Pat and John - June Allyson Eyes

 Sassy interpreted by Norma Boeckler
and Photofunia.

When Sassy and I walk each morning, we often pass John and Pat's home. I have known them for four years, from walking by, stopping to talk, but we know them a lot better now.

Today I learned that John was a veteran. He washes dishes for extra money. Their running joke with me is that I drove by without waving to them. People use their front porches and lawns to socialize in this area, instead of hiding in the backyard. They barbecue in the front yard and may even leave food in the grass for animals. Sassy counts on that for snacks.

From the beginning, John learned Sassy's name and called it out when we were near. His wife Pat got to know us too. This is what I hear when we stop and sit a while. "You drove right by and never looked over to see us. We were sitting on the porch. Good thing it wasn't raining or you would have drowned, your nose was stuck up in the air."

To thwart this teasing I began to slow down, roll down my window, and wave, even when no one seemed to be home. My wife joined in the drive-bys and waved too. One day, she said, "Let's get out so I can meet them." I parked and we crossed the street. We had a good time talking.

I thought we were doing well with driving, slowing down, and waving. Sassy and I always stopped if one or both of them were sitting outside. Sometimes they eat their cereal outside in the warm weather, and look for us.

But no, I was not doing all I could. John said, "You were on 40th and we were waving at you when you were fixin' to turn on Elm Springs. We honked and you never saw us."

 June Allyson

I said with some emphasis, "My job is to drive safely, not to wave at all my friends." They both laughed. When Pat laughs, her eyes shut completely, which is very charming. June Allyson said she could never pose right for the still photographers, because her eyes became slits. Otherwise she was bug-eyed trying to keep them open. One of my classmates does the same thing, and a camera cannot capture it the right way. Fifty years after graduation she was still laughing the same way, just like Pat, just like June Allyson.

June Allyson had beautiful eyes,
which disappeared proportionately to her smiles.

Sassy shows us when she is completely at home. She sits down and watches the whole area. If anything new is happening, her ears perk up and her eyes focus on the new interest. If things are calm, she slowly adjusts here position, rotating slowly around to cover all angles.

"Sassy is guarding us so we can relax." That would last a certain amount of time. Since this was at the end of a long walk, she liked to do this while catching her breath and cooling off. Once completely rested she gave a short bark in her alert sitting position, as she does elsewhere.

"Do you have an appointment somewhere, Sassy?"

Bark! Bark!

"Are we keeping you?"

Bark!

"Should we be going?"

Bark! Bark! Bark! She gets up on all three legs and leads me forward.

"Have to go. Sassy has an appointment." Each time I shake hands with John and Pat as I leave. If they have kidded me about waving, I take off my Tilley hat and wave it at them as I leave. Pat grins until her eyes close completely.

Life Is a Gift from God, With or Without Good Health

Sassy was working me over this morning, since I had a relatively late start. She simply kept looking at me with that expectant expression, so I poured out her breakfast and put on my shoes while she ate. Dress code in Arkansas is - wear shoes. We had a nifty walk through the neighborhoods as I scouted for leaf bags and she checked the latest news left by her canine friends and sniffed for potential meals. BBQed ribs are popular here, made in the front yard, so she finds them. She still loves to rush at squirrels, too.

The landscape was still dripping from rain yesterday and last night. The leaves are green and just starting to fall, but the pine needles are carpeting the lawns of those who enjoy the trees. The scent is overpowering and far more attractive than PineSol.

One little bloom on my Crepe Mytle suggests a spring in the future. The seeds have rounded out with the extra energy from the five plus inches of rain we had.

The neighborhood is brimming with potential life as plants shut down for the winter. The sun-loving plants are done after a mild frost. One might rescue a tomato, but no more will ripen in the cool weather. Egg plants are the first to go when cold weather looms. Someone wrote, "Do you want to know whe the first frost arrived? Look at your egg plants. They die from the lightest frost."

Sunflowers loom high over gardens, their disks still holding some seeds, but the stalks brown and dried. The smart gardeners, like Almost Eden, will leave sunflowers alone as winter homes for beneficial bugs and bees. Poor people in the Upper Penninsula winter in Minnesota, because they do not have enough money to drive to Florida.

 Beautyberries are toxic for humans,
created for birds.

Beautyberry and Pokeweed finish the growing season by leaving food for the birds. My yard is relatively gray now, but the Beautyberries shine brightly in the midst of dying foliage.

Sassy was enjoying her walk and guiding the itinerary, so I was thinking what a gift of God life is. Some bad advertising once said, "As long as you're healthy," but in insurance we always said, "If someone has no health issues, he is lying."

I had one client, a relative, who told the medical examiner he had no health issues. And yes, he was lying. We can admit to being imperfect and still be relatively healthy. Even if we are, time drags us to the omega point eventually.

One of our neighborhood friends lost her leg from infection. I watched the progress of her treatment. First, she had a wheelchair. Later, she worked on getting special shoes. Now she has a prosthetic leg. She is quite cheerful about it. My veteran friend has a dozen maladies from serviing as an Army Ranger, from painful legs to poor hearing. Like Mr. Gardener, he can barely hear, but he is a font of fascinating stories and memories.

Life itself is a great blessing, and we get to see more of those blessings if we believe in the Author and Giver of Life. Having two girls with declining neurological paths meant being gathered with many other rare disorders at famous clinics, hearing about world leaders in medicine. It is God's way of saying, "Here are children with little of what the world values, but you can see for yourself "My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me." 2 Corinthians 12:9

If you want to see and remember peals of laughter from little children, visit with the weakest and most complicated children. They squeeze more joy out of life than the best comedians, and they stir up great love in those who care for them. As Luther wrote (1 Peter commentary), their infirmities are like jewels to their loving parents. Many medical helpers are needed, and the best offer their care with great patience and wisdom. One nurse said to us, "I was trying to teach Erin Joy about Jesus, and she looked at me like - I know all about Him." The Christian believers understand this and see these great blessings, but unbelievers are blind to it and mock the parents and children.

One person in class made a mocking comment about handicapped children. I told him, "Someone in this room has been deeply hurt by that comment. That person will probably never bring it up, but you have lost credibility just by saying it. People have friends, relatives, even children targeted by your attempt at humor."

Job's Comforters must have had a lot of children, because their descendants are still with us:

• Is this in your family?
• Do you think living in ______ caused this to happen?
• Would you like our elders to provide oil and pray for your child?
• If you had faith...
• If you tried a different diet...

Those Job's Comforters, who blamed Job for his problems, are suffering in their own prison of dark stupidity. They cannot see outside of their delusions because they do not know the fruits of the Gospel. Some of them are medical people. Others are neighbors, professional helpers, and so-called friends. But they are far outweighed by the other side. 

Jesus said, "Remain on the True Vine, and you will be fruitful. Through Justification by Faith, you are pruned and become even more fruitful. Those who do not remain on the True Vine are cut off, wither and die. They are gathered up and burned."

My Favorite Title Is Dad

October 15th marks my birthday, a grilling event for Team Jackson, and a Walmart Saturday Morning meeting, where Dolly Parton is a special guest.

On those days, our son and his family come to Springdale and we grill a lunch. Grandson Alex often helps with grilling, but others pitch in too.

The meeting days are especially fun. I get up at 5 AM, my normal time, drive north to the Walmart Headquarters neighborhood, and take LI to the meeting in our limo, the Town Car. This will be about the 80th Saturday Morning Meeting since we moved to Arkansas. On the way to the meeting and once there, we discuss Lutherdom and the world of business and computers. We get there so early that we are often seated near whoever attends from the Walton family. I have met and spoken with the Walton family numerous times.  Alice Walton has thanked my wife and me for volunteering at the Crystal Bridges Museum. I introduced myself to two CEOs of Walmart and one CEO of Sam's Club. Sometimes we sit right behind the top executives or in front of them. Various stars in entertainment and sports, politicians and others sit near us, sometimes a few feet away.

 You saw the movie "Sully"?
Good. My son and I heard him speak at Walmart,
a few feet away from us.
He received two thunderous standing ovations.

When we drive down to Springdale, we discuss the meeting and read the tea leaves about how things were expressed at the meeting. Our daughter-in-law comes down separately with the grandchildren, because schedules vary and they often have her exquisite, homemade cheesecake to share. In that interim, LI explains current business issues to his mother, and I get the grill ready.

Long ago I was influenced by two theories. One is that confidence comes from time children spend with parents. Children are spoiled by stuff given to them to make up for lack of time with their parents, but they are not spoiled by affection and time spent with them. The second theory is quite similar and came from a famous business speaker. He said, "There is no such thing as quality time. Measure the hours your child is with others. That is the way to measure influence, not one hour of time per week that is called quality time."

LI grew up in a parsonage, and we home-schooled him for a year before he went to a WELS prep school. I tutored him in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. The goal in Latin and Greek was to be able to sight read and translate the entire Gospel of John, without English words written in the margins. We translated Jonah to learn Hebrew. In those required prep and college language classes,  he was far beyond struggling with the basics and ended up tutoring others, already at the prep school and also - at the request of faculty - at Northwestern College. Naturally, he learned more from the start and still more from tutoring in Latin and Greek. He volunteered some of my acerbic comments about the art of making the classics deadly boring - right in class. Faculty reactions varied.

We went through Pieper's Dogmatics at home, too, which continued earlier experiences in enjoying great literature for children when he was much younger - Twain, Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, and many more authors. A lot of current family jokes come from those reading sessions, which we enjoyed immensely.

We all went through the experience of losing Bethany and Erin to a mysterious disorder. I am quite sure that made LI especially appreciative of his daughters. And then a grandson came along, we all got to enjoy another child all over again.

As Luther said, "children are the blessed fruit of marriage." God intended men and women to be married and learn selflessness from having children, cleaning up messes, and dealing with the stages of growing up. From those moments come the greatest memories. I have cautioned many ministers that they will never say, "That was a great meeting 20 years ago." But they will remember those priceless hours spent with their families.

All the time spent in adding onto the church, expanding the parking lot, planning events, and working out budgets can be seen as time wasted when the congregation closes 20 years later, the synod pocketing the equity, often a hefty sum of money.

I lost track of the workaholics who lost their families in pursuit of advancement or self-esteem in the denomination. No one wants to talk about it or admit the facts.

But the family is the most important congregation of all, and it lasts - for good or ill - forever. Before 20 years are up, the children are involved in school, work, activities, and friendships. The long-term investment of time pays dividends for life, and those moments are replayed time after time with great satisfaction.

Much later, people realize that the jar of raspberry jam broken on the brand new white rug was just a moment whose agony became humor, even if the humor had to be slowly distilled from the disaster over a certain period of time.

At my 50th high school reunion, the grandparents were easy to spot. I do not think they were long on luxuries, but they were beaming about their grandchildren. One very special boy has a condition so rare that I had to look it up, and we went through the medical resources in dealing with ours. He is a special boy, very cute, with manifold problems, but he is deeply loved by his grandparents. I thought at the reunion, as we had dinner with them, how lucky he is to have parents and grandparents like that. Certain attitudes developed by sincere Christian faith developed those qualities. That was the clergy/active laity table. Gravitational pull drew us together for a unique dinner. We even sat next to one of my mother's favorite grade school students, who is married to a minister.

When I hear certain things about the business world, my mind zooms back in time to raking leaves at a Notre Dame faculty home. LI was there. When we saw Joe Montana at Walmart, LI said, "Yes, I saw him play at Notre Dame," watching the jaws drop open. We visited Yale together and he saw the beauty and quiet of the enormous Sterling Library, where he met Roland Bainton - my hero in church history. At Yale Divinity we dropped in on Paul Holmer, my favorite professor, and he met with Dr. Holmer years later.

We are a family of languages and libraries. All three of us worked in libraries. All three of us studied various languages, the men leading in Hebrew, but Mrs. I in Russian. We have so much fun together, talking, joking, and discussing current events and crises. And I often hear my favorite title spoken - Dad.

Sterling Library is the main library at Yale University.

The Day Mission Library at Yale Divinity School,
not far from where the early version of the ESV was translated
by the National Council of Leftwing Churches.