Losses

 My youngest daughter still has a few words that she gets wrong, and we’ve learned not to make a big deal out of this kind of thing. I actually enjoy it. They get it figured out in the long run. But when they do, when the particulars of childhood are left behind, it makes me sad sometimes.

The current word that I love, that she gets wrong, is when something grosses her out. She says, “That’s exgusting.”

Frankly, I think it’s a better word than the original. It has a little more bite to it.

There are lots of things that you hate to see go with the kids as time passes on. The way you can hold them when they’re really small. The way they mangle certain words and make faces and laugh about certain things. The moments when they first try to be funny. Those cute little baby teeth, all lined up so perfectly straight and even, which get ejected and replaced by over sized, out of place teeth that are way too big for their current faces. And sometimes it seems to take forever for some of the gaps to fill in their smile.

You realize that kids lose so much as time goes by. Sweet things, like the ability to hide under small tables and watch the feet of the grown ups go by or fitting completely in the arms of your mom or dad, wrapped up with your head tucked under, feeling safe. Or the simple joy of playing with an empty card board box or the feeling of running on the grass, barefooted, with the belief that you are the fastest creature on the planet.

Sometimes we also lose trust in the people we look up to at way too young an age, which can be very hard to get back. And sometimes, unfortunately, we lose our innocence.

When I stop to consider all of the loss, all of the things we can lose as we leave childhood behind, frankly it’s kind of...

exgusting.


Matthew 18:2-4




Peace to you.

© LW Publishing 2011

Trust Issues

One year, when I was in Elementary School, there was a poster contest for a carnival in town. It was a thing the city was putting on, so they had the kids in each school make posters to promote it, and each school chose a winner for best poster. If you won, you would get free tickets to the carnival, yada yada yada. So I went home and drew up a poster. It was Donald Duck, telling the kids to go to the carnival because it was going to be so much fun. Yada yada yada. And it turned out pretty good. I won the contest.

So the posters go up on the wall of the school, in the big hallway near the office, and they did some little ceremony with me. I can’t quite remember the details, but the principal shook my hand and such. Which was all cool. But then this one lady, she was a teacher or a secretary or something, I honesty don’t remember why she was there, but she turned to me and asked me a question. She said: “The picture is really great, but why did you spell the words all wrong.”

I was a little dumbfounded because what I had done was obvious. Or, at least, it should have been. Donald Duck has his peculiar way of speaking. A kind of scratchy duckese. So I had spelled whatever it was I had him saying on the poster phonetically to reflect that. No one had questioned this, all the way to the victory circle. And that’s what I told the woman. “I just tried to spell it like it would sound if Donald Duck said it.” It was, let me say it again: obvious. But the woman seemed surprised. She said, “Oh.” Then she looked at the poster for a second and looked at me and said, “Well. I think it would have been better if you had spelled the words correctly.” She said the word “correctly” as if it was a word I would have a hard time understanding. I remember that the principal gave her a look, but he didn’t say anything. After all, she was a grown up like him. He just gave me a pat on the head and sent me back to class.

Now. I mention all this because, in a small way, it was a life changing moment. For the first time in my life I looked at an adult and thought to myself: This is a stupid person. I wasn’t thinking mean about it. I didn’t look down on her. I just realized that she didn’t get something that was simple. Something I understood, and I was just a kid.

Seriously. I thought about it all that day, and again and again over the years. Grown ups CAN be stupid. Grown ups CAN be wrong. Some grown ups MIGHT not know more than kids, let alone other grown ups.

Can you see how this could change one’s world view? Can you see how this one little incident could undermine a kids trust in the adult world?

I’d like to say that the adults of the world have regained my trust. You know, in general.

I’d really like to.


Peace to you.


© LW Publishing 2011

Grow Up Already

Over the years I’ve become a much more serious person. I suppose it needed to happen, but I kind of miss the old me who would do and say really dumb things and laugh at whatever and not take everything so seriously. But growing up happens. And it should.

I found growing up a challenging thing from an emotional standpoint. I simply didn’t want to do it. Partly because it scared me, and partly because our culture encourages us to not grow up. It’s apparently something we’re supposed to avoid.

The commercials said, “I don’t want to grow up, I’m a Toys R Us kid.”

Walt Disney said, “Too many people grow up. That's the real trouble with the world, too many people grow up.”

The Ramones sang, “I don’t want to grow up.”

Simple Plan sang it at the top of their lungs, "I don't want to be told to grow up."

And there’s plenty more where that came from. It’s a theme of living in the western world that growing up is about loss. Losing innocence. Losing freedom. Losing imagination and wonder.

But I think, in reality, what people are afraid of is losing our selfishness. After all, childhood is a massive exercise in selfishness. And we accept it from children, to a point, because they’re trying to figure out who they are and what their life should be about. But when this selfish, self focus, drags on year after year, decade after decade, keeping a person from growing and maturing, it gets plain ugly to see.

Growing up doesn’t mean giving up comic books or giving up dreaming about the future or losing your sense of wonder. At least it shouldn’t be about things like that. Growing up means realizing that the world doesn’t revolve around you, and being at peace with that reality. It means living for others sometimes instead of living every moment for yourself. It means learning to live out grace with contentment. It means learning to cope with the harshness of life without letting it eat you alive.

I love children. I adore my own kids. They are wonderful. There is much to be said for childhood. I miss my childhood in some ways. But here’s the truth: Apart from a very few child savants, children have not produced great art or films or accomplished great scientific discoveries. Children have not created medicines and vaccinations. Children have not built great cities or uncovered profound spiritual truths. They just don’t have it in them yet.

We should be like children. We can be child-like. But we should not be children forever. It’s okay to grow up. It’s healthy. And it should be expected.


1 Corinthians 13:11
Peace to you.

© LW Publishing 2011

Cuss

There are times in life when we are all challenged to take the next step and move forward toward maturity, adulthood and enlightenment. For instance: learning to cuss.

I did not hear a lot of cussing in my house growing up. It was frowned on and I’m thankful for that. But it was a constant friend in the neighborhood. Some of the kids were masterful with it. The cussing flowed like chocolate syrup on the vanilla ice cream of life. And so it was that I tried to use this particular art in one of my endless attempts to fit in. And the plan was simple. I thought I’d learn the cussing thing. It seemed easy to figure out and it was an easy way to prove my manhood to the other kids in the neighborhood.

So I started in one day. I cussed and I cussed. I didn’t think for a second about the meaning of the words. It didn’t matter. Each word was simply a key for getting in the door of acceptance. And the kids in the neighborhood helped me! They told me which words were most appropriate in whichever situations. They high fived me when I got it right. It was very affirming. All day long, cuss cuss cuss, every other word. Icouldabeenagangsta.

When I went home in the evening, after being unaccounted for all day, I started to get nervous that I would accidentally cuss in front of my parents. I wasn’t sure, but I thought there was a good chance my mom would immediately kill me if she heard me cuss. Probably with a sawed off shot gun or a dull knife. And she’d do it in front of my brothers and sisters to make a good example of me, my blood spraying across their tender, horrified faces. But I somehow managed to control myself.

Over the next few days I couldn’t wait to get out there and practice my art. Cuss cuss cuss. Hey man, how’s it cussing goin’? Cussing great! Well I’m cussing glad to hear it. We should get our cussing bikes and cussing go to the cussing creek and try to find some cussing turtles or snakes. Cuss yeah, man! I bet there’s cussing all kinds of cussing turtles out there. Cuss.

Being me, I think I was enjoying the creativity of it. It took careful effort to fit all of those expletives in at just the right spot, to get the nuances correct. It was like a new toy. I loved it. But a few days later, the guys took me aside and sat me down on the porch to explain something to me. They told me I was taking things too far. Cussing was great, but I was overdoing it. I was cussing so much it was annoying them. Too cool to be cool. So they asked me to tone it down a bit. And I did. Failing once again to get it right with the indiscernible madness of human interaction.

Cuss.

When I was at university, an English professor said that cussing had no true meaning and was really a form of violence. He said that anyone can cuss, but not anyone can express their true heart. And I found that very challenging. I don’t know if he was completely right, but I think he was on to something. I learned how to cuss and I have since learned to put it behind me. Mostly. I have to confess that even now, decades later, the urge is still there sometimes. When you least expect it, it can rise, easy to the tongue. But I think the prof was right. I think it’s a good thing to want what you say to matter and have meaning. That simple desire could shape our connections to others into something more beautiful and true.




Matthew 12:36-37
Peace to you.


© LW Publishing 2010