For Sunday, February 7, 2016

Psalm 127. A PILGRIM SONG OF SOLOMON

If GOD doesn’t build the house,
        the builders only build shacks.
    If GOD doesn’t guard the city,
        the night watchman might as well nap.
It’s useless to rise early and go to bed late,
        and work your worried fingers to the bone.
    Don’t you know he enjoys
        giving rest to those he loves?
 
Don’t you see that children are GOD’S best gift?
        the fruit of the womb his generous legacy?
Like a warrior’s fistful of arrows
        are the children of a vigorous youth.

Oh, how blessed are you parents,
        with your quivers full of children!

    Your enemies don’t stand a chance against you;
        you’ll sweep them right off your doorstep.
 

pops and his "arrows", celebrating our 2016 birthdays.

Testing 1, 2, 3.

I'M NOT AN ELECTRICIAN OR AN ENGINEER. Luckily, you don’t have to show some kind of license or certificate when you go to Home Depot® to buy a pair of wire strippers or vice grips, because like most guys, I don’t let knowledge, or the lack of it, get in the way of taking things apart and trying to put them together again.

As a kid, I remember the intrigue of attaching wires together to see what would happen. One such memory is burned into my cerebral circuitry. It was probably second grade and time for the school science fair. My parents were very busy. They were bakers at the time, making pies for the early morning deliveries. I took it upon myself to create a blue-ribbon science fair entry.

We definitely could have hung out together.

I found an extension cord, cut off the feminine end, stripped the wires back and taped them to the legs of a little metal folding chair. I strapped my little brother in and was just about to plug in my certain-to-be-award-winning entry, when my mom noticed, screamed, and the rest is a blur. Despite other, later experiments on my brother, he’s still here today.

One of my favorite and successful, projects started with finding an old record player in a pile of junk someone had dumped onto the Arkansas riverbed near our house. Its tubes were missing, but I used the turntable parts, wired around the internal amp to another working amp and voila!

So, four paragraphs in now, let me say, this is a post about connections. I had an english teacher once who critized my writing because, “it takes you too long to get to the point.” Well, I have a blog now, so… there.

For several posts now, I’ve been talking about having a "knot"—a group of people to hang out with, talk with; connect with. I realize my metaphor is a bit flawed now, in an age where everything is becoming more wireless. But I really like the picture of relationships being like wired together. Even the picture that sometimes wires fray and sparks fly.

Tonight I’m meeting with a little knot of people I treasure. We meet almost every Friday night. They are the first two people I’m interviewing as a part of the series I promised in my last blog post. I’m hoping to wrap up the interview tonight so I can write about it over the weekend.

Until then, may your connections be strong and your tubes burn brightly.

Finding the Knot

So...

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
Bert and Ernie
The Lone Ranger and Tonto
The Team
The Tribe

To review: a couple of posts back, in a little essay titled, Keeping Company I mentioned a group called The Inklings. It's the kind of group that C.S. Lewis described as "a little knot of friends who turn their backs to the World."

As I said, I would like to have a group like that—a Knot, if you will. To explore the idea further, I started with identifying "six" people I would like to invite to a dinner. These people wouldn't actually be in the Knot, but in going through the process of who to invite, maybe, I thought, I can discover something about myself and the kind of people I could potentially be in a group with.

If you take a look at my "six": David Letterman, Flannery O'Connor, Paul McCartney & John Lennon, Tina Fey & Amy Poehler, Yo Yo Ma, and Atticus Finch, some elements are evident: humor, music, creativity, gregariousness, a strong B.S. filter, and a certain, healthy irreverence.

Maybe it's a guy thing. I don't know for sure, I've never been a girl. But it seems like guys like to be a part of the something. Maslow called it "Belonging" needs. Back when I was a kid, guys had clubs and lodges they could join. I'm not sure what all went on, because by the time I was old enough to join in and find out, Gloria Steinem had burned her bra and all males were chauvinistic pigs. Now don't get me wrong. I'm happy for women, and probably would have said something like, “You go girl!” had I ever met Ms. Steinem; but I will admit, I would have liked to go to one of those lodges where guys wore funny-looking hats and had a secret handshake, and maybe smoked a cigar and acted like big shots and maybe had a bowling team.

Now, men seem to be relegated to impromptu little gatherings at places like McDonald’s or The IHOP where they can drink cheap coffee, and complain about the dang democrats. That's not the kind of Knot I'm looking to be a part of. I'm not even sure I would want to go bowling with those guys.

The fact is, the Knot is already forming in my mind. (Wow, out of context that sounds ugly and ominous.) What I mean is, I already know some of these people and we're actually loosely knotted now. They may not look at it that way, but I do. 

So here's my plan: over the next few months, I'm going to interview these people, these potential Members of the Knot, and introduce them here at About Pops (if they'll let me that is). So stay tuned.

Keeping Company

You’ve heard the fun, hypothetical question, “What six people, living or dead, would you invite to dinner?”

I’ve performed a lot of weddings in my day. In most of them I have used a thought from C.S. Lewis in his book, The Four Loves.

Lovers are normally face to face, absorbed in each other;
Friends, side by side, absorbed in some common interest.

I then explain the obvious—that a marriage is two people who should strive not only to be lovers, but friends to each other as well.

C.S. Lewis and his good friend, J.R.R. Tolkien and a few others hung out together; regularly. They even had a name for their little group: “The Inklings”. Lewis spoke of the importance of having a group like The Inklings in that same book, The Four Loves, calling them a “little knots of Friends who turn their backs on the ‘World’”. By that, (I think) he meant, when they are together, they honor the relationship and the time by being fully present. If he were writing that today he might say, “When you gather with your little knot of friends, KEEP YOU DANG PHONE IN YOUR POCKET.” Just guessing.

I’ve been reading a book called, The Company They Keep by Diana Pavlac Glyer. It is a book about The Inklings, and it has me thinking. What if I was in a little knot of friends? Who else would be in it? What would we talk about? Would it be worthwhile?

I realize this kind of friendship is a step beyond just asking six or so people to dinner, but to me the spirit is the same. For most people the hard part of the exercise would be limiting the number of people they would invite. For me, I know that if I invited too many, if the knot was too big, I would be lost. In fact, I would probably go to another room and just eavesdrop on the conversation.

It’s just introversion and I’m fine with it.

This year, 2015, I’m going to explore this idea of having a Knot. Will I work to actually make it happen? Probably not, but I hope at least to be bold enough to meet some new people, have some interesting conversations and learn something about myself.

Let’s start though with this game of naming the Dinner Party Six. I’m going to expand the options a little and say that it’s okay to include a fictional person or two. I mean if we can invite dead people why not make-believe ones too?

Here’s my list (at least for now), not for the Knot, but for the Dinner:

Wait. First, I want to say in all honesty that while I’m not including family members in the list, I love being at the table with my Amazing-Missus, our two sons, our daughter-in-law, and our Grand-Girls. Second, there are some that I would love to have at the table, but they are of that category of being even above my hypothetical dinner guests; you know, people like Jesus, Mary Magdalene, G.K. Chesterton, Martin Luther King, Jr., Einstein, George Gershwin, etc. (Relax, I’m not saying or even inferring these people are equal to Jesus.)

Okay, now for the list (in no certain order):

1. David Letterman (he would ask really good questions, keeping the discussion going)
2. Flannery O’Connor (because she writes lines like: “To expect too much is to have a sentimental view of life and this is a softness that ends in bitterness.”)
3. Paul McCartney & John Lennon (I know, I know)
4. Tina Fey & Amy Poehler (They will split an entree)
5. Yo Yo Ma (hopefully he and John would play “Imagine” together)
6. Atticus Finch (played by Gregory Peck)

You know Atticus Finch, from the greatest fictional book ever, To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee. If not, maybe, you’ve seen the movie where the role of the Atticus, the single father of two kids, is beautifully played by Gregory Peck. 

The story is told by Scout, Atticus’ daughter. Here’s an except from the book. Scout is telling of encounters she and her brother Jem had with a mean old woman named Mrs. Dubose who lived down the street. Scout’s description of her father in this passage will make it clear why I want him to have a chair at my table.

When the three of us came to the house, Atticus would sweep off his hat, wave gallantly to her and say, “Good evening, Mrs. Dubose! You look like a picture this evening.”
I never heard Atticus say like a picture of what. He would tell her the courthouse news, and would say he hoped with all his heart she’d have a good day tomorrow. He would return his hat to his head, swing me to his shoulders in her very presence, and we would go home in the twilight. It was times like these when I thought my father, who hated guns and had never been to any wars, was the bravest man who ever lived.

So, what “six” people would you invite to dinner if you could?