Just a little more than usual
A cozy place for my stuff. A well-insulated nook with a door and a view. Not necessarily free standing, with a couple of comfortable chairs, a small table, and decent lighting. A window or two, a mini fridge, a Bluetooth speaker, heated and air conditioned. Simple, uncluttered, but not Spartan.
Just about anything from Toyota. They’ve made consistently dependable vehicles for a long time. Not necessarily the most stylish, I guess, but that has never mattered to me. They’re stylish enough. Their dependability more than makes up for any lack of pizazz.
Another tough one. I don’t feel that I’m all that creative. I think the closest I come is when I’m sitting at the piano and stumble on a tuneful riff using my rudimentary knowledge of chords and chord structure.
Necessity may be the mother of invention, and creativity might be something born of desire and opportunity. But I also believe there’s something magical about it, that real creativity can’t be forced or manufactured. It magically flows. It’s organic. People are born with something extra, with proclivities and inclinations and curiosity in search of expression or a catalyst. Solutions in hand or mind, searching for problems to be solved or beauty to be revealed.
This isn’t to say that we can’t learn to do things, to refine a craft– whether it’s writing or drawing or dribbling a football. In the extreme, I guess I’m imagining that a group of people can’t sit down at a table and just say, “Let’s be creative.” There might be a bit of synergy, something spontaneous, but I’m thinking more along the lines of a Da VInci or Jobs or Chopin.
On first thought, I’m not sure there are many. I’m not sure how much molding and shaping is left to do. There are people who, in the moment, still affect my outlook and evoke emotions. But my essential character, for better or worse, has been shaped already. It seems to be more a question of who were the biggest influences in my life.
I recently mentioned my father. He played a role, as did my mother. Then there are my wife, my siblings, a friend or two, a couple of seminary professors, various musicians that I’ve listened to, one or two athletes, including Bobby Orr.
Politicians either aggravate or resonate, depending on their personalities and platforms. I guess I’ve always gravitated toward the more humble voices, the peacemakers and dreamers, most of whom the world has never been quite ready for.
I make it sound like it’s “put a fork in me” time– I am who I am, and all that blather. But of course I still hold out for a moment or two of revelation, a teaching moment.
Now that I think about it and keep writing here, there are a few people who currently have my attention: Juval Noah Harari, Sam Harris, and Neil deGrasse Tyson. A triumvirate of secularists who, with the possible exception of Harris, speak respectfully of religious faith, but speak more fervently and forcefully about reason and logic and the blatant hypocrisy of supposedly “religious” people.
OK. So there are people I listen to, opinions with which I wrestle, and opportunities for enlightenment and maybe even growth. The reality remains, though, that the cast of influential voices may just keep changing.
Dwight D. Eisenhower was President; The Brown v Board of Education decision was handed down; the first mass vaccinations against polio began, in Pittsburgh; the first Burger King opened– in Miami; the first Godzilla movie premiered in Tokyo; “Rock Around the Clock” was released as a B side; the DJIA closed at an all-time high of 382.74, not seen since before the crash of 1929; things were quieting down and heating up in Vietnam; The USS Nautilus was launched in Groton, CT; Texas Instruments introduced its first transistor radio; the U.S. government announced the testing of a hydrogen bomb on Bikini Atoll, and the U.S. Senate roundly condemned Joseph McCarthy.
I needed a memory refresh courtesy of Wikipedia… the only things about 1954 that I remembered off the top of my head were the Brown v Board… decision, and that Dwight D. Eisenhower was POTUS.
There might still be a bit of spidey sense happening, or at least first impressions made, but I’m retired and don’t usually spend time with anyone other than people I choose to spend time with. Apart from the occasional door-to-door salesperson, I don’t have opportunity or reason to have to size anyone up. Ok, salespeople and political candidates.
In my years as a pastor, I became somewhat astute at being able to tell who the troublemakers were going to be– the occasional backbiter, chronic complainer, saboteur, and passive aggressive type who made life more interesting, i.e aggravating, than it needed to be. But it’s not like I could fire parishioners (technically, I could, but there was a process involving me and members of the congregation, and the infraction would have to be grievous). Most often, we had to learn to coexist, try to be Christ-like.
When it came to our small staffs, deficiencies sometimes emerged. I had to be responsive and caring, and on rare occasions had to have conversations and be part of decisions that were difficult but necessary.
Most parish pastors wear a lot of hats, but I don’t think I would have made a very good personnel director.
Quick answer– when I’ve had a decent night’s sleep, the alarm goes off, and I’m ready to get up and start my day with some cold brew and time to write.
Longer answer– when my wife and I share a laugh, which is more rare than it once was; connecting with the grandkids; when the words come and I write something that turns out the way I was hoping; the anticipation of a visit to or from someone; the joy of sitting at the keyboard and stumbling onto a chord progression that reminds me of a song; a well-struck drive off the tee; a well-composed picture; and news that the world may not be teetering as close to the edge as is often reported.
Yesterday was full of fun things– we sat and visited and laughed with my sister and her husband before they headed home after a too-brief visit; I drank coffee and put together a router and router table with our son and played with the grandkids for an hour or so before coming home from there.
The last thing I did for play or fun was watch a couple of shows that my wife and I have been keeping up with. The one (Before) has been something of an ordeal, not the genre we usually sit through, but engaging nonetheless; the other (Shrinking) has been easier to watch and quite a bit easier to follow.
We’ve never actually planned a weekly menu, though we often talk about how that might be a helpful thing to do. In any event, the items we monitor the closest might be yogurt, eggs, something for lunch, bottled water, and something for supper.
It depends on the day and what’s on the list, I guess, but if I’m the one shopping, I’m liable to be looking for something extracurricular– a deli item besides lunchmeat, pretzels or wine, a Cliff bar, some bargain on coffee– along with items from the previously mentioned list.
The first person who came to mind was Abraham Lincoln. But moving a bit closer to home, I’d have to say my father.
He lost his father when he wasn’t quite two years old, was the youngest in a family of six children, never finished high school, enlisted in the Coast Guard toward the end of WWII, married my mother in the early fifties, worked a lot, scraped and saved little, helped build the house in which we grew up, worked construction– floor and ceiling installation– for years, until that company closed its doors. He then finished his working years as a custodian at one of the local elementary schools.
Dad was keenly aware of and occasionally haunted by his unfinished education, and he would ask us kids– half kiddingly and yet with a certain poignancy and sober intent– if we thought we’d amount to anything. Our family of seven lived paycheck to paycheck, but we never wanted for anything of importance. My brothers and sisters and I were blessed with parents who were focused on raising a family, in it for the long haul. We knew we were loved, even if being loved wasn’t necessarily something we could name, in the moment.
Dad was a smart man, something of a perfectionist, not always brimming with self-confidence. He was a kid at heart, and he stayed that way for most of his life. He had a great sense of humor, would laugh robustly at things until he coughed and couldn’t breathe. He made us laugh. He didn’t suffer fools, though he made an effort to get along with pretty much everybody.
He taught us to be kind and honest, to appreciate beauty and the natural world. He taught me to eat a tomato like an apple (with a little salt, for added flavor). He taught me to work until the job was done. He taught us cribbage, took us golfing and camping and fishing early on, and revealed a competitiveness that fueled certain endeavors but never consumed him.
He was a good man, something of a hero.
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