CHRISTMAS 1955

I can’t remember if I’ve ever told this story on my blog, but my apologies to you if I have. The thing I want to say about it is that it is one of my most memorable Christmases from my childhood.

          The year was 1955 and I was 12 years old. We lived in the house I was born in in the upstairs back bedroom on Main Street in Medford, NJ. It was a couple of days before Christmas, and my father’s company was on strike, and in addition, he was suffering from a severe case of Bursitis in his shoulder to the extent that he was pacing the floor in agony.

          Outside a pretty hefty wind was blowing along with a heavy snow storm stirring. We had not gotten our usual Christmas tree from the Pine Barrens because my father had not been in any condition to make it happen. Finances were tight for my parents because of the strike and it looked like it was going to be a pretty bleak holiday. We all had pretty much resigned ourselves to what was.

          I think my mother had done some shopping, but I don’t think very much. I don’t remember whether or not I had asked for anything in particular for Christmas or maybe they just told me not to expect much. By that time, the idea of there being such a person as Santa Claus was something I had outgrown, so there was no hope that gifts would magically appear under the tree that we didn’t have anyway.

          But there was a moment—an incredible moment—when my mother suddenly said to me, “Jack, let’s you and I go down to Harriet’s and get a Christmas tree.” Harriet’s was a local gas station down the hill and across the creek. They also had a little store where you could get important things like bread and ice cream. That year they were also selling Christmas trees.

          Now you have to know that my mother was a small, somewhat stout, short woman, barely five feet tall if that. She had a lot of stamina and was a hard worker around the house, but trying to imagine the two of us in this severely windy snowstorm going down the hill to fetch a tree didn’t seem reasonable. And yet, she was dead-serious about that. So, we bundled up and headed to Harriet’s. With all my skepticism and dread of going out into the storm, at the same time I was also delighted with the thought that we were going to have a tree after all.

          There were only a few left, but we found one that would do very nicely. My mother hadn’t brought any money with her—probably because there wasn’t any, but we knew the owner very well and he knew our circumstances. So my mother asked if we could pay for it later, and he said that we didn’t have to—it’s all ours, free and clear!       In a world that at times seems very cruel and harsh, in these days in particular, that memory is worthy of a Christmas carol heart and I’m humming one as I write this.

          We managed to get the tree back up the hill, and my mother and I, with some help and advice from my father, put the tree up and decorated it with all those very familiar glass ornaments and tinsel, and set up the village underneath. Christmas had come into our house thanks to my mother’s determination and to the kindness of the man at Harriet’s gas station.

          I don’t remember what I got for Christmas—no doubt something that my parents’ couldn’t afford. But the trek for a Christmas tree remains one of the most important and perhaps favorite memories of my childhood.

TRUE CONFESSION OF A PINBALL WIZARD

          I was reminded recently of something that happened when I was about 12 or so. My parents took me to an amusement park somewhere in Pennsylvania that had an arcade (long before even a faint idea of video games).  I wandered in with my pennies, nickels, and dimes to play my heart out with all the available lo-tech, mechanical, coin-swallowing games that promised the lucky winner pocketknives, compasses, harmonicas, x-ray glasses, etc. plus the ones that would tell my fortune or to just win against some fictitious bad guy behind glass.

          There were pinball machines everywhere of every adventure theme you can imagine. I was never any good at those. The only knack I had was to put the machine in “tilt” faster than anybody I knew—if that was to be regarded as a skill, which, of course, it was not. So I made my way around the entertainment wonderland of games and gimmicks, and happened upon a guy at a pinball machine playing like gangbusters. He said to me, “Hey, kid! You want to play this?”

          I was a little bit intimidated by that thought, and I said, “I’m not very good at pinball.” He said, “You will be at this one.” Then he showed me that he had racked up about 21 or so free games on it, and he was tired of playing. Then he said that the machine just keeps giving free games whether or not you score or win—it was stuck in some kind of mechanical mode and you couldn’t lose.

          So I took over the helm, and he disappeared somewhere in the crowd. In the meantime, as I was playing, along came a couple other kids who stood there watching me, not knowing anything about what was going on. They were amazed at my talent. They called over a couple of other kids. “Hey, look how many games, this kid has won!” A crowd started to gather around me, and the pinball machine just kept on a-giving. I forget how many games I ended up with, but it was enough to make people think I was the real thing—an amazing pinball wizard!

          I forget exactly what happened next other than me offering to let somebody else take over because I also got tired of it. I remember that I walked away and never told anybody the truth about it—I was too caught up with my moment of glory. I knew that they would eventually find out for themselves, and my reputation would be tarnished after I was gone; but somehow it seemed worth it, however briefly it lasted. “The wizard has left the building” and indeed I did.

          The memory of that day came surging back as I stood in a room full of pinball machines at the Golden Nugget Flea Market. There was a part of me that wanted to put a quarter in and see if age had improved my skill, but none of them were plugged in anyway, plus another part of me said let the glory of your pinball wizardry moment stand.

          I don’t know what the moral of the story is—maybe there isn’t any—it’s just a story. But at the risk of making too much of it, I will say that it occurs to me that though my “amazing’ moment was short-lived and admittedly contrived, there are people who are genuinely amazing, and what they are and what they do is far more impressive than any pinball wizard’s pseudo accomplishment. I’m thinking of people who are calm and peaceful in the midst of chaos; I’m thinking of people who are nice in spite of any meanness they incur in the world; I’m thinking of people who are generous even though they themselves are far from rich (generosity takes many forms, by the way); I’m thinking of people whose smiles and ways have healing power to bring the presence of joy and love wherever they go and wherever they are.

          Just a thought.

TRYING TOO HARD

            

There are some things that I miss about being the pastor of a church, but not everything. It’s nice to sit in a pew next to my wife and not be responsible for how a Sunday worship service turns out. All I have to do is relax and let myself be absorbed in the spirituality of communing with God in a time apart from the world with all its current madness. And the church we are presently attending provides just what both of us are looking for—thoughtful music, prayers, and sermons that invite your participation.

          They asked me to preach one Sunday this past summer, but I don’t think I did a very good job of it. It had been a little over a year since I stood in the pulpit and delivered the Word, as it were, and I felt a bit awkward in doing so. My thoughts were meandering and sometimes trivial, even though I had spent a great deal of time preparing. Perhaps I tried too hard to be clever or to at least be creative in my approach. I don’t know for sure, but I do know that it was far from what I had hoped it would be. Some people—I think politely—said that they appreciated what I had to say.

          I’ve never been a scholarly preacher. It’s not who I am. I’m more of a storyteller than an intellectually fine-tuned presenter of truth. Whenever I’ve tried to be otherwise, I’ve usually come off either terribly dry and boring or pretentious at best. When I was in seminary, I once asked one of my preaching professors how to develop a preaching style, and he said, “You already have one—you’re a storyteller—go with it.” So I pretty much stuck with it throughout my career, with a few exceptions here and there just for the sake of changing it up (which is not always a good reason).    

          The reason I’m bringing all this up is because a realization has set in that I wanted to share with any of you who may experience from time to time, key moments in life that you were hoping would be both rewarding and uplifting, but turned out to be, if not disastrous, nonetheless disappointing. I believe I am right in saying that almost all of us do have them once in a while. In time we get over them. We come to the place where we realize it was not as a big a deal as we have made it out to be. However we still may wonder what happened when our intentions were so earnest and pure.

          I believe in many cases we are guilty of trying too hard to be “perfect.” Perfection is not always a healthy goal. To be good or to be better at something is one thing, but to think we have to be flawless is quite another. The pressure and stress related to that saps the joy out of what we are wanting to do.

          We were in New Orleans last week visiting our daughter. We went to one of our favorite places down there—Preservation Jazz Hall. It is truly one of life’s greatest musical experiences as far as we are concerned. The musicians are incredible! Their music flows out of them with such ease and joy. As a group, they are able to feel one another’s musical spirit to such a degree that each performance is a magnificent blending of their hearts and souls. That may seem like an exaggeration, but it’s what we have truly felt whenever we have gone there.

          Now what does that have to do with what I’ve been talking about? I believe that one reason their music flows so beautifully is because it is effortlessly performed. Their egos aren’t in the way because they are completely relaxed and aren’t self-conscious about how perfectly they’re doing it. i.e.-they’re not trying too hard.

          Granted, they are masterful musicians, extremely talented, and know what they’re about. Yet, that’s only true, I believe, because they lose themselves in the joy of their music and not in the effort of trying to perform it perfectly—even though it is perfect to my ears.

          Just a thought, but what if we could each regard life with the same ease and flow? What if we trusted in who we are and allowed ourselves to relax and live without being self-conscious of what we need to try to be other than what we are? I don’t know if that makes sense to you, but I just share this with you as a possible way of increasing our joy in life, free from the tension of trying too hard.

Preservation Jazz Hall Trumpeter

SEASONS

          I was out in the garden this morning picking tomatoes. As I was reaching through cages and wrestling with vines, I suddenly caught the aroma of fall. It’s that time of year that, when I was a child in Milton H. Allen Elementary School in Medford, my friends and I would go to the school ground to see if they had put the swings back up yet, and make promises that “this year I’m really going to be a better student!” I don’t remember how that worked out—sometimes good at least for the first two weeks, then other things got in the way.

          I was an outdoors kid, not so much as an athlete, but as an explorer and tree climber and making up adventures. On rainy days, there was sitting on the front porch, reading comic books or playing up in the attic. If the attic was the place of choice, then another aroma still lingers in my head: English walnuts being dried out in a box on the floor. We had an English walnut tree in our side yard and the walnuts were always ready to eat by Thanksgiving or sooner.

          I’m glad I grew up when I did, but then that’s probably true for most kids in whatever decade they were born. Still, I have to say that I appreciated my childhood for its seeming simplicity—simplicity being my preference over complexity. I can handle some complex issues of the 21^st century, but there are many that make me feel quite lost.

          Now that I’m 76 years (918 months) old, most of my life is behind me. It’s not a depressing thought—just an accounting. Too old to climb trees, to pretend to be Davy Crockett, to buy comic books, to read Hardy Boys mysteries, to play hide-and-seek, and to swing on the swings on the school ground. Any one of those things could make people think that I’ve finally lost it. They might even suggest that I go for therapy, and tell my wife to keep an eye on me to see if any other symptoms of regression emerge.

          Dorothy Parker once said, “I hate writing, but I love having written.” To paraphrase, I hate growing older, but I love having gotten here. Being retired, I have plenty of time to reminisce, to enjoy the present, and to sigh a deep sigh of relief that I didn’t make a total mess of my life. In many ways I could have done better or been better, but basically, I have no regrets that haunt my soul.

          A lot of the credit for that goes to the people I have known in my life—the teachers, the preachers, the friends, the family, my children, even the strangers with their kind words, and most definitely, my wife, who continues to love me in spite of my aging and my sometimes quirky ways of thinking and being, and who makes this one of my favorite times to be alive.

          There have been people who have picked me up when I was down. People who have tolerated my stories that I’ve told over and over. People who taught me to play the guitar. Parents who insisted that I practice and took me every week to my guitar lessons. People who complimented me even when I didn’t deserve it, but I thought they meant it so it made all the difference in how I felt about myself.

          What I’m getting at in this little essay is to encourage you to do what Fred Rogers used to do in his talks: ask you to take a few seconds, ten if you’re counting, and think of the people who have helped you in ways great and small to be who you are and to have the life you have.  Then quietly thank them. I assure you that they will know.