The Way Has Been Made
If you are looking for a way into life today, a way to work with grace and love others with courage and perseverance, the lever that you’re looking for is this simple phrase: the way has already been made.
Lawn Care and the Smell of Memories
Memories, in fact, make us who we are. We have no idea who God is, who we are, and what life can and should be without the woven stories of our recollection.
As I smell motor oil, I remember my uncle. I remember the things I learned since being a child around all the carcasses of cars yet to start again. The hurts, the disorientation that came as I lived longer in the Midwest than in my native South, I remember them.
The parting of my parents.
I remember my and Holley’s wedding.
When our daughter came crashing into the world after a brief and petrifying medical intervention.
It is all part of me, it makes me who I am.
we are made to be known.
My wife Holley spent the spring entry period battling a wicked sinus infection, a fact she shared with the walking parents in our neighborhood who pass by every morning with bleary-eyed kids in tow, headed to school. Our daughter, tall and wild and graceful, steps out the door as well to join the fray.
The weeks passed and antibiotics did their due diligence, until standing on the porch one morning a walking parent – a mom that we talked to often – saw us and said:
“Are you feeling better?”
Behind this perceived pleasantry is a hint of something more. We are part of a network, a neighborhood of houses and lives and spirits. Our kids go to the same school and we share geography, taxes, and sidewalks.
In that moment, a great secret was revealed: we were in some sense known.
(Photo by Justin Luebke on Unsplash)
A Bit About God, Music, & Memory
I can clearly remember the first time I ever heard the vocalist and songwriter John Gorka.
It was a song called “Houses In The Fields” and I remember the video vividly. Gorka talks of the decline of farming in the United States, how all the farmers had been bought out and replaced by subdivisions with grand magisterial names.
I remember Gorka's voice, sounding like the kind of voice that would come out of a person who is hewing wood from fallen trees, or shoveling great heaps of earth into or out of the whole working with his hands.
But I also remember John Gorka because of my father.