PEACHES, GONE

We have four peach trees here. All four are beautiful in bloom in the spring and all four bear a lot of fruit in summer. Two bear fabulously sweet yellow peaches. Two bear less sweet (and harder) white peaches. I hear the white peaches are better for cooking – but you can’t prove it by me. I don’t like them. It’s the juicy yellow ones I love. (No apple in Eden; I’m sure it was a peach!) 

We’ve picked nearly the last of them. Soon, this year’s peaches will be gone. 

I wash them and cut them up and refrigerate them for awhile – eating my fill while peeling and slicing, of course. 

When I was a boy, we had a peachtree in the backyard. The roads into our town were lined with orchards. Those were the days when the Peach State was chock full of sweet yellow peaches.

I do not recall ever eating one from our own tree, though we bought pecks and pecks from the roadside stands. We didn’t know fruit trees so I don’t think ours was ever pruned. The peaches were knobby little things, eaten by birds or made into missiles by us neighborhood boys long before the fruit ripened. (China Berries and Persimmons, too – but those are stories for another day.)

I did not love our peach tree. It grew switches. Yes, I grew up when corporal punishment was still in fashion. My mother would make me go cut the switch she would use. (If you do not know what a switch is - lucky you! My mother always said that using one hurt her more than it hurt me but I didn’t believe it then and I don’t believe it now.)

One day I tried to kill the tree by scattering salt around the roots (my summer reading had included stories about the Romans). That didn’t work. Another day, I tried to chop it down down with a hatchet (I daydreamed of becoming President and not telling a lie about it. But I did lie when my dad asked who had been chopping on his peach tree. That was not presidential.) 

The hatchet didn’t work, either. Eventually the tree died, or was cut down, but I don’t know when or why – and now there’s no one to ask. I just know I didn’t do it.

All that is the past. All is forgiven! Now I love peach trees! 

This year, like Israel in the Promised Land, like the blessed of every generation, I eat the fruit of trees I did not plant – as I hope will my children and my children’s children. Selah.

I will try to tend the trees better so that the best prophecies may be fulfilled. I read that I should prune them much more heavily than the conservative pruning I gave them last winter (and that only because last Summer’s fruit was so bountiful that one of the trees broke). E is horrified when I show her pictures of what a well-pruned tree looks like right after the deed is done. 

And I understand. I identify with the tree – life has pruned me more than once, and sometimes quite drastically. I hope I have borne some good fruit – but I don’t feel like more pruning, thank you very much.

Hmmm … maybe I’ll prune the trees that grow white peaches first ….

INDEPENDENCE DAY

I have spent several Independence Days in Washington, D.C., meditating at the secular shrines to the nation’s noblest hopes.  Beyond beer and bottle rockets, beneath political and social skirmishes, the city’s architecture blends Classical democratic ideals and Imperial conceits that are uniquely American.

They bear witness to the finest ideas of the Enlightenment—ideas that freed American life from the power of the English regent and freed the American soul from the tyranny of the righteous neighbor who would force us through the narrow gate of their heaven by bending us to the constraining template of their own minds. Independence Day is the powerful symbol of the American achievement in secular life and religious life: more than two centuries of liberty unknown in the world before and rare in the world still.

Current public discourse is too much shaped by angry voices from the loud religious right and the ranting Tea Party that claim the government is taking away our liberty (they mean that we have to pay a fair allotment of taxes to support social services they want to decay) while really believing that unless we think like they think, we have too much liberty. Especially if we are poor. Especially if we are from South of the Border. 

They think they know how we should live, what we should read, what our media programming should look like and sound like, even whom we should love, with whom we may live out our lives and to whom we may leave our property.

They know it all!

Voices like that are not new to our public life. They are the declarations of men and women who cherish their own privilege and their fortune of a lucky birth while fearing the threatening liberties of others.

They are loud, they have money behind them, they are organized, they are dangerous. The rest of us are fools indeed if we allow these people to control religious or secular institutions, if we allow them to appropriate for their own narrow interests the flag that represents the liberty bought by the lives of men and women who were willing to die, if necessary, so that the rest could live free.

We owe our forebears and we owe those who come after us the costly preservation of the freedoms rooted in the document whose signing marks this day.

Everyone knows the opening words to the Declaration of Independence. They ring down the years. Do you remember the closing words, which made it possible for the opening words to stand?

...for the support of this declaration, and with a firm reliance upon the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honour.

What more could they have risked for a vision, for an idea, for liberty?

TOOLBOXES

Toolboxes

The New Yorker published recently a Personal History essay by art critic Adam Gopnik. (June 27, 2011) It is a thoughtful piece reflecting on his drawing instructions with artist Jacob Collins. It is a good read and I commend it to you. 

I have some reflections that are triggered by a line near the end of Mr. Gopnik’s  essay: Drawing, I now think, need not be the bones of art, but skill must always be the skeleton of accomplishment. (p.63)

This is my jumping off point: skill must always be the skeleton of accomplishment.

When I was young I thought knowledge was all I needed in order to become accomplished. If I wanted to know how to do something, I looked it up in the book. Sometimes this worked for me. Because I had little (no) experience, I undervalued the gifts of time and repetitive acts that build up skills. 

How ridiculous. I had tried to play baseball once upon a time. Did I think I could hit a home run without a lot of batting practice? (Well, I couldn’t hit a home run with a lot of batting practice - but you get my point.) Even if I have aptitude for a certain kind of work, skill requires practice. 

Accomplishment requires skill – and skill is developed over time as one practices one’s craft. Often by rote. Even if one’s heart is not in the repetitive task. (Better still if it is.) A skill is being developed. It is a tool - and there will come a situation for which only this tool will suffice for the work that must be done.

I came out of theology school thinking I was a professional. I was not - not yet. I had a toolbox – theological education, a way of thinking about the world and about the divine. And I had some tools (not many yet) – mostly things I had learned in practicums and under supervision. But I was not skilled. I did not yet have a skeleton on which a body of work might be formed.

But now I am more than thirty years on, looking back. I see some “easy” sets of responsibilities that fell to me – that I failed to accomplish. And I see some very difficult tasks that fell to me that, even at the time, seemed natural and easy. 

Why? I developed skills in some areas (but not in others), Where I had been challenged and had worked hard and had sharpened my tools, difficult tasks that required just those tools became natural. And where I lacked experience (or had not or would not do the work needed to grow) even easy tasks were insurmountable when my toolbox did not contain the tool required to finish the job. 

At this point in my life, I have multiple toolboxes. Let me tell you about two of them.

The first is a black plastic box I have had since I was a boy. It has my name under the lid, written with a marker on masking tape, in a child’s hand. It first was my tackle box when I went fishing with my uncle and my father. In young adulthood, I replaced fishhooks and corks with jigsaw blades and toolkits. As I learned to use my tools, I have carried that tackle box with me everywhere I have lived. It has been by my side as I did many home repairs. I never open it without thinking fondly of my uncle, who died in 1966, and my father, who died in 2000. The boy needed a place for hooks and corks. The man needs a place for bits and blades. The box has been with me from the beginning and will be with me until the end.

The second box is made of wood and was handcrafted by someone who liked my work. 

On the ends of the tool box he carved my name and “St. Luke’s” and between them – the image of a winged ox, the symbol of St. Luke the Evangelist. I love the ox – a steer that has been trained daily to be a working animal. I see that symbol, I see my name. I am coming to think of myself as an ox trained to wear a yoke and to do my daily work. Bill, who crafted the box and gifted it to me, died nearly two decades ago. A lot of stuff breaks around here and I reach for the box. I remember Bill. And I take the tool I need from the box.

All of this is to say that accomplishment requires skill. Skill builds up laboriously over time and becomes just the right tool we can use at just the right moment. 

Over a lifetime, we acquire a lot of tools. We don’t know just when we shall need them but we know that we shall. 

Yesterday I reached into the wooden box. I had need of a tool I have not used often and had not used in a long time. Before the work was done, I cut my finger on the edge.

I will hold it more carefully next time. I will be better.

Lightning

One of our dogs is terrified of thunder - if he is outside. He stays relatively calm if he is indoors while it is thundering. I guess he knows instinctively what our mother used to tell us boys: come inside you hear thunder. 

Good advice. If you hear thunder, the lightning is close enough to be dangerous to you. 

One summer day in the late sixties, a large group of us went to the lake to ski – well, the others went to ski. I mostly went to watch the girls get wet. “It came up a cloud” (as we say in the South).

The power-company owned lake was not surrounded by upscale housing – upscale docks, yes, but not housing. Some rustic cabins. Mostly, though, old trailers that had been towed to the lakeshore and put on blocks. Electricity and indoor plumbing but that was about it. 

The host’s trailer was way too small for all of us to take shelter inside when it began to rain. But who minds rain when you are already wet from being in the lake? 

Then the lightning started. Close. Thunder peals were deafening. We crowded inside the best we could.

And then lightning struck somewhere close. Doug (not his real name) had been standing in the doorway, leaning against the metal jamb. He hit the floor. He turned bluish and foamed at the mouth. I had seen this before – when my just-crawling brother had picked up an extension cord that was plugged into the wall and put the other end in his mouth. And then licked it. 

No lasting damage to him, but a nasty shock. Same with Doug, fortunately. He caught his breath, someone rushed him to the doctor and all turned out well. 

He ate a lot less dinner than the rest of us, though. LIghtning had left him queasy. For a few days afterwards at school, we watched to see if his eyes glowed or his fingers sparked and then we forgot about it.

Thunderstorms this summer reminded me though, these forty-plus years later. So when I hear thunder I make sure I’m heading indoors.

Even indoors is not safe enough according to my mother and her lady friends. They wouldn’t go to the bathroom when it was thundering. Mom nearly stroked when she once realized that I actually had taken a bath during a thunderstorm. 

She also turned off all the lights during storms and would not sit near anything electrical (even if they were unplugged). Her reason was two previous encounters will ball lightning. Now there are different accounts of what that is – and differing opinions about whether it even exists. But she had two encounters with something.

The first, she said, was when lightning struck two trees in the yard. They had a metal clothesline running between them and whether one tree was struck or both were - both had the scars to prove something happened. Vertical wounds that looked like something had taken a slice out of each of them. (Dad moved the clothesline.) 

When the trees where slashed by heavenly fire I was sitting in my highchair. Mom said blue, fiery spheres came out of the wall, rolled down to the floor, across the floor – and that I was sitting in the highchair watching the light show while she screamed and ran to her baby.

Her second encounter was similar but there was no nearby lightning strike (that she knew of) and she was home alone. Different room. Thunderstorm. Blue fire ball out of an electrical outlet, rolling across the floor to disappear in a sizzle. 

Whatever happened, the outlet never worked again. But then, it may never have worked before. Since Dad would only let us plug in one thing at a time, it was hard to tell. it wasn’t near the television.

Copyright Roger Hoyt Ard June 2011

Summer Rain

On the second day of summer, I worked all afternoon in the rain. It felt great and it triggered some memories.

Growing up, rain was our only hope in summer. Long, hot days - no air conditioning. Oh, a few friends homes had a window unit in the den and in mom an dad’s bedroom – and the doctor’s office had one, too - but those cool places were off limits to kids. 

So was Belk’s - the first store in our town to have central air (even the movie theatre had only giant, noisy fans). We would duck into the cool store whenever we could, pretending to shop for knit pants and bright knit shirts (made of wonderful, miracle polyester!) – but the manager was never fooled and always shooed us away immediately. (We were puzzled at how he knew we had no money.)

We experimented with spending the whole, hot day in the Y pool - but we couldn’t do that often because of the sunburn. (And if anybody had sunscreen - we didn’t. What the girls had was tanning cream. Whatever that was.)

So rain was our only hope for relief in summer. (Or a cold bath - but that wasn’t great because the “cold” tap water was tepid. And parents would rarely let us use the garden hose for more than a few seconds.) 

Nights so hot, I would lie on the floor next to the bed because it was (a little) cooler than the bed. 

But, ah, when it rained! I would set myself up on the front porch (day or night) with a stack of comics or one of those canned science kits sold by Western Auto in the toy section. Hearing the rain, smelling the rain - once in a while going to just stand in the rain. Summer bliss.

A few years ago, a group of kids from the Middle East were at camp in the North Georgia HIlls. (http://www.kidsforpeaceglobal.org) A heavy rainstorm blew in - and the kids ran outside laughing, jumping, excited (the way we would have been in a snow storm). They had never before seen heavy, sustained rain. From a dry part of the world - one of their lingering memories of America would be summer rain.

On the second day of summer, I worked all afternoon in the rain. It felt great and it triggered some memories.

Writing Your Own Obituary?

Have you ever thought about writing your own obituary? Making sure that it says what you want it to?

Personally, I have always declined to write my obituary or plan my funeral. It seems to me that this is part of the process one’s loved ones need to go through. No harm to make some notes to help them – but all this is for them, not for me.

Then, someone sent me an obit unlike any I have ever read before. I feel certain that she wrote it herself. I know nothing about this person except what is written, but it makes me wish I had known her.

I imagine a woman laughing many times as she worked on it and pictured friends and relatives reading it one day. I have no idea whether she thought strangers would see it, but read it here:

http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/idahostatesman/obituary.aspx?n=ellen-mcgarr&pid=150429149&fhid=10163#ixzz1PYSNFMCk

Retiring Men

Retiring Men

In 2007 it dawned on me that, with careful planning, I could retire in 2011 at the age of 58. I was feeling ready for a change – wanting to do some new things with the rest of my life.  I did not think I could afford it. (Who does?) But I read several books on retirement, read a lot on the internet about financial planning and retirement - and attended an excellent workshop that helped me sort out exactly what would be necessary. (Thanks, Church Pension Fund! Thanks CREDO!)

Everything pointed to the fact that I could pull this off if I really wanted to – and if I was willing to make some changes in my lifestyle. 

Still, I wavered often over the three years between the birth of my dream and the day I actually stepped into it. Why?

Fear. Especially the fears others projected onto me - projections I was too willing sometimes to accept. Joseph Campbell once said that nobody wants you to do what you want to do. He followed that up by saying follow your bliss. It is clear to me, as never before, that my happiness required me to de-link myself from other people’s expectations and their projected fears. Then I could start working on freeing myself from my own fears.

I know men who want to retire and don’t. I know men who don’t want to retire ever – and that’s fine – except some of them don’t want to simply because they cannot imagine changing their self-definition. Fear. Whatever you want to do – or not do – is fine by me. But I wanted to retire and I did. I don’t want my life circumscribed by fear. And it’s not.

I’m only in my fourth month past the last day on the job. I’ll keep you posted as time goes on.

The best advice i received? Two things from two retired friends:

1. When you find yourself dreading going to work more days than not, it is time to change your life - before illness changes it for you. (Thanks, David.)

2. Nobody is ever ready. Just do it. (Thanks, Bob.)

© Roger Hoyt Ard 2011