Winter gardening and the cycle of life

“I’m gonna write a book,” my friend, Glen Sandusky announced to me when I saw him Sunday morning in the church office.

Glen was grinning from ear to ear, a sure signal he was up to something.

“What are you going to write about?” I played along.

“I’m gonna write about how my preacher kept his garden going in January!” Then snickering to the audience gathered around him, he proudly proclaimed, “No one told him you can’t keep a garden alive in the dead of winter, so he just did it!”

Glen has been my gardening mentor, and I've been a slow learner at times, so I suppose he has a right to boast. My wife Lori still seems to know more than I do about gardening. She got an early start, spending summers with her grandparents who gardened.

I on the other hand, am a city boy, even though I grew up in a town and not a metropolis. What I've learned from gardening has come from friends who have patiently coached me along the way. During planting season I keep several of them on speed dial, “Now how far apart do I plant okra? How deep should I plant those potatoes? Do you think I should pour more Miracle Grow on them?”

This was the first year I tried my hand at a fall garden. In the past, I wearied of gardening by the middle of September, feeling almost like a slave to the garden’s neediness: it needed weeding; in needed harvesting; it needed watering; it needed weeding, weeding, weeding. Finally, I would tromp away, exasperated by its demands, fearful that I was descending into a co-dependent relationship: I needed the vegetables; it needed my time!

But this year I caught a second wind and went for it: In September I planted broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, lettuce, kale, and my most prized produce: spinach.

And they thrived. I took pictures in November and December and sent them to family and friends who sent me back admiring comments about my fall garden. My nephew Brian, a beginning gardener as well, was especially beholden, amazed at the lushness of fall in Kentucky compared to drought-stricken Lubbock, Texas, where he lives.

I felt like I was on the verge of graduating from gardening grade school, like the 4H boy in his first showing at the county fair, dreaming of blue ribbons.

Spurred on  by the possibilities of success, I worked as if my fall garden were my sole source for food, putting row covers on when the temperature dipped into the 20s, pulling them off when it warmed up, then covering the plants again when a hard freeze threatened. Finally in early January, the week after Glen’s acknowledgment of my accomplishment, I closed the garden, leaving only a few rows of kale and spinach--- just in case.

“Why did I do that?” I asked myself as I brought in the last of my harvest, cradling it in my arms like a proud papa presenting his first born to the waiting family. “Why this effort to prolong the garden’s life?”

Is it just a desire to say I did it? Or is it a matter of enjoying homegrown produce, proving that I can weather the weather, protecting my precious plants weeks after the farmer’s markets have closed for winter?

Or is there something else? The end of the growing season, suggesting the ending of life, reveals in me---one who conducts funerals as a part of my job description--- the resistance of death as a part of life: I want the greens, yellows, and reds of a fruit laden garden lush with life, not the brown grassed plot of dry deadness.

And anyone who has left an empty, silent schoolroom where there was once laughter and learning, or a vacant house where once a baby giggled and a family grew, or a locker room where once teammates high-fived in celebration and cried together in defeat---knows that saying good-bye to one season of life while the next is yet to be---is itself an act of faith, a claim that there is more to come, that the class will reconvene, that the family will stay together somehow, and that the team will remember.

And where there is faith, doubt usually lingers in the corner of the next room, or in the adjacent closet.

Or right beside you.

Or inside you.

And so we want to hold on.

But giving in to death is a part of life---a life that gives rise, in time or beyond time, whether measured in three days or three months, or forever--- to something new, bright, scary, fascinating, hopeful, and mysterious. As I gaze at the setting sun, standing with my feet at the edge of my barren garden, I long for that garden to be: the one for next season.

And while waiting, I see it.

By faith, it works.

Deep in the cold of winter.

Finding the real deal

“You don’t seem like a preacher, at least not a typical one. You’re ‘the real deal.’”

The comment, coming from an inmate in jail, I took as a compliment, although I frequently ask myself if I’m really real.

His comment was followed by a question: “How did you ever get to be a preacher in the first place? (“Do you think I should have been something else?” I am tempted to ask.)

Choosing to do what I do wasn't something that came on sudden like---a flash of lightning followed by an etching in the clouds, “BE A PREACHER.”

More like a boy carefully crossing a shallow creek on stepping stones, round and slippery, I came to it cautiously, carefully sizing where to plant my foot next, yet still moving forward, if ever so slowly, until I hopped and finally skipped across stones to the bank, at last resting peacefully there at my place on shore.

I learned about Jesus while being rocked on my mother’s lap and watched Jesus walk through my house in the actions of my parents.

But when I ponder the answer to that question, how did you get to be a preacher?, I can’t help but think of my great granddad, the Reverend A.F.Whitlock, or as I called him, Great Granddad.

Great Granddad’s entry into the ministry, unlike mine, was born from the cauldron of despair. In the early 1900s, his daughter (my Great Aunt Byrcha) was deathly ill. In desperation Great Granddad cried out to the Lord, “God, spare her life, and I’ll serve you with mine.” God answered his prayer, Aunt Byrcha was miraculously healed, and Great Granddad sold his farm in Osage, Texas, enrolled at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, and moved his family to Ft. Worth.

Years later, while I myself was a student there, I found his picture in the library’s archives. There he was in the 1917 class photo: square jaw, youthful face, piercing, determined eyes that I could have sworn followed me as I looked at him from every angle; I think I could even feel his breath on my back as I turned and walked away.

When I knew Great Granddad, he was far from young; indeed to me he was ancient---well into his 90s. But his eyes were still penetrating, his jaw still set, and though his steps were unsteady, he at least walked with deliberation.

“Who’s going to take Granddad a plate of food?” Grandmother Whitlock would ask after she had fed us ample portions of fried chicken, mashed potatoes, corn on the cob, and fried okra.

“Can I go?” I always tried to be the first to volunteer.

His house was across the street, and there I would find Great Granddad sitting in his plain, cotton upholstered Easy chair. A single light bulb hanging from the ceiling would barely lighten the room. During the summer I might find him tuned in to radio station KMOX, the home of St. Louis Cardinals baseball.

I often felt like Jacob or Esau when Isaac wondered which son was which, for Granddad’s eyesight was clouded by cataracts, so taking my hand he would ask, “Now, which one are you?”

“L.D.’s youngest boy,” I would say.

Having passed the identity check, I would start asking questions, simple ones at first like, “Can I help you with your knife and fork?” Or, “How are the Cardinals doing?”  Then as he nibbled, I would proceed, “Tell me what it was like back then, when you first started preaching? What churches did you pastor? What was it like to preach revivals? How did you make it through tough times?”

One time Granddad was with me as I once again peppered Great Granddad with questions. Great Granddad was 102 at the time, and his son, my granddad, was then 82. Having recounted the churches he had pastored, Great Granddad paused, and Granddad interrupted, noting that Great Granddad had forgotten one church. Without missing a beat, Great Granddad said, “Well, I never did like that church anyway.”

Another church had a few people who apparently antagonized Great Granddad. “But I had helped work in their fields when they were short handed, when sickness kept some from bringing in their crops. They remembered that and weren't about to let the trouble makers have their way.”

“Why do you still wear a suit every day, Great Granddad?”

“I never know when I may be called on to minister,” my century old Great Granddad would tell me.

Not your typical 102 year old preacher, I suppose. But then, how many century old pastors do you know?

Chances are, if you find one at that age who is still dressed and ready if someone calls, you’ve found the real deal.

That’s for sure.

Bring back Santa’s pipe…before it’s too late!

I never thought much about Santa smoking a pipe in Clement Moore’s 1823 poem, “Twas the Night Before Christmas,” but now that a new edition of the poem has taken his pipe away, I think I miss it.

Would somebody please give Santa his pipe back? I don’t want him rummaging through my cabinets, frantically trying to find some tobacco for a post sugar-cookie nicotine fix.

Here’s the skinny on Santa and his pipe: It seems self-published Canadian author Pamela McColl decided children and parents should be protected from images of smoking. So she mortgaged her house and sank $200,000 into publishing and promoting her version of Moore’s classic poem. “Wouldn’t it be sad if we saw a poem that’s so incredibly influential in our celebration of Christmas cast aside because we didn’t make a simple edit and took out a simple verse that’s offensive to modern children?” she asked.

In order to make Santa less “offensive,” the pipe had to go. Out went the lines, “The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth/and the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath.” Then McColl hired an illustrator to redraw a sanitized Santa without that protruding pipe and tobacco swirl of smoke encircling his head. Finally, she made it read like it was Santa’s decision to go tobacco free: "Edited by Santa Claus for the benefit of children of the 21st century," she added to the book’s cover.

I don’t miss Santa’s pipe because I long for a smoke. I never was very good at that anyway, although I do admit that during graduate school I smoked a pipe for a brief period of time---at least long enough for someone (Santa himself?) to give me a pipe one Christmas. Cradling that pipe in my hand, I felt like Santa and I had bonded. The trouble was I spent more time tamping on the tobacco and relighting the darn thing than I did studying, and besides, the librarian frowned on the presence of a pipe, even an unlit one, on her terrain.

So I gave it up rather easily.

Now, my granddad, whom we affectionately called, “Pappy,” knew how to use tobacco. He could spit with the best of them, and his “nasty little habit,” as Grandmother called it,  made finding him a Christmas present all the more easy and uncomplicated. One single trip to the grocery store for a box of Top chewing tobacco, and we were done. I loved breathing in the pungent tobacco odor before surrendering the box to mom for wrapping. It was plug tobacco because, according to Pappy, “anything else has additives in it and that makes it something entirely different than baccy.”

I don’t know what brand of pipe “baccy” Clement Moore gave Santa, but why have these insensitive moderns chosen Christmas as the time to break him of a gentle smoke? I just hope he doesn’t let his nervous, sweating, shaking, nicotine needy hands grab his whip and in a fit of frustration start relentlessly popping Dasher, Dancer, Donner, and Blitzen.

And what about these “modern children” who are supposedly offended by Santa’s only vice? (Well, the only vice I know of.) What if Santa caves under pressure: “Enough already! I’m done! Get your own presents, I’m sitting down for some alone time with my pipe.”

I’m not the only one who’s calling for a return of Santa’s pipe. Deborah Caldwell-Stone, the American Library Association’s deputy director for intellectual freedom likens the new version of “Twas the Night Before Christmas,” to Alan Gribben’s recently edited versions of “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” and “Tom Sawyer,” which replaced the 200 or so occurrences of the “N” word with “slave.” Said Caldwell-Stone: "This was presenting the original but censoring the content. That kind of expurgation that seeks to prevent others from knowing the original work because of a disapproval of the ideas, the content, is a kind of censorship that we've always disapproved of."

Removing Santa’s pipe, involves the “altering of a classic work of literature with a view toward protecting modern sensibilities, or preventing children from being aware of the character of the original work," Caldwell-Stone concluded.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Ms. McColl. I say if Santa needs a makeover, why stop with the pipe? Put him on the treadmill, trim that beard, slap some contact lens on him, and replace the sugar cookies with low fat yogurt.

But then we wouldn’t recognize him, would we? Santa wouldn’t be Santa.

Santa, I’m with you. I miss your pipe, too, and I’ll do my part to get it back.

Just remember me when you shimmy down my chimney.

Is it someone important or just family?

“Is someone important arriving here, or are people just waiting for family?”

Before I could answer the man, the lady standing next to me in the airport terminal said in a voice loud enough for everyone around us to hear, “Family IS important!”

I stepped back, not wanting to get caught in the crossfire of a potential verbal volley, but then the questioner submissively lowered his head and silently trudged toward the baggage claim. The lady pulled the front of her coat closer together while simultaneously raising her chin in a gesture of triumphal indignation.

I felt a tinge of sympathy for the guy because I too have asked the wrong question and been embarrassed by what I said. But I knew that lady had him dead to rights.

In a matter of moments both would disappear in the pre-Christmas airport crowd because my eyes were riveted toward one person: my daughter.

Most of us have at least momentarily lapsed into an all too casual familiarity with the wonder of our family. Why shouldn’t we respond to their arrival like they are celebrities? Who could be more significant than family?

As I escorted my celebrity to the baggage claim, I couldn't help but think about the return trip when I would be checking the departure flights and not the arrivals. The thought hung over my happy moment like a black cloud waiting in the distance.

Because family is important, it can bring us unspeakable joy as well as unbearable pain. Some set the family dinner table during the holidays dreading another visit from the one who always seems to find a way to ruin it for everyone else. Others are staring at a mate they no longer know, while some are wondering if that child will ever get it together, and others would be elated if the kid would simply come home. And then others, their insides torn by an aching absence, can do nothing but stare at the place where he or she used to sit.

If we dwell on it, we are likely to limp into the New Year in a melancholic mood that invites more somber thoughts into our home than we have emotional rooms to accommodate.

How do we keep the possibility of sorrow from dominating our future?

“I’ve learned to lock the door behind me and move on,” a lady I admire told me the other day when I asked her the secret of her refreshingly positive attitude. Now in her late 80s, she relishes the good life she’s lived, but I know she’s also endured plenty of twists and turns, bumps and bruises; life has not always been easy for her. Her only child was tragically killed in a car accident years ago, and now her husband is no longer able to take care of himself. Sometimes he is aware; most of the time he is not. He frequently stares blankly at me when she is not there to help him remember who I am.

She looks up at me from her chair beside her husband’s bed. And as always, her smile is soft and gentle, and her eyes tingle with the look of someone who has just received an unexpected gift.

“When we left our winter home in Florida for the last time,” she tells me as she reminisces of former days, “I knew the best thing to do was lock the doors behind me and look for new ones to open, and take each new room as the gift it is.”

Not a bad way to face each day of the New Year or any day of any year.

Glancing back at her as I leave her husband’s room, she remains in her seat, patiently keeping vigil at his side, and I can almost hear the man back at the airport, “Is there someone important you’re waiting on, or is it just family?”

I have a feeling she would say, “Both.”

Amid grief over a tragedy, can we talk?

I used to work with someone who would on rare occasions step into my office and ask, “Can we talk?” I immediately knew something was seriously amiss and therefore needed to be addressed in order to avoid potentially disastrous consequences.

One of those moments has come for our nation. We seemed to have avoided the discussion after the 13 were killed at Columbine in 1999, and the 32 at Virginia Tech in 2007, and the 13 at Ft. Hood in 2009, and the 6 in Tucson in 2011, and in 2012 the 12 in Aurora, Colorado, the 6 at the Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, and the 2 at the shopping mall in Oregon.

In the aftermath of the 26 children and adults killed at a Connecticut elementary school, people are asking, “When is enough, enough? Can we talk?”

The killings happen in our schools, hospitals, houses of worship, and shopping malls. No place is safe.

And we are fortunate more have not been slain. Indeed, on the same day as the Connecticut massacre, an 18 year old Bartlesville, Oklahoma man was arrested for allegedly attempting to lure students at his high school into the auditorium where he planned to chain the doors shut and start shooting. On the day after the Connecticut murders, a man opened fire at a hospital in Birmingham, Alabama, wounding a police officer and two others before being killed by another police officer. That same weekend, a man fired 50 gun shots in the parking lot of a crowded Newport Beach, California shopping mall, while in Indiana a man who owns 47 guns was arrested for allegedly threatening to kill as many people as he could at a public school.

This is not a rural problem or a city problem: It’s everyone’s problem. Tom Mauser, whose 15 year old son was killed at Columbine High School in 1999, spoke last July of his futile efforts as an activist against such violence. “There was a time when I felt a certain guilt,” he said. “I’d ask, ‘Why can’t I do more about this? Why haven’t I dedicated myself more to it?’ But I’ll be damned if I’m going to put it all on my shoulders. This is all our problem.”

He’s right: It’s our problem. And we must address it.

Violence seems to be woven into the fabric of our culture: From video games to movies, we ingest a steady, daily diet of it. But political and cultural commentator, David Brooks, speaking on “Meet the Press,” cited studies showing that the perpetrators of these mass killings don’t seem to be spurred by violent video games or films. “It’s a psychological problem, not a sociological one,” Brooks said.

Why these tragic events are frequently a part of the public scene is no mystery: It’s a matter of statistics. There are some 300 million firearms in the US. Consider that $1.6 billion has been cut from state mental health budgets, which includes budgets for mental health services. Those numbers equate to a simple formula: The less help available to mentally troubled people, multiplied by the availability of guns, including assault weapons with high capacity magazines, equals the proliferation of horrific events like the ones we have been witnessing. It’s inevitable.

The objection that even under the best of circumstances, with proper background checks on purchased weapons and mental health care more available, what happened in Connecticut and other places still could have happened, may be true but should not deter us from enforcing more effective regulations that help safeguard the public by trying to keep weapons out of the hands of those who are mentally incapable of properly and sensibly handling them.

The conversation won’t be easy, but it’s necessary, because violence has and always will be an ever present reality and therefore must be checked.

In the meantime, let us pause and pray, weeping with those who weep, comforting the brokenhearted, protecting the innocent, and looking with hope to the Healer, whose birthday we celebrate December 25.

And as we do, remember what Fred Rogers’ mother would tell him when he saw frightening things in the news. “Look for the helpers,” she would say. “You will always find people who are helping.”

Let’s be those helpers as we sit down together. We need to talk.

Making a list and checking it for a...surprise

Surprising someone with just the right gift is a risky business, even if you think you know the person well.

I chuckle every time I think of that cartoon of the husband standing outside his bedroom door in his pajamas, wearing some ridiculous looking bunny rabbit slippers, trying to coax his wife out, pleading repentantly, “Mildred, I’m sorry. I really do like my bunny rabbit slippers.”

We've all received one of “those” gifts.  What to do with them? “I just knew you would love it,” your distant aunt or cousin or work-related acquaintance tells you. And you stare at it, wondering what it is and what they were thinking when they bought it. And you ask yourself if you've been the victim of regifting. 

I rummaged in the back of my closet and came upon some regift relics. There’s the wind chimes (I’m a light sleeper, need I say more?), the industrial size silver bells (as soon as I buy a Clydesdale, I’ll use them), an entire flock of ceramic birds (enough to block out the sun if only I could bring them to life and set them free), and last but not least, the Cross pen and pencil sets (Yes, sets, plural, circa 1999, leaving me to wonder how many times they've been passed along.)

Unfortunately, now that I've shared my closet of suspected regifts, I won’t be able to pass them on.

I’m a believer in a list. That practice started with me when I was a child. It was a beautiful moment when one of my list items showed up under the tree. When I was in 4^th grade I asked for PF Flyers. Mom and Dad bought them, I’m sure, but my older brother Mark had his name on the card. “You can really run fast in these, Merry Christmas,” I think his card said. I raced across the street to show Kim Parrish my prized possession. Occasionally I remind Mark he’ll never top the PF Flyer gift.

The key is giving what someone truly wants rather than what we think they need.

The Wall Street Journal recently reported on a study by the Journal of Experiential Psychology that maintains people are more appreciative when they receive a gift they have requested. “It turns out it’s not the thought that counts, it’s the gift that counts,” observed Nicholas Epley, professor of behavioral science at the University of Chicago and one of the authors of the study.

That makes perfect sense: Friends ask what you want for Christmas; then they actually get that instead of some off-the-wall item they thought you needed. And you are so happy they gave you the warm pair of house slippers you requested rather than a leprechaun candy container.

But then again, there are those ever so rare occasions when The Surprise is exactly what we need, even though we don’t realize it at the time.

On my birthday Lori surprised me with some new headphones for my computer. At first I didn’t like them simply because she had broken the sacred no surprise rule. “How much did you pay for these?” I growled, trying to remind her in a not-so-subtle fashion that she had violated the no surprise rule.

Maybe I’m a lousy grumbler---or maybe she’s a better ignorer---because she merrily shared the discounted Groupon price for the headphones.

I had to admit, it was an excellent gift.

But I still try to maintain the no surprise rule. Venturing outside it can be dangerous.

“Now remember, no surprises this Christmas,” I reminded Lori as I bookmarked my wish list on my laptop and forwarded it to her. “Stay on the list.”

“Sure, I’ve got it.” I thought she acquiesced.

But something in the tone of her voice signaled suspicion in my mind: Something about that phrase, “ I've got it,” raised an eyebrow.

As I whirled around to face her, my hunch was confirmed: She was smiling, and I could see what she was thinking; she had him in her eyes again, shining as brightly as the noon day sun: it was the Baby--- THAT ONE AND ONLY BABY--- the one born at an unexpected time in an unexpected place to an unsuspecting people.

And I had to smile back, thankful for those occasional surprises that meet our deepest need.

And make Christmas, Christmas.

Tell me another story, Mr. Lincoln

I wonder what Abe Lincoln would think about all the fuss with Steven Spielberg’s epic movie, “Lincoln.”

I can hear a reporter asking the ghost of Mr. Lincoln, “Did you ever think your popularity would soar even beyond its already lofty heights? And, how does this development affect your assessment of your own place in history?”

I can see Lincoln smiling wryly as he whirls a swivel chair around, straddles it, and leaning over its back, says in a high pitched, piercing drawl, “Well, it reminds me of the story about the backwoods preacher in Hardin County, Kentucky, back in 1850. Seems his church voted him the most humble pastor in America, and they gave him a medal that said, ‘To the most humble pastor in America.’ Then they took it away from him on Sunday because he wore it.”

The reporter chuckles as Abe then makes his point: “I did what I believed was right in 1864, and I took the necessary steps to abolish slavery, and no movie’s popularity or movie critic’s predictions of Academy Awards will change my humble assessment of my strengths and weaknesses. I did what I did.”

In reality, Spielberg’s “Lincoln” is not only endearing; it’s enduring (and I’m not referring to its length: two and a half hours): It stays with you long after you've left the theater.  Spielberg brings Lincoln to life like no film about the 16^th President has done. But the movie is not about Lincoln’s life. Rather, Spielberg narrows the time to the beginning of Lincoln’s second term, specifically, the fall of 1864 to January 1865, when the war was coming to an end, and Lincoln wanted to assure the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, which would make slavery unconstitutional. The movie’s drama revolves around what Lincoln does to get the necessary votes in the House of Representatives for the amendment’s passage.

Much of Lincoln’s genius, in addition to his political acumen---he could cajole, he could coerce; he could stand firm, he could be flexible; he could demure, he could demand---was his ability to make a point with a story, endearing himself to both supporters and opponents. He was a master of the anecdote. Through it all, he was resolute in achieving his goal: the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment.

People sometimes had trouble understanding why he used so many stories. There is a splendid scene in “Lincoln,” where Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton (Bruce McGill) has lost patience with Lincoln’s penchant for spinning a yarn: “No, you’re not going to tell a story. I can’t bear to hear one,” Stanton bellows as he storms out of the room.

Lincoln slowly smiles and proceeds to tell another story.

Now let’s return to that imaginary reporter as he walks alongside Lincoln outside the cinema after a late night showing of Spielberg’s “Lincoln.” The reporter presses the President: “Political pundits each have their ‘take-away’ from this movie. What’s yours, Mr. Lincoln?”

Lincoln stops, pauses, turns to the reporter, stares him the eyes, and you guessed it, tells another story.

“It happened five years before my death,” he begins, “in the fall of 1860. The steamship, ‘Lady Elgin,’ was en route from Chicago to Milwaukee when a lumber schooner rammed her, sinking the ship, accidently killing 279 passengers and crew members. It seems a student at Northwestern University, a young man by the name of Edward Spence, made 16 trips from the shore to the sinking ship, saving 17 lives. The young man suffered from shock, and as they carried him to the hospital---and by the way, as a result of his heroics he would spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair, not one of the 17 he saved ever returning to thank him---he kept asking a question, kept asking over and over, ‘Did I do my best?’”

The puzzled, slack jawed reporter looks up to Mr. Lincoln, “Are you saying that you did your best to preserve the union, or are you questioning if we the people have done our best for this nation and the cause of liberty for all---regardless of race, religion, or sexual orientation?”

With a twinkle in his eye, a satisfied smile breaks across Lincoln’s wrinkled face as he stares above the reporter, gazing at the stars.

And we know the answer to the question lies in yet another story.