Masonic Musings

I was in South Carolina last month with my friend Michael. We were staying with his grandmother. She’s 84, a strong Christian, fun to listen to. She’s involved in an organization called Eastern Star. It’s sort-of a Masonic Lodge for women. While we were there, she told Michael, “You should join the masons. The best friends you’ll ever have come from those groups.”

That got me thinking about “those groups” – Masons, Elks, Lions, Rotarians, Optimists, etc. – and why my generation really isn’t that interested in them.

Yesterday, on the drive back from Houston, Christine and I listened to Tom Brokaw’s book The Greatest Generation. It’s a collection of stories about the generation of Americans who came of age during World War II, then came home and built strong families and communities. Brokaw said they are the greatest generation any civilization has ever produced. I find it hard to argue with him.

I don’t know much of the history of fraternal organizations like the Masons or Elks, but I’ll bet that many of those lodges were founded by returning GIs. It seemed to be a theme with those men in the book. They had experienced intense esprit de corps during the war – situations in which their lives were, literally, in their buddy’s hands. Brokaw tells stories of men carrying each other through German POW camps so that the weaker wouldn’t be shot as a straggler. About one medic who won the Congressional Medal of Honor for fighting off a wave of Japanese soldiers alone, with one hand, in an exposed position, while the other hand held aloft a bag of plasma for a wounded officer.

After the war, more than 12 million GIs came home and, suddenly, in most cases, they were separated from that camaraderie. Whether because most of their buddies died in battle or lived in other parts of the country or simply separated themselves from memories of the war on purpose, they went from eating, sleeping and fighting with buddies to no buddies at all. This is just my hunch, but I’ll bet that’s why many of them joined fraternal orders.

Now, consider a young man from my generation. Likely growing up in a suburb, or, more likely, several suburbs. His extended family lives in another city. As their family and salaries grows, his parents may move to different school districts or attendance zones throughout his schooling. At school, he might be involved in some clubs or activities, but not necessarily the same clubs every year, or with the same classmates. He may experience some camaraderie in, say, a team sport. But, unless he has a great coach, the team’s teens see themselves like the pros they model – each a free agent looking out for his own good. The young man goes to college and finds the same level of mildly-intimate friendship in a fraternity or Bible study. But these groups, without any clear mission or opposition, don’t produce the kind of esprit de corps in which members depend on each other. The young man graduates and finds a job. Then another job. Since companies are likely to RIF workers if need be, workers, in turn, have little loyalty to their companies. Employees come and go, and our young man finds himself in his third job out of college looking back on a third of a century of disposable friendships. This, you may think, should drive him to an organization like the Lions or Masons. But not having experienced close camaraderie, the young man doesn’t know where to look or what it would look like when he sees it.

I don’t really have an answer for all this and I’m not advocating that every guy my age go out and join the nearest Elks Lodge. I’m not doing it. But I just see this difference in generations. My generation has it easier. Some of my contemporaries are fighting overseas still. I know some of them who are. But my entire generation hasn’t gone to war like the Greatest Generation did. And though I don’t envy their experiences in war, I see that those hardships made them stronger people, equipped them to build a stronger nation of strong communities. And made their friendships stronger.

Jesus Taxis

I had this great idea last night for a new kind of ministry...Jesus Taxis! Kind-of like what I college kids do on Beach Reach trips when they offer free rides. You start a taxi service but instead of paying the fare, people have to hear the gospel! I know that's kind-of "out there" and a lot of people would rather pay money than be preached to. But hey, I would probably listen to a Muslim for 20 minutes than pay the 20 cab fare. I bet there are people as cheap as me out there. You'd have to get licensed because there's already going to be the perception that you're a "crazy" who might abduct people and make them drink Kool-ade. Then you just sit in the queu at the airport w/ the other taxis and when someone hails you, you tell them before they get in, "This is a Jesus taxi. I won't ask you to pay a fare. Instead, I just ask that you listen to what I have to say on the way. If that's not okay with you, feel free to take the next taxi in line." This might work better in a tourist town where people aren't traveling for business and are more liesurely with their time. But I bet it could work somewhere.

Argh. Keep away from me puffs if ye know what's good fer ye. Grrrrr... 

Swing

I'm overdue for a blog entry and too busy to think of anything original so here's a poem I wrote a while back. You can also find it on www.coffeefaucet.com.

(Disclaimer: My dad has NOT been diagnosed with cancer. I know that makes this poem seem kinda dark, but I wrote it after hearing bad health news about family of other people I know. I started to imagine what they were going through...)

“Swing”

All of life is in the swing of a bat.
That’s what Dad taught me,
pointing to players and stances
too far away to see while he held my Coke
so that I wouldn’t spill.

In a sense, life is all physics.
The ball is wound tight,
stitched with knotty, red twine
and hurled at you with speed.
The bat is hardwood –
sanded, polished, solid and heavy.
There’s a pitch and a swing
and life is ignited in the material.

But in another sense, the batter swings supernatural.
With rhythm, timing, momentum, strength, hope.
Toward the mystic union.
The critical time, the living part of the swing,
is in the instant that contact is made.
The hands feel the shock that reports that
they’re alive and they’ve arrived
at the right moment.
The pitch is fast and the crack violent and stunning
so that it feels like the bat should shatter or fall
helplessly from the hands and the pitch continue
on its ripping course.
But then the weight of bat and arms and the strength of hands and hips
carry forward faith until,
as quick as that,
the course is changed
and the bat swings away wide
and shoulders open to the field before them
and eyes look up to a sky of clarity and possibilities.

Last week, Dad’s doctor said “cancer.”
The pitch was fast and, for a moment,
I wondered if he would strike out.
He seemed to swing free and I expected to hear the pitch
forever sink into the padded mitt behind him,
the chances gone.

But then the bat shook
and hands and hips carried forward faith until,
as quick as that,
the bat swung away wide
and shoulders opened
and eyes lifted.

And all of life was in the swing of a bat.

The Hermit

Last night, Christine and I were watching Globe Trekkers on PBS (I recommend it) and the traveler, a girl named Megan, was in Egypt. She went to a monastery in eastern Egypt – St. Antony’s – said to be the oldest monastery in the world. Established when St. Antony came to the area around 200 AD. The monks there told her that in the hills above the monastery there was a hermit who is trying to live as St. Antony did. I don’t even know who St. Antony was, but this got my attention.

Megan hiked up the hill and found the old man. He lived in a cave – had a wooden door on the cave and a little place to sleep in a little tunnel of a room with candles. He wouldn’t allow Megan into his cave because she was a woman. (I suppose if word got out that there had been a woman in his cave, the other hermits might talk.) But he sat on the rocks outside with her and talked. He talked as though they were meeting at church. I expected him to be a pop-eyed, quivering thing, afraid of contact with other people and spewing curses or ancient hexes. Or to be so excited to see another human that he jabbered on about his cave or his new clay pot. But he seemed normal, informed, well-adjusted. I wondered if he was a more complete human, more connected to what it really means to be human, than the people I see at work every day.

He must not always stay in the cave because he talked about society. He said it saddens him to go into town where the people use Jesus’ name in vain. He said, “But when I say that name here, in my cave, it’s beautiful…Jesus. Jesus. I call to him here. I have called to him many times.”

The hermit said he decided to live there after his mother died and he realized that suffering was the path to maturity…or did he say enlightenment? I don’t remember, but it was something good that he was seeking up there on the lunar-looking hillside with nothing but sand and rocks around.

This morning, I was reading 1 Samual 1&2 where Hannah takes her son to Shiloh and gives him over to GOD and leaves him with Eli. What commitment to God! To leave your child with a stranger. And what voluntary suffering! Is it worth it to have a son if you should only have him until he’s weaned?

And what a life Samuel must have had. What did he think of himself? That he was special to GOD or that he was abandoned by his mother? Or both?

There’s something about the life of Samuel and the hermit that is enormously appealing to me. But any time I get close to something like that – to the writings of the desert fathers or St. Fancis or Thomas Merton – I realize that the treasures of that life can never be reached on a try-it-out basis. You can’t take a retreat to a hermitage and call yourself a hermit. In fact, I doubt that you can spend a year in seclusion and reap the benefits of that seclusion if you know that, at the end of the year, your seclusion will end. It seems to me to be an all-or-nothing affair. When the hermit gave up all hope (and desire?) of rejoining the world, then the whispering of Jesus name in his cave became sweeter to him than the world he gave up – but not before. I don’t know this, but it’s my hunch. And I suspect, too, that I’ll never know because I’ll never be able – because of fear or weakness or selfishness or destiny – to renounce the world as clearly and thoroughly as the hermit has.

Oooo....

Did you know that today's date is 5/5/5? Also, this Friday is the 13th. Wasn't this in the Da Vinci Code?

Francois the Frog

I don't know what possessed me to write a children's story. The baby woke us up at 4:30 this morning and I couldn't go back to sleep and I had this thing in my head about Francois the Frog that had to get out. So here it is:

Last year, when I was in first grade, my teacher was Ms. Hollabaugh. She liked to give homework. She didn’t like to smile. She didn’t like recess. And she didn’t like to wear anything but frumpy, green dresses with puffy shoulders.

For science, we had a frog. We named him Francois. Francois liked to eat. We fed him dead house flies.

My friend Oscar liked math. He said Francois could eat ten flies. He said that was three more than most frogs could eat.

My friend Kaylee liked science. She said Francois was a unique frog because he had bigger shoulders than most frogs.

My friend Keisha liked stories. She said Francois reminded her of a fairy tale about a prince and princess.

One day, Keisha brought some powder to school. She said it was magic fairy dust. She sprinkled some on Francois.

After that, Francois started eating more. Oscar said he could eat fifteen flies. Then twenty. Then thirty.

Francois started to grow. He grew too big for his glass cage. Then he grew too big for our classroom. Then we kept him outside in the school courtyard. He could eat one hundred flies.

The ladies from the cafeteria started feeding him leftovers from lunch. Francois liked hamburgers. He didn’t like fish sticks. He could eat fifty hamburgers.

Then, one day, Francois came back to our classroom for a visit. He was as tall as Ms. Hollabaugh, and she looked nervous. Francois sat quietly in the corner until it was time for recess. We all lined up at the door and walked out to the playground. But Francois and Ms. Hollabaugh didn’t come with us.

When we came back from recess, Ms. Hollabaugh wasn’t there. Francois smiled at us and asked us to take our seats. He looked frumpy and he had big shoulders.

Francois the Frog taught our class the rest of that year, and he never mentioned Ms. Hollabaugh.

This year, in second grade, my teacher is Ms. Hildebrand. She likes math, and science, and stories, and jellybeans.

She doesn’t like frogs.