vitalwholeness

Yesterday I enjoyed a genealogical excursion with a friend. We traveled to family stomping grounds where history was stored. And part of that was residing in a particular cemetery.

One of the challenges of rural cemeteries is the lack of clear records. In the major operations in the city you generally find charts and grids showing burials. It is relatively easy to do a search of who is buried where. Not in the country. In those graveyards – community or family plots – it is more a matter of tradition. The knowledge is passed down from person to person, often in oral tradition.

So it was as we searched for one of the family members of my friend. Records were not to be found. The only answer was walking the grounds, moving from stone to stone, many of which had been polished smooth by the sandpaper of time, erasing the names and dates once carved into them.

After an hour of wandering and looking we were preparing to depart, mission unaccomplished. But just then a pick up truck pulled up and a man in a feed cap got out. “You look like you’re looking for somebody.” We were. His name was Jimmy and he mowed the cemetery.

“Yes,” my friend said, “we’re looking for Kirkpatrick. We understand they are buried here but can’t find them.”

“Oh, yeah, I know right where they are.” He walked us right to the stone and pointed. “Here you are.”

Sure enough, it was. The cameras came out and we celebrated. But how did Jimmy remember?

“You know, one time a delivery truck came through town with Kirkpatrick on the side, and I wondered where they were from. And so every time I mowed around this stone I wondered if they were somehow kin, those buried here and the company on the truck.”

And that’s how the man who stopped because people looked like they were looking led us exactly to the spot, because he remembered a delivery truck that reminded him of a grave the mower buzzed by.

That’s how it works, of course. There are the billion connections buzzing around us like lawn mowers in summer. And the present and the past are one, right along with the strangers passing by and, yes, passing away.

No, it’s not a sports conference. It’s a condensed list – of the ways one harms the relationship with God or with neighbor.

The one that comes to mind today is found in a recent court case. Ryan Ferguson was falsely accused by Charles Erickson of the murder of a Columbia Tribune editor in 2005. The newspaper custodian joined the fray with false testimony.

This sent Ferguson to prison for a crime he did not commit. This April, both Erickson and the custodian changed their tune. They admitted they were lying. Ferguson was vindicated.

The commandment, of course, is to not bear false witness against your neighbor. Why? Because your self-interested lies harm the innocent. It happens all the time, of course, a repeating drama. Which is why it’s in the Big Ten.

It’s that important.

It was a good old summertime family reunion. Everyone was there. The kids played in the park while the men cooked up their animals on the grill. The table was strewn with baked beans, slaw, potato salad, chips, fruit, brownies and all the rest.

Then it came time for family photos. These are the posed shots of various family “lines” within the larger family. I got nominated to take the pictures because there wasn’t anyone else on hand who could operate a point and shoot automatic. Let’s see, is everyone in the picture? Heads chopped off? Well then, it probably will do. That’s my level.

At the close of one family shoot, an older gentleman steps forward and I think he’s going to shake my hand, thank me for snapping the pics. But no. Instead, he puts a little religious tract into my hand. His wife says, “Well, honey, I think he’s a minister.” That, it soon appears, is not enough. “Of what church,” he asks, honing in on the salvation issue at hand. “Well, the Christian Church,” I retort cheerfully. His expression does not change. That, I guess, is not the right answer. “You know,” I continue, “a church of Christians, you know, Jesus people.” His expression softens, I suppose with mention of the “J” word. I place it back in his hand as I say, “So I won’t need this tract because I’m already on the team.” But the tract was like a boomerang and headed back to me, tucked in my shirt pocket with a gentle pat, like you’d pat a baby to sleep. “Then just keep it. You’ll know when the time is right to use it on someone.” That ended that.

1. I can’t think of a tract that could be more disgusting and reprehensible than the one he gave me. I threw it in the trash to make sure no unsuspecting soul accidentally picked it up and was turned away from the Christian faith one more time, given the opportunity to paint all Christians as fringe lunatics one more time.

2. I can’t think of a more ineffective way to attempt to communicate the gospel than this, to push a pre-fab comic-scaled story of salvation into a stranger’s hand. No, sharing our faith is about love, genuine relationships, sharing story and being a real human being with another, not finding conquests for your program.

Wake up, church. Tract religion is not working. It never did, really. Especially when crammed into the hand of your family reunion designated amateur photographer. Just have another hot dog, really.

I’m really not sure that it was conscious, this synchronized movement on the part of mother and daughter. The outdoor summer concert had just begun when I spied them, perched on a short wall just adjacent to the stage. The mother, bent with age and hair white as cotton, sat beside her middle aged daughter.

Slowly and surely their bodies began to sway to the tempo,  rhythm and accents. Like the Hasidim rocking before the Western Wall in Jerusalem they leaned to and fro in tiny, imperceptible movements, like fledglings in the nest, waiting for a worm, a tidbit from the parent birds.

Was it the power of suggestion that, as I discretely watched them, some musical voyeur, I started swaying as well? And what if that is the point, this side to side dance through time, a waltz of the generations,  floating on no more than an eighth note here and a quarter note there?

In my naive days I evaluated the data of life from its outside appearance. That, I discovered, was reading the world incorrectly.

Oh, yes, much of what you see is what you get. There are people like that, circumstances like that, books like that, religions like that. But there is much much more that is not.

First impressions are tricky. Depending on person or context they may indicate the true reality or not. More than once I have misjudged a book by its cover. I have either under or over-valued a person, place or thing. I’ve repented over those occasions. But the temptation to be wooed by the externals is a strong one.

Some years ago our family had some investment rental property. The next door neighbors were a fine family – two parents and three children. The father was a bus driver for the city and a strong working guy, involved in the neighborhood. The mom worked in a school cafeteria and knew everyone. The parents spent time with the kids and the family was always doing things together.

One day dad came home from work, walked from the drive to his front door, and on the way somebody emerged from the side alley and pelted him with bullets. He died where he fell.

It was a neighborhood tragedy and I remember going to the mourning house, walking through the zombie-like children and shattered mother to express, what, some consolation. They numbly regarded my gesture. I was not surprised.

How could this happen to such a family? What monster would destroy such harmony?

Maybe two months later I saw a news piece that featured this grief-stricken wife and mother. She had been arrested and was charged with conspiracy to commit murder. It ends up that she and her lover put a contract on her husband’s head to have him snuffed. She’s now in prison.

And I remember walking into her kitchen, expressing my sympathy, and she lifting her heavy eyes toward mine. “Thank you for stopping by,” she said. And I thought to myself, “How could anyone do something like this to this family, this woman?”

We are not what we seem, to ourselves or others. People are better than we give them credit … and worse. And quick judgments based on first impressions are often … mistaken.

I once read an author who asked a simple question about bringing peace and love into the world. The question was, “How can we begin to bring about peace and reconciliation to the four quarters of Jerusalem when we can’t bring peace and reconciliation to the four quarters of our own heart?”

It’s the right question.

My daughter and I went fishing this afternoon. Lest I mislead, we are not pros. Novice would be a flattering designation. We have a our rods, reels and tackle. The lake was just fine. The fish weren’t biting. The sun beat down. And the row boat got us there.

Only row boats were available at the public facility and that was about our speed. Of course, I was the rower. As we moved from place to place, observing any form of wildlife except  fish – herons, hawks, snakes – something suddenly occurred to me: In a rowboat, if you’re the rower, the only way you get anywhere is backwards. You literally row with your back to your destination. In terms of time it takes on a different shade of meaning. In a rowboat you move into the future while looking at the past. That’s not bad, especially for Memorial Day.

Rowing into the future requires a back to the wind, not knowing what’s coming other than a general direction. The most helpful coordinates are the ones we already passed by, those sitting on some distant shore of what’s already been. That centers us somehow. It doesn’t provide all the answers because some of those live only in the future and are never provided in past tense. Rowing backwards keeps us reading the way things have been as an aid to understanding what will be. It’s not always a one-to-one correspondence, of course, but very often it’s close enough.

A couple of things help rowing backwards. Since good navigation has to do with comparing the future with the past, you can’t only look backwards.  Some people do that – only look backwards – and it generally doesn’t work.

The first way to accomplish that is to keep glancing over your shoulder. What you’re doing is comparing your destination with where you’ve been already.

But the second thing is to include an on-board companion, one who is not rowing backwards like you are, but rather facing forward. Their observations become another helpful measure of direction. The perceptions of another provide a different point of view. Together they make some magic.

Backwards into the future; not a bad way to travel, fish or no fish.