Praytell

Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Minneapolis, Minnesota

I suspect I have already written about the pastor who decided Monday would be his sabbath.  On Sunday he would preach that no work should be done on the Sabbath, but he was paid for his sermon.  And so, having compromised the day, he needed some other day to rest and reflect.

He wrote a story for Weavings magazine.  It went something like this.  Monday morning, we awake, saying nothing.  We pack lunches, and drive to the hills, saying nothing.  All morning we walk the trails, saying nothing.  At lunch, we take out our sandwiches, and share what we’ve been thinking about, and what we’ve seen — the blue jay, the moss, the chickadees, the clouds, the rain.  And then we walk back home.  I go to my desk, and answer correspondence.  I fiddle around a bit, putting things in place.  The sun sets.  We, my wife and I, are renewed.  All day long, we trying to “get the rhythm right.”

I have never forgotten those last four words.  How is it we get the rhythm right.

We are in holy week.

All week long, there are chances to “get the rhythm right.”

The readings are long.  Very long.  Too long to be read in church.  They tell the whole story.  We know most of it, but every year, something new appears.  Around the table this morning, we were talking about life.  The suffering servant, Isaiah, writes, takes on our diseases and our infirimities.  He pays for it.  Because the wounds show, we count him “out.”  He is not “above it all.”  He is not “successful.”  He is not immune from that which would wound us.  And so, we judge him.

We are a little repulsed by a wounded healer.

Our session goes on as we try to get the story “right.”  There are two fundamentals, says Peter.  Jesus says, “Into thy hands I commit my spirit.”  And he says, “Why have you forsaken me?”  The tension between them is palpable.  But if we only had one, without the other, all would be lost.  We church people always wonder, “Is this really true?  This church stuff.”  And then say, “I don’t know, but we’ll commit anyway.”

We discuss Peter.  He denied Jesus not once, but three times.”  If we judged him at any one of those points in time, without being aware of what Paul Harvey once called, the “Rest of the Story,” our interpretation would be false.

Do we judge each other at a point in time?  Or over time?  Which would be true?

Suddenly, our legal system and a moral system collide.  A man in California shoplifts a block of cheese.  It is his third strike.  California sentences him to 25 years in prison.  A judge reduces the sentence to seven years.  Peter also had three strikes against him.  He wept.  And Jesus said, “Upon you I will found this church.”

How different.

How vital.

How real.

Tomorrow night, a service remembering betrayal.  Friday night, a service.  Saturday night, a service.  Sunday morning, a service.

All an attempt to move a bit beyond ourselves.  All trying to “get the rhythm right.”

It is mysterious.  Many would ask, “What are you doing?  And why?”

To which, we might answer.  We’re looking for a little more healing, a little more purpose, a little more truth, a little more hope.

To which, they might say, “I am too.”

And so it is, on this spring day when green has yet to show its true strength, in the last week of Lent.

Sunday, March 28, 2010

Trees That Find Their Way

Minneapolis, Minnesota

Yes, there is a separation between church and state.  But, thankfully, it is anything but watertight.

And so, although this is a Lenten meditation, written on a nearly balmy Sabbath afternoon, my text comes from a school.  A high school, to be exact.

A few years ago, the school in my home town, asked a teacher to be the commencement speaker.  I did not know who she was.  She was fairly new to the school, but had the determined energy that makes classrooms and schools hum.

I remember just one line of her speech.

“You are not a number,” she said.  Then, she had the students all say it together.  “I am not a number.”

To believe that, and to live that, is easier said than done.  Over and again we are evaluated by statistics.  What is our address?  Is it in a good part of town?  What is our net worth?  What are the measurements of our television set?  What is our zip code?  What is our credit rating?  Exactly how far away from “best?” are we?  What, precisely, is our weight, and exactly how far off perfect is that weight?  How many calories do we consume a day?  How many do we burn off in a day?

Well, you get the point.  These numeric evaluations could go on for ever.  They are the stuff of census bureaus, the basic of sociological analysis, the stipulations of rank.

Every so often, I bump up against numbers in an unexpected place.  I dearly care for and appreciate the congregation I attend nearly every Sunday.  It decided to go through a visioning process.  Kind of a survey, indicating our age (a number), our address, (a number) how many times we attend a Bible study each week (a number) if we share our faith with others (a number), whether or not we tithe (a number.)  The diagnostic survey is full of numbers. Each tells something, but not much about me.

I support my church, so I will not oppose this plan.  But I find myself standing aside.  This morning, in a conversation, I wondered why my reaction has been so strong.  What is it about the sociological approach that puts a burr under my saddle?

Then I realized something.  Or many things.

My entire life has been about beating the odds.  Not many Type 1 diabetics make it 54 years.  In my first heart attack, the doctors told Connie I probably wouldn’t make it.  I did.  After my first stroke, the folks at the clinic bet I’d never live out the year.  I did.  After the second stroke, it looked like curtains.  It wasn’t.  After my second heart attack, numbers said I had good reason not to make it.  I did.  Every evaluation of me had numbers behind it, but no spirit.

Deep in my soul, I do not trust the numbers.  I trust story.  I trust your story, my story, and God’s story with us.

Whereas numbers lead to categorization, stories lead to an exploration of life.  It’s when the chips are down, and the numbers are against us, that life gets interesting, beautiful, and compelling.  That, of course, is Easter’s story.

You are not a number.

Neither am I.

A single line from a high school graduation in Big Timber, Montana, continues to ring in my ear.

Now that I know the source of my opposition, perhaps I can better bless the process and somehow find it part of the story, of this church that lives out the meaning of joy, hope, faith and love.

Saturday, March  27, 2010

Minneapolis, Minnesota

I knew virtually nothing about George Washington Carver.

I’d heard about him.  Something to do with sweet potatoes and peanuts.  Something to do with being one of the first African-American scientist to achieve national and even international acclaim.  But that’s all I knew.

Until, one day, a book came my way.  It had been part in an interesting collection, the kind that grows almost accidently, until one says, “What are we going to do with all these books?”   They chose to put them out for the taking,.  One was a biography of George Washington Carver.  Not knowing much I decided to read it.

As  slave, he owner was a white Missouri farmer.  When he was just ten months old, a slave raider stole him and his family from Moses Carver, and sold them in Kentucky.  Moses found them, those who survived, and brought them back.  For Moses, George was more a son than a slave, although there was work to be done.  Single-handedly, Carver the slave/son plowed 70 acres.  Moses encouraged and supported George’s education, and did not oppose emancipation.

One day, George had a vision.  He saw a “slave” neighborhood burdened by poverty.  The people were malnourished, their dwelling ramshackle, the land exploited beyond its limits.  In his dream, the people were well-fed.  Their houses were painted.  The land productive.  It was a vision of healing.

And so he set to work.  At Tuskegee, he set to work.  Mighn’t the sweet potato and peanut feed a people?  Mightn’t it be used to produce paints?  Couldn’t it revive the fields?  Couldn’t it produce an income?  What would happen if a community organized around a plant God had given but people didn’t understand?

The answers began to flow.  Each one said, “A lot.”  Those buildings could be painted.  Those people could be fed.  Those lands could become productive.  Vision found its science, and science extended the vision.

One day, the Ku Klux Klan decided to do what the Klan had a habit of doing.  It would “show” the black students at Tuskegee, and their faculty, just who is boss.  They would put on their white sheets, and take their burning crosses right onto campus.  Everyone knew what was going to happen, and when it would happen.

A group of whites came to him and said, “You’d better come stay with us.  This could be bad.”  Carver’s answered them with a single word.  “No,” he said.  “This is where I do my work.  These are my students.  This is where vision has led me.  I will not flee.”  His friends didn’t understand it.

Tuskegee students and faculty also had a plan for him.  “Here’s a rifle, take it.  Here’s what we’re going to do.  We are going to make a statement too.  Join us.”  Carver declined their offer as well.  He stayed in his lab that made his vision real.

Neither side understood him.

That’s the thing about visions.  Over the last few months, we have seen how sustaining and how difficult vision can be.  The left had plans for Obama and are angry that he hasn’t agreed.  The right had plans for Obama, and are angry he didn’t cave in to their demands.  If one is to be a healer, somebody will be angry.  In the end, one must stay with the vision, especially, and most importantly, when it is grounded in compassionate healing.

Soft walking,

Larry

Thursday, March 25, 2010

The Visit

Minneapolis, Minnesota

We want it right.

And we want it right right now.

Today, in your  town, a physician wonders about her call to heal.  She has 18 patients to see.  Each one has a chart, probably on a computer.  Each one has a problem.  Some are acute.  Some are imagined.  Some are no more than fear.  Some are the first sign of something wrong, the lump that needs a biopsy.  She has 15 minutes to make the assessment.

In those same 15 minutes she has to make an assessment of that assessment.  Are there resources available?  Did the patient actually comprehend what she said?  Did she comprehend what the patient said?  What will this mean?

Is healing possible?  Or is the purpose of the visit a simple matter of complex diagnosis?  Answer.  Answer right now.  The clock is ticking.  Another patient is waiting.  Answer.

We do not wait for the answer.  We want the problem solved.  We as patients want it solved right now.  We expect healing.  We expect things to work.

The day looms as a virtual impossibility.  How does one heal in 15 minute increments?  Who has time to find the story?  She became a physician to heal people, to help people, to care for people.  But the technology that saves us began to dictate the consult.  The MRI said, “Use me, right now.”  The specialist said I don’t really care about your life story, all I do is track cancer cells.  Pay me.  Right now.

Into such a setting comes the impossible example of pastoral care.  As pastors, we learn early in the game to never look at our watch when talking with someone.  To say to them, in body language, “I have somewhere else I need to be, and that place is more important than you,” to say this breaks every rule of dignity, presence, and relationship.  Even when we have heard that same story a million times over, we refrain from looking at our watch.  (I hasten to add that none of my churches had a clock in the sanctuary, as those who sat through an hour and a half worship service could and would testify).

As long as we reduce the healing encounter to 15 minute increments, we are denying healing the blessing of time.  We heal over time.  We heal “out there.”  We heal in places that there is no charge.  We are not billed for the family reunion, for the hymn in church, for the phone call with a friend, for the jokes we tell the mail carrier.

There are healers who get this right.

Treatment centers get it right.  In-patient treatment lasts 28 days.  It takes a long time to come to terms with healing.  The inter-personal surgery is difficult, painful, visceral, and, leads to life.  Hospice gets it right.  They “travel with” as our journey through life draws to a close.

“We can do this,” I often wish a doctor would say.

And who is “we?”

All of us who, without training, but with compassion take the time to heal over time.

I write with a deep respect for the call of every healer, and awareness of how difficult today’s string of appointments may be as it boxes in their beautiful call.

May God bless them.

And you.

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

The House of Hope

Minneapolis, Minnesota

Far from the city, a path of red sand bordered by purple flowers emerges from the Paraguayan woods.  The flowers that could just as easily be called weeds.  No matter.  There they are, and they are beautiful.

Just where the path turns a thicket of trees veils a white-walled home.  Or perhaps a garage.  Whatever it is, its walls are  brilliant and the trees and flowers that surround it are beautiful.

Were I a pastor for whom words like “bread” and “light” and “water” and “table” and “heart” are a mysterious mixture of the real and the ethereal, I’d say this could be a house of hope.  These places of hope in our lives tend to arise in the midst of tangles where the way is crowded and dissonant.

Walking the path last fall, something said, “Paint me.”

“I don’t know how.”

“Paint me.”

“What if I don’t get it right?”

“Leave that to photography.”

And so, I picked up  a brush and wondered how to find the colors of hope.

When our children were about 11 years old, it became clear that each had a disability that would only worsen with time.  It was the same disability that had emerged in their mother’s life.  We did what could be done.  We went to Shriner’s Hospital for Crippled Children in Minneapolis.  We went to Mayo.  We risked surgeries that often did not “work.”

And we did what we could to emphasize hope, meaning, and compassion as best we could, knowing that none of them are ever completely owned or even understood.

Along the way I harbored a quiet fear.  I knew that on their own, no matter how bright and beautiful their spirit, each would be rejected for health insurance.  Chronic conditions get worse.  Our family is not a good risk.  We are too expensive.  Medical insurance is for the healthy who rarely need to use it.  That’s the only way insurance companies can make money.

When I went to the Interfaith Health Program (IHP) in Atlanta, there was a time after our trainings to share why we were there, why this changing of health care mattered.  Whatever I do here, I shared, is for my children.  They are not children anymore, but their future depends on changing this system.

We did not choose our disabilities.  We did not cause them.  We could not have avoided them.  But we were punished for them.  After my strokes, the fights with insurance companies led me to believe they would be so relieved if I had simply died.

This week, a legislative pathway made its way to the house of hope.  The woods were so thick it was almost hard to see.  For a moment the way was almost lost.

But then hope appeared.  The children I could not protect from disability are now protected from being thrown overboard by the principalities and powers that once ruled against them and so many others.

I am grateful beyond measure for all who fought the good fight.

Thank you.

Monday, March 22, 2010

When Land Became Sky

Minneapolis, Minnesota

I am “teaching” a class on the Leading Causes of Life.

We’re into the “fifth” cause–blessing.  We cover the basics.  Blessings change one’s outlook on life.  They change us.  They bring hope, they connect us, they open a new door.  We can give them; and we can receive them; but we cannot bless ourselves.

That’s enough.

Lecture is over.

The discussion begins.

There are twelve of us, so that makes three groups of four.  I ask the lead question, because that’s what teachers do.  “When have you been blessed?  And when did you bless?”

The questions are simple enough.  Quietly, tentatively, the sharing of stories begins.  As the “leader” I’m never quite sure if I’m supposed to “float” between groups, or if I should just grab a chair and join in.  I decide to do the latter.

I am struck by the poignant power of the stories.  A teacher thanks another teacher, and the power of that affirmation made his day.  A family, a group of mothers, created a ritual for their daughters as they became women.  I share the story of courage blankets in our family.

My wife received the first courage blanket.  She received it after too long a hospitalization.  She didn’t receive it because she “beat” the disease, but because she endured with poise, with heart, and with courage.  She “came home.”  And so we gave her a courage blanket.  It was a navy blue Pendleton blanket, with a beautiful design.

We somehow knew we had started a tradition.

Each of the kids would, one day, receive a courage blanket.  The timing was uncertain.  There was nothing they could “do” to receive the blanket.  Instead, as we saw their lives unfold, there were times we noticed compassion, courage, kindness, and an embrace of life.  You didn’t get a courage blanket for being “good.”  You earned one by something deeper.  Something that would last.  Something that showed the way.

Tim received one.

Ben received one.

Andy received one.

Emily Jane received one.

In time, I even received one, from my parents who were aware of our tradition and its world of meaning.

We gave them to honor life.  We received them from the pool of love we call “family” and realizing they would be a reminder.

That’s another thing about blessings.  Once given, they never wear out.  They last.  They prompt us.  They call us to do things we might not have thought we could do–especially when it comes to being what might mean to be human.

Today, may we be open enough to receive a blessing, and kind enough to give one.

Sunday, March 21, 2010

Minneapolis, Minnesota

Had you asked me when I graduated with an actual BA, and then an actual MA, if I would ever be a coach, I would have said, “I seriously doubt it.  Poets aren’t coaches.”

But when one needs a job, one tries to get a job.

And so it was I became a teacher at the Hyde School in Bath, Maine.  Needless to say, they had a football coach.  A basketball coach.  And a lacrosse coach.  But track?  What’s that?  What is a sport that nobody knows how to score, that pits one against the clock instead of an “enemy” and doesn’t even have shoulder pads or helmets.  What’s that?

Needless to say I became the track coach.  When the bus arrived to take us to nearby Lincoln Academy, we got on it.  And then we ran, threw, jumped, and lost.  The score of my first track meet was 121 to 7.  There was an event, called the “tripple jump.”  I had no idea what it was.

But there are such things as libraries.  An Australian runnning coach, Percy Ceruti, had written about running with one’s thumbs.  And there were entire encyclopedias about track.  I read them.  Watched the opposing coaches, figuring I had something to learn.  I’d pester them, asking the Exeter track coach how he coached his hurdlers, his javelin throwers, his jumpers.  Their teams had knowledge, class, and power.  My teams didn’t.  I could sense them saying, “Oh no, here he comes again.”

Along the way, we began to win.

We began to win quite a lot.

The cross country team won the state championship, and then  the New England championship.  Track meets became close.  “We’ll sneak up on them with the events they don’t understand,” I’d say to the kids.  We can do this.  We can do this.  Yes we can.

One year, all the private schools in the Great State of Maine competed for the track championship.  It was at Hebron Academy on a beautiful spring day.  The coach was better than me, and far more experienced than me. His  team was better than ours.  But we’d compete.  And so we did.  The dashes, the runs, the jumps, the throws, even the pole vault that none of us had any idea how to do.

Leroy Kelly was one of my runners.  He was “placed” with the school by one welfare agency or another.  He ran with heart.  He cared with heart.  He was the captain of the team, on a team within which votes didn’t count for much.  It was a matter of the spirit.

At the end of the day, when the score was tallied, we lost the championship by two points.  Don’t pin me down, but I think it was 123 to 121.

I walked off the field with my team.  I looked over to the track.  There, sitting on the newly green grass, Leroy was weeping.

He was not weeping because he lost.  He was weeping because he knew in his soul that we had given our all.  There could be no nobler expression of what it is to be human than giving one’s all.  If we had won who would have remembered?  Nobody.  But winning or losing isn’t the game.  Life is.

Tonight, when Kansas lost to Northern Iowa University, I saw a Kansas player on the floor, weeping.

I thought of Leroy, and the nobility of his tears.

I don’t know where he is, or what has happened to him.  All that was a quarter century ago.  Soon, for the Kansas player, tonight’s loss will be a quaater century ago.  But tonight’s exertion of spirit will last, and last, and last.

And so, these words are for Leroy.  Thank you.  And these words are for the Kansas player.  Thank you.  Take heart.  To both of you, well done.

It is an honor to have coached you.  I wish you well, and I thank you.

Saturday, March 20, 2010

No Scores to Settle

Minneapolis, Minnesota

“You can’t keep score without a program,” it was said by ushers hawking programs at baseball games.  I’ve only been  to three major league games in my life, so I can’t quite vouch for the expression.  But I’ll take it at face value and focus on two words.  “Score” is the first.  “Program is the second.”

And politics is the game.

The NRA keeps score on the votes of every elected official.  How exactly did they vote on Second Amendment measures?  The NRA wants to know.  It would vote for gun rights one hundred percent of the time.  Legislators who agree with the NRA would receive a 100 percent score.  From there the slide towards weak-kneed decisions begins.  A legislator with a 40 percent score would be a “problem.”

The Abortion debate folks, both sides, keep score as well and want us to buy their program.   Who is “with them?”  And who is “against them?”

The liberals keep score.

The religious “right” keeps score.

The progressives keep score.  Of course, “we” have good reason to do so.  One need only witness the tilt of government towards the rich and away from the poor in the halls of St. Paul (the state capital of Minnesota, in case you are wondering) or in New Jersey where the newly elected governor will not, will not raise taxes but will balance the budget but cutting programs that nobody would need if everyone was right.  And so, “we” keep score.  Like the NRA we keep score.  Two can play at that game.

In a democracy if goodwill is ever to become policy, we need to fill in our scorecard and then either praise or punish.  If we don’t, we’ll be accused of living in some Kumbaya-esque delusion.

A confession.  I learned the word “dogmatic” when I was in the ninth or tenth grade.  Around the dinner table each night  conversation was part of the meal.  We always asked, “What did you do today?”  And then, “What do you think about this?”  I almost always had an opinion.  “Good, but don’t be so dogmatic!”  my parents would say.  “But . . . ” I’d respond.  Dogmatists are full of passion, and love to sow the seeds of a fight even when there isn’t one.  Most of all we are assured of our convictions.

Eventually, we learn the blessings of vulnerability.  Of course I’d prefer to say “humility,” because humility is “good.”  The lean towards “dogmatic” hasn’t yet disappeared.

But something is beginning to take its place.

Scorecards make me cringe.  In ministry we learn, often at great cost, to not get caught up in outer storms.  Instead we are called to appreciate the inner person, to understand why he or she is thin-skinned, hot-headed, intransigent or stubborn.  We learn there is a reason.  We learn a person is more than a vote, more than a scorecard, more than meets the eye.

The mail brings scorecards.

The debates in St. Paul, Trenton and Washington rage.

The reports find a way to my desk, each its own version of truth.  The envelopes take their place beside a book.

“Love is patient.  Love is kind.  Love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude.  It does not insist on its own way, it is not irritable or resentful it does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in the truth.  It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”

So writes the hot-headed, often stubborn and argumentative Paul to the misguided, controversial and difficult church in Corinth.

The message sinks in.

As for scorecards, the back of an envelope will do just fine.

Friday, March 19, 2010

Weather Talk

Minneapolis, Minnesota

Once upon a time, I took weather talk as chit-chat or elevator conversation.  When it’s 20 below outside, we say, “Cold out there,” agree and end the conversation.

In Big Timber, where the wind relentlessly rehearses what a three-week windstorm should be, we’d say, walking outside and trying to not have the door blow away, “Windy,” complain a bit and then go on with our day.

Weather talk seemed like idle talk.

But then, I I began to wonder.  Doesn’t weather surround us with something bigger than ourselves?  In a self-centered age, couldn’t that be a blessing?

The weather, and talk about the weather, began to intrigue me.  Not surprisingly, television didn’t share my intrigue.  It is too hunkered down in EXTREME WEATHER bureaus.  Its spokespeople are paid to commiserate.   Perhaps the fields need rain but, oh no, it’s going to rain today.  And so on.

Weather can be severe.  The Minneapolis tornado that touched down two blocks from here last summer was anything but gentle.  Weather is full of unexpected changes.  So is life.  We’ve all been flooded a time or two, and have somehow endured a drought.  The more I fiddled with the thought.  And then I began to read, to actually read,  the New York Time’s weather report.  To my surprise, I found the text exceedingly evocative.  Listen to what’s happening around us today according to page A18 of today’s paper.  I’ll bet the forecast matches a bit of your life.

“Much of the area from New England to Florida and Central and Eastern Texas has a sunny, delightful day unfolding today.”

Still more will unfold today.  As the advance of cold air “leads to a widening area of snow farther south and east from Wyoming.”  How nice it is to read the full name of a state instead of ubiquitous initials.  The snow will be “disruptive.”  It won’t kill you, but it might be best to meet with the committee’s subcommittee sometime next week.

The snow has a “leading edge.”  So do I.  Life is full of leading edges.  The day will then “progress” towards evening.  Thank heavens!  What weather channel broadcaster would say, “Today we’re going to start with morning and then move towards evening.”  We’re next told there could be some “blinding” downpours in parts of Northeast Texas and that a “few flurries will hover over the western part of the Dakotas.”  I like that.  The Dakotas are one land, but two states with the same last name.  The writer had it right.

But we’re still not done.

“Depending on where these storms stall and strengthen, will determine which part of the central Plains gets the heaviest snowfall.”  Storms stall.  Sometimes life stalls as well as we wait, and wait, and wait for something to happen but can’t get traction.  And then, sometimes, it strengthens.  In the end, “A good deal of sunshine and dry weather will span the West Coast.”  Span.  I like that verb.

We span the years.

Faith spans the years.

Hope spans the years.

Let us enjoy the elevator’s idle conversation and listen to the weather of our lives as life stalls or strengthens, and  morning moves towards evening once again.

Thursday, March 17, 2010

The Family Trees

Minneapolis, Minnesota

I didn’t say it was a miracle.

My brother did.

You may remember an entry of perhaps a month ago.  I was “snagged” and needed to make a decision I did not want to make, one that was not of my own choosing.

First I went “this way,” and then I went “that way,” regretting and second guessing the first way.  The only thing I knew for sure is that a process was underway.  In the end one must trust the Spirit’s leading, indiscernible though it may be.  I just didn’t know to dam, or free, its waters.  And so I decided to call home and seek my father’s counsel.

Both he and my mother are in a “memory care” unit in Wisconsin.  One is in such a unit because  judgment is clouded, confusion tends to reign supreme as dementia takes its toll.

“Larry,” a woman with dementia once said to me years ago, “Guess what?”  “What,” I answered.  “They have put me in charge of the entire nursing home.”

“Really?”

“Yes, really.  I’m just as surprised as you.”

“You mean you get to decide the menu?”

“Yes,” she said.

“And who gets to work here?”

“Yes,” she said.  “The whole thing.”

“That’s amazing,” I said.

“It amazes me too,” she said.

We said a prayer, loving life for all its deceptions, for all its wonderful delusions, for all its sweet spirit.  Over the next few months I’d always ask, “How are you doing.”

“Pretty good,” she said.  “I still can’t quite believe it.  They just haven’t announced it yet.”

We both laughed.  Her state of mind is the state of folks in memory care units.

But my father is my father, not a diagnosis and I needed more wisdom than I had.

I carefully explained the dilemmas, and the choices I had to make.

He listened.  Carefully he listened.  Deeply he understood.  He caught the tension, the conflict, the depth of the decision I was pressed to make. It was love I could hear in his discernment.

“Well,” he said.  “I don’t know all the facts, but it seems to me . . . ”

For 45 minutes we spoke.

And then I made my decision.

“That phone call was a miracle,” my younger brother later said to me.  “It was as though 25 years disappeared.  It was like listening to the dad we once knew.  He was careful, he was probing, he’d never make the decision for you, but it mattered to him.  I couldn’t believe it.  How did that happen?   I asked him what you were talking about but he wouldn’t say a word.”

Of course he wouldn’t.  There is an element of parent child confidentiality that is utterly sacred.  Dad would share the dilemma only if I did.  That’s how wisdom works.  It is indeed wise.

A miracle.

How’d that happen?

Once, my father said to me, “I’ve got life more or less figured out but nobody asks me.”

I do, dad.

I will not dismiss your wisdom because of dementia or the loss of memory.  I will not do that.  I will ask as though life depends on it, especially when it does.  You’ve known me since the very beginning.  You’ve been there, worried about me, sometimes been confused by me, always caring and knowing a way would be found.

Authenticity is powerful.

Always has been.

Always will be.