Thursday, June 16, 2022
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Our father, who art in heaven, in Wisconsin, and in Geneva
After a few days in central Illinois, I pointed the Prius north. Don and I have met for years, once or twice a year at Cindy’s – a friendly family restaurant on I 39, about halfway between his home in Wisconsin and mine in Urbana. We met again on Tuesday, made friends with our waitress and ate bigger breakfasts than either of us are used to.
Don will see his kids next month for a gathering, and he asked himself, his wife, and his kids to think of three questions – three questions to toss up into the air for discussion. Good idea! I’m excited for him. The conversations I’ve had with his family over our forty-eight years of friendship assure me that the ones next month will be stimulating and fruitful.
We met in 1974 or so, on a dock behind our too-fancy rented house on Lake Mendota outside Madison, Wisconsin, brought together by our girlfriends at the time. As he walked onto the dock that day, I had just hooked a northern pike. We both got really excited about that, and our friendship has never lagged. LeAnn and Jane have gone their own ways, while we have kept to the road set out for us together.
Don read me a card I gave him after his heart valve surgery in October, 1986. Soon after that I began driving up to River Forest while he convalesced, and we started reading the Bible together. We were like happy ducks on the lake at dawn, spraying each other with cold water, laughing and diving deeper, always diving deeper.
During each of the next twenty-five or so years, we put together a spiritual retreat, sometimes at his Lulu Lake paradise and other times at St. Vincent Pallotti Retreat Center, just over the ridge from Alpine Valley in southern Wisconsin. With our friends we prepared and ate gourmet meals, sang Taize worship songs and many others, probed our souls and practiced various kinds of prayer and meditation, the Examen, and lectio divina. Don’s parish priest often came to administer the Eucharist to us. We sat around campfires and shared mostly true stories, along with other, often practical aids to parenting and marriage. Every year we hated to say goodbye. And at one of the early retreats, Ken and I met.
And so, after spending the morning with Don I drove to Geneva and spent the rest of the day with Ken and Tricia. Sitting on their deck watching the finches, mostly able to ignore the heat, I felt more and more happy in Jesus … how does that song go … just to trust and obey … Ken and Tricia do just that.
Around mid-afternoon we prayed the Divine Chaplet together, as they do every afternoon, just the two of them:
For the sake of his powerful passion, have mercy on us and on the whole world … Eternal Father, I offer you the body and blood, soul and divinity of your dearly beloved Son, our Lord, Jesus Christ, in atonement for our sins and those of the whole world.
Each repetition included prayers for U (Ukraine), and R (Russia), and the C’s (their grandchildren). Years ago Ken introduced many of us to the Divine Chaplet, which he himself had just discovered. We stretched out in the dark on Don’s living room rug. Ken couldn’t have been more excited. He led us, and led us, and led us, through the whole prayer, which that night to my evangelical soul seemed to go on too long, for hours, can we stop already?
Ken knew what he was doing, so my shaky Protestant protests fell on deaf ears. He just kept loving God and loving me and loving all of us. And now I have learned to love the Divine Chaplet too.
We had dinner together and were going to watch a movie, if we could figure out how to use his fancy new streaming smart TV. Ken can fix anything and if he can’t fix it, then he will invent something new. He’s a genius that way, besides being a former Almost US Navy Seal. But he is a bit clueless about smart TVs, so for once I could be helpful … although he quickly pulled the remote back into his own lap once we got things going.
We watched four episodes of The Chosen on Prime Video. They had heard of it, but now they could see it, and it was, of course, wonderful. So often when Jesus touched the lives of his friends, he touched us too. I pretty much soaked my handkerchief. And there are at least twelve more shows for them to watch.
Our prayers were rich the next morning as well, and when Ken insisted on paying for breakfast, I put two twenties in his hands and wouldn’t take them back. Too public, perhaps. We had read yesterday’s lectionary:
When you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your almsgiving may be in secret. And your Father, who sees in secret, will repay you.
I left soon after breakfast. Ken handed me my bag full of phone and wallet and notebook and pills. I drove home, south along a two-lane road through corn and soybean fields, into hot sun, listening to the fifty-fourth hour of my audible book, History of the World. Trying to stay awake. So grateful for my Chicago and Wisconsin friends. Remembering, remembering, remembering.
I made it home. I cleaned out my bag. I can’t be sure. But there were two twenty dollar bills in there that I think weren’t there before. Ken is a sly fox. And if he put them there with his right hand, I’m sure his left hand had no idea. So I won’t ask him about it.
And when you pray, go to your inner room, close the door, and pray to your Father in secret. And your Father, who sees in secret, will repay you.
Yes, I’ll just pray for Kenny and Tricia and be thankful. And I’ll pray for Don and his wife Pat and the kids, and be thankful. And I won’t say anything.
Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come.
I’ll pray in my inner room for the friends I love so much.
Have mercy on us, and on the whole world.
(Sirach 48, Psalm 97, Romans 8, Matthew 6)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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