MLK Speech given September 12, 1962

In lieu of a main item today, please take a few minutes to read (or listen to) Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s speech commemorating the 100th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln issuing his Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. Delivered in New York City on September 12, 1962, King’s address made sure to celebrate the United States’ founding ideals—and the ideals Lincoln espoused in the Proclamation—before turning to the myriad ways the country was failing to live up to them. Here are some key passages:

If our nation had done nothing more in its whole history than to create just two documents, its contribution to civilization would be imperishable.

The first of these documents is the Declaration of Independence and the other is that which we are here to honor tonight, the Emancipation Proclamation. All tyrants, past, present and future, are powerless to bury the truths in these declarations, no matter how extensive their legions, how vast their power and how malignant their evil.

The Declaration of Independence proclaimed to a world, organized politically and spiritually around the concept of the inequality of man, that the dignity of human personality was inherent in man as a living being. The Emancipation Proclamation was the offspring of the Declaration of Independence. It was a constructive use of the force of law to uproot a social order which sought to separate liberty from a segment of humanity.

Our pride and our progress would be unqualified if the story ended here. But history reveals that America has been a schizophrenic personality where these two documents are concerned. On the one hand she has proudly professed the basic principles inherent in both documents. On the other hand she has sadly practiced the antithesis of these principles.

The unresolved race question is a pathological infection in our social and political anatomy, which has sickened us throughout our history, and is still today a largely untreated disease.

How has our social health been injured by this condition? The legacy is the impairment of the lives of nearly twenty-million of our citizens. Based solely on their color, they have been condemned to a sub-existence, never sharing the fruits of progress equally. The average income of Negroes is approximately thirty-three hundred dollars per family annually, against fifty-eight hundred dollars for white citizens. This differential tells only part of the story, however, the more terrible aspect is found in the inner structure and quality of the Negro community. It is a community artificially but effectively separated from the dominant culture of our society. It has a pathetically small, grotesquely distorted, middle class. There are virtually no Negro bankers, no industrialists; few commercial enterprises worthy of the name of businesses, the overwhelming majority of Negroes are domestics, laborers, and always the largest segment of the unemployed. If employment entails heavy work, if the wages are miserable, if the filth is revolting, the job belongs to the Negro.

And every Negro knows these truths and his personality is corroded by a sense of inferiority, generated by this degraded status. Negroes, north and south, still live in segregation, housed in slums, eat in segregation, pray in segregation and die in segregation. The life experience of the Negro in integration remains an exception even in the north.

The imposition of inferiority, externally and internally, are the slave chains of today. What the Emancipation Proclamation proscribed in a legal and formal sense has never been eliminated in human terms. By burning in the consciousness of white Americans a conviction that Negroes are by nature subnormal, much of the myth was absorbed by the Negro himself, stultifying his energy, his ambition and his self-respect. The Proclamation of Inferiority has contended with the Proclamation of Emancipation, negating its liberating force. Inferiority has justified the low living standards of the Negro, sanctioned his separation from the majority culture, and enslaved him physically and psychologically. Inferiority as a fetter is more subtle and sophisticated than iron chains; it is invisible and its victim helps to fashion his own bonds.

This somber picture may induce the somber thought that there is nothing to commemorate about the centennial of the Emancipation Proclamation.

But tragic disappointments and undeserved defeats do not put an end to life, nor do they wipe out the positive, however submerged it may have become beneath floods of negative experience.

The Emancipation Proclamation had four enduring results. First, it gave force to the executive power to change conditions in the national interest on a broad and far-reaching scale. Second, it dealt a devastating blow to a system of slave-holding and an economy built upon it, which had been muscular enough to engage in warfare on the Federal government. Third, it enabled the Negro to play a significant role in his own liberation with the ability to organize and to struggle, with less of the bestial retaliation his slave status had permitted to his masters. Fourth, it resurrected and restated the principle of equality upon which the founding of the nation rested.

When Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation it was not the act of an opportunistic politician issuing a hollow pronouncement to placate a pressure group. Our truly great presidents were tortured deep in their hearts by the race question. Jefferson with keen perception saw that the festering sore of slavery debilitated white masters as well as the Negro. He feared for the future of white children who were taught a false supremacy. His concern can be summed up in one quotation: “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just.”

Lincoln’s torments are well known, his vacillations were facts. In the seething cauldron of sixty-two and sixty-three Lincoln was called the “Baboon President” in the North, and “coward”, assassin, and savage in the South. Yet he searched his way to the conclusions embodied in these words; words already quoted this evening: “In giving freedom to the slave we assure freedom to the free, honorable alike in what we give and what we preserve.” On this moral foundation he personally prepared the first draft of the Emancipation Proclamation, and to emphasize the decisiveness of his course he called his cabinet together and declared he was not seeking their advice as to its wisdom but only suggestions on subject matter. Lincoln achieved immortality because he issued the Emancipation Proclamation. His hesitation had not stayed his hand when historic necessity charted but one course. No President can be great, or even fit for office, if he attempts to accommodate to injustice to maintain his political balance.

The Negro will never cease his struggle to commemorate the Emancipation Proclamation by making his emancipation real. If enough Americans in numbers and influence join him, the nation we both labored to build may yet realize its glorious dream.

There is too much greatness in our heritage to tolerate the pettiness of race hate. The Declaration of Independence and the Emancipation Proclamation deserve to live in sacred honor; many generations of Americans suffered, bled and died, confident that those who followed them would preserve the purity of our ideals. Negroes have declared they will die if need be for these freedoms. All Americans must enlist in a crusade finally to make the race question an ugly relic of a dark past. When that day dawns, the Emancipation Proclamation will be commemorated in luminous glory

Telling Stories

I remember my English teacher in high school telling me that there was a story hidden in every photograph. Take this one for example.

What is she looking at? What is she thinking? Definitely a story there, I just haven’t written it yet. 

That’s what The Tempest has been about for all these years, a place where I could tell stories of one kind or another. Its always been a part of my DNA, this love of stories. My mother could spin a yarn at the drop of a hat. Mom’s stories always had at least some relationship with the truth, but the best parts were the embellishments. I might not have always paid attention during Dad’s sermons, but whenever he started using an illustration from his life I would hang on every word. During the last couple of years of his life I had a front row seat for a treasure trove of stories he suddenly felt compelled to share before he died.

Stories are our way of trying to make sense of the world. They attempt an explanation for our existence, an answer to to the big why. When I was a child it was nursery rhymes and Doctor Seuss. The great richness of Bible stories were read and reread. Eventually I was introduced to the short stories of Ernest Hemingway and Edgar Allen Poe, and finally the plays of William Shakespeare where I discovered that stories were art. I’ve never recovered.

Then, there’s this guy…

This is a piece of cheap pottery I had when I was a kid. I can’t for the life of me remember where I got the thing or who gave it to me. But it used to sit on my dresser when I was a teenager. For reasons that remain curious, I took it along with me when I moved out of the house after college and it survived into the early years of my marriage. One day around thirty years ago I was going through a rough patch at work and was exhausted after a long day of rejection. About the time I should have been going to bed I glanced at this cheap piece of pottery and felt compelled to take out an empty three ring binder from my briefcase. I picked up a pen and starred at the old man for the longest time. Then I began writing a story. It would over the next several months evolve into the first long form story I had ever attempted to write. A few days ago I was looking for something in the bottom drawer of my nightstand when I found that three ring binder. I opened up the dry and slightly yellowed pages and began to read. 

Its fascinating to read something you wrote while a much younger man. I had forgotten much of the story, but as I read, it all began to come back to me. Much of it was sloppy and disjointed but the power of the narrative resonated with me in much the same way it did that first late evening when I began writing it. So, now I have a new project to work on. I’m going to rewrite this thing chapter by chapter hopefully improving it with more mature and experienced prose which hopefully will include more  properly constructed sentences! I might even publish the chapters here on The Tempest. If only I could figure out a way to make you guys pay for it!

Should be fun. Story-telling always is.

A Boy’s Last Innocent Summer

The summer of 1968 was far too much for the boy. He was not able to take it all in, to process all the new things. So, he went fishing instead. He picked up the cane pole his Dad had bought him for his birthday back in the spring, before everything. It was in two pieces, long and skinny, the color of cherry wood. There was a red bobber tied two feet from the sharp hook at the end of the line. He could hear them clicking against each other as he walked down the gravel road that led to the pond. It was about a mile from home and his Mother didn’t know where he was, only that he had promised to be back in time for dinner. Her last words to him as the screen door slammed shut were, “If you climb a tree then fall out and break your leg, don’t come running to me.” She always laughed when she said it, and she said it every single time he left the house on summer days in 1968.

It was his tenth trip around the sun. There was a birthday party for him in April. All his family were there and most of his friends. It was fun right up to the moment when one of his uncles  announced that someone had been shot in Tennessee. All the adults gathered around the car radio and listened to the news while smoking cigarettes. The boy watched them from across the back yard and remembered the day when bus number 44 carrying his older brother and two sisters came home early from school because somebody shot the President. But this time the conversation coming from the grownups seemed different. Nobody was crying.

Someone said, “Its a terrible thing and all, but if you ask me the man was asking for it.” Then his mother shot back with, “That’s a shameful thing to say. He was a decent and brave man.” Then another, “This country is going straight to hell.” The boy heard this a lot, especially after dinner when his father turned on the RCA to watch the news. Everything was going to hell.

He didn’t understand any of it and didn’t care to. He liked it better when his parents were thinking about anything else besides the news. He thought about asking one of them what was going on in the world but each time the subject of “the country” came up, it would end up in shouting. So, the boy ignored the crackling static of the radio and the stern gray man with black rimmed glasses on the RCA.

When June came around it was his sister’s turn to celebrate a birthday. June 5th. Everyone gathered over at his grandparent’s trailer in the back yard of his uncle and aunt’s house. Everything was fun until his grandfather’s soap operas got interrupted by one of those “Special Reports” which seemed to be happening every other day. This time there was a shy, smiling man speaking into a microphone in a big room filled with cheering people. When he was done he walked off the stage and made his way through the crowds who all seemed to want to shake his hand. All the while a man was talking in the background. Everyone gathered in the tiny space of the trailer where grandpa smoked his pipe and watched his stories and strained to hear what he was saying. Then something happened and suddenly everyone was running and the man’s voice got louder but he was even harder to hear. The boy saw the grownups all lean in closer and cover their mouths with shaking fingers. Someone else had been shot. The shy smiling man. Then, there he was, lying on his back in a pool of blood. His mother began to cry and quickly led all of the kids back outside. He thought, is this going to happen at every birthday party now?

Then it was July and there were no birthdays in July.

The boy found the worn path that led down to the pond from the gravel road. He walked through weeds almost as tall as he was on either side before breaking into a clearing where he could see the blue water. The sky was bright and clear and it was early enough in the day before it got hot. He found the spot, a place worn down to dirt. Someone had laid a couple 2x6 planks at the water’s edge for people to stand, but today he had the place to himself.

He took his mother’s garden spade from his back pocket and walked along the pond’s edge to the soft soil where the earthworms lived. Three spade fulls of spongy soil yielded five fat night crawlers which he shoved down in the pocket of his shorts. He could count on hearing about it from his mother when she got around to doing the wash. He stood firmly on the wood planks and watched a couple of buzzards circling high above him. He would have given anything to be a bird, to be able to soar far above this strange new world.

After assembling the pole into one ten foot piece, the boy reached into his pocket and grabbed one of the squirming worms, held the slippery skin still enough to find a thick one inch piece, then bore down hard with his fingernails until the worm had been reduced to a bleeding mass in his hands. Then he slipped the still squirming piece onto the sharp point of the hook until the point was completely covered. In one smooth motion he slung the hook and bobber out into the water where it settled fifteen feet off shore. The ripples sent out from the entry of the line into the water settled down and soon the bobber lay still on the surface. Then he began the wait. It was why the boy so loved fishing—the waiting.

“Why do you like the waiting?” People would ask him.

“Because it gives me time to rest my head,” he would answer and all the grownups would laugh.

What they didn’t know is that his head needed resting. The thoughts in that ten year old head were colliding with a world where people shot each other out of the clear blue and everybody had something to say about it except him. News would come about people he didn’t know far away, people he had never met and nobody else had ever met. But the news would make people sad or angry and sometimes his mother and dad would cry. Something was happening that seemed a thousand miles from the little pond hidden behind the tall grass, under the giant power lines. He could hear them popping and hissing far above his head. They drooped slightly over the surface of the water from the giant metal monsters from which they were strung, one in the distance to the north and the other behind his head to the south half obscured by the tall oaks. They looked like silver stars with legs. His dad had told him that if it weren’t for those silver stars and the popping and hissing wires we would all be in darkness. It was the same thing the preacher always said about sin, how it always left you in darkness. It was one of the million things that the ten year old boy didn’t understand.

The waiting ended with the dancing of the bobber slowly across the water then the plop when it disappeared under the ripples. He tugged firmly upward, but not too firmly. His dad had taught him to be careful to not pull the hook out of the fish’s mouth too soon. But when he pulled, the hook was set and the tip of the long pole bent nearly in half under the strain. A yellow perch the size of his dad’s giant hands danced on the end of the line as it lifted out of the water. The sun reflected off its golden scales as it wiggled back and forth in the air. When he got it on the ground he removed the hook which was barely attached. He had been lucky not to lose him to all the wiggling. Then he slipped his thumb into his gasping mouth, picked him up and held it high for a closer inspection. It was a beautiful creature, this fish. His scales looked like a painting of a fish. Its spiky tail, a dark and dirty green color. He was fat around the middle and the large eyes staring at him gave off the impression that the fish considered the two of them equals, and at a crossroads. “Do you put me on a line or in a cooler and take me home to eat, or do you put me back where I belong?”

When the boy turned his eyes away from the fish and the sun he saw the splash of red in the tall grass near the earthworm patch. He hadn’t noticed it earlier. It was probably an empty bait container left behind by some kid too lazy to dig his own worms. He threw the perch back in the water, laid his pole on the ground and walked toward the red.

It was matted and and water-stained by rain. No telling how long it had been laying like this in the open. He picked it up. It was heavy, a magazine, the back cover facing up, an ad for a Corvette. He turned it over and saw a beautiful women wearing a red blouse smiling sweetly. 

Playboy, May 1968.

He had heard of Playboy. All ten year old boys had heard of Playboy. The closest he had ever come to one was passing by the magazine rack at 7/11 on the way to the ice cream case in the back. But now here was one in his hands. He looked around to be sure he was alone and felt his heart beating faster in his chest. He slowly opened the swollen and moldy pages and saw an ad for Miller High Life. Then a thick page in the middle, more substantial and dryer than the rest. He took the thick page in his hands and noticed that it was more than one page. As he opened it, one page became three and the boy felt the heat of the day burning on the back of his neck. There was a woman holding a guitar in one hand, her other hand resting on her bare thigh. The sunlight reflected off the first two female breasts he had ever seen. They stood out above the guitar like ripe fruit and the boy wondered if he was in heaven or hell.

He knew enough about the female body to know that he shouldn’t be gawking at a naked one. He quickly shut the magazine and threw it back on the ground where he had found it. The image of the woman with the guitar would never leave him for the rest of his life. When he got back to the wood planks he was sweating and feeling warm and alive. His hands were shaking when he baited the hook. When he began the wait he looked up and saw three buzzards circling, lower now in tighter circles. The bobber was still and the boy’s head was no longer resting. All he could think about was how fast life had suddenly begun to move. People getting shot. Adults arguing. Women with no clothes and beautiful breasts smiling at him.

By the last week of August the summer had gotten dreadfully hot and dry. After Labor Day he would be back in school. The long summer was drawing to a close. Now the RCA was on and everyone was watching a big auditorium with tall signs with the names of the different states. The people under the signs wore crazy looking hats and looked to be having a great time even though they were crammed in the place like sardines. Then the screen cut to the streets outside where men with white helmets were swinging big wooden sticks at groups of wild-eyed angry people and carting them off in dark vans with the word POLICE on the sides in big block letters. His mother and dad were horrified and began praying that Jesus would return but this time not someday but today, right this very minute.

That night as he lay in his bed in the dark unable to sleep, his older brother was turning the dial of his transistor radio slowly, stopping each time he heard the new song he liked which seemed to be playing all over the dial. 

“Do you think the country is going to hell?” The boy asked?

Across the room his brother answered, “I think the country is already in hell. We’re just trying to find a way out.”

Once again he found the song he liked and started singing along softly. The boy listened and thought about the woman and her guitar. He thought of the men in the white helmets and the violence raining down on the heads, backs and arms of raggedly dressed boys in the streets outside the auditorium.

Now the singer was screaming and sounding frantic. He asked his brother, “Is this song happy or sad? I can’t decide.”

“Listen to the words, you dope! ‘Take a sad song and make it better.’ There’s nothing sad about this song. It’s more like a celebration.”

“But, why is he screaming?”

“Go to sleep. You’re too little to understand a song this great.”

Just before the boy drifted off to sleep he wondered what it would be like to be able to understand the world like his big brother did. He wasn’t sure he would like it, this ability to understand. Maybe he would rather not know whether the country was going to hell or already there. Maybe he didn’t want to know why people shot each other out of the blue or why men with sticks beat people bloody in the streets. Maybe he just wanted to go fishing and give his head time to rest. He thought of the fat perch with the glistening scales asking the question about its fate. He needn’t have worried. 

I always throw the fish back.

The Future of The Tempest

I am discovering that I have begun running out of things to write about in this space. For one thing I’ve been doing this for eleven years now. That’s a total of 2,731 posts. I have expressed opinions on practically everything, and on some things, two or three different opinions. I don’t apologize for that. If your views and opinions don’t change over eleven years, you’re probably not paying attention.

But, its getting harder to do. I’ve written a ton about politics, mostly making fun of it. But the past four or five years have so poisoned the well, I’ve lost interest. Nothing I could possibly have to say about politics would be nearly as funny as politics itself. 

I’ve written a lot about sports, especially baseball. Ironically, my interest in sports—even baseball—has waned a bit. The staggering amounts of money being thrown around at athletes has had some sort of cumulative effect that has made the actual games less interesting. I’m not even sure why. I suppose its harder to identify with people who will over their careers earn more money than the the gross domestic product of Haiti.

I’ve chimed in on most of the hot-button social issues that have boiled up over these past eleven years, like gay marriage, abortion, and the designated hitter. I have persuaded nobody.

I’ve written about Maine. For many of you I’ve written too much about Maine. Although I never tire of the subject, at this point there’s repetition. As beguiling as it is, how many different ways are there to describe fog drifting across a glassy lake at sunrise?

I’ve written about my family. I told all of you what it was like to have your mother die in her sleep and to care for your Dad for two years after. I’ve gone on and on about my wife, extolling her many virtues. I’ve bragged about my kids, boasted about my siblings. But I also can appreciate the eleven year sinking pit in Pam’s stomach every time she sees one of my blogposts, wondering what embarrassing thing I’ve said. Sometimes I worry that she might secretly resent being the subject of so much public comment.

I’ve written about my dogs. Murphy, Molly and Lucy have dominated this space, for which I make no apologies. Even my GrandPups, Jackson and Frisco, have gotten plenty of publicity here. The reason is simple. Dogs, unlike practically everything else in this world, are incorruptible.

I feel myself slowing down at The Tempest. Writing fiction seems more fun and more stimulating. That’s where I see my writing headed. Stories.

So, 2023 will bring diminished output here. Instead of my normal 200-250 posts a year, maybe half that— unless some completely insane thing happens that demands my attention.

An Afternoon at the Theatre of Horrors

Our Christmas Day was Tuesday, the 27th of December and it could not possibly have gone any better. We opened presents all morning, took a break for a fabulous breakfast, then opened up the stockings in the afternoon. There was much merry making, playing with toys and nap taking. Then for dinner we headed over to Wong’s Tacos for a feast, after which we ended the day watching a funny movie—Glass Onion. Then, when this morning rolled around, everything went to hell in a hand basket—both Sarah and Patrick tested positive for COVID.

Immediately, Plan B was initiated. Unfortunately, nobody could remember where we put Plan B. Was it filed in the Christmas emergencies Google Doc, or was it folded in one of Pam’s sixteen planners? Luckily we have not forgotten the fine art of improvisation. Patrick and Sarah have spent most of their day in their room with the door shut, while the rest of us have broken out our collection of masks from moth balls. We are all hoping for the best. Tomorrow both sets of kids are scheduled to drive home. If you are so inclined prayers would be appreciated for Patrick and Sarah specifically…since I can’t imagine how bad it would be to make a 9 hour drive in holiday traffic while feeling like crap.

However, into every catastrophe, humor finds its way. When you least expect and are the least prepared for it, something hilarious tends to happen. I will try to explain while at the same time protecting the names and reputations of everyone involved.

Pam and I always buy tickets to a show when the kids come home for Christmas, and this year was no exception. Six tickets were purchased weeks ago for an afternoon show at a theatre that will remain nameless and for a show which will also remain nameless. Nothing in our previous experience at this particular venue could possibly have prepared us for what we witnessed. The title of the show suggested nothing but the best possible combination of music and merriment. We settled into our seats—just the four of us and N95 masks securely in place—and watched as four singers rushed out onto the delightfully warm and Christmas-y set.

My daughter listened to a TED Talk recently about public speaking which suggested that when a person walks out on a stage, we decide what we think of them in less than a minute based on two things—warmth and competence. The performer who was closest to me on the stage gave off two powerful vibes. I immediately thought, “This dude is gay and high.” Incidentally, neither of these traits are a negative in musical theatre. I was still pumped for the show. Then, he opened his mouth to sing. I must say that I have never been quite so glad to have been wearing a mask. His voice kept flipping back and forth between overacting show choir to incompetent opera. His relationship with the notes he was trying to sing were strained to the breaking point. As I listened to him I kept thinking, “man, there’s not enough weed in the world…” For a moment I thought it was a gag, that it was a plot device like when Barney Fife tried to join Mayberry’s choir. We would soon be treated the comic relief of having the one male singer kicked out of the troop leaving only the Lennon Sisters on stage. But no. He was for real…and to drive home the point he was given the first solo that hardy standard, Mel Torme’s Christmas Song. Our guy did his finest Frank Sinatra impersonation, placing his hand against the microphone stand and began, “Chestnuts roasting on an open fire,”. So far, so good, I thought. He’s actually only a half a step under his note. Then the second line came out something like this—“Jack Frost shi, shippppping in the flows.” Luckily, he recovered his knowledge of the lyrics in time for us to hear about folks dressed up like Eskimos. At the intermission Pam leaned over and asked me, “Do you think maybe the real guy came down with Covid and they like literally got this guy off the streets 15 minutes ago?” What we didn’t know at this early point in the evening was that it would get much worse. Luckily of the other singers, one had a decent voice but was clearly under the weather, another had a passable voice but sang so softly she was hard to hear, and the third girl was wonderful and saved the entire show from a tomato barrage. The high point of the evening was when our unfortunate male singer was one line in to a third crooning solo when he tried to suavely remove his mic from its stand but it was stuck, whereupon he pulled harder and stabbed the mouth of the thing into his nose…FLummmpp! If he had played this for laughs it would have brought the house down. Since it was during O Holy Night…not so much.

During the show we were treated with several fun songs done reasonably well. But, we and the several five year olds in attendance got to hear Santa get outed in one weird song, along with a super fun round featuring a Christmas song, a Hanukkah song and a Kwanza tune where nobody could understand a word being sung. 

You might think we regretted going. No way. They gave us all a cookie on the way out.

Waiting For Christmas

Absolutely love all the pictures of families opening presents and modeling fresh Christmas pajamas on Facebook. We have enjoyed a Christmas Eve service at the Altria Theatre featuring our nephew Isaac Nunn leading worship in front of 3,600 people. We had a fabulous dinner at Tarrant’s downtown with the Roop’s.

We have driven around town gazing at the Christmas lights, tacky and otherwise. Our two wonderful next door neighbors and their delightful kids both have visited bearing gifts. We (mostly Jon) have been making quick work of a 1,000 piece Christmas puzzle. Everything has been lovely. The only problem is…Christmas hasn’t arrived. Our presents are still safe and secure under the tree. And today brings more waiting. What in the name of the Grinch is going on here?

Its simple. Patrick and Sarah aren’t here yet. In our family. Christmas doesn’t happen until everyone is present and accounted for. Here’s the deal…

P & S have been busier than one-armed brick layers these past couple days. They have performed at two different Christmas Eve services, dealt with negative temperatures that knocked out their power in Nashville for four hours, and hosted and prepared two fabulous Christmas dinners at their new home—on the same day!! Yes, as a matter of fact, that does sound insane. But somehow they pulled everything off like champs. Here’s just one picture of the gourmet delights they prepared…

Amazing. I swear those two should have their own cooking show!

So as I write this, Patrick, Sarah, and Frisco have hit the road headed to Short Pump, only to be greeted by a snow storm which has slowed their pace. They are hoping to arrive here around 6 o’clock this evening. If so they will be just in time for a soup dinner with 18 of their cousins, aunts and uncles from the White side of the family. We will open presents and make merry until 9:00 or so. Then, if the two of them haven’t already fallen asleep standing up, the six of us will open up our new Christmas jammies and then go to bed so that on Tuesday morning, the 27th of December Christmas will finally arrive.

The extended Dunnevant tribe has also had to wait for Christmas. The cruise director, my big sister Linda and her husband Bill are under the weather and had to cancel the extravaganza until early January. This will be remembered as the long Christmas.

But, it isn't really the day on a calendar, is it? Christmas happens when everybody is there.

The Hand of Fate, or The Will of God?

The wind is picking up and the temperature is falling. Outside, dead leaves tumble across my lawn from the towering oaks across the street. Its finally stopped raining. My oldest and her husband are on the road here from Columbia while temperatures plummet. From Nashville my son sends me a screenshot of today’s conditions. There is a minus sign to the left of the number 2 and a bit of snow on the ground. They won’t be on the highway for home until Monday morning. Over all of these things I am powerless.

As I listen to the wind now lashing the house it occurs to me how powerless I am over a great many things. It is perhaps the most stubborn lie we tell ourselves, isn’t it? This idea that we are the captain of our own ship, that we set our own course, that we are masters of our own fate. Despite a lifetime of difficult lessons teaching us how fragile we are in this life, we have the amazing ability to cling to seductive things—and nothing is quite so seductive as the notion of personal autonomy. Yes, we have agency. We enjoy the gift of free will. But no matter how many wise choices we make in this life, there is nothing protecting us from random encounters with the laws of physics. Car accidents and cancer diagnoses—like rain— fall on the just and unjust alike.

I have made my living helping people plan for the future, specifically to see to it that they don’t run out of money before they run out of life. It is a wise and prudent thing to do. Besides, I’ve found that if a man doesn’t make plans, he will always become victim to the plans of others. But there is space in the planning business for that rarest of human qualities…humility. We do our best to be good stewards of money and resources, but we also have to remain open to the hand of fate. For people of faith, the hand of fate is translated… the will of God.

This morning I saw a beautiful photograph of a young woman who lost her life earlier this year in a horrible accident. There she was, bundled up in a winter coat, a knitted scarf snug around her neck, her hands covered in warm black gloves with a face that radiated hope and potential. Her mother had posted the picture. Of course she would. It was beautiful. I know her mother and father. I know of their great faith. But I cannot fathom the depths of a loss so overwhelming. I fret as my daughter drives home for Christmas. But for my friend, her daughter will never be home for Christmas.

But as I studied the photograph closer the thought occurred to me that I might have it all wrong. My understanding in this matter could very well be spectacularly wrong. Maybe…she is home. To my unbelieving friends this at best is a harmless fantasy, at worst a delusion of the simple minded. I can offer not one shred of physical evidence to prove my belief in God and an afterlife. I only have scripture and the tender urging, sometimes feint but never silent voice of the Holy Spirit…absent from the body, present with the Lord. It is the hope of the Gospel, that transcendent story that began in Bethlehem. One of the pastors at my church has a catch phrase that he is famous for…You go nowhere by accident. Its his summary of something that the old prophets said thousands of years ago…A man’s heart plans his course, but the Lord directs his steps. 

Something to ponder on this blustery day.