Dad's Cousin, and the Passage of Faith
Is there anything better than a long meal with family and friends spiced with memories of people you all love?
Last night, around six o'clock, one of my dad's first cousins rolled into our driveway to spend the night. I remember Crain from my childhood days and the few times we've seen each other since I grew up. He is an uncle to me, having grown up next to my father as something closer to a brother than a cousin. He and his wife and his now grown son sat down to a meal of salmon, chicken, asparagus, and apple pie, and stayed at our table until well after ten, telling stories of Dad and their family, stories laced with both joy and sadness. He told us about "Jo-jo" (Crain's name for my father, which was a variation I don't remember hearing before) riding "service-cycles" which were somthing like motorcycles, about Dad being in the drama club in high school, about his desire to be a preacher. He also talked about Dad's determination, that once his mind was made up, that was it, and that though his mother and her sister (Crain's mom) didn't think Dad was ready to be married, there was no stopping him.
As we swapped stories about our lives, it hit me like it always does. There is always a point in these conversations when I get overwhelmed with the poignancy of life, its long scope of generations, its heartbreaking depth and beauty. They talked of the old days--this would be the 1930's and 40's--of farms and working the land, eating black-eyed peas and tomatoes for seeming months at a time, of visits to Oklahoma and riding white horses and Shetland ponies, of the thunder of the West Texas storms. And then there was the more recent story of their son-in-law's brother who in his late twenties was tragically killed by a lighting strike, literally out of the blue, even as their daughter was approaching the birth of twins. Death and new life colliding again, just as they did with Dad and Amy.
And there was talk of church and the heartache of change. Musical instruments coming into the churches of Christ, new models of ministry, decades of emotional and financial investment discarded at the whim of the newest, avant garde preachers. And in the eyes of these fine people, I can see years gone by, an entire culture of Christ-followers who perhaps did not get it all right, didn't follow in all the ways they'd hoped, but they did their best, and now, with change breaking all they fought to keep sacred, how difficult it is to hold on to the old ways. They want to be graceful in the change, and it is just so hard.
And their son sits with them, a beautiful young man who just now is making his life and living in music. And he sees the future, and is instinctively longing for the emergent church, even though, until we talked about it last night, he hadn't really been part of the conversation. Something tells me he will find his way to a group of people seeking to follow Jesus in a much different way than his father and mother, but that in the end, just as as been the case with this uncle of mine, people will experience the presence of God in their lives because of his discipleship, part of another generation of doing-the-best-they-can-with-what-they-know Christians.
Missing Dad...
6:27:28 AM 
