The day is growing short, my friends, and while the weight of the air says there’s a storm on the horizon, the clouds have an ambiguity a politician would envy. While we need the rain, I hope it holds off tonight; I for one am looking forward to the meteor shower. I have a passle of words to wrangle and beat into submission before I can flee this place, although I know many of you are on the road for along weekend, while others, like me, see the clock as a mocking face defying our pleas for fleeting freedom. Whichever company you belong to, I can assure you, soon the Wildman will be on the loose. Please keep my buddy Jake in your prayers; he has been through so much, and his mom, Anita, is such a rock. Jake’s faith shames many of us. I cannot imagine losing my eyesight, much less the other battles he has fought and won, and at such a young age. We need kids—young men--like Jake to remind us not to feel sorry for ourselves. I had the privilege to hear John LeSane sing this morning; a “local boy done good,” LeSane is an operatic performer, and still made darn sure he gave his momma, Miss Susan, the credit she deserves. It makes me feel good to see someone who has become rather famous on the national level come home and remind schoolchildren to honor their parents, and to love God. Speaking of mommas—hug your for me. Thank your daddy. Talk to your grandparents. Tell your siblings you love them. And hold your kids so close they squirm. Roll in the grass with your dog. Confuse an owl. Make faces at a cat. Howl with a coyote. Panic with a guinea. Gossip with a goose. Tell a goat a joke. Stare down a cow. Crow with a rooster. Whistle at a mockingbird. Hug a horse. Make friends with a donkey. Read to a little kid—the Bible, a good classic story, anything that’s worthwhile.Ask a kid what he thinks about something, and listen. Play a game by her rules, and don’t cheat so she can win. Do something cool—fly a kite, go fishing, take a walk down a dirt road and look for animal tracks. Watch the meteor shower. Count the rings on a tree stump, and equate them to your age and the kids. Listen to them when they pray. We can learn a lot from little kids, if we’ll just pay attention. Do something nice for someone, with no expectation of a reward. Give a caregiver a break. Babysit for a harried mom. Buy someone’s coffee, their gas, their groceries. Open a door for a stranger. Say please and thank you. Be the friend you’d want in a time of trouble. Ask how the waitress or cashier is doing, and mean it. When you hear the words “Somebody needs to do something”—be that somebody. There are a hundred ways to make life better for someone, and most of them are just a few feet away, if we’ll only look with our hearts. Watch a sunrise, then a sunset. Listen to a river. Try to count the stars in one corner of the sky. Watch the moonrise. Feel the bark of an old tree. Trace a meteor’s path across the sky. Crush a handful of pine needles, and smell their perfume. Feel the earth under your bare toes. Listen to a baby cry. Then think about the fact that the maker of all these things, and so many more, the one who knew the path that meteor would take, the one who knew that baby before he was even formed in the womb, the one who made this world, and all that is in it—the maker of all this and more loved you enough to send His son to die on the cross, that you could spend eternity in a place so much more beautiful than we can imagine. If that ain’t humbling, we need to talk. Go to church Sunday, and pray. Read your Bible every day, and pray. Talk to God—He wants us to, and he wants to hear from us. Pray for the man in the pulpit, the choir, your church leaders, the ones in the pew beside you, and the ones who should be there. Pray for the hopeless and helpless. Pray for those who put themselves in harm’s way every day, so we don’t have to. Pray for someone you don’t like, and someone who doesn’t like you. If you run out of requests—ask God how you can better serve Him. Just be careful, because if we say yes, we need to be ready to mean yes. Hold hands with the one you love, in public, because you want to, not because you’re fighting your way through the mall. Do something nice for that person, for no reason except to be nice. Tell that person you love them, and mean it. If you don’t say it often enough, you can forget to do so after a while. Be patient—you’re no bed of roses, either, I can assure you. We celebrate—I hesitate to use that word—Memorial Day this coming Monday. I ask you, please, to spend less time worrying about the grill and the beach and the race and the time off of work, and more time remembering those families who have a vacant chair at the table, and an empty hole in their hearts. We come from a nation whose foundation is mortared together with the blood of heroes, even though our building blocks these days seem awfully weak. Thank a living veteran this weekend, and remember those who have answered the last call. I still have work to do, before I can flee this place to my beloved’s kisses, the ebullience of my dogs, the ambivalence of my cats, the hug of a horse and the disdain of a mule, but if you need me, holler, and the Wildman will come runnin’ fast as he can. Rattle the dogbox, y’all, and wake up the possums. There’s weasels out there making trouble, and we never know when they’re coming after you, so keep an eye out. Y’all be good. Let us howl.
Posted on: Fri, 23 May 2014 21:08:15 +0000
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