Zoey and the Sweet Peas

Zoey is a chocolate lab. A pound puppy with no papers, she's still a chocolate lab. Loves the water! On her last lake adventure, she even swam until she was exhausted and had to be rescued.

She loves sweet peas, and lives in an area where they are a fine spring crop. She loves the peas. She loves the leaves. She loves the vine. There wasn't anything left. Nothing.

Zoey celebrates every day, every single one. I don't think she knows she doesn't have papers.

I like Zoey. Zoey loves life.

And I like people who have something of Zoey in them. They love life. They experience it.

A great choral conductor told us: "When you sing, I don't want to hear ink-on-paper! I want to hear the music move!"

Jesus said the gift was life abundant. Overflowing. Not a matter of proper credentials and labels, but moving, flowing, loving, caring, celebrating, living.

Zoey got the memo on that one. I know lots of people with that kind of joy. They make my heart sing.

Hoot's Best Rope and a Deer

One of the more colorful folks to spend time in East Texas was Hoot Gibson, not the familiar cowboy star of some years ago, but a Gibson who liked the name, and claimed it. I knew Hoot when he was "retired", it seemed, loved horses, and could look like the ghost of Hank Williams. He had "southern gray magnificent" hair, sometimes wore a white suit, with a long white silk sash around his neck, driving an enormous long white Lincoln. An altogether like-able guy, he had made his living as a stunt man in Western movies. So, most of his stories concerned "horseback" in one way or another.

One story he loved to tell was about the day he decided to rope a deer. (I thought it was a tremendous feat to get close enough to do that, but he said that wasn't the dramatic part.) He roped a buck, who ran to the end of the rope, spun around, and came back at him full speed. The buck leaped over the horse, right over the saddle. Hoot said he looked down and saw that the deer's hoof had sliced a huge gash right across the saddle horn. And was headed to the end of the rope in the other direction. At full speed.

Knowing the deer just might come back like the last time, Hoot made a choice. The rope wasn't THAT valuable! With a quick move of his knife, the rope was cut and the deer ran free. Most importantly, the deer ran free AWAY.

Sometimes we need to make that quick response. The "rope" that binds us to an adventure gone wrong is not THAT valuable. We need to know how to cut loose. Every self-destructive sin once presented itself as an adventure or a pretty "good-idea-at-the-time! Choices are the stuff of life, Jesus said. Still true.

The Chair Conspiracy

One of our family antiques is a child-sized rocker, carved, cane-woven seat. It was "my" chair, and I was proud of it as a small child. It was presented to me early on, and I felt good claiming it.

When I grew up, my elderly aunt told me it had been "her" chair 50 years earlier, and no one is sure how many generations have been presented with that very personal chair.

It's a simple binder from one generation to another, more serious than a toy, but less serious than the faith-binders that are so rich and ancient.

At Passover, a young one asks an old one: "How is this night different...?" And the binding confession is recited: "We were slaves in Egypt.....God brought us out..." All is spoken in first-person plural. Not THEIR story - OUR story. Not separated generations - united generations.

Passover, Communion, blood shed for all, Christ's call and acceptance of us makes us US.

God's plan to create those binders that join us is a holy and joyful thing, and it wears the face of something very personal.......ancient, it has OUR names on it.

Naming Yourself

Yesterday, I reported discovering the source of a family name. Along the way, another realization. My grandmother, at birthdays or other "light" times, would say a strange (to me) thing: "I am a centennial baby!" Light, but totally serious. Family loyalty and Christian faith were basics, then her self-designation.

Born in America's centennial year, 1876, she chose that for a self-definition. She could have called herself the child of a Civil War survivor, a child of Reconstruction, a child of "wild west" chaos in the Big Thicket of East Texas, baby daughter number four of a farmer, the prettiest girl in Moscow, Texas, or the doctor's wife. All true! But, she liked Centennial Baby.

Always a Christian first, it then meant to her: patriotic, optimistic, totally hard-working, great-things-to-accomplish. She wasn't defined by living in a tiny town, she went on to graduate from Sam Houston in Huntsville in 1897. She taught, raised children, rolled on past 93, saying with a light grin and a wink: "I'm a centennial baby!"

Naming yourself means you choose. You can just fit in, let someone else name you, then cut yourself down to fit their name, or you can aim high. And the choice shows first in how you name yourself.

RePost: A New Name in the Family

Looking at a friend's house pictures, his place in Galveston had a 1900/2000 Two Storm Survivor medallion. It reminded me of one "root" in my family that goes back to Galveston, making this "repost" fresh to me, and maybe to you.

It wasn’t such a long journey to Galveston from Polk County, Texas. He just caught the train near the house in Moscow, rode through Houston, and down to Galveston. Bryan didn’t want to go in September, with Pearl expecting by mid-month, but there was a surgery demonstration that the young doctor (four years after his degree from that school) needed to see.

The ride was uneventful, weather good, and he arrived on Friday to be ready for the Monday sessions. By late in the day Friday, there were signs of a storm, and by Saturday afternoon, September 8, 1900, the Great Storm of 1900 was close. By dark, it was clear the storm-eye was to pass just west of the town. Winds of 135 mph swept a storm surge twice the elevation of the city, and by Sunday morning, the sun rose on a destroyed city. Thousands died, but the young doctor survived in one of the strongest buildings, the medical school. He worked at the hospital for a special few terrible days, caring for a long procession of survivors. It was America’s worst natural disaster.

Back in Moscow, Pearl had a baby early, on September 7. The recovery in Galveston kept Bryan in town longer than he wanted, and when the Katy Railroad finally took him north, The Great Storm would never be mentioned, ever again. It was too painful to discuss.

Except for one thing: the baby needed a name. Clayton. There had never been one in the family, but Nicholas J. Clayton, Galveston’s famous architect, who had designed the building in which the young doctor survived the Great Storm, was the name chosen for a boy born the night before the storm. Pearl made it clear: names mean things, and she was determined to honor the man whose work kept her husband alive! So, Pearl and Bryan named him Clayton Lawrence Canon, a new name in the family.

Honor, love, purpose, life mission, these are things informed by gratitude, and offered up to God by a Christian man and woman, so aware of the Old Testament stories of the naming of children, expressing their thanks to God by honoring and blessing an architect named Clayton.

How big is Big?

Rozell's orchard, abundance all around, eyes wide, 4'1" tall, blue eyes and blonde, turning round and round between loaded peach trees, branches bending to the ground. Wow! Basket in her hand, not knowing where to start. Big!

Astronomer at the University of Chicago, his team just completed new map of the universe. Eyes wide at the first look. Wow! Big!

Big is in the eye of the beholder, and any new realization of the abundance of God's creation brings out a "WOW!"

Finding Parables

Generation after generation, rabbi after rabbi, the stories taken from life illustrated God's message for people who trusted only the spoken word. Vivid images, poetry, insights that changed and focused lives, and created traditions.

No other of the rabbis ever approached the skill of one, the Master teller of parables. From the mustard seed to the mountain that could move, Jesus evoked images that stuck in the mind, more shaping than a simple listing of facts.

I'll find some new parables, some parables from the saints and solitary folk of the Christian tradition, and some that you will suggest, from time to time.

One Sunday morning, in the polite moments as folks leave church, a man thanked me for a very specific statement. I hadn't said it. I asked my wife. Nope, you didn't. Well, he needed to hear it and the Spirit shaped the moment. It happens. It's a blessing. Let's share more than we thought we already knew!

I'll always BCurious........

Thanks, Bryan