My Dad Reflects on Crunching the Numbers
I had an unexpected and pleasant surprise in my inbox this morning: a guest post from my dad, reflecting on some of the discussion we’ve had here the last few days. I know, I promised Part 3 on confession and self-disclosure today. It’s still coming. Consider this Part 2.5. You can pick up Part 1 and Part 2 to get up to speed.
When I think of what’s made me what I am today, it’s one part my dad, one part my mom, one part being beat up by my brother, one part having a girly older sister, one part reading a lot of books, one part being pursued for years by the love of my life, one part . . . well, a whole lot of parts God worked together to come up with a little something called me. But I was highly blessed to have a mom and dad who taught me the good stuff from day one and lived it out where I could see it.
So I’m happy to break my dad out of the comment box for you today. Ignore his flattery (he’s my dad, what do you expect?) and just move straight to the meat of it.
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by Paul Willingham
Fascinating discussion. You have the uncanny ability to take mundane things like pocket lint and Show and Tell and make us think. It is interesting that you posted on this subject this week. Yesterday, I started putting into words something that came to me in the car and it sort of ties into what you are discussing here. My opening lines were going to be the words of an old hymn that popped into my head while driving to Grandpa’s last week.
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Show and Tell
No surprise to me, Part 2 didn’t go where I thought it would. I promised a look at self-disclosure and confession. I ended up at self-promotion. You can read Part 1 here. Part 3 to come.
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When my boys started kindergarten I was in for a rude awakening.
Oh, I was fine with them going off to school and all. But with kindergarten came the dawn of homework.
And at that age, let’s be fair. Homework is for parents. Not for kids.
It seemed that every day they had school, they had Show and Tell. And Show and Tell always meant work for us, scurrying around at bed time when we were nearly ready to collapse, looking for the perfect item for their next big moment on stage.
If perchance we forgot to prepare, the boys weren’t above reaching into their pants pockets for a chunk of lint and then jumping up on the platform to extol its function and beauty.
They loved Show and Tell.
But you can bet that sitting at their short-legged table, on a tiny chair, there was a smallish kindergarten classmate wondering why, when that dreaded moment arrived each day, she couldn’t make herself even smaller. Why the ground couldn’t open and swallow her little self whole.
She wondered why, after tossing pennies in the fountain, did she never awake to find she finally had that invisibility superpower she always wished for.
At least that’s how I remember Show and Tell.
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Legends
If you were a young child living in a cardboard shack in the interior of a South American country, it’s likely you’d heard of a North American movie legend or two.
But never venturing beyond the confines of your dusty shanty town, you probably wouldn’t know Rambo from a redheaded Swede.
So in the early 1990s when Lane and I traveled to just such an Argentine barrio to show the Jesus film, it came as no surprise that many of the children mistook the first big Yankee they’d ever seen for their hero, Rambo.
The kids spoke no English. Lane spoke limited Spanish.
Their interactions, when he wasn’t showing off his proficiency at asking about a bathroom, usually amounted to kids squealing Rambo! and throwing their arms around his neck every time they saw him, and Lane returning their hugs and flashing his trademark grin, two international signs for friendly.
All in all, everybody was happy. The kids had a real live action hero. Lane had an instant fan club.
And Sylvester Stallone was none the wiser.
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If I Talked to God Like that When I Was Your Age…
Have you been around long enough to know that Judges is just not safe for me?
Tiptoe as I might, I will one day trip over my own feet and spend some time stretched out with my face in the dirt trying to sort out why on earth God worked like He did.
Or works like He does.
Or is Who He is.
If this is new to you, welcome.
Every now and again, it’s what we do here.
It’s time.
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10 Cool Things You Can Do with 300 Fox Tails
You’re right, the post title is intentionally misleading.
I only have one idea for what to do with a whole bunch of fox tails. It’s been done, and I’m not sure how cool it was.
But I’ve read that list-posts are popular with readers and I’m all about making you happy. So I figured, why not?
What could it hurt if I didn’t deliver the goods?
It’s not like anybody would get mad and take three hundred foxes, tie their tails together, start them on fire and set them loose in my back yard.
Nah, nobody would ever do something like that.
Except, I suppose, maybe Samson . . .
He might just be crazy enough to do something like that.
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His Body, Broken
Contrasting Samson’s strength-for-myself with Jesus’ willingness to muscle under us for our gain reminded me of a post from the archives. Meanwhile, we’re off to see our last Minnesota Twins game in the Metrodome. Enjoy the weekend. Go Twins!
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The Lord’s Supper is not funny.
That last meal that Jesus shared with His disciples, celebrating the Passover supper together? Even less funny.
Yet, from time to time when I hear said that Jesus’ body was broken, I confess I force back a snicker. I don’t want to laugh. I try not to do it very loud. And I try to get over it really fast.
It’s embarrassing and offensive to be found laughing about such a somber thing.
I’ve learned that not a lot of people appreciate snickering during Communion.
And they really hate snort laughing.
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Don’t Plow with Samson’s Heifer
This set-apart stuff can sure go to a guy’s head.
Make a guy a Nazirite and give him awesome hair, and Wham! The whole world revolves around him.
It started with a harmless riddle between a bridegroom and his wedding party.
It turned into death threats, a sobbing bride, and Samson kicking the snot out of 30 guys so he could take their clothes and pay his wager.
All because an arrogant fool couldn’t grasp his calling.
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Why I Wash My Hands After Reading the Word
If you blog, you might notice we oft find ourselves as the Wizard of Oz, hidden in the control booth of Blogger or Word Press throwing switches and levers to project whatever image suits our fancy. Even when we do let down our guard and expose our shortcomings, we do so in a controlled environment, putting our best foot forward. Our words are measured, thoughts processed, outbursts edited.
If folks start to see our true faults, we might be quick to turn up the volume and pour out more smoke. Like the frail wizard, we shout into the microphone, “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!”
Don’t worry, you can keep reading. I don’t plan to reveal any dark secrets today. But I will point out one of my more neurotic quirks that often wedge themselves under the fingernails of those who know me. You who have only a digital image are more often spared such annoyances of day to day life.
Curse you, Samson. You continue to expose me.
I apologize in advance.
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My coworkers and I paraded to the cafeteria yesterday and stood in a herd like so many cattle. You’d think we never eat. But the cooks whipped up homemade caramel rolls just the way we like them — warm and free — to kick off the annual Combined Appeal (think: small town United Way) campaign.
When it was this glutton’s turn at the table, I took tongs in hand and felt electricity rack my arm. I tried in vain to hold in the guttural half-scream that left my throat. A nearby coworker jumped away as I jerked my hand back but was unable to rid myself of the utensil, now one with my hand.
Caramel Rolls + Hungry Workers = Sticky Tongs
I seized up.
Once done making my scene, I pulled the tongs from my palm, handed off my plate and slunk to the kitchen to rinse the offending glop down the drain.
I’m not a germophobe. I’m not even particularly neat or tidy. And I don’t live in a spotless home.
But sticky does something deep inside me.
It immobilizes.
So, when Samson stuck his powerful paw into honeycomb the bees created inside a lion’s carcass, I started to twitch.
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Could Anybody Use a Little Rest?
It’s always so backward to me.
I have an organized brain, one that is neatly compartmentalized.
The earth, you know, travels on its axis in one direction only. Seems my mind follows the same pattern. What works for the earth surely will work for me. Straight lines, one foot in front of the other.
Stay in the lines, between the fences, on the path.
I imagine He cast a sideways grin my yet-unformed way when He breathed words into Matthew’s quill and parchment. Jesus stood teaching the crowd in Galilee and said such backward things.
He said He would hide understanding from the wise and learned, and instead reveal His knowledge to children.
Tiny minds would grasp what we smartypants could not.
And it was all for His good pleasure. It’s right there in the text.
That was His way of saying My Father delights in crazy backed up logic just because He knows two thousand years from now it’ll make my Beloved’s head spin right off her neck.
And there’s that sideways grin again.
Seems the child vs. grown-up remarks were just the prelude. There was more backwardiness to come.
After uttering such ridiculous words, He would turn and ask us to slip our heads into a constrictive apparatus meant for beasts of burden and heavy labor.
He would ask us to wear the yoke as though we were oxen, all so we could find a little rest.
And I ask myself: A little rest? Is He mad?
His pearly whites are flashing that grin.
All for His good pleasure.
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Unredacted: A Page from the Journal
Thoroughly enjoyed my reading of 103 earlier this week and thought I’d give this to you straight out of the journal.
Unedited.
Unadulterated.
Unredacted. (Yeah, that’s not a word. But I like it.)
If this is the first time you’ve ventured this far, my humble apologies. I do write better on days when I’m not talking to myself.
Wait a sec . . . for all I know, that’s what I do here all the time. Hello . . . ?
This is a hair scattered. When it comes to the Psalms, I like it that way. And please forgive all the shouting CAPS. I got excited.
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We Could Have Been Praying
It’s murky, looking into my future. My family’s future.
Two months from now I’ll complete this near year-long process of working myself out of work. I prefer not to use the U-word just yet, thanks. I hope and intend to have no need for it.
Even so, the uncertainty is all that is clear.
The rest remains, well, murky.
Funny.
I suppose your future is murky too. Nobody knows for sure what’ll happen tomorrow. Perhaps we just don’t always realize it.
Sometimes life’s moments conspire to make us more acutely aware. More focused on the murky waters below the raft than the clear blue sky above it.
Seems the waters will always be murky if we look deeply enough into them.
A little contemplative, it seems I am today.
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I Want It Now!
The hair on the back of my neck just stood up.
The same way that it stood up when I was a kid during the Super Bowl. While the Dallas Cowboys kicked somebody’s rear in one room, we non-NFL fans holed up in another and watched Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Between the Oompa Loompas looking just a little too much like the scary Jolly Troll in the smorgasbord commercials and the maladjusted characters not getting what they deserved quite soon enough, it’s an old movie I love to hate. Or hate to love. Or something.
It’s one of my all time favorites but still one that creeps me out a little.
On today’s reading of Judges 14 (you don’t want to know for which numbered time), Samson’s giving me that same sick chill.
When he demands that his parents fetch him up a cute Philistine bride, it is as though he’s just slipped into Veruca Salt’s prim red dress and Mary Janes and taken over the Golden Egg Room at the factory. As Veruca implores her doting father to procure a goose that will lay golden eggs (one hundred a day) and lay out a feast for her (of beans, no less), Samson joins in with a rousing chorus of I want it now!
All the while, I find myself wanting to nudge them both a hair closer to the Bad Egg Chute.
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The Conversation