A Father's Birth Story

Usually it's the mothers who tell the birth stories.  This is one of mine.


Ninteen years ago today was a sunny, snowy, cold January day.  Ellen and I were awaiting the Next Big Event in our life: the birth of our next child.  It was, especially for our culture, a "late pregnancy" - Ellen was just a month shy of her 42nd birthday.  Ellen had been experiencing - something - from the evening before, but it never settled into a pattern that resembled her earlier labors, so we didn't call the midwife.  However, as the day progressed, it became clear that things were indeed happening, so we called our friends who were to assist at the birth, and I prepped the requisite materials, as I'd done for our three prior home births.

We called the midwife twice - once earlier in the day just to give her warning that something was probably imminent, and again in the early afternoon.  Ellen's contractions weren't settling down into a pattern, so she didn't want to sound a false alarm.  But after talking to Ellen the second time, the midwife told us she was on her way.  But by then it was midafternoon, and the midwife was driving from a neighboring county over country roads thick with schoolbuses, so her trip took longer than she expected.

As it turned out, it was too long - at least for Kelson's purposes.  Perhaps the knowledge that the midwife was coming gave Ellen "permission" to get on with labor - we'll never know - but shortly after hearing that she was on her way, Ellen's labor progressed rapidly.  She went through a very quick and mild transition, and before we knew it was struggling against the urge to push.  The midwife hadn't yet arrived, and our friends were rather alarmed, but Ellen and I had both been through three home births and knew that if the baby was coming quickly, the odds were that it was a problem-free delivery (most delivery problems are related to overly long, not overly swift, labors.)  So when, after panting through one serious contraction, Ellen gasped, "baby's coming!", I was much less alarmed than the assistants.  I gave them orders about what they should have ready while I got Ellen into position for delivery.  Suddenly a little head was not just crowning, but emerging.  I'd seen it before, but this one looked different.  I realized that I was seeing that very rare occurrence: a baby born under a caul.  Because this birth had been too swift for interventions of any kind, even rupturing the amniotic sac, Kelson came out wrapped in his.  There was no problem - it was the work of a moment to sweep it aside and welcome him out.  He opened his eyes and started breathing without any trouble.  As with all of our births, there was no howling or crying.  Our friends swept in to wipe him clean and wrap  him in a warm blanket, then Ellen took him in her arms.

About 15 minutes later the midwife arrived.  She gave mama and baby a look-over and affirmed what we knew: everyone was all right.  We had the siblings in to see their new brother, and Ellen at last got her wish: having a "party" after the birth.  Not a real party, of course, but welcoming visitors and celebrating the new arrival.  All our prior births had been in the night or early morning, and everyone had assumed Ellen wanted to go right to sleep after the rigors of labor, but she insisted that she was so "up" from the experience that her real desire was to have lots of friends around to celebrate. (She slept a lot in the weeks that followed.)

Now, nineteen years later, that hasty baby who couldn't wait to show up is getting ready to embark on the next major phase of his life.  He's done well and made us proud in so many ways, and he's making us even prouder - not just because he's going into the service, but because he's continuing to take responsibility for his own life, make his own decisions, and accept the burden of maturity with grace and dignity.  In this he's following the superb example of his elder siblings, but it's not just out of imitation of them.  Sure he's building on their example, but he's also doing things his way in a manner that honors God, respects his family, and is true to his own vocation as a man.  We're proud of all our children, but on this, his birthday, I wanted to specially honor him.

God bless you, Kelson Reuel Thomas.  May His grace follow you every step of your life.

A life worth staying in

I don't often quote “experts”, particularly medical experts.  This isn't because of disdain for medicine per se, but rather out of suspicion of those who pretend that expertise (or advanced education) in one field makes them automatic experts beyond that field.  Thus when some MD weighs in attempting to provide a medical answer to a moral problem, or a psychological solution to a spiritual struggle, I take their statements with large helpings of salt.

But once in a while one of these experts comes up with a statement that's spot on, even if it's strictly outside his area of training.  Such was this column by Dr. Keith Ablow of the Fox News Medical A-Team (whatever that is.)  As a doctor, Dr. Ablow does a good job of explaining some recent statistics published by the CDC and unpacking their implications.  But as a man, he goes further and discusses the dire significance of these developments, painting a somber picture of our culture.  He's not scaremongering or doomsaying, but he is gravely concerned about what it means when “A significant portion of our population wants to not be present for significant portions of every single week.”  He sees what so many of us have been ringing the alarm bell about for some time: that a culture whose members want to regularly check out is a culture in trouble.  As he puts it, “The fact that we are doing this as a culture is the single most ominous psychological trend we have ever faced. I am not exaggerating.”  For the sake of those of us who (fortunately) have never had to deal with chronic drunkenness up close, he goes on to detail just how it saps the will and guts the character of those who do it, with dire consequences for individuals, families, and society.

The best prescription Dr. Ablow can offer is “decisiveness” - that people should just choose well and “be present” for the critical decisions in their lives.  Granted and fully agreed.  The problem is that most of those who are drugging themselves senseless on a regular basis have heard some variation on that argument, but can't for the life of them find a good reason to follow it.  It reminds me of a comment once made by a priest when he heard of a campaign urging youth not to take drugs because it was slow suicide. “First,” the priest explained, “you have to convince them that they shouldn't commit suicide.”  I think Dr. Ablow succinctly summarizes the dangers we face and even prescribes a correct solution, so far as it goes.  Where it falls short is providing an incentive to those who need it to follow the prescription.

This week in our parish Bible Study we're covering chapter 10 of the Gospel of John, which contains Jesus' explicit statement of one of the reasons He came to us: “I have come so that they may have life, and have it more abundantly.” (v. 10)  Think of that: abundant life.  That's what's really lacking here.  People who have an abundant life don't gut their way through the week so they can drink (or smoke, or snort) themselves insensible on the weekend.  How can it be surprising that when so many in a culture have “gotten beyond” God Himself, they find themselves with something-short-of-abundant lives?  And this in the most generally affluent culture in known history.  If security, freedom, and material wealth could provide abundant life, then surely the modern West would have more than enough.  Instead we find ourselves in a bind that even the secular world recognizes as dire.

All the likes of Dr. Ablow can tell us is that we need to take charge of our lives.  But we need an incentive to be decisive.  Jesus provides the incentive: love.  Absenting ourselves from our lives and the lives of those who care for us is not a loving thing to do.  We should be present because we love those around us and want to help them.  When we don't love enough to care for those around us, or when we don't think anyone does love us, then we suffer deep loneliness and alienation.  That's just the sort of pain that calls for an anesthetic of some sort, and so the cycle continues.

For any who acknowledge the accuracy of Dr. Ablow's prognosis but despair of implementing his prescription, permit me to direct you to the One who can not only help you accomplish it, but give you a good reason to do so: Jesus Christ, author of abundant life.  The life He gives is so rich that you won't feel the need to escape from it.

The 100%

While the various Occupy movements fade away with a whimper, what impact they might have had linger in phrases like “the 1%”. Lots of the chanting and debate sparked by the Occupy movements center around those sort of catchphrases.

It seems to me that the problem is that this sort of thinking restricts the debate to the economic and political sphere – a far too common fault of modern thinking. Supposedly “the 1%” exercise disproportionate control over a too-large amount of the world's wealth, and “the 99%” should have more of that control, and (presumably) that “the government” should do something about it. This is answered by questions about liberty, and legitimacy of government power, and free markets, and so on. But the whole debate ranges along economic and political lines, as if these were the only areas of human activity that really mattered.

In the midst of this discussion we find this almost unnoticed incident . Los Angeles County recently buried 1639 “unclaimed” bodies – people who had died for whom nobody ever showed up to attend to their burial. They lingered in the morgue or wherever they're kept until they were interred in a mass grave with a civil ceremony. The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors is to be commended for making this minimal sign of respect for their fellow humans, as are civil authorities everywhere to attend to such matters, but even they acknowledge that it was far short of what those people deserved.

Some would notice that some of the unfortunates were “poor or homeless”, and resume the 99% vs. 1% argument with renewed fervor. But I think this misses the point. It was not because of a shortage of money that these 1639 people died abandoned. Only “some” of them were poor – probably a good number had sufficient means to at least pay for a simple burial. The shortage that necessitated this mass burial was a shortage of love. Nobody loved them enough to bother providing a simple burial, so the responsibility devolved to the civic community.

We have no idea how this came to be. Perhaps some of them lost all their close relatives. Perhaps some had children who they'd lost through death or estrangement. Perhaps some had walked away from love offered to them to pursue abstractions like “independence” (I've seen it happen). Whatever the reason, these people died with nobody to love them enough to know about their death and do something about it.

That is the ultimate poverty.

Blessed Teresa of Calcutta used to say that the world she served in, what wealthy Westerners referred to as “the Third World”, was poor in material goods but rich in love, while the West was rich in material goods but poor in love. This mass burial of unknown, unclaimed people could be Exhibit A of this. In one of the richest, most envied counties in the world,1639 nameless people were buried in a mass grave with no marker to record them and nobody to mourn their passing. This is an impoverishment of what matters most.

Ultimately, discussions about which percentage of the population controls which percentage of the wealth are meaningless. In the end, 100% of us are stripped of all economic goods. That's when we find out how much real wealth we have. Who cares enough about us to stay by our side through our final days on this earth? Who loves us enough to honor our memory and insure we're laid to rest with dignity and respect? Who remembers our names, and why? In short, what is the balance of our “love account”?

One of the classic works of mercy for Christians is burying the dead. This meant more than just cleaning the landscape of corpses – it meant expressing God's love to even those who no man loves. The reason it was a duty was not to remind us to do it for those we loved and respected.  Burying them comes easily. It so that we'd do it for those like these 1639 forgotten ones of Los Angeles County.

Because 100% of us die without earthly wealth. But thanks to what happened at Bethlehem, and Calvary, none of us should die unloved.

My Father Was Half Right

I'm sorry for not having posted here for a bit.  Life has been happening at a good clip, and it still is, but I didn't want to totally neglect this small portion of it.

One of the kindest things my father ever said was me was, "Once you get outside your family, nobody gives a damn about you - they only care about what you can do for them."  He meant this in the kindest possible way (really!) with the intent of bracing me for what I could expect in the Big Wide World.  And indeed, that advice was very helpful in adjusting my expectations, and I have always kept it in the back of my mind, especially as an independent consultant.  People might be cordial and even kind, but I'd better deliver the value if I'm going to be handing them a bill at the end of the visit.

But as I've grown older, I've come to see that my father was only half-right on that point.  It was helpful counsel so far as it went, but taken straight is is overly pessimistic, almost to the point of being cynical.  It may usually be true that strangers, particularly employers, will not invest more in you than they can get out of you, but that does not mean that others will never invest in you.  In my personal history, it has sometimes been people I barely knew who invested in me out of sheer charity.  A high school teacher and football coach, who saw potential in an introverted sophomore that nobody else had spotted.  A second class petty officer saddled with a boot who'd never even been underway, who nonetheless took the time to instruct him in character and manhood.  There were others, and though it isn't a long list, it is long enough to prove that sometimes people do give a damn about strangers, and go out of their way to help them thrive and grow.

One irony about my dad's dictum was that he'd had experiences that proved that it was not universal.  One was in Colorado, on his way west to California, when his car broke down on a lonely mountain road.  A stranger driving by stopped to help, then drove my dad 20 miles back to the last town to get the requisite part, drove him back to his broken-down car, waited while he installed the part, and then followed him until he was safely to the next town. (Furthermore, that man was black, which was a real shock to my father, who'd been raised in a racist Missouri home.)  Another irony was that he tried to raise all of us children to be the sort of people who extended Christian charity to strangers - in short, to be the sort of people who'd defy this principle.

I've tried to keep dad's proverb in mind, particularly in the business environment.  But I've also learned that it's "more like a guideline", something to keep in mind when out in the world, but not something to assume is always applicable everywhere.  True love, charity toward another - even strangers - does exist.  Furthermore, we should stive to be people who spread it.  Granted, it's hard to deal with everyone at a level of intimate love.  Courtesy is possible and desirable, and we should always be on the lookout to do good, but we may be called to invest deeply in the lives of a few others - who may be strangers.

Of course, there have been a few who have attained to expressing deep charity toward everyone they encounter.  We call them saints, and we just celebrated them yesterday.  Wouldn't it be great to be that kind of person?

More lessons of manhood from the Inklings

Continuing in with the theme of an earlier post, I wanted to share a few more principles of manhood I learned from the Inklings:

Wisdom matters

“Edmund was a graver and quieter man than Peter, and great in council and judgment.” The Hunt for the White Stag, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

“The might of Elrond is in wisdom not in weapons, it is said.” The Council of Elrond, The Fellowship of the Ring

The importance of wisdom is a theme that weaves throughout all the works of the Inklings, and it caught my eye from youth. Even as a lad I was enamored of the image of King Edmund the Just, wise in council, even more than with the High King as a leader or warrior. And in Tolkien's works, great figures such as Elrond and Gandalf and even Aragorn displayed the value of wisdom over raw force and power.

Of course, as I grew older I realized that there was more to gaining wisdom than growing a white beard and sitting around talking about deep things. The Wisdom Books of Scripture especially helped me to understand that wisdom changes you – that if you truly seek wisdom, you will return from the journey a different person than you were when you started out. This is one reason true wisdom is so hard to obtain, far more difficult than simply learning reams of facts or gaining technical skill. Again the examples from the Inklings lore helped me grasp this: the price Gandalf paid to learn the truth about what happened to the One Ring after Isildur's fall, or the price Ransom paid in Perelandra to learn what he did.

But I credit their imaginative vision with helping me to understand the value of wisdom – that it is worth striving for, and to be treasured when found. I think that has been part of my lifelong urge to understand things, rather than just learn how to manipulate them.

Sometimes being a man means doing what needs to be done without calculation

“Will you ride with me then, son of Arathorn? Maybe we shall cleave a road, or make such an end as will be worth a song – if any be left to sing of us hereafter.”

“I will ride with you,” said Aragorn. Helm's Deep, The Two Towers

You may recognize this bit of dialog between King Théoden and Aragorn at Helm's Deep. The defenders were trammeled in by Saruman's orc hordes, and things were looking bleak. Théoden was proposing what looked like a suicide charge, for they had no knowledge of the help that was even then coming to aid them. Even so, Aragorn agrees to accompany him.

But anyone familiar with the story knows that in the Big Picture, the struggle between Rohan and Saruman was a side struggle. It certainly was part of the greater war against Sauron, but the Main Event was the showdown between Gondor and Mordor. That was Aragorn's ultimate goal, even from their departure from Rivendell and before. It was only by strange chance that he had gotten embroiled in this regional struggle.

In light of that, Aragorn's unhesitating agreement to ride with Théoden might seem reckless. Had he been prudent, had he pulled back and weighed his options, we wonder if he might have come to a different conclusion. The main war was in the east, which was also to be his kingdom if they came through this, and that was the price of his bride. That was an awful lot to risk on a death-or-glory charge in a backwater fortress. Perhaps better to lie low, perhaps slip away in the darkness and live to fight another day?

Aragorn's determination to do what was necessary displays what I think a vital aspect of true manhood. Wisdom and prudence are important (see point above), but sometimes one has to decide that the game is worth the candle and do what must be done, regardless of risk. Here wisdom comes to our aid, in helping us decide what causes are worth such risks.

Men don't leave dirty jobs for others

“I have no help to send, therefore I must go myself.” Aragorn, The Passing of the Grey Company, The Return of the King

Another consistent theme in the works of the Inklings is that a mark of noble manhood is shouldering difficult burdens. This stands in stark contrast to the adolescent desire to avoid hard tasks, or find some way to “stick” someone else with them. Accepting difficulty without shirking is the way that character, and civilizations are built.

Men make it easier for those who follow

Pippin marveled at [Boromir's] strength, seeing the passage that he had already forced with no other tool than his great limbs. Even now, burdened as he was, he was widening the track for those who followed, thrusting the snow aside as he went. The Ring Goes South, The Fellowship of the Ring

Related to the point above is the idea that a man strives to ease the burden of those who follow him. This image, and many others throughout the works of the Inklings, has served as an ideal for me for years. The example of Boromir and many others has encouraged me to look beyond just discharging immediate task to see where and how I could help make the path easier for those who follow. I haven't always succeeded, but the ideal has been there for me to strive for.

The next 30 years

Yesterday Ellen and I celebrated our 30th wedding anniversary.  In a way the celebration has been going on all month - last weekend we had a long visit with most of the kids and all the grandkids in celebration - but yesterday was The Day.  We had a quiet day away, just us two, running over to Frankenmuth to be "fudgies" for the day (something that Ellen pointed out we'd never done without little ones!)  It was subdued and low-budget, but all the more charming for that.  Lunch in the snack shop at Bronner's - where we took all the time we wished to browse around - and a dinner of sausages and cheese and veggies and wine at a little roadside park on the shores of Lake Huron.  Someday we may be able to do something more costly, like retrace our honeymoon route (not that that would be all that expensive), but this year a subdued celebration seemed more appropriate.

For some reason the 30th is making me stop and think more than, say, the 25th did, even though the 25th is supposed to be the more notable milestone.  Perhaps it's because our life circumstances are truly different now.  On our 25th we still had kids in school, and were in the thick of graduations and open houses and all.  We lived in the same house we'd lived in for 20 years, and things were pretty much as they'd been for most of our marriage.

Now, at 30 years, we live in a different house, are more or less empty nesters, and our focus is shifting from supporting our children to supporting our children's families.  Also, three decades is a long time - longer than some people's entire lives, and (sadly) longer than many marriages last.  It's the kind of span of time that causes one - or at least one like me - to meditate on the path traveled, and how well or poorly one has done along it.  I'm probably a poor judge standing at a poor vantage point, but I'm pondering more things.

If there's one thing 30 years has taught me it's the importance of love.  Not just romantic, "in-loveness" love, but sacrificial charity that gets up every morning and expends effort on behalf of others.  That's the love that bears fruit.  What we've achieved in 30 years of marriage has been due to that kind of love.  The feelings come and go and come again, and they're great in their way.  But the thing that matters, the thing I can build on, is that Ellen is always there, and will always love me.

That's why 30 years is, in a sense, a big deal, but in another sense it's not.  We didn't leap 30 years in a single jump, but in thousands of little jumps: each day we got up and by God's grace stayed true to the vows we'd taken to one another.  He promised to help us keep them, and He did.  That's why the next 30 aren't that intimidating: so long as they come at us one day at a time, we'll handle them the way we handled the first 30.

The things I learn from vinedressing

“I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit, he will take away. And each one that does bear fruit, he will cleanse, so that it may bring forth more fruit." (John 15:1-2)

I think I've mentioned before that our new house came with a Great Big concord grape vine, which was a bit of a surprise find, because it had grown all through some adjacent shrubs. As I've learned to tend this vine, all manner of Scriptural metaphors that were opaque to me before have come alive with meaning.

Our first year's harvest was when the vine was still intertwined with the shrubs. Though I found a respectable amount of fruit considering how well the clusters were hiding, many of the grapes were inedible due to mold or fungus. So, that winter I cut down the other shrubs, extricated the vine, and strung it on a makeshift arbor. The vine survived my inexpert handling, and bore some fruit the second year, but the harvest was sparse. I'm not sure how much this might have been due to trauma from all the handling and how much was because it was just a bad year for grapes, but there were few grapes, and they still had mold problems.

So I started reading up on the care and tending of concord vines. I had a friend come over to show me how to do the mid-winter pruning, where the last season's growth is cut back to optimize the vine to bear in the new year. But I read something else interesting: about the mid-season cleaning of the vines.

This is the vine early in the year.
Lots of leaves!

The vines start leafing out in springtime, throwing out big leaves and swift-growing tendrils that wrap around stems and fences. It's very impressive growth. Then the buds and flowers come, though it's easy to miss the flowering stage. The flowers are little tiny things that don't look like much - little six-stemmed stars just a few millimeters across. You have to look very deliberately to find them.

Grape flowers

Once the flowers are gone and the fruit starts to develop, there comes a point you have to cut away the leaves around the clusters. This is what I didn't do the second year, but the experts say is vital. Grape vines put out an immense amount of foliage, often large leaves that shade the entire area under the vine. But being shaded isn't good for the grapes. They need to be exposed to the light, and able to have air circulate freely around them. If they aren't, the clusters will remain damp from dew and rain, and mold and fungus will grow (this was the problem the first year when the grapes were growing all through the shrubs - they were too shaded, which was why so many were lost to mold.)

These clusters are too shaded.
They'll be prone to mold and fungus

So earlier this week I took my secateurs and went out to trim back the leaves and expose the clusters to the light and air. It turned out to be a tremendous task - far more than just trimming a leaf or two here and there. Once you get in among the vines, you find that nearly all the clusters are shrouded by leaves that need to be trimmed away mercilessly if the clusters are to see the sun and feel the air.

As I was doing this, I was pondering Jesus words in John 15:1-2. Most translations I've read say that the Father will "prune" the vines that they may produce more fruit, but I can't help but wonder if this translation (Catholic Public Domain Version) might have the more accurate nuance. Pruning is typically done off-season, during winter or some other time when the plant is not bearing fruit. Grapes are the only fruit I've heard of that calls for actually dressing the vines in the middle of the season to help the fruit along. People in that agrarian culture would surely have understood the need for and purpose of such "cleansing", and some of Jesus' disciples may have actually done it.

With that in mind, I found myself wondering in what way the leaves and clusters correspond to elements of our spiritual life, and how the Father's "cleansing" would help the fruit along. I came up with an analogy, which will break down at some point as analogies do, but it seemed to have some useful correspondence. What if the grapes themselves correspond to the "good fruit" our lives are supposed to bear - charitable deeds done for the good of others and glory of God, Christlike attitudes, humility, and the like? What if the leaves are pious practices of the type that can be observed: prayers, Mass attendance, Scripture reading, and so forth? By this I don't mean empty external actions, but truly well intended practices that are intended to form us into Christ's image.

Presuming that rough correspondence, how does that help us understand Jesus' promise that the Father would "cleanse" the "vine" of our lives, that we might bear more fruit?

One obvious point is that leaves are necessary, and always come first. Were one to strip all the leaves from a vine, it would die. Likewise if we were to strip from our lives all the external spiritual disciplines such as prayer, fasting, worship, and the like, our spiritual life would quickly end.

But the point of the leaves is the fruit. A big, leafy vine may look like it's Really Something, but if it's not bearing fruit, it's meaningless. By the same token, a vine full of fruit but with no leaves will never ripen, because the leaves are needed to make the sugar that goes into the fruit. So it's not a leaves-or-fruit question, because the fruit needs the leaves, but the point of the vine, including the leaves, is to bear fruit.

These clusters have had the
shading leaves trimmed away,
so that sun and air can reach
them.  They should ripen well!

But, just as too many leaves around the clusters can hinder the growth of the fruit, likewise the fruit of our lives needs the "light and air" of accountability and public examination to stay free of "mold" like self-delusion and pride. To use a historical example, St. Francis of Assisi started his movement as a group of men committed to a way of life living according to certain rules. But he submitted his rules to the authority of the Church, who investigated the movement and ruled upon it. Some of the original rules which Francis proposed for his Order were denied by Church authorities - they were "pruned away". St. Francis accepted this, and the Franciscan Order was born. Had he not accepted the pruning, his movement might have remained a small, local activity that might have just dwindled away, or degerated into rebellion or heresy.

On a personal level, sometimes we have to accept cutting back of things which seem like great spiritual practices in order to bear good fruit. When I first discovered the Liturgy of the Hours, I dreamed of finding time to say all the offices through the day. Eventually I had to settle for Lauds and Vespers, because my vocation as a father and breadwinner didn't permit me to take breaks for all that praying. If it's a question between fruit and leaves, the fruit will win every time.

Sometimes the "pruning" in our lives can seem severe, even brutal. It's like this with grapes, too, but it doesn't mean the plant is being killed. It doesn't take many leaves to keep a vine going - in fact, grape vines are always throwing out new leaves all through the season. Unlike deciduous trees, which grow a crop of leaves at the start of the season and that's all they get for the year, grape vines are sprouting new leaves all the time. Come to think of it, it's kind of like that in our spiritual lives as well. If the new baby or the new job means I can't attend daily Mass like I used to, maybe the Lord will cause a new avenue of blessing to "sprout" in my life. Just because a familiar set of "leaves" was trimmed back doesn't mean all is lost, it just means that the Father was trimming back to make me more fruitful.

Another thing I learned with my pruning is that you can never tell where the fruit might be. As I started cleaning away thick foliage, I found grape clusters in the strangest places. Totally hidden by leaves and stems, they awaited the pruning back of the leaves to be revealed. Had I not trimmed back the leaves, I never would have found them. In similar manner, sometimes the Lord has to trim back parts of our lives that seem healthy and impressive in order to bring forth some hidden fruit that even we might not have known was there.

A pruned-back vine, with plenty of leaves
and developing fruit.  Hopefully it will yield a rich harvest!

I think I've taken this comparison as far as it'll go, at least for now. I hope I remember some of these lessons the next time the Father starts to take His divine "pruning shears" to my life.

Staying alive - a lesson from yeast

Last Sunday's Gospel reading from Matthew 13 contained the parable of the Wheat and the Tares (to use the older reference) as well as the brief metaphors of the Kingdom being like the mustard seed and the yeast mixed into the flour. (Matt 13:24-43) I've always been able to grasp the Wheat and Tares parable, and the mustard seed comparison (somewhat), but the one about yeast always befuddled me a bit - until I started baking a lot of bread.

I'm a renowned bread baker - at least in the circles I travel. I don't do much, but what I do, I do well. My basic white bread has been called by some the Best Bread in the World. (Credit for that has to go to the late James Beard - it's his recipe.) The ingredients are simple: flour, water, a little salt, yeast, and some sugar to feed the yeast. Yet for all its simplicity, I've had many people ask me for help, because they "can't make bread".

Turns out the most common problem is dead yeast. Three tablespoons isn't a very big portion of nine pounds of dough, but it makes all the difference. If the yeast is fresh and vigorous, the dough rises swiftly and evenly, transforming all that wet flour into high, light loaves. But if the yeast is dead (as most grocery store yeast is), the dough just sits there - a flat, heavy, unappetizing lump. Without good yeast to leaven it, bread is just flour that's been saturated and then dried in the oven.

My experience with yeast dough has helped me understand a little of Jesus' brief metaphor. For one thing, I read somewhere recently that the "three measures" of flour was quite a bit - the same measure stipulated by Abraham in Genesis 18:6, which would have been about three bushels in today's measures. Three bushels! Also, the "yeast" (or "leaven", depending on your translation) would not have been the dry powdery material we typically use today, but a living culture more like a sourdough starter. So even if the woman mixed in three cups of starter, that would have been a lot of dough to rise.

Yet yeast, being the stubborn little beasties that they are, would've done the job given enough time (especially in the warm Mediterranean climate.) I think part of Jesus' point was that it doesn't take much to have a dramatic effect. Just as a few tablespoons of yeast can turn nine pounds of wet flour into bread people will drive miles to get (especially fresh from the oven), so just a few children of the Kingdom can make a big difference in a culture. However - and I think this was another point that Jesus' audience would not have missed - the yeast has to be alive. Yeast isn't like baking soda or vinegar. It's a microbe that is only effective when it's living. Dead yeast is worse than useless - it just smells, and you have to throw it away. But if it's living, it's very effective.

Something for us to keep in mind: if we're to have the "leavening" effect that Jesus desires, we have to be alive in Him. If we are, then we can have a dramatic effect on the world around us, transforming it dramatically. If we don't stay alive, the "dough" of our culture will not be leavened, but remain a soggy, heavy, useless lump. It'll be good for nothing but to be thrown out - and us with it.

The Weight of Love

One of my daughters recently gave birth to twins. Though a few weeks premature (not unusual with twins), they arrived healthy and without complications. After a couple weeks of observation in the infant care section of the hospital – which was stressful in its way but could have been a lot worse – the twins were brought home, and the fun truly began. At first the impact was buffered by the presence of some extra help. One of my other daughters stayed and helped for a couple of weeks, and then my wife for a couple more weeks. But eventually all the helpers went home, leaving mom and dad with “four under five”.

My poor daughter has been feeling the weight of this, as everyone expected she would. My son-in-law is a superb husband and father, and does everything he can to lighten the burden, but having even one newborn added to a home that already had a four-year-old and a two-year-old would be a tremendous burden. Two newborns seems unbearable; and indeed, my daughter's online posts both short and long indicate that the incessant demands of the babies are stretching her and her family to the limit.

And yet, deep down, even my stressed daughter and her husband understand that it isn't really the babies that are the burden. They “weigh” nothing at all. What is so heavy is the love. They love so deeply and so truly that they will give nothing less than everything they have to all of their children. It is that compulsion, that intensity of love, that is the real burden.

This is a burden they have taken up voluntarily, and take up again every time one of their children needs care. They lay down their immediate preferences, die to themselves a little more, and shoulder the burden of love and service. It is the love that is the burden, not the babies.

Of course, they don't have to shoulder this burden. They could simply not respond to the need, or give it cursory attention. They could love their children less, and spare themselves some effort. But they will not take that route, for even the thought of that weighs much more heavily than any task. They could not bear to think of their children being less-than-completely loved.

Parenthood is an extreme example of this principle, but it is what comes into play every time we care for others. The burden is always the love. It is not the cry of our child from the next room, or the late-night phone call from the distressed friend, or the sleepless spouse sitting in the darkened living room with a burdened heart, that is so hard to bear. It is the love, or it is nothing. We can always pull the pillow over our head, or let the call roll to voice mail, or pretend we don't notice the empty bed. But if our love is great enough, those options will not even occur to us, and we will again shoulder the burden of love.

We were warned of this. The One who loved so much the He left perfection to come down to shoulder the burden personally was crushed to the ground (thrice, according to legend) before He was broken for love. He told us that following Him meant shouldering the burden of love every day. He also assured us that we would have help with that burden, because it was His burden, and He would help carry it.

But we won't get that help unless we step up and agree to take on the weight of love. Perhaps it will help if we remember what's so heavy: it isn't the baby, or the friend, or the spouse, or whoever. It's the love we have for them that weighs so much, that drives us to expend our scarce personal resources for another. And let us pray for one another (particularly my daughter, her husband, and their children!), that we can share the burden of the weight of love.

Much of what I learned of manhood, I learned from the Inklings

For a variety of reasons, I didn't have a lot of instruction in manhood from other men while I was growing up. My own father never had good instruction from his father, so he had only so much he could pass along. He led by word and example as best he could, and I'm tremendously grateful for that, but it was limited. We lived far from any relatives and didn't have many families we were close to, so I didn't have grandfathers or uncles or surrogate uncles to do the kind of mentoring that can form lads into men.

But the Lord has many tools in His toolbox, so He arranged for me to learn critical things about manhood from other sources. One of them happened to be the Inklings – primarily C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. Now, don't go looking for a book or essay on “Manhood 101” from either of those authors, because there isn't one. What they have to teach is scattered through their works. In my case, it was mostly through their fiction, which was very formative in the development of my moral imagination. I grew up with the Chronicles of Narnia from elementary school days, discovering the Lord of the Rings and Lewis' Space Trilogy in my high school years. I cannot count the number of times I walked across Ettinsmoor with Puddleglum, or crossed the Midgewater Marshes with Strider and the hobbits, or looked on while Tirian gave Eustace lessons in knighthood. Though these were literary figures alive “only” in my imagination, they were real, formative, and very valuable.

So, I'd like to pass along a few of these lessons, and what they've meant to me. These aren't just nice theories and maxims – these lessons have helped me at critical points in my life, and have guided my decisions great and small since I was 10 years old. I'm afraid that understanding them will require a reasonable working knowledge of the works quoted – I haven't the space or skill to synopsize them in blog posts.

So, I present: the manly wisdom of the Inklings:

“[Shasta] had not yet learned that if you do one good deed your reward usually is to be set to do another and harder and better one.” (from The Horse and His Boy)

The young traveler Shasta had only intended to escape a harsh and bitter life in Calormen. He would have considered himself fortunate to simply succeed at that, but one circumstance after another kept complicating his journey. The hardships kept piling up, and he always bore the brunt of them. In the end he was forced to do dangerous and heroic things in circumstances he could have never foreseen. He didn't choose these struggles; they were just handed to him and he was expected to overcome them.

Except – he did choose them, in the sense that he did not walk away, as he could have done. With the immediate future of Archenland and the ultimate future of Narnia in the balance, he could have just thrown up his hands and sat down on the grass, letting the Great and Powerful decide the outcome rather than a ragged, runaway peasant boy. But he and his companions just couldn't do that, so he kept at the tasks, even when the cost kept going up. The hurdles were the cost of getting to Narnia, to the freedom he had dreamt of his entire life, so he kept his eye on the goal and kept at the increasingly difficult tasks.

Lewis tosses this principle into the narrative almost as an afterthought, but it is a pivotal one that has helped me many times in my life. It's only human nature to look for some kind of reward or at least recognition for a job well done, especially when in service of a noble ideal. The reality is far different, especially with service to Christ's Kingdom, and doubly so with less glamorous tasks like pro-life work. Often when I'm feeling disappointed or getting discouraged or tending to self-pity with the never-ending-ness of it all, I remember the “Shasta principle”. I should not be surprised when the reward for doing a good deed is being set to do a harder and better one. Expecting that, living with that, is a critical part of true manhood.

A true man takes responsibility, even at great personal cost.

“And since it seemed fit that Isildur's heir should labour to repair Isildur's fault, I went with Gandalf on the long and hopeless search.” Aragorn son of Arathorn at the Council of Elrond, The Fellowship of the Ring

The character of Aragorn is a lesson in nobility and true manhood, and this statement is a good example of why. Gandalf needs Aragorn's help in a difficult and dangerous task: finding Gollum to learn the truth about the Ring he held for many years. That the Ring was not destroyed when it should have been was due to Isildur's fascination with it. Centuries later, Aragorn remembers this fault of his forefather, and undertakes the brutal hunt of the lost Gollum in partial reparation. He takes responsibility for something that happened centuries before he was born, to which he is only tenuously connected.

The cultural phenomenon of adolescence was all but invented for my generation, the Baby Boomers. Part of the definition of adolescence is claiming adult privileges while avoiding adult responsibility. When I was a young man, I saw most of my peers place an almost unquestioned value on avoiding responsibility. The idea was to get as much as you could while giving as little as you could get away with, especially as little personal commitment. This was what engendered men living with their parents well into their 20's, and participating in “relationships” that sometimes lasted longer than a decade without moving closer to marriage.

Over against this insipid model stands the inspiring figure of Aragorn, who accepts responsibility for something for which no reasonable person would consider him in the least culpable. This has inspired me all my adult life not to fear responsibility, but to step up and accept it. I've been far from perfect at it, but the example of Aragorn has always been there, calling me on.

What must be done takes precedence over what you feel like doing

“Were I to go where my heart dwells, far in the North I would now be wandering in the fair valley of Rivendell.”

“...may I not now spend my life as I will?”
“Few may do that with honor.”

Conversation between Aragorn and Éowyn, “The Passing of the Grey Company”, The Return of the King

One of the highest value in our culture is self-fulfillment. Every day through hundreds of channels we are told that we, and only we, should define ourselves and lay out our own paths. We should go where we want to go and do what we feel like doing. Nothing should stand in the way of self-fulfillment – not duty, not honor, not responsibility. “I just had to be true to myself” is the mantra that trumps every claim on us and justifies any treachery, any abandonment, any shirking. It is even taught that to deny yourself pursuit of what you wish is to be false to yourself, to betray your own identity.

Again the manly figure of Aragorn stands in stark opposition to this lie. Duty and responsibility drive him to do what must be done. He knows what he wants, and longs for it deeply, but first he must attend to his tasks. Others are counting on him to come through, and he must not let them down. His own desires and wishes can wait – he has a job to do. To Aragorn, being a man means being one who puts responsibility and duty before his own wishes and preferences.

Aragorn's example has helped me frequently through the years, especially when the sirens of our culture have sung to me about placing my own identity and fulfillment ahead of my responsibilities. I will not find my identity by abandoning my duties and chasing after what seems fulfilling at the moment. I will find my identity by seeing my responsibilities through to their completion – because that's what men do.

I'll have a few more examples of Inkling manhood in my next post.