Friday, July 26 2024
Memorial of Saints Joachim and Anne, Parents of the Blessed Virgin Mary
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Father and son
Dad and I were cutting weeds around the house. I was 18, returning in the fall to Valparaiso for my sophomore year.
Dad had left home to enlist in the US Army when he was 21. He came home after the war to finish a University of Illinois accounting degree and then after two years returned to dairy farming. His history displayed courage, perseverance, loyalty and patience.
I was just getting started, and so far I had not displayed much of any of those virtues. I was, however, creative, curious and yes … rebellious.
Return, rebellious children, says the Lord, for I am your Master.
“If I told you I smoked marijuana at college, Dad, what would you do?” I felt honest asking him, although I couldn’t help but look away.
Dad grew up in a farm household where neither parent shied away from confrontation. But  Dad, the oldest kid, did. I can’t say if he looked at me after my question, because I didn’t look at him. But he did speak.
“Well,” he said, “I guess we would stop paying your tuition.”
“Oh,” I said. I cut another weed with my hoe. It was a thick, fast-growing milkweed, and white sap spurted out at the cut.
I will appoint over you shepherds after my own heart, who will shepherd you wisely and prudently.
Nothing more was said. I smoked marijuana and didn’t tell Dad. He didn’t ask. We agreed to disagree. Our relationship maintained its relative calm. Twenty years later, President Clinton echoed our wise and political way of avoiding confrontation in the US Armed Forces about another volatile issue.
“Don’t ask. Don’t tell.”
Leave well enough alone.
The Lord will guard us a shepherd guards his flock.
Dad and I didn’t go to the altar and ask God for direction.
And I don’t know how he kept these things and pondered him in his heart, but I do think that is exactly what he did. Dad was usually quiet. He worked hard, slept soundly and took 20 minute naps after lunch. Even in the field when he was plowing, he laid under the tractor on a small blanket he kept with him, and took a nap.
I admired him through my desire to get away from all that hard outside work. I preferred to read. Dad also liked to read, after all the weeds were cut. And all the weeds were never cut. He caught up on his reading during the last five years of his life, when his body kept him sitting longer than ever before.
His commitment to Kogudus, a system of Lutheran renewal retreats which over a few years he invited his whole family to attend, opened up his bible. And the Lutheran charismatic renewal got him singing too. In those less weed-eating years, he smiled, read books, and sang a few songs and listened to many more. He waited for God’s trumpet.
Come on up here, Roland! I’ve been waiting just for you.
How did Dad blend his family and church and personal commitments? Jesus left his family for ministry. Jeremiah left his family for ministry, commanded not to participate in funerals or celebrations. He was a preacher’s kid, and Hilkiah the priest took his work seriously and undoubtedly his family as well. Jeremiah, weaned early by God his first Father, surely felt torn and distraught when God kept him from home. I left home for the Moonies and didn’t return for two years.
Two weeks before he died we visited Lincoln. Margaret cut his hair. I asked him how he was doing, and he looked me in the eye. “Ready to go home,” he said and limped carefully to his chair. He was 80. He had done enough. He knew how much God loved him, and how much God loved us, his family. At his funeral Margaret and I sang “I’ll Fly Away” at his request. Oh, glory.
Blessed are they who have kept the word with a generous heart and yield a harvest through perseverance.
(Jeremiah 3, Jeremiah 31, Luke 8, Matthew 13)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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