Listening To A Red Oak

We had a massive red oak come down across our driveway night before last.  Betty and I worked all day yesterday in the rain cutting it up.  Around 1 p.m. I was completely spent and sat down on a cut section to rest.  My head was hanging low, sweat dripped from the bill of my hat, I was filthy, Betty had walked to the house to get us some water and the woods were finally quiet from my chain saw.  The red oak just laid there most of it still intact even though I had spent up most of me working to cut it up.  It smiled at me and said, “It’s hard to come up against a tree isn’t it boy?”  I chuckled at myself and acknowledged, YES!  “Just one of me in a forest of hundreds on your hill and untold billions of us across the earth!”  Yep, I said, beginning to take its meaning.  The red oak smiled knowingly and I did too.  Soon it would send up new shoots from its roots and grow into more red oaks.  “Did I mention I have 14 shoots of my own”, I said.  “I know”, said the red oak smiling.  I shut my eyes and prayed; praise! 

Hard to come up against a tree—much easier to listen to one.  

   

Recording Quiet

Sitting beside The Sweet Tennessee shimmering in the mild morning after a night rain.  Everything is turning from the bright green of new spring to the dark green of ripe fullness.  It is quiet, the river lolling about full to wollar in stillness before the long baking days of summer.  The mountains and trees are putting on weight, fattening up with shade to share in late July and long August and the small Blue Birds are flittering about preparing to wed.  My lover sleeps as does my dog, the clicking of my Mac keys the only sound—recording quiet as is a good habit.  Outside my windows, there is no sign of humanity but God is shore to sky, peak to peak.  

The Gift Of Ears In The Rain

There are certain things, few, that a man can hear, that proves God as though the sky had opened and there He sat on His Throne, smiling at you and said “Hi!”  One such thing is the beginning of rain in the forest.  If one is so gifted to have ears—one should listen!    

Keeping At The Work of Living

I am 61.  It is 2:02 a.m. and I am not asleep.  What do I know?  Not much.  For 61 I know a lot but in relation to all that can be known, I know very little.  The older I get the less I know because I am more aware of how much there is to know.  I am not talking about what there is to know about physics or brain surgery but what there is to know about things that are a part of my own particular-ness. I have made a fair swipe at the ball, a good attempt and have kept at it fairly well.  Keeping at it, at being in a relationship with God, at loving Betty, at fatherhood and now grandfatherhood.  I also try hard to be a good teacher, I realize how much there is to learn and how quickly you can fall behind if you don’t really work at it diligently.  As a beginning teacher, I was trying to build a program.  The best way I saw to do that was to make my students be really good at what my program was about.  The key was just plain hard work.  At 61 I seem to spend most of my time trying to convince my students that life is so profoundly meaningful but only if you are willing to work hard at living.  61 would be so much lesser than if I hadn’t worked so hard to get here.  Working hard always pays off with you being better than you would have been.  Many people will read these last few sentences and say I am too focused on working and need to learn to relax and the second sentence above may be their proof.  But I would say they would be wrong.  When I say “work” I mean those things that I expend a great deal of energy on because they are so meaningful to me; loving God, loving Betty, being a good patriarch, artist and teacher are not jobs or work, they are who I am, who by Someone else’s unfathomable grace and kindness I have been gifted enough to be.  That’s not called work.  It is called living.      

Empty Holes and Half Gainers

Sometimes I sit in an empty pool, down at the deep end where the walls tower above me.  I spent 21 years at the top of the pool, everyday swimming laps and praying; praying is why I now sit in it empty.  My university in all its dull wisdom drained my sanctuary, closed the doors, boarded up its windows and now ignores it like any other hole in the ground.  So I come and sit in it and ponder life.  When I first came to Union, 23 years ago, I could do a Gainer off the board here and even a much more difficult dive, a Half Gainer.  My children would ask me to do it and on those special days when I was feeling 14 at 38, I would meet their fancy dreams with my fancy acts.   Not only do I no longer have a pool for which to perform in, I am no longer able to.  I can only fall off the board.  I doubt if I could even dive.  But I tell you what—I have done many a Half Gainer.  And in that is smiling memories for the well living aged. 

Sometimes I even hold classes there.