Category Archives: Uncategorized

“Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good.”  – Psalm 107:1 

It was the fall of 1970.  I was stationed at Fort Eustis, Virginia for military training.  When Thanksgiving Day rolled around, being too far from home to be with our families on such a brief holiday weekend, several of us made reservations at a quaint restaurant in nearby Williamsburg.  It was a lovely place with white tablecloths, traditional Thanksgiving fare, and a quiet, friendly atmosphere.  Understandably we were a bit homesick, but instead of making the best of it, cheering each other up and enjoying a nice meal together we began to complain about our predicament of being in the army and away from our families.  Soon our dinner party digressed into a pity party.

Strange, isn’t it, how a group of privileged college educated young men with great futures sitting in a lovely restaurant on a beautiful autumn day in one of our nation’s great historic cities would have anything to complain about?  Even worse, we were all Reservists whose full time military service would soon be over, after which we would be returning to our homes for good, while many of our army colleagues were going to be assigned to combat zones in Vietnam.  Why then were we so ungrateful, indeed resentful, about our circumstance?  And of all times, Thanksgiving!

As you can tell, this is not one of my proudest memories, yet one I have played over in my mind a thousand times, wishing I could do it over.  If only we had paused long enough to be thankful for the delicious meal, the warm surroundings, the beautiful setting, the friendships we had formed with each other, and our families back home.  If only I had had the courage to redirect the attitude around the table to gratitude.  If only!

I share this memory not out of shame or regret, however, but out of gratitude.  For, as mistakes and failures are often our best teachers, so was this incident for me.  Not a Thanksgiving goes by that I don’t think about it, reminding me of the many things I have to be thankful for – my beautiful family, nice home, host of friends, good health, even those old army pals, most of whom I’ve lost touch with.  I will be ever grateful for that Thanksgiving back in 1970 for reminding me of all my many blessings.  And I “Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good.”

“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?  – Matthew 7:3 

Fiorello LaGuardia, the colorful Depression era mayor of New York City, once walked into a night court in one of the city’s poorest wards, dismissed the judge for the evening, and took over the bench himself.  A tattered old woman was brought before him charged with stealing a loaf of bread to feed her starving grandchildren.  After hearing the evidence from both sides, LaGuardia upheld the law by punishing the old woman with a ten-dollar fine or ten days in jail.  But even as he was pronouncing the sentence he reached into his own pocket and produced a ten-dollar bill, exclaiming these words to all present in the courtroom: “Here is the ten-dollar fine which I now remit; and furthermore, I am going to fine everyone in this courtroom fifty cents for living in a town where a person has to steal bread so that her grandchildren can eat.  Mr. Bailiff, collect the fines and give them to the defendant.”

Now, being the good citizen that I am, I have always dutifully shown up in court whenever I’ve receive a jury summons.  And there’s one thing that is always predictable.  At some point during the voir dire process the attorneys, as well as the judge, will instruct the jury panel on the importance of weighing all the evidence before passing judgment.

Every time I hear that little admonition I am forced to take pause.  While I’m great at passing judgment on others, something I do frequently, I’m not quite so adept at weighing the evidence.  And there’s good reason for that; for digging deeper into the evidence against someone else has this strange effect of revealing my own guilt.

Mayor LaGuardia must surely have had the same experience in that night court back in January of 1935.  The evidence clearly revealed the woman’s guilt as undeniable.  Yet, in digging deeper, neither was the Mayor able to deny his own, and why he assessed the biggest fine against himself.  After all, he was the mayor of a town where a person had to steal bread so that her grandchildren could eat, which must have caused him to ask himself, “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?”

“A patient man has great understanding, but a quick-tempered man displays folly.”          Proverbs 14:29 

My whole morning routine got totally derailed this past week.  First, our newspapers started arriving late, sometimes up to two hours later than normal (yes, I’m one of those late adopters who refuses to give up reading the papers the old-fashioned way).  Then, to make matters worse, the coffeemaker went on the fritz.  So, for a very early riser like me, waking up to no paper and no coffee completely disrupted my life, which as my wife can attest, changed my usual chipper nature to that of a quick-tempered, cantankerous grump.

The whole episode had me messed up, and out of sorts.  It made me want to write nasty letters to the newspaper, scream at the poor delivery guy if I could ever find him, throw the coffeemaker across the kitchen, kick the dog, yell at my wife, or blame anyone else who got in the way.  I was a poster-child for how “a quick-tempered man displays folly.”

Then I remembered this little quote, a clever word play on Jesus’ Beatitudes.  “Blessed are the flexible,” it says, “for they shall not get bent out of shape.”  And that’s when I realized how I was being totally inflexible, and therefore completely bent out of shape.  As it turns out we have alternative ways to brew a cup of coffee available in our kitchen, and there are stacks of good books, devotional pamphlets, and even a Bible right next to my reading chair, much more stimulating and uplifting than the daily newspaper.

Fortunately, I did restrain myself from acting out on my emotions.  That is to say, I did not yell at my wife, kick the dog, throw the coffeepot across the kitchen, scream at the delivery person or write any nasty letters to the newspaper.  How foolish would that have been!  More importantly, I was able to experience the rewards from being patient and flexible.

By week’s end, our newspapers were once again arriving at their usual time, a brand-new coffeemaker now sits on our kitchen counter, and all is right with the world.  And a lesson learned: “A patient man has great understanding, but a quick-tempered man displays folly.”

“You intend to harm me, but God intended it for good . . .”  – Genesis 50:20 

Those of us who remember the late Dizzy Gillespie, besides being one of the greatest jazz musician and trumpeters of the twentieth century, will probably also associate him with his two distinctive trademarks, one being the way his cheeks puffed out like two balloons when he was playing his horn.  The other, and my favorite, was his oddly shaped trumpet with its 45-degree up-tilted bell.  It was not until I read an article about him this past week that I learned the origin of his bent trumpet.  “A bandmate fell on his horn,” according to the article, “bending it, and Gillespie found that he liked the sound projection.  From then on, each of his trumpets was custom-made with an up-tilted bell.”

Now when I read about that, the first thing to cross my mind was that had it been me I would have been furious with the clumsy musician for damaging the instrument of my livelihood, accident or not.  Apparently not so with Dizzy Gillespie, who instead discovered a whole new unique sound from the bent trumpet, which eventually became his trademark.  But then it occurred to me, isn’t that the nature of jazz as a musical artform?  For unlike rote musical scores intended to be performed exactly as written, jazz is improvisational, being modified, or even made up as it is played.  So, where a wrong note or missed beat in a written score is considered a blunder, a jazz musician might turn it into a whole new sound – exactly the way Dizzy Gillespie reacted to his bent horn.

So, from that perspective it made me think about God, and how He must be the consummate jazz musician, improvising as we humans clumsily blunder through life, bending creation and one another into all sorts of misshaped forms, sometimes accidentally and other times intentionally.  Yet, regardless how bad we bend things out of shape, God finds ways to improvise and redeem our blunders, to transform wrong notes and missed beats into new sounds, damaged instruments into distinctive trademarks.  Look, for example, at the redemptive work of Alcoholics Anonymous, based on the concept of one addict helping another addict find sobriety.  Such are the “grace notes” God includes in the music of life.

“Pay attention and listen to the sayings of the wise.”  – Proverbs 22:17 

My wife Tee is a master pie maker, so among our family and close friends her pies are considered delicacies, works of art.  Her secret is not in the recipes, for she’s most happy to share them with anyone who asks; rather it is in her magic touch.  As you know the foundation of any good pie is the crust, and making a good pie crust requires much more skill than simply blending together the correct portions of ingredients and rolling it out.  It involves having a sense of when the dough feels right, has enough or too little moisture, its elasticity, how it looks.  The outcome of the dough is connected to other factors such as the amount of humidity in the air and the temperature of the room where it is being prepared.  Tee is sensitive to all those things, making subtle adjustments that cannot be explained.

It was hanging out in the kitchen with her mother, also a master pie maker, where Tee developed this extraordinary talent, paying attention and listening.  It was there I’m quite sure that Tee observed certain subtleties about mother’s techniques that can never be explained in words.  It was those subtleties that made Tee’s mother’s pies unique, that made her mother’s character unique, and therefore what makes Tee and her pies unique.  And all those precious hours together will forever keep Tee connected to her mother.

That is why being served a slice of Tee’s pie is such a special privilege.  Besides being delicious, it connects us to her and who she is.  Observing her magic touch in the making of the pie crust reveals part of her character, as well as connecting us to her mother and her character.  Today, in much the same way, I catch glimpses of our granddaughters – a whole new generation – connecting with their “Grantee” by hanging out in her kitchen, paying attention and listening.

Neither Tee nor her mother ever baked a pie for their own consumption.  It has always been for someone else, a special gift to family and friends.  And ultimately that’s the real secret, the magic touch that makes them perfect – what makes them such works of art

“Pay attention and listen to the sayings of the wise,” the Proverb reminds us.  And observe those subtleties that can never be explained in words.