Drink Coffee and Live

 A friend of mine sent me an article about the latest scientific research that shows how people who drink six or more cups of coffee a day have a definitive 10 percent increase in their ability to stay alive while others are not staying alive. That’s right. A clear decrease in overall mortality due to a constant consumption of the divinely provided beverage, el Cafe.

Um. But if you smoke. No deal. You throw it all away.

Of course, they didn’t say what kind of coffee these people were drinking. And it’s scary to think that people are living longer if they are drinking one of the major coffee brands, sold in large, coffin like cans, stale and tasteless. That stuff could kill a vulture. I wouldn’t want to live longer if it was only to drink that stuff.

If you could see my face right now you’d see a clear look of disdain as I contemplate drinking such offensive coffees for long periods of time. I mean, I can have a cup at someone’s house, I’m not a snob, but I try to avoid it whenever possible, not because I’m too good, but because it is too bad.

I ran out of good coffee a few weeks ago. I was too lazy to go to the store. My wife had a can of the “good” to the last drippy stuff. Seriously. It was stunning in its awfulness. I had forgotten how bad it is. Soooooo bad. It’s almost like they’re doing it on purpose.

Maybe someday I’ll post about how we’ve lost our taste for decent coffee. It is a historical fact, a tragedy really. A by-product of war and forgetfulness. But, for now, I leave you with this encouragement:

Don’t just drink coffee and live. DRINK GOOD COFFEE AND LIVE!


Peace to you.


© LW Publishing 2011

Dark Water

We slept in the car, on the road between here and that place of loss. To view empty bodies. Broken. I was empty headed and too young for my own good. Talking stupid came easy to me. But he was wise beyond his years. And kind. He took me to the door of death and stood with me while I peeked in. I didn’t like what I saw. I didn’t know how to process it.

I had seen the cost of this over the years, had lived with the cost, endured it, but I was too young to feel the pull of the waves. I was farther down the stream, where you can imagine waterfalls and oceans, instead of the dark flow from hard rock on the side of a moss covered mountain that no one can stop up.

Later, I saw the water rise, flood the hospital room where my grandmother was drowning in her mortality. It didn’t scare me but it disturbed me. It shook my spirit. And I have seen this wash of mortality again and again since. I have held the hand of people, soaking in it, waiting for the waves to take them under.

It makes me wonder how well I will tread this awful, dark water myself. How will I handle it as it fills my lungs. As I’m reaching for that strong hand on the other side to pull me up to safety.

© LW Publishing 2011

Relics

Today, for no particular reason, I was remembering how, over the years, usually when traveling, I’ve come across little country churches that were built years and years ago. Some as far back as the seventeen hundreds. And what you find is that it was common for a graveyard to be attached to the church, or very close by, especially in smaller rural communities, with ancient looking headstones lined up in rows.

Some people hate seeing these headstones. I’ve talked to people who get creeped out by them. But I enjoy reading them and imagining the lives of the people whose bodies were put into the ground in that spot at some time in the long past. With the oldest graves, the people who lived those lives did it without television or even radio. Most lived without phones or electricity or plumbing. It was a very different world, and most of them died pretty young. In fact, it is a bit troubling sometimes to read how many of those tombstones were carved out for babies who didn’t last even one year. It was a hard world to live in, especially before antibiotics became readily available, which was less than 100 years ago. Prior to that, a small cut could take your life if it became infected..

But the grave stones that impact me the most on an emotional level are the ones where the writing on them has been washed away by erosion. You might see part of a date, a few letters of the name, but not much more than that. And some of them have literally crumbled into pebbles and dust.

There was this one time when I was in Tennessee, I was walking through a woodsy area and I came across some headstones that you could barely see. They were covered in ivy and weeds and grass and there were trees grown up all around them, some of them had actually been broken up by the roots of trees. It took me a moment to realize that it was a forgotten cemetery. So much time had passed that there was no one left to care for it.

Give it enough time and we all become relics. At least our physical bodies do. Stuff for future generations to dig up and display in museums. And this can be kind of depressing, I suppose. But it doesn’t depress me. It just makes me think.

It makes me consider how little time we really have here on this planet. And it makes me want to spend the time I have wisely. Not in fear, but with purpose. I have confidence that there’s more to this life than . . . this life. So, for me, my life and the lives of everyone else on this planet, they’re all part of a big picture, like patterns on a quilt being made in the hand of God. It's a part of what keeps me warm when the world goes cold.



Psalm 90:12
Peace to you.



© LW Publishing 2011

Whitman's Got Nothing On Me

What more do you need to meditate on the transience of life here on earth than to have to rake up leaves in your yard?

I am so sick of these leaves. Why can’t they just stay on the trees?

Sure, they start out nice. Dark green in the early summer. Bright and colorful in the fall. But they have such a short time to live. I imagine it’s hard for them to find a sense of meaning and purpose. Leaves are probably stoics. Or perhaps Existentialists?

Whatever.

I suppose the truth is that the leaves live for the sake of the tree, right? Mindlessly, I think. I mean, that’s what they’re there for. They gather the sun for the tree. “Don’t distract me. I’m trying to photosynthesize here.” It’s all about the tree. And when the tree is finished with the leaves, it just drops them like a hot potato. They fall to the ground, an ignominious end for something so selfless.

It hardly seems fair. You might feel sorry for them.

If there weren’t so stinking many.



Peace to you.


© LW Publishing 2010

The Day After

 It’s fascinating and a little frightening how fast life moves on.

I was at my buddy Joe’s funeral last night. Joe Smith. It was kind of intimidating. It just wasn’t right. He was too young to be resting in a casket. I kept wondering: if we had known twenty-five or thirty years ago that he would be gone at this time, what would have changed? Anything? If you knew that you weren’t going to make it into old age, that two years from now or five years from now or twenty that you would be gone from here, if you KNEW, then what would change about how you are living life right now?

Ignorance is bliss.

Apparently, Joe’s heart stopped working, which is amazingly ironic because he was all heart. It’s the last thing I thought would ever go bad in him. It was painful to look at him. Joe’s eighty-eight year old mother took me by the hand and we faced him together. He had a grin on his face, which is unusual, but his mom liked it. So did I. It was fitting.

There were some friends from High School at the funeral that I hadn’t seen in almost 30 years. 30 YEARS!!!  Pardon my French, but holy crap Batman! That’s like a lifetime all by itself. Even though it was a funeral, it was good to see them. It was like we hadn’t been apart at all. These people are wonderful. I could have talked all night with them without missing a beat. Only thing was, Joe wasn’t in on the conversations, and they would have been a lot funnier if he had been.

It’s a little sad that it took one of us dying to get us together, which is as much my fault as anyone’s because I’m so busy. I haven’t always been there for people like I wanted to because there’s just no time. My life is very full like everyone else’s seems to be. And even death didn’t draw all of us together. Some couldn’t make it to the funeral home, of course. Life gets in the way. High School was a long time ago. People have jobs and responsibilities, some people are too far away, and that’s that.

Every funeral I go to makes me think of this haunting line from a Jackson Browne song that I love called “Of Missing Persons.” A sentence from that song has been stuck in my head for decades and it won’t go away because it’s so true...

“Does it take a death to learn what a life is worth?”

Joe was an amazing person. They had pictures of him, like they usually do at funerals, and there he was, smiling with that big smile of his, through the windows of those photos. I had sat across from him, smiling at me, looking just like that, many times, back when Joe lived just a few blocks from another close friend who means the world to me. And these two were with me at a time in life when I was trying to figure out who and what I was. I don’t exactly know why we fell together in time the way we did, but I’m thankful for it, and I realize that they are both a part of the definition of who I am, along with other great friends who have no idea how important to me they are, even though I haven’t seen some of them for years. We simply ended up separated by the geography and expectations of life. I’m not bitter about it, that’s just how it goes, but it makes you wish there was a little more time here to keep things going. And it makes you want to reconnect with people that you have lost contact with. But that’s easier said than done.

When I was working on my undergraduate and then my master’s degrees I lost touch with practically everyone I had known prior to that. Not good, but there is nothing I could do about it. The demands were very heavy. And then we had kids and I launched into a whole different direction job wise with the church, and then suddenly 30 years is past and your hair is going grey and you find yourself wondering where the time went.

Honestly, right now, I feel like going away somewhere quiet where there are no expectations. I feel like I need time away to assess and figure things out. But that’s not going to happen. We don’t always get to do what we feel we need to do. So I will forge ahead and pray and try to figure out what God wants and what the people around me need so I can love them like I should.

What else can you do?



Peace to you.



© LW Publishing 2010

Mysteries of the Mind

No kidding. I’m standing on my front porch and I glance to the right and see another dead bird in the bush in front of our house. It apparently hit our front window and fell onto the bush where it lay, a big black bird with shiny feathers. I’m going to have to get out there and do something with it. I can at least bury this one.

What makes finding these birds stand out to me is that over the past few weeks I’ve become kind of obsessed with a weird question. This happens to me a lot. I come up with a weird question and I can’t figure out the answer and it gets into my mind and won’t go away, but it’s almost always something nutty.

For instance. An example that is not the question I am currently obsessed about. A long time ago I thought up a question that I still don’t have an answer to that I find satisfactory. The question is this:

Why do men have nipples?

I’m just saying. I know it’s a weird question. I know it reveals that I probably have some kind of psychological disorder. But, still, I wonder . . . why? They are pointless.

And, so, back to the birds. I have been mulling over another question the past few weeks that won’t leave me alone. And it goes something like this:

This world is FULL of animals, wildlife of all kinds, birds by the trillions, foxes, cats, mice and rats and squirrels. And on occasion you find a dead one. I found a dead squirrel in the tree in my backyard last year. And it really stood out to me because how often do you find a dead squirrel unless it has been hit by a car on the road, right? So, here are the basics of the question:

Where are all the animal bodies? Where are all the dead animals? They don’t have tremendously long life spans, and yet you just don’t see a lot of animal bodies laying all over the place. Are the animals having secret little squirrel funerals in the woods that we don’t know about? Elephants have graveyards, but what about rabbits? Where do all these animals go when they die? Is the process of decomposition so fast that they are gone within a day? Even so, why don’t we see more of them before they decompose. Is it a part of their instincts to get under a bush somewhere to die?

This world is full of things that can make us wonder, wonder, wonder. Don’t you think?







Peace to you.




© LW Publishing 2010

Bird

The family and moi were at a campground the past few days. Because I’m with them, we got a little cabin to stay in. I don’t tent. Call me a sissy if you want. I don’t care. I just laugh at you when the rain comes.

Next to our cabin one day we came across this bird on the ground, breathing his last. Literally. It’s chest was heaving, it’s head was pulled back, trying to breath, doing everything it could to stay alive, but there was no hope. I wondered what was taking the bird down. Did it run into the window on the side of the cabin? Did it just get old and have a heart attack and fall from the tree above? There’s no way to know.

It was compelling stuff. It was hard to watch, and yet we couldn’t walk away. Together, we saw how death takes over. How the fight is lost. And I think it was good for us to see. All of us.

This bird had been able to fly, which is something I can only dream of. It made it’s way out of the nest and into the world with very little help. Like all birds, it was amazing. An intricate work of art that decorated the skies.

I wasn’t sure what to do with the body. I wanted to honor it somehow, but I couldn’t think of anything. I didn’t have a shovel to bury it. I ended up putting it in a plastic cup and setting it in a garbage can.

Death is a part of things. We shouldn’t obsess over it. But it’s a reality we need to face. If you don’t, you won’t make good use of the time you have here. If you’re pretending you’re going to be here forever, then you’re likely to waste a lot of good time doing . . . stuff. You know. Stuff.






Matthew 10:29-31
Psalm 90:12
Peace to you.





© LW Publishing 2010

A good friend of mine has been grieving because his best friend committed suicide. My friend has been handling this in what I consider a heroic manner. But grieving can be hard because it’s so unpredictable. Grief does not always behave like you expect it to. It can do weird things to us.

Years ago, when I was 19 and still living at home, my parents were in the kitchen, making dinner or something, when the phone rang. My mom picked up the phone. I didn’t pay much attention until I heard her say...

“No.”

She said it quietly. It was disturbing. I dropped what I was doing in the next room and walked toward the kitchen. I saw her hand the phone to my dad. While he listened, his face started to change right in front of my eyes. In a moment it went from the face of a grown man to the face of a broken and hurt child. He said, “Alright.” But it wasn’t. He hung up the phone and collapsed into my mom’s arms, weeping. I have never before and never since seen my dad weep like this. Sobbing. Uncontrollable. It scared me.

Two of my dad’s sisters, living in Tennessee, had been driving to work. At some spot on the road, near a school, there had been some ice on the road. They collided with a semi truck and were killed instantly.

A good friend decided to drive me down to Tennessee for the funeral. We drove until we were passing out, then we stopped on the side of the road somewhere and slept in the car. We drove some more. We talked. We observed. We philosophized about life and death. Jack Kerouac would have been proud.

I was nervous about getting there.

When we arrived in Tennessee, I didn’t know how to feel. I think seeing my dad like that had messed me up. Knowing how my aunts had died, so violently, left me not knowing how to respond. Everything about how I felt seemed inappropriate and out of place. I laughed at things I shouldn’t have. I was unintentionally rude. I said things that were outright goofy, which I’m pretty good at regardless. But, more than usual, I was nervous and unsure about what to say to people. I didn’t know how to act. I just felt numb. And I didn’t shed a single tear. It was weird.

We got through it, then the friend took me and we detoured over to the Smoky Mountains for a day. Had a nice time. Headed on home.

Life went on. Time happened. Over a year went by.

I’m sitting in the car with my newish girlfriend. She would later become the wife. We’re talking about different things. Somehow the subject of my aunts and how they died comes up. I start to talk about the trip. I try to explain what I experienced. And, suddenly, I realize that I am broken and I fall apart. Sobbing. Uncontrollable. I wept for my dad and the family. I wept for my aunts. I wept from the center of my strange, inscrutable heart.

For some reason, finally, after all that time, I mourned.

I’ve learned over the years that the process of mourning can heal if we don't let it take possession of us. It can be like a demon, or it can be like a guide. You can let it control you or you can let it take you through the loss to a place of peace. Without mourning we would be emotionally destroyed by our broken world. But we can't belong to the sorrow because we belong to the Creator.

Like love, mourning works to heal us. So we need to grieve over whatever we've given away or whatever has been taken from us, we need to mourn, to confess our loss and, through that expression, begin to move on. It’s okay to weep, to grieve, to mourn. For a time. But it’s also okay to move on. It really is.

There is a light at the end of the tunnel. Do you see it?




John 11:35; 1 Thessalonians 4:13-14
Peace to you.


© LW Publishing 2010

Requiem

Perhaps you can sing with me.

My friend, Mickie Davis, just passed away. The funeral is tomorrow (Monday). Mickie was one of the most kind people I’ve ever met. She reminded me of my grandmother. Mickie was always kind. She always had a smile on her face. I never heard her say an unkind word.

She will be missed. She died from Alzheimer’s Disease. She was 88 years old.

I learned at a very young age that this was a part of life.

I was doing some work on the internet the other day and came across an obituary in memory of my sister Sharon. The classmates from her high school put it up. Sharon died in 1969. Her friend Don was driving the car they were in and he died too. I was 5 years old.

In the picture she has a haircut sort of like you’d see in that Hairspray musical. It must be her graduation picture. I remember seeing this picture around the house growing up. More than ever I realize that she was just a kid, barely out of high school.

I remember the funeral like it was yesterday. They did funerals in churches back then. If I remember it right, she was in a funeral home for a day or two and then they took her body to the church for the service before driving to the cemetery. We were in the church, sitting on the front row. The sound of crying, wailing, all around. Our pastor, Pastor Nance, did the service, but I have no idea what he said. What do you say to the parents of a nineteen year old girl who dies from exhaust fumes leaking up into the car? How could any of it make sense to a five year old?

There’s something that scared me that day that I didn’t tell anyone about for a long time.

While the service was going on, just before they had us stand and go look at the body, I heard a strange noise. Sounded sort of like a grunting noise. I heard this noise and my little five year old brain instantly told me that my sister was waking up. I was sure, for a moment, that when I walked up to the casket, she would open her eyes and yawn and say something like, “ What’s going on?” At that point everyone would laugh and say, “Wow. We thought she was dead! What’s the matter with us?” But when I looked into the casket, she didn’t move and I realized the noise must have come from outside the church. Could have been anything.

I remember being nervous about them putting her in the ground. What if she were to wake up and not be able to get out? What if I wanted to talk to her about something?

All that week, people coming over, bringing food. There was so. much. food. Adults talked in their strange language. Southern accents floating in the air. People cried. People laughed. Sometimes all at the same time. Conversations were hushed. Some of it I could make out, other things were too quiet to hear or too cryptic to understand.

This thing that happened, it broke my mom. For a long time she was broken by this. There were a lot of things she couldn’t do without getting angry. She couldn’t go on vacation without getting angry. Holidays were hard too. I didn’t understand it at the time. I didn’t make the connection, but I understand now. We have to move on but we don’t have to like it.

Years later some women at our church were having a dinner. They were trying to find a speaker and I suggested my mom. I told them to have her talk about her life. She’s done a lot. She’s seen a lot. She’s been through a lot and still loves God in Christ. It really is inspiring.

She agreed to speak. I wasn’t there, but I heard she talked about a lot of things, including the death of her daughter. She met a woman there who had lost a son a few years before that. Mom was able to comfort in a way no one else could. They talked. They tapped into the reality that they weren’t alone in their brokeness.

It seems to me that my mom is different since that day. I’m not sure she would agree, but it seems to me she’s more relaxed, more at peace in life. She doesn’t seem broken anymore. Just wise.

Pictures of my sister are kind of haunting for me, but not in a negative way. They just bring up images, vague memories.

I remember her coming over to our house. She had moved into an apartment or something. She brought cookies with her. I remember her walking in the front door. I remember her smiling at me, opening the cookies and handing me one.

She thought to do that.



If you want to see that picture of my sister, you can find it here...

http://www.lowrey1967.org/class_profile.cfm?member_id=1901876


1 Corinthians 15:37-44


Peace to you.

© LW Publishing 2010