Dismissals

We gathered around a table in the cafeteria of the men’s shelter. There were a dozen homeless men, some volunteers and a few college students. I brought tangerines and passed them around. I saw the college kid throw the tangerine. It arced across the room, hit the far wall near the trashcan and fell to the floor. Tangerines are a luxury anywhere, the more so at the shelter. Eyes followed the boy as he crossed the room, stooped, retrieved the smashed tangerine and mimicked a trashcan jump shot. The boy raised his arms in victory but the cafeteria was silent. 

My mother was an artist. I was a boy when she won the $500.00 “Best Oil Painting” prize at the Ohio State Fair. She thought long and hard about where to invest her prize money so that, one day, she would have “a little something set aside.” Her brother was a stockbroker and he was adamant: “Invest in the military! Lockheed Martin! Dow Chemical!” My mother heard not a word of it. She intended to support art and not war. My mother bought shares in the Walt Disney Company. It was then only dollar a share. That worked out well. 

A disheveled old man sat in a booth of the fast-food joint. As I walked by he asked, “Can you help me?” I kept walking. I ordered my usual but with an extra burger. I paid and started out but stopped to ask the old man, “Hungry? Want a burger?” He looked at the burger and said, “Mighty kind of you but what I need mostly is help tying this darn shoelace. I can’t bend to reach it.” I knelt, tied his shoelace, took the one burger for myself and left the rest for him. I learn every day. 

Nonbelievers who know I’m a deacon sometimes ask what I find valuable or fulfilling about the church. Then, before I can gather my thoughts, they will tell me all the reasons why they don’t go to church. Everyone needs to be heard and I try to be a good listener. When it’s my turn, I want to be straightforward and I often quote Verna Dozier: “I don’t accept every single thing that the church says and does, at its best the church expresses what I believe is God’s message to us, and I want to be part of that.”*  Amen. *Verna Dozier, Lay Theologian, Confronted by God: The Essential Verna Dozier

He told me he’d never been to an Ash Wednesday service before. I asked him if he intended to go forward for ashes. He said “no” and gave me several reasons. None seemed very good to me but I let it go. We listened to the collect, scripture, sermon and then the bidding: “I invite you, therefore, in the name of the Church, to the observance of a holy Lent.” I went forward for ashes and there he was in line! Later he said, “I’m a doubter and nothing’s changed … but the ashes … that was a powerful moment for me.” 

“Rash Boon” is a term from Celtic and Arthurian literature, a promise made without knowing precisely what will be required. A rash boon is an oath that binds for a lifetime, laughable in our modern era. The Knights of the Round Table, Gawain, Lancelot and Percivale, are long gone. Still, to this day, some pledge their lives to the service of others. Imagine a world ordered around this rash boon: “I will seek and serve Christ in all persons, love my neighbor as myself, strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being.” 

Jim was married to my sister but they divorced and Jim drifted off to Florida. He was always a terrible drinker and, honestly, I didn’t miss him much. I chanced to visit with Jim’s son and I couldn’t help but ask, “Whatever became of your dad? Still drinking, I suppose?” He said, “Well, I guess you haven’t heard the news.” I expected to hear that Jim had died behind some watering hole but his son told me, “Dad’s been dry 10 years now. He’s a bigwig in Alcoholics Anonymous in Florida. Some kind of regional director. Sober as a judge.”

I was two. We lived in Mallorca, Spain. My parents worked and I spent days with Maria. Maria spoke no English. I learned Spanish. Maria and I wandered the markets, sat in the cool of the church, watched the fishermen mending nets on the quay. The fishermen gave me Spanish words to say … not high-minded words … I repeated the words. Maria scolded the fishermen and they laughed. I know now that I was not the object of the fishermen’s delight. Their eyes were on Maria, may light perpetual shine upon her. Maria Colon, May 15, 1924 – February 8, 2019.

Men traveled the road looking for work. Sometimes they knocked at the old woman’s door and asked for food. She gave what she had. One day, a hungry man let slip that her fencepost had the hobo’s mark. Her house was ‘good for a handout.’ She went right along feeding the men. Some days she baked extra bread, maybe pie and always soup with a little meat in it. Some days, the old woman went out to the fencepost with a little lampblack and made the mark nice and dark so the men could see it plainly from the road.

Bee speed is about two thirds of the speed of a stroll in the park, at which speed we arouse no fear, suspicion or even interest in those around us. At this pace, we can walk through a hostile crowd or a convention of optimists and no one will take note of us. When we walk in the shadowed valley, or among homeless men, or move among the bees, wherever our ministry may call us, there is something we communicate to others in our pace and our movement. 

My father and I played dominoes, a game popular world-wide and certainly in our home. I’ve seen raucous games played for money on the sidewalks of foreign cities but our games were quiet. I tried to interest my sons in dominoes. No luck, competing as I was with Pac-Man and Donkey Kong. I did not realize it then, sitting across the table from my father, that as we played dominoes we talked of many things, of the great and of the trivial, our words paced to the click of dominoes on the kitchen table on a Sunday afternoon. 

They’d traveled not but four miles when the boy heard the tire whacking against the fender. He pulled the old Ford to the berm. His aunt, lips pursed, sat the back seat. The boy’d not before changed a tire on his own but set about it, unhitching the fender-mount spare, bracing the jack, loosening the lug nuts, then jacking the wheel clear of the ground. The first lug nut squealed as he put the wrench to it. His aunt called from the back seat, “You ever get ‘em off, you best put them lug nuts in the hubcap, lest you kick ‘em into the weeds!” The boy frowned and bent to his work. He applied the wrench to the next…