Some Thoughts on Middle Age

I think back to me at 18, and for all the tumult of being that age, my life stretched before me with seemingly limitless, even frightening, promise. I had not yet known failure of any significant scope. I had yet to have my heart broken. I was going to change the world, dammit, and I wanted answers, and clear ones at that.

Things seemed simpler, or maybe it was easier to convince myself they were. Men in my peer group typically did a stint in the armed forces, and I enlisted in the Army with scarcely a thought to the justice of my country’s causes, or the effects of propaganda on my decision-making.

If my body ached, it was my own damned fault (well, mine and rum’s, anyway...). Time had yet to start insisting on its supremacy, had yet to supply me with the pains of its passage – pains of both body and mind. I understand the temptation in men my age to vainly try to hold on to a mercilessly vanishing youth — but that would require me to surrender wisdom, too, and more; being 18 again would mean the erasure of some memories by which I mark the years, experiences which have softened and mellowed the fabric of my soul.

I would lose the morning I got up before dawn, walked out into a meadow and watched the sun come up over the Vermont mountains and frosted-blue grass and fiery autumn woods. I would lose my first real love, and the way her face looked that one night as the moon lit its contours with blue and sacred light; I would lose the moment, praying the Stations, when Christ showed me His pain with such tenderness that I wept and gave Him some of mine.

Bob Seger once said in a song, "I wish I didn’t know now what I didn’t know then."

Me? Nah. For all the melancholy and aches and increasing limitations, I’ll keep the lessons I’ve learned.

Mom and the (Last) Depression

I had dinner with my mom a couple weeks ago, and we were discussing her having grown up during the depression.

She told me the story of a neighbor girl about her age named Clare, when mom was about 9 or so. This girl was a recent transplant from dust-bowl Oklahoma. She and her family lived in a tumble-down shack that was down the road a ways from mom's nicer (but still modest) childhood home.

Mom invited Clare to her birthday party, and for her present Clare gave mom a scarf, one with a pretty flower pattern on it.

Mom went to her mother and said, somewhat scandalized, "Mommy, I saw Clare wearing that scarf!"

Grandma said to Mom, "Well, that was all she had, Anne. That was all she had to give."

Mom still gets misty when she tells that story. To me, there is no greater example of childlike simplicity and generosity.

If only we could all be like Clare, the world would be a place of aching beauty and simple love. There would be no poverty, no greed. I hope we can commit ourselves to building such a world.

Proof That There Is a Loving and Merciful God

When I was a kid, I was adventurous to a fault. I was legendary for the bike wrecks I used to get into.

When I was about 10 or so, my friend Ray and I were biking around the hills of El Cerrito, along with my older brother Mark and Ray's brother Sertha. Actually, I was on the back of Ray's bike, since my bike was in bad repair (presumably from the previous week's spectacular crash) and goading Ray to take more risks and live a little. His bike's brakes were out, so we had to hop off and walk the bike down the steeper hills.

A time came when we were at the top of a long, steep, curvy street that ended in a "T" intersection. I was sick of walking down hills when we seemed to have two perfectly good wheels to go down a whole lot quicker, and the lack of any means to stop seemed like an awfully abstract problem. Ray, knowing what was coming, immediately said, "No Matt. You've made me do some crazy stuff, but this is too much. My mom will kill me if I get killed because of you. I'm not even supposed to be playin' with you, man..."

15 minutes of teasing, goading, and calling him "chicken" later, he agreed to go down the hill. The plan was, he'd control our speed by putting his sneaker on the front tire as a sort of provisional brake, so we would not get going too fast.

About 15 seconds into our journey, we were going, oh, 35 or 40 miles per hour, and his sneaker was decidedly not up to the task of stopping 130 pounds of kids and their bike. That's when Ray started screaming.

About two thirds of the way to the bottom of the hill, Ray raised himself slightly from the seat, and put his foot down on the front tire with all his might.

Massive mistake.

His foot rode up the back of the tire, and directly into the front forks where it lodged firmly, which stopped the front tire. Instantly. At 40 miles an hour. The bike instantly "endo'ed" and cartwheeled into a parked car, Ray attached. I was launched into the air over the car that Ray was messily impacting, and remember thinking with startling lucidity, "When I land, this is really, really going to hurt..." - just before I landed in some lady's rose bushes. Ray didn't break anything, and made me give him my tee shirt to absorb the blood from his cut face, and I also had to carry the two halves of his bike home. When I got home, mom said I looked like I'd gone ashore at Normandy on D-Day.

Good times.

Prayer Request

I have been prone to anxiety since I was young, and it has become very bothersome for me lately. Please remember me in your prayers.

A-hunting we will go...

My brother Luke and I went hunting this weekend. This is us, looking sheepish at the end of the day. Score: Animals 1, Hunters 0. Two weeks earlier there were Turkeys all over the road - we had to steer around them, honk the horn, etc. Sunday - nada. Figures.

Thank you for your prayers

My dear brother Mark's Mass of Christian Burial was yesterday; a friend of the family who is a Deacon gave the homily, and after communion invited me up to share some thoughts about Mark. I'll post that later, but I wanted to use my first post since I've been back to thank everyone who has been praying for us. I and my family have truly been floating on prayers since last Thursday.

Glory be to the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. AMEN!