Merry & Bright; But Not That Bright!

If you are a child of the 50s/60s, maybe you remember suffering a malady of temporary blindness every Christmas morning. Sixty some years later, it doesn’t seem there are any lasting ill-effects. It was all well-intentioned, an attempt by fathers everywhere to capture the childlike wonder on that special day.

Every dad, theoretically, wants Christmas morning to be special for his family. This spirit of well-meaningness is personified in the affable Clark Griswold as chronicled in the movie “Christmas Vacation”. We laugh and relate to Clark’s story because in some ways it’s our story too.

If, from Clark, we can learn what NOT to do, could it be that there’s an outline, a plan for the guy who wants to get it right, leaving the family with happy memories of Christmas 2016?

If we go back a couple of centuries we find this advice:

1. Deck the hall with boughs of holly,
2. ’Tis the season to be jolly,
3. Don we now our gay apparel,
4. Troll the ancient Christmas carol,

5. See the blazing yule before us,
6. Strike the harp and join the chorus.
7. Follow me in merry measure,
8. While I tell of Christmas treasure,

9. Fast away the old year passes,
10. Hail the new, ye lads and lasses!
11. Sing we joyous all together,
12. Heedless of the wind and weather,

Fa La La La La La La La La

Let’s interpret this line by line and see if it works in the 21st Century.

1. Decorate the house.
2. The season is fraught with the potential for stress and frustration. Don’t worry, be jolly.
3. Feel free to wear whatever crazy sweater you want.
4. Crank up a Christmas playlist and sing along at the top of your lungs.

5. Build a good fire, if you have a fireplace.
6. Maybe you don’t have a harp to strike, but a ukulele or kazoo will do.
7. Encourage others to join in the merriment.
8. Definitely tell the Christmas story.

9. Savor every moment. They pass quickly.
10. View tomorrow with a youthful optimism.
11. More singing.
12. Turn off the TV and the hyper-reporting of Oklahoma’s TV weather prognosticators.

Fa La La La La La La La La

And by all means make memories, take pictures and video. Today we can do that without blinding our children and grandchildren as our dads did to us with that bank of flood lights they would turn on with their 8mm movie cameras just as we awoke on Christmas morning to see what Santa had left under the tree. Usually by 11:15a or so our eyesight would recover so we could join in the merriment.

If you’re not familiar with those lights dads used for their film to work in indoor settings, you can still see them today keeping the french fries warm at McDonald’s.

Fa La La La La La La La La

Birth and New Life: my favorite kind of story

An advantage of age (as if we were keeping score) is that you have the potential to know life more deeply. You haven’t just seen pictures of the Grand Canyon, you’ve stood on the edge of it. You haven’t just heard a digital recording of jazz singer/pianist Diana Krall, you’ve been in the room with her when she performed. You haven’t just thrown back a glass of wine, you’ve picked the grapes, put them in the press, poured the juice into the vats and lived while it aged.

People who don’t “get” art, have only taken a quick look and walked on. Consider this picture for example. It’s a picture of a girl, right? It looks like it could be hanging in a museum, right?

the little shepherdess

It is hanging in a museum. In Tulsa, Oklahoma. It’s called The Little Shepherdess by William-Adolphe Bouguereau. It is oil on canvas and was painted in 1889, a few years before I was born. You will know nothing about the picture by only looking at this digital image. You have to stand before it and look this little sherheredess in the eyes and let her look into yours. Let her judge you for a minute or two. Let her question what you are wearing just as you are contemplating what she is wearing and what she is doing. The painting is large and the colors are rich. And, if you visit her in her home in the Philbrook Museum in Tulsa, I guarantee, you will have experienced art. You will “get” it. Kind of like us old people “get” life, because we’ve taken a deeper drink of it.

This longer perspective adds to the value of life. Every life and every experience is richer, packed with more meaning.

I think this is why every time we have received word that we will be grandparents again, I am moved beyond words. I know I was excited and scared and overwhelmed each time we learned that we would be parents, but we were young, we knew only a part of what a human life really meant. For the births of each of the Grand-Girls it has been somehow uniquely remarkable. I am always awestruck, and speechless because there are no words in my vocabulary for the reverence of that reality.

Well it’s happened again! Brooke and Kyle have told us of their news. They did it in a wonderful way and I was again speechless. And even if I could have found the words, they wouldn’t have been able to get past the lump in my throat.

So, come this next May, another little one will grab a piece of our hearts and not let go. With the benefit of age, I understand just how special this is. With the benefit of knowing Kyle and Brooke, I know how deeply this little one will be cherished and cared for.

I thank God for the privilege of getting to be a part of another human story that begins, “once upon a time” and transcends our human stories with, “and lived happily ever after.”

Congratulations Brooke and Kyle. How wonderful that this little baby will be born and will live in and through love.

Any Questions?

I hope it’s not yet time for me to take on the role of senex—the sage, the archetypical wise old man.

A while back, I went through this assessment called the Pearson-Marr Archetype Indicator®. After the process you get a report that shows your scores for twelve archetypes, highlighting the three for which you score the highest. Mine are Creator, Jester, Sage.

Each archetype in the report has a summary statement which hints at what it is all about. For example:
CREATOR: “If the Creator is active in your life, you assume what can be imagined can be created.”
JESTER: “If the Jester is active in your life, you assume that life is meant to be enjoyed.”
SAGE: “If the Sage is active in your life, you assume that ‘the truth will set you free.’”

By the way, if this sounds intriguing and you would like to know your archetypes to learn more about the story you’re living, you can do an online version of the assessment for $19.

If you do it, I would love to hear from you to see how it turned out, and how you feel about it.

For each archetype in your report you’ll get the good news and the not-so-good news; areas where you can improve. That’s where this Sage thing worries me. I’m good with the Creator and Jester types, although I do see some of the evil tendencies of those types in myself. For example, in the Creator there is an inner critic that can get out of control, and for me it does. For the Jester there is “a tendency to be irresponsible, to give into debauchery, to play tricks and make cracks that hurt people—or at least their feelings.” To all those who have been in the fallout of my jesterly ways: I’m sorry.

It seems to me that since I’m old now I should be less jesterly and more sage-like. To be honest, I can’t picture myself as the wise old man on the top of the mountain where people can come in search of answers to life’s big questions. Maybe I could get a job writing those “fortunes” that get stuck in little oragami cookies at Panda Express®.

The scary part of the Sage archetype for me is seeing how the dark side of it shows up more and more these days. From the report: “Guard against the Sage’s tendency to be dogmatic and opinionated, with an ivory tower disdain for ordinary life and affairs. Their keen ability to see the flaws in opinions and practices can take a negative or cynical turn, as they sit on the outside criticizing the efforts of others. They also can retreat to their heads, as they fail to act on what they know. Their emotions may take them over so that they act in petty ways, masked by high-sounding principles and rhetoric.”

Ouch!

Fortunately, if I could figure out how to do this Sage thing well, there is a capacity to “be not only knowledgeable but wise, to be wonderfully curious with a love for thinking things through.” According to the report, I have the potential to “excel at evaluating the merits of relative truths and to commit to people and ideas even in the face of the realization that it is impossible to know anything for sure.”

I’m still probably not your guy for solid wisdom though. When it comes to the big ones, most times I still have more questions than answers. I do have opinions though. So if you need one of those delivered with biting wit and sarcasm, I’m your Jester/Sage.

There is a song that fascinated me from the first time I heard it. It was written by a guy that goes by M. Ward. It’s called “Chinese Translation”. It’s a song about sage-seeking and the quest for answers to great questions. The song set me to thinking: if I could go to a mountain top and speak to a real sage, what question(s) would I ask? In this song the young man gets to ask three questions. The three he asks are not ones I would have ever thought of asking, but I love them.

CHINESE TRANSLATION By M. Ward

I sailed a wild, wild sea
Climbed up a tall, tall mountain
I met a old, old man
Beneath a weeping willow tree
He said now if you got some questions
Go and lay them at my feet
But my time here is brief
So you'll have to pick just three

And I said
What do you do with the pieces of a broken heart
And how can a man like me remain in the light
And if life is really as short as they say
Then why is the night so long
And then the sun went down
And he sang for me this song

See I once was a young fool like you
Afraid to do the things
That I knew I had to do
So I played an escapade just like you
I played an escapade just like you
I sailed a wild, wild sea
Climbed up a tall, tall mountain
I met an old, old man
He sat beneath a sapling tree
He said now if you got some questions
Go and lay them at my feet
But my time here is brief
So you'll have to pick just three

And I said
What do you do with the pieces of a broken heart
And how can a man like me remain in the light
And if life is really as short as they say
Then why is the night so long
And then the sun went down
And he sang for me this song

Any Questions?

Shared Name

THANKFULLY I HAVE A DAUGHTER-IN-LAW. Initially the first sentence of this post was going to be, “Thankfully I have a daughter-in-law who reads this blog,” but when I typed those first seven words I had to put a period, or as the Brits call it, “A full stop.” First and foremost I am so thankful for our beautiful daughter-in-law; period. I am also thankful (in a less profound way) that she reads this blog because she read my recent post on ideas for Father’s Day gifts and bought me something leather—this wonderful leather journal cover. Perfect.

Her husband, our son, then screenprinted the cover of a few Moleskin journals for me to use in my new leather cover. Perfect.

He chose to put on the cover a quote, a line from a song by the Avett Brothers called “Murder In The City”. It is a haunting song both in melody and lyric. I had not heard the Avett Brothers play the song before but it sounded vaguely familiar. Then I realized one of my all-time favortie artists, Brandi Carlile, recorded the song on her album, The Firewatcher’s Daughter.

Always remember there was nothing worth sharing
Like the love that let us share our name.

In a few days now, vows will be exchanged, born out of shared love. Names will be shared, and I will be humbly thankful to have a second, beautiful daughter-in-law.

Thank you Kara & Corey, Brooke & Kyle.