friendship

Essential Humor

~ Paul Phillips ~ Leave a comment

The old fellow apologized as he handed me the check he had just signed.  I had noticed as he wrote that his hand wasn’t as steady as most, but what was on the page was a little surprising.  The spidery signature was perfectly formed, the letters completely legible.  It was in fact almost a beautiful signature, a testament to penmanship lessons well learned.  Upon closer examination, though, I could see the jagged edges of little waves along the surfaces of every single letter.  Instead of the signature sweeping smoothly up and around and over and back, the letters bore the evidence a tiny, consistent shake throughout.  Every single aspect of these letters was influenced by the most regular and, until examined closely, almost imperceptible shakiness from the first upstroke to the final flourish.

The old gentleman looked at me, now wearing a wry grin and said, with a twinkle in his eye, “The doctor says I have an ‘essential tremor’…”  Then, leaning across the counter almost conspiratorially, he continued in a stage whisper, “…but I think I could do without it.”  I couldn’t help the smile that flashed across my face as he said it, any more than I can help the one that forms even as I write this.  What a great gift…the gift of humor in the face of affliction.  This octogenarian wasn’t fazed emotionally by the ravages of the years on his body, but welcomed the challenge, never losing his sense of humor and self-deprecating wit.

You know that I am a lifelong teller of jokes and puns, having brought groans to the lips of scores of friends, acquaintances, and innocent passers-by with my repertoire (mostly gleaned from others).  I have recently become aware of something else, though.  I don’t tell jokes when I’m unhappy, or when I’m under stress.  If some unfortunate event (or even a series of them) has stolen my joy, I loath humor; preferring instead to wallow in the feelings of self-pity, or anger, or even bitterness.  As a child, I can even remember becoming angry with my mother if she would attempt to cheer me up with levity while I was sulking.   Maybe someday, I’ll expound on the value of a good sulk.  Today, I’m thinking about the astounding ability of humor to raise spirits, to deflect anguish and discouragement…and my stubborn resistance to its effects.

I’m looking forward to the day when I am able, as my distinguished friend, to lighten a potentially awkward moment with humor which both calls attention to, and lessens the importance of an infirmity.  An infirmity, by the by, which could not have been hidden anyway.  I have a tendency to try to hide my weaknesses, my defects, for fear that someone will comment on them; might even tease about them.  A case in point:  Several years ago, I realized that, much like this old gentleman, I had a spot of shakiness myself.  One Sunday as I led worship at church, I discovered that I had a tremor in my right hand if I held the microphone in that hand as I sang.  Not in my left hand, just my right.  I was embarrassed by it and have never talked about it before today with anyone but the Lovely Lady.  It may have been a temporary issue, caused by too much caffeine (a distinct possibility) or a medication (less likely).  Nonetheless, I am always careful to hold a microphone in my left hand, so I have never chanced revealing the problem to anyone since that day.  I think I’m ready to face the issue now.  Besides that, I am realizing the potential for little jokes should the problem continue.  Think of the killer vibrato which could result! I realize that I’m on shaky ground here, but we might even work a version of Elvis’s “Shake, Rattle, and Roll” into the repertoire.

Shared by a friend on facebook.  Simple but effective.

They call it “gallows humor”.  Laughter in the face of a hopeless situation.  The man is led to the the electric chair and asks the warden as he enters, “Are you quite sure this thing is safe?”  Some would describe it as denial, the inability to believe that something bad is unavoidable.  Other would call it bravado, a false pride or even arrogance…not giving adversaries the satisfaction of victory.  It can be those things and if so, it is not really humorous and possibly even hurtful to those listening.  Thankfully, it can also be the desire to lessen the hurt, the mental anguish, of others looking on.  This is what I see when I remember my friend, along with others I know who do the same thing.  The hardship is not nearly as important to them as the desire to ease the pain of others, so they lighten the mood, effectively saying, “It is real, but nothing to be anxious about.”  I want to be able to do that.  In the midst of suffering, of mental pain, I want to think about those around me who love me.  I just haven’t gotten to that point yet.

I’m going to keep trying.  I’ll keep kicking myself when I realize how selfish I’ve been.  Hopefully, surrounding myself with people like my elderly friend above will yield the desired result in time.  Someday, you may even hear quips from me about my aches and pains (e.g., “My back goes out more often now than the Lovely Lady and I do”) and perhaps a bald joke or two.  I’m certainly not ready for the latter yet, though.

I may not have all my marbles, but I’ve still got most of my hair…so far.

“Don’t worry.  Be happy.”
(Bobby McFerrin~American singer/songwriter)

“No, ’tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church-door; but ’tis enough, ’twill serve: ask for me to-morrow, and you shall find me a grave man.”
(Mercutio, asked if a knife wound was painful~from “Romeo & Juliet”~William Shakespeare)

A Close Shave

~ Paul Phillips ~ 1 Comment

I’m not sure if we were supposed to be in the Junior High band room, but there we were.  The Three Musketeers…Randy, Paul, and Mike, hanging out before school, acting like we belonged there and were kings of that particular mountain.  Come to think of it, at that point in our development, we might have been more like the Three Stooges, but no matter.  There we were, 3 band geeks, with the jocks and brainiacs locked out of our territory, so we hadn’t a care in the world. 

The problem with locking the perceived problems out of your world is that you can never lock out your real problems, the ones that you carry around inside of you.  Mike, Randy, and I were good buddies.  We got along great, until some little minor tiff escalated into an all-out row.  This morning, all it took was a little ribbing.  Naturally, I started it.  Randy had a cleft in his chin and I started teasing him about how he was going to be able to shave when his beard started to grow.  Randy was a little touchy this particular morning and he was hurt, so he went for the jugular.  “How about that acne?  How you gonna shave around that?”  He had a point, but at thirteen, I was more than a little touchy about my problem.  “Well, my pimples will go away, but you’ll always have that cleft”  I’m still amazed that such a little, stupid flap could grow into a major altercation, but before we knew how it happened, we were trading blows right there in the hallway leading to the practice rooms.

Back and forth, we went–smacking each other on the body with our fists, until I stopped short.  “I’m not doing this,”  I stated as I turned away.  “What’s wrong with you? You chicken?” came the mocking reply from Randy.  “Maybe you’ve had enough.  You know I can beat you up!”  I retorted, “No, that’s not it, but I’m not fighting with you!” 

Now before you get in your heads that I stopped from some noble flash of discernment, realizing that I was destroying a friendship, you need to understand that no such thing was true.  I just knew something that few others knew about Randy and it was enough to make me put on the brakes and back away from the physical brawl.  When Randy was born, he had a congenital heart defect, a hole between the chambers of his heart which allowed the blood to flow from one chamber to the other, instead of being pumped out to his whole body.  When he was a toddler, an operation had been performed to repair the hole, but he still had the scar in his chest, and he was never allowed to participate in sports or physical education classes.  The only thing that stopped me from pummeling him as long as I had strength, was the picture I had in my head of Randy on a stretcher, headed to the hospital because some coward caused his heart to stop working.  Now, I know it was highly unlikely that anything like that could have happened, but then, I was scared to death.

“Why won’t you fight me?” he asked.  “I just won’t,” I replied.  Within minutes, he was crying, because he realized that I had stopped as a result of his weakness, not mine.  It was an interesting feeling, to know that I had defeated him by not fighting…not a great feeling, but a little eye-opening to be sure.  Randy and I patched up things and went on being the Three Stooges…er…Three Musketeers, along with Mike for a few more years, but that day still stands out in my mind as a reminder that there are better ways to win an argument than physical domination.

I learned that lesson about the physical aspect of domination, but it was about the same time that I started to come into my own with the verbal arguments.  I had learned to argue early.  Well, being the youngest of five children, you could hardly expect me to handle it otherwise.  I’d love to tell you that my verbal problem was solved while I was still young, but I still struggle with it.  Perhaps that’s the reason that the inscription from Proverbs, which my Father wrote on the fly-leaf of the Bible he and Mom gave me as a graduation gift, says: “A soft answer turneth away wrath, but grievous words stir up anger.”  Mom and Dad knew well the mayhem I could cause with my motor mouth.

Maybe someday, the transformation will be complete, but the lessons learned along the way keep shoving me that direction.  I still don’t always get the muzzle on in time, but I’m working on it.  The reminder that the spiritual heart can be damaged by verbal brawling is every bit as powerful as the lesson I learned about physical brawling in the band room with Randy that day so many years ago. 

It seems that maybe instead of using fists or mouth, it might be better to put a fist into our mouth until the moment passes.  I think I’ll try that next time…

“Discussion in an exchange of knowledge; An argument, an exchange of ignorance.”
(Robert Quillen, American journalist and humorist, 1887-1948)

IOU

~ Paul Phillips ~ Leave a comment

Pay it forward.  Random act of kindness.  We have all heard the buzzwords and have an idea of what they are.  I wonder how many of us have been the beneficiary of such an act.  If you have, do you remember how it felt?  Did it change you, give you a different perception of the people around you?

While I know that I am the constant recipient of these acts in a small way, there was a period of time, several years ago, in which we not only benefited from a number of them, but actually were in dire need of them.  It was an uncomfortable time, to put it bluntly.  You might also say, an embarrassing span of time.  I use the word embarrassing because I remember, it was during this chapter of life that I first really became cognizant of the term “financially embarrassed”, and I’m certain that I was also aware of the meaning in a very personal way. It unquestionably had a direct application to our condition.

It was not too many years after we had purchased the music store from my in-laws.  Business wasn’t deplorable, but it wasn’t booming either.  We had enough to pay our bills and that was about it.  We had even been able to put back a couple of thousand dollars and were planning to replace the ancient old roof on our two-story Victorian home with it.   But I guess we needed to learn about giving and receiving, more than we needed to be self-sufficient.

A chain of events would make crystal clear how closely our lives were intertwined with our friends, family, and church.  We loaned our van (which was essential to our business) to a group of students going to Florida for a mission trip.  “It uses oil,”  I told the young man in charge.  “I guarantee you will need to add some, so just check it every time you fill up with gas.”  Receiving assurances that he would, the van left, loaded to capacity with kids and equipment and pulling a small trailer.  The following Saturday morning, the desperate call came; the motor had burned up and they were stranded in Mobile, Alabama.  It appears that, not being experienced in such matters, he had religiously checked the dipstick at every fill-up, just not the engine oil dipstick.  He had been checking the transmission fluid, which hadn’t moved a millimeter the whole trip!  Since no oil was added at all, the motor seized up and was scrap.

What a disaster!  Not only was the van dead, but they wanted us to come get them.  This is where the amazing giving from others started, although right at the time, it was difficult for us to appreciate.  One good friend and his wife offered to go with me and did so completely at their own expense, towing a trailer with which we could retrieve the van.  Another friend offered his van to bring the kids back in, which we did over the weekend.  After we returned with the crippled van on the trailer, a local mechanic offered to rebuild the motor at a greatly reduced price, but even so, our roof fund was depleted in the process.

Time after time, through the months to come, gifts were handed to us, or a little cash slipped into my hand, even some gift certificates for the local grocery store were left in the mailbox.  But the icing on the cake came when our friend Jim, who teaches building construction at the local university, called and told us that we were going to get that new roof put on the house.  We would need to buy the materials, but all the labor would be provided in the way of friends, most from our church, who had volunteered to spend whatever time it took to get it done.

What a week!  The two-story house had eaves which, in places were 20 feet off the ground, and the pitch of the roof was incredibly steep.  Scaffold was built, old shingles pulled off (with 85 year-old Mr. Hood picking most of it up off the ground), materials lifted up by crane (also provided at no expense to us), new decking installed and building felt and shingles laid down.  The description of the endeavor could never draw an adequate picture, but I will always remember Dr. B plunging through the rotten porch roof and catching himself before dropping to the floor below, as well as Ray sliding off the decking up at the twenty-foot level, only to catch himself on the railing of our make-shift scaffold, short of plunging to the ground before.  As we were building the railing, Jim had quipped, “It’s only for a visual.  It would never stop anybody from going over.”  How glad we were that he was wrong!  And what a great time of fellowship and fun together!

Words cannot describe the gratitude!  Even now, 20 years later, I get choked up as I think of the sacrifice of time, effort, and yes, even money these folks willingly gave to us.  There was no expectation of repayment, no feeling of obligation, just an offering freely imparted to friends.   And, while it was indeed a humbling experience for us to need the help, there was no sense of arrogance, no negative air of largesse in the benefactors.  These were friends, doing what friends do, simply because that is how friendship works.

I wish that I can say that I have proven myself worthy of the gift.  I would like to be able to point to the great deeds that I have done as a result of that wonderful period, but I cannot.  What I can tell you is that I do frequently find myself looking for the hidden things that need to be done for others.  I’m not great at it.  Some times, I hear about needs after they have been filled by others more gifted in seeing the disguised opportunities and wonder how I missed them.  But we can only live by the light that is given to us.  I’ve had opportunities and at times have come through with flying colors.

I’m going to keep working at it.  Hopefully, I’ll keep getting better at it.  But, if you see me slacking off and not helping out where I’m needed, a quick reminder of that time when I needed some random acts of kindness should be enough to get the fire lit under me.  I would hate to be the “Knave” in Mr. Franklin’s note below, who stops the progress of the gift.  I’m doing my best to keep paying it forward as long as I’m able.

I do not pretend to give such a Sum; I only lend it to you. When you meet with another honest Man in similar Distress, you must pay me by lending this Sum to him; enjoining him to discharge the Debt by a like operation, when he shall be able, and shall meet with another opportunity. I hope it may thus go thro’ many hands, before it meets with a Knave that will stop its Progress. This is a trick of mine for doing a deal of good with a little money. ~Benjamin Franklin in a letter dated April 22, 1784

Let your yay! be yay!

~ Paul Phillips ~ 1 Comment

She meant it as a compliment, but twenty-some years later, I can still get a little annoyed when I think about it.  Why is that?  What is it about words that makes us carry them around in a niche at the back of our minds and take them out sporadically, only to founder in the bad feelings they evoke?  I’ve decided in my adult years that I disagree vehemently with the old children’s doggerel that we heckled each other with, years ago…”Sticks and Stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.”  Since I know there are human beings in atrocious conditions that I could never comprehend, I don’t want to this to be too sweeping of a statement, but it seems to me that bones will heal. Conversely, I’m also convinced that the pain of hurtful words may linger for a lifetime.  If hers had actually been intended as hurtful, I might be writing this article from a completely different perspective.

When I tell you what she said, you’ll laugh at how thin-skinned I was.  I really never was angry at her, but it just irked me to hear it.  As I contemplate more, I think that the reason the comment comes back to me now is more about the truth (or potential for truth), than it is about the hurt. As I age, I find that I am examining the things I do more and more to be sure that I am leaving a legacy.  No, not the same kind of legacy that Presidents and public figures seem to be so obsessed with.  This is not about fame or public honor, but about the knowledge that I’ve fulfilled my purpose in life.  I really don’t want to get to a point where I look back and decide that I’ve wasted all the opportunities that I’ve been blessed with, especially after it’s too late to redeem the time.

What did she say?  Well, over the years, I have had the privilege of preaching at a number of services at my church. On the occasion I’m reminiscing about today, this elderly saint heard me preach for the first time.  I’m sure it was just that she hadn’t pictured me as a preacher, or even a public speaker, but as I greeted individuals at the end of the service, she gripped my hand, smiled sweetly, and blurted, “What are you doing wasting your time in that dinky little music store?”  I stuttered out a reply, which must have been satisfactory, since the dear lady remained my friend until she passed away some years later.

She meant it as a compliment!  She wanted me to know how excited she was to have heard me preach!  I think she was even saying that I had done a good job.  But all I heard was, “You’ve wasted your whole life doing something completely worthless!”  How do you deal with that? 

The Lord knew I needed an answer to that question because a short time later (a few weeks, maybe), I was speaking with my Dad on the telephone and he asked if we could pray before we said goodbye.  As he prayed, I heard the words, “…and bless Paul in the ministry you’ve given him there in the music store.” 

Wow!  How’s that for a contrast?  On the one hand, the thought that preaching would be so much more worthwhile than the profession I was in, and on the other hand, the statement that we are ministers wherever we find ourselves in life.  I’ve got to tell you, the light bulb went on!  I was put in this very spot for a purpose!  I don’t have to reproach myself for missed educational opportunities, or for my past lack of achievement in professional endeavors.  I can make a difference right here, right now.

My dad used to love this hokey little song that our choir sang many years ago.  I can’t remember the whole tune.  I don’t even have all the words at the tip of my tongue, but the main thought was, “Bloom, Bloom, Bloom where you’re planted!” (Told you it was hokey!)  And, that’s what I’m doing. You may think that I’m really just a bloomin’ idiot, but I’m pretty sure that the Good Lord wants us to buckle down and work right where we are.  He may move us somewhere else, but we do the same thing wherever we land…Settle in and bless those around us!

Oh!  And, let’s be careful how we compliment others.  A backdoor compliment isn’t how we bless them at all.  It’s more like the sting of nettles than the sweet aroma of a beautiful flower.  And it’s a sting that might be felt for a long, long time.

For he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of waters,
which brings forth fruit in its season,
and whose leaf also shall not wither.
Everything he does shall prosper.
(Psalm 1:3)

Dinner is Served!

~ Paul Phillips ~ Leave a comment

A gentle nudge is sometimes all it takes.  Other times, more drastic measures have to be resorted to, but we eventually get to the car to head home.  I can’t help it.  I’m a last minute conversation guy.  We’ve been at the church since before 9:00 AM, but now it’s noon and there are still people to talk with.  I’ll never understand the folks who dash out the door immediately after the last “Amen”.  I understand that not everybody is put together like I am (thank goodness!), but these visits with friends are some of the best moments of the week.  We catch up on children and jobs, even exchange a short joke or two, but we love spending time together.  However, the lovely lady is nudging again, so we say our last goodbye and head out.  Oh, one or two more conversations along the sidewalk crop up, but we have to keep moving.

What’s the hurry?  It’s just another Sunday afternoon, after all!  You say that and think you mean it, but you must not understand the meaning of Sunday Dinner.  We don’t eat “lunch” after church.  We have Dinner!  There are important people coming to share our table with us today and we have to get ready.  The list of dishes was made earlier this week before the visit to the grocery store yesterday.  Roast chicken and dressing, mashed potatoes, green beans, and spinach salad are on the menu today, among other things.  The lovely lady was up well before I was this morning, making the dessert and preparing the meat for the oven.  Important events like this take planning  and preparation!

We spend the last hour working feverishly.  I arrange the dining room and set the table, making sure that everything is just so for our VIPs.  She puts together the salad while making gravy, rolls, and the vegetables.  You understand that her role is much more difficult.  I do one thing at a time, while she multi-tasks, stirring this pot, cutting up that salad green, mixing a bowl of ingredients for another dish.  She knows better than to push me.  I’m hard pressed to remember which side of the plate the fork goes on, much less, not to forget the homemade peach jam. But, we get the work done; me, step by lumbering step; her, gracefully and efficiently.

As the last push comes to get dinner on the table, the important guests begin to arrive.  The lovely lady’s mother, accompanied by her brother, comes in first.  Great-Grandma lives at the local rehab/nursing center, but she is sharp as ever, noticing a different piano in the living room right away.  Brother-in-law plays a few chords on it for her and then, I’m back to the kitchen for some more last minute jobs. Then the doorbell rings again and in come the grandchildren, all calling out “Hi Grandma!  Hi Grandpa!”, with varying success in forming the words, but still entirely successful in letting us know they’ve arrived.  They are, not coincidentally, accompanied by our daughter and her husband.  Bringing up the end of the procession is our son, who also lives in town.  His arrival is met with cries of “Steben!” by the kids, who all adore him, although he pretends to be aloof. 

With much ado, and very little organization, the dinner commences.  Arguments about seating arrangements are par for the course, with the coveted position being the one adjacent to the lovely lady.  Those differences settled and drinks having been distributed, we ask the blessing, holding hands around the table.  When I was a child, the blessing was a prolonged affair, taking into account the leaders of the country, our missionaries, the heathen in darkest Africa, and various and sundry incidental requests, but, knowing the attention span of those in attendance, we keep ours confined to thanks for the food, and a quick request for showing love to each other.  Even with the abbreviated blessing, the next to the youngest manages to get a loud “Amen” out before I can finish, much to the amusement of all at the table.

Dinner is a boisterous affair, with conversations going on at all points of the compass, jokes told, and a few severe instructions issued (“Eat your green beans or no dessert!”, “No, you can’t get up.  You haven’t been excused yet!”).  Since Great-Grandma is a little hard of hearing, we have to speak up when addressing her and this doesn’t help the level of the din much.  Still, good food and good conversation are the order of the hour.  Most of this time is spent sharing the events of the week, both trivial and momentous.  We laugh, we cry, and the time speeds past.  After it’s all done, one by one, the groups of visitors head out, goodbyes and last-minute conversations finished as we stand at the door, with Uncle Steben leaving last after we’ve shared a bit of football time in front of the TV.  After some cleanup (not an insignificant task), peace reigns again.

That’s it?  That’s what your great Sunday Dinner was all about?  Your VIPs were just some family members getting together and eating food?   You bet!  When we can, we include other family members and friends from church.  This is a sacred time.  Oh, we don’t spend a lot of our time discussing theology (although that enters into most conversations), but the time spent with family, both old and young, is priceless.  Memories are being made.  Young minds are learning the respect that is due to those advanced in age by seeing it in practice and they are discovering how we interact with other people.  These are occasions that every single one of us will keep in our memories for years to come and treasure for all of our lives.  Some of my best memories from childhood are the times when we got together for meals with grandparents, with cousins and aunts and uncles.  They were more rare in my experience than they have been for my children and grandchildren, but that doesn’t make them any less cherished.

Family traditions don’t always just happen.  Some traditions you have to nourish and labor for.  We make this important, because we need this. Our parents, our children, and grandchildren need it.  Would it be easier to chuck it and go get dinner at KFC or some local restaurant?  You bet, much easier!  But, the time we spend nurturing each other and our memories will one day be the subject of the “remember whens?” and even some “when I was young” conversations for their children and grandchildren.  All the work (and even leaving church earlier than I want) is a small price to pay for the dividends all along the road.

Oh, and after the hub-bub and cacophony of dinner is finished, the lovely lady and I get to settle into the den for some “down time” (nap for me, stitching for her).  It seems that there are other family traditions besides Sunday Dinner that are just about as important.

“After a good dinner, one can forgive anybody, even one’s own relations.”
(Oscar Wilde~American poet)

Ifs, Ands, & Buts

~ Paul Phillips ~ 1 Comment

If weekends meant a reprieve for me in any way, I would have been asking, “Is it Friday yet?”, right about four o’clock this afternoon.  Bad day?  That’s like asking if GEICO makes funny commercials.  For disastrous days, this was ranking right up there with the best of them.  Promises I’d made couldn’t be kept because of ineptitude by suppliers, and every order placed by customers had a problem to be chased down and sorted out (okay, not every one, but enough to seem that way).  Even before that, at 4 minutes before opening time, one guy actually had the audacity to blow his horn outside the front door!  Not sure, but it might have been the fellow returning a non-functioning product.  We got that sorted out, only to have him return a few moments later, with the replacement not working!  As the day wore on, a rep from the inept supplier actually had the nerve to lie to me about a shipping date when I was staring right at the shipping record on my computer.  I had opened the doors at 12:00, and by 4:00, I felt it was time to close.  I was done!

But…!  I like that word:  But!  Although it’s a small word, it turns around what came before and gives it a different direction.  It has been a favorite word for me since childhood.  When I was a kid, I used it to argue with everyone in sight.  My big brother said I sounded like a motorboat going, “But,but,but,but,but,but…”   Mom’s phrase was, “You’d argue with a fence post.”  I spent most of a lifetime using the word to give the declarations of others a negative twist, to prove that I was superior.  I wish it were not so, but it is true, nonetheless.  I remain cognizant of my bent to arguing and I strive with the urge constantly, sometimes to emerge victorious and just as often to be humbled by my failure.  The fight goes on…

Tonight though, I put the word to different use.  The day had been horrible, but…!  I love the conversion from the negative to the positive that “but” gives to the sentence, the repentance that marks the turning from darkness to light.  This very dark day had a “but” in the middle of it.  A good friend walked in the front door of my business with the means for me to keep my promise!  I don’t want to be maudlin, but I can think of nothing more encouraging than having friends who rise to the occasion when I cannot.  And, make no mistake, I could not rise.  I had no “outs”, as they say in the game of Poker, but this friend had the very card I needed up his sleeve.  I think he was embarrassed by my gratitude, but I had been drowning and he threw the much needed rope to save me.

The “but” in the middle of the afternoon revived me, and still the day made one more attempt at bringing me back to my knees.  A last minute call from a customer far away ensured a labor intensive job which had to be completed this evening.  Fortunately for me, Thursday evening is always Macaroni and Cheese night at our house, so even the threat of this drudgery wasn’t as crushing at it might have been.  Nevertheless, the discouragement of the day hung on through the meal of comfort food.  After supper, we were off to a benefit concert for some young missionary friends, an appointment that my day had made much less attractive as it wore on.

But…!  (Did I tell you I really like that word?)  What a refreshing time!  We spent the evening visiting with old friends, many of whom we hadn’t seen for a long time.  It was energizing to visit while enjoying the great Bluegrass music (and some good coffee too).  But this time spent among friends, reminiscing, catching up on current happenings, and just enjoying each other, simply reinforced the lesson I learned earlier today;  Self-reliance is desirable.  Skill is to be sought after.  Even fortitude in the face of adversity is laudable.  But this I say without fear of any “but” to follow:  Friends are a gift!  And, I stand firmly with James in the Bible when he states that every good and perfect gift comes from Above.  May we all be blessed throughout our lives with many such gifts!  And may all our bad days be interrupted by the “but” of one of those gifts arriving to redeem the time for us.

“Old friends, Lord, when all my work is done,
Grant my wish and give just one old friend, at least one…
Old friend.”
(from the song “Old Friends” ~ Roger Miller)

A friend is always loyal, and a brother is born to help in time of need.
(Proverbs 17:17 ~ New Living Translation)

Is It Really You?

~ Paul Phillips ~ 1 Comment

The old grey donkey, Eeyore stood by himself in a thistly corner of the Forest, his front feet well apart, his head on one side, and thought about things. Sometimes he thought sadly to himself, “Why?” and sometimes he thought, “Wherefore?” and sometimes he thought, “Inasmuch as which?” and sometimes he didn’t quite know what he was thinking about.
From “Winnie the Pooh” by A.A. Milne

Do you listen to people?  I mean, really listen.  Today I heard a friend for the first time.  I’ve known him for a number of years.  Been an acquaintance, said hello on the street, even chatted for several minutes.  But I didn’t listen to him.  I was too busy looking at what he did and where he’d been.  Today I actually feel like I know a little of who he is.

This wasn’t going to be one of my “preachy” notes, but I have been a bit more contemplative tonight.  When life’s truths hit me, it takes a little of the jocularity out of my mood.  As my friend Eeyore said, “We can’t all and some of us don’t, you know…Gaiety. Song-and-dance. Here we go round the mulberry bush.”  So, this evening, I’ve been thinking…

What I’ve been thinking about is: Who do people think that I am?  Easy-schmeasy!  You’re that guy who writes a bad joke every day on his Facebook page…That guy who runs the music store…That guy who leads music at my church…That guy who plays the Horn at the Candlelight Service…That guy…  But, I didn’t ask you what I do.  I asked you who I am.  Do you know me?  The real me?

We spend our lives seeing the filters, the framework, but never looking past them to the person.  Honestly, there are only a very few people who I know, really know.  And maybe that’s the way it’s supposed to be, but I want more.  As my friend and I talked today, I caught a partial glimpse of what made him tick, part of what makes the whole person he is, not just the filters.  I didn’t just see a professor, or a musician, or a radio personality.  Oh, he’s done all of those things and they’ve helped to shape the person, but when we really listen and genuinely communicate, we can see, dimly at least, into the substance of what makes the man or woman.  And as I thought about what a great gift it is to learn about someone, I started wondering about how I present the real me to you.

I like to think that I’m upfront about who I am, that my friends know what drives me, but I know that’s an illusion.  The belief that you know who I am comes because I’m constantly aware of it.  Mostly, I know my faults and secret sins and it’s hard to believe that everyone I come in contact with doesn’t see them written on my face.  I want to be honest, but I protect myself from hurt and exposure by keeping who I really am to myself.  I’m pretty sure that isn’t the way God planned it, but we’ve messed up the relationship thing about as much as everything else He had in mind for us way back there.

I’m not suggesting that we need to “let it all hang out”.  What I would propose is that we start by realizing that our postman isn’t just the postman.  Your hairdresser isn’t only the hairdresser.  The President isn’t really what the publicity and press make him out to be.  Those titles and descriptions are just some of the filters.  The visible person is actually just the container for a real person, with dreams, remorse, joy, and sadness.  There’s more to every one of those stories than what you think you know.  Let’s just spend a little more time finding out who people are and not just what they do.

“For the Lord sees not as man sees: Man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.”  (I Samuel 16:7b)