The 2012 Andy Blog

This day comes around every year.  And every year I feel gut-shot or beat over the head as the memories of that day in 1996 come rolling back into focus.  But something is different about this year.  It struck me that he has been gone almost as long as he was here – 16 years.  No, it does not seem possible when so many of the memories are still fresh . . . but others are starting to dim no matter how hard I try to hold on to them desiring the clarity and comfort of that smiling face, that wonderful laugh, that aroma of his after shave (though most times it was applied without shaving).

A lot of my feelings this morning can be expressed in Fr. Abram Ryan’s poem about his brother who was killed in battle.  The title of the poem is Gone

Gone! And there’s not a gleam of you.

Faces that float into far away,
Gone! And we can only dream of you
Each as you fade like a star away,

Fade as a star in the sky from us,
Vainly we look for you light again;
Hear ye the sound of a sigh from us?
“Come” and our hearts will be bright again.

Come! and gaze on our face once more,

Bring us the smiles of the olden days –
Come! and shine in your place once more;
And, change the dark into golden days –

Gone! Gone! Gone! Joy has fled for us,
Gone into the night of the nevermore,
And darkness rests where you blessed us
A light we will miss for ever more.

Have I Learned the Family Secret, Nellie?

My maternal grandmother was Nellie K. Hussey . . . well, that’s partially correct.  Her tombstone reads: “Nellie K. Hussey; July 25, 1878 – April 2, 1959.”  As far as I knew while she was alive and while my mother’s generation was alive, her name was Nellie.  One time I asked my mother if Nellie was short for some other name.  Her answer was that Nellie was Nellie.  But after further grilling from me, she finally admitted that Nellie was not her given name but it’s the name on the death certificate and every legal document she ever signed, including her marriage license.  I always planned to explore this matter further but, by the time I got around to any serious study of family history, there was no one to ask. 

Several years ago, a friend’s wife, who does genealogical research professionally, volunteered to look into my family’s history.  She did far more work than I ever expected and I learned some very interesting things about my family.  One of the revelations was that Nellie’s given name was Margaret Ellen Kearney.  I love this name.  I think it is beautiful.  So, while one mystery was solved, another raised its head: why would she insist from the time she was a young girl that she be called Nellie?  There is just not a single clue in all the remaining family documents.  So while this is an interesting subject to me, there did not seem to be any answer this side of heaven.

Over the past few months I have been becoming acquainted with Father Abram J. Ryan, the Poet Priest of the South and the person for who my high school was named.  I am working my way through his collected poems while reading David O’Connell’s well researched biography.  The poems are incredible but not modern.  They are much more like Kipling’s in that most them rhythm in the classical sense and they tell a story.  I’m only a third of the way through the poems and my heart has been deeply touched – I’ve shed many a tear.  While reading the biography I came to the section when he first agreed to publishing a book containing his poems (he claims they are not good enough to merit the term poems and refers to them as “my simple verses.”)  While the majority of his poems have religious themes, the ones for which he is the most famous are the ones that lament the “Lost Cause.”  Ryan was born in Illinois and raised in St. Louis but his sympathies were with the South, not in defense of slavery but in defense of state’s rights. His poems were so popular in the south that many poems were required memorization for school children up until the late 1920’s.  When Ryan published his first edition of his collected poems in 1879, he felt that something was needed to “soften” the collected works so that the readers would not think that he was antagonistic against the North because many of his poems defended the Lost Cause.  A friend of his had won a poetry contest conducted by a Mobile newspaper and he asked her if he could include her poem “Reunited” in his collection.  She agreed and it has been part of his collection in every edition since.

My grandmother, Nellie, was surely exposed to Ryan’s poems as she progressed through school.  She finished high school and very soon began to teach in a one-room school house (grades 1 through 8) in Palmyra, Tennessee.  The friend of Ryan’s who wrote “Reunited” was named Margaret Ellen Henry Ruffin, but he knew her by her preferred name: Nellie Henry. 

I was only 9 years old when my grandmother had to be put in a nursing home because of the dementia she was suffering.  But I do remember how much she liked to read and how much she loved poetry.  Did she choose to be called Nellie because of her knowledge of Nellie Henry?  The final answer will have to wait but I certainly think it is possible and interesting.   

A Reflection on Being 65

When I was a kid I never thought I would be here.  In the late 1950’s my Dad was about 40.  During a stretch of a few years or so, he had three friends that died, all in their 40’s.  I remember how distressed he was and, at times, it seemed that he was wrapped up in thoughts about whether this was going to happen to him.  I got this notion in my mind that the way things worked were anytime after 40 the rules of life said that you could just drop dead.  So what I began to focus on was living to the ripe old age of 53!  If I could only live to see the new millennium I would be satisfied.  Well that milestone is past and so is the big “six-o” and here I am at the culturally created “retirement” age.  It was not that many years ago that people did not go to work the day after their 65^th birthday – they were finished with their work career and were ready to go fishing and play with grandchildren.  While I am certainly ready for those two activities, tomorrow morning, Lord willing, I will be sitting at my desk and I have plans to do so for several more years.

 My thoughts this morning, on the 65^th anniversary of my birth, run as follows:

I find myself more inclined to thank God for his blessings every day.  I don’t think this is directly associated with this birthday but with a more consistent prayer life.  Many of my blessings are directly associated with my wonderful family – I praise God for them every day.

I find that I still have many more things I want to do but I am finally starting to “grow up” and realize that, unless I live to be 130, there is not enough time to finish them all.  So, with a more mature attitude, I am sorting through dreams and deciding which ones can really go on my “bucket list” and which ones need to fade away.

I find myself more sure of God’s love for me than ever before – which leads to being able to trust him more completely.   Lately, I have been able to turn more and more of my problems (and my angst with life) over to him and say with those brothers and sisters I met in Africa “whatever the Lord does is right!”

I reflect more and more on the minefield of my life (most of it self-created) and see the hand of Providence carrying me over the most difficult areas.  While there are many, many things I would like to go back and fix, many words I wish had never escaped my lips, many hurtful deeds I mourn over, I know that God’s grace has been at work in all those situations and that he has provided healing.

I have a continuing regret that I have not been good at nurturing relationships.  Scotty Smith refers to this as being a “frozen man” and I think that is an excellent description.  This does not mean that I don’t like people – I do, I love people – but I find it hard to build intimate, lasting relationships.  It is my hope and prayer, that God continues to work on me in this area, to make me transparent to those who are close to me and, that by the time I leave this planet, I will have enough close friends to carry my bones.

I do have a goal for the rest of my life: I hope that I will be able to say before I die that Jesus is everything to me!

Andy Post - 2011

O Lord, I still miss him so much!

The carving in the wood (his desktop),

     The luggage tag named “Doc” on the wall,

Taz sitting watchfully on the bookcase,

     Waiting for the return of his friend – his all.


Lord, I confess my amazement,
     That while you made our minds to think
           Thoughts grand and deep and surreal,
It is the small things of life that get us,
     And constrict our hearts with bands of steel.


His favorite jacket hanging in my closet,
     The lock-back knife in my desk drawer;
The computer disk with his password lost,
     All these and many, many more.


The old pipe in its velvet sleeve,
     With sweet aroma lingering still;
The story of his traitorous stump,
     Turning over on the hill;
The memory of that afternoon,
     Will chill my soul and be with me till . . .


I wait like Taz with hopeless yearning,
     My joy unfulfilled in this earthy state;
Knowing that his eyes are glory viewing,

    As I await my time with him across the gate.

It is the small things of life that get us,

     And constrict our hearts with bands of steel;

O Lord, I still miss him so much!

     Will it end – this grieving feel?

A Remarkable Book about Books

I just finished reading Pat Conroy’s My Reading Life. I actually bought the book at the Blue Bicycle Book Store in Charleston while we were on vacation. Blue Bicycle is a great source for everything Conroy and when I saw this little book (though overpriced) I had to have it. I started it on the beach but heavy philosophy reading assignments kept me from the final third of the book until this week.

Pat Conroy may be my favorite author. I have read all his books except The Boo, and My Losing Season. All of his books are autobiographical. The pain of abuse by his father and the loving care of his bibliophilic and thoroughly southern mother come through on almost every page. This little book is just what the title offers: a delightful tour through those books and authors that have become part of the writing persona of Conroy.

One entire chapter is devoted to his mother’s, and subsequently Pat’s, affection for Gone with the Wind. His mother read the book so often (and at least once a year out loud to Pat) that she would wear out copies and had to buy a new one. Conroy has this to say about the book: “To Southerners like my mother, Gone with the Wind was not just a book: it was an answer, a clenched fist raised to the North, an anthem of defiance. If you could not defeat the Yankees on the battlefield, then by God, one of your women could rise up from the ashes of humiliation to write more powerfully than the enemy and all the historians and novelists who sang the praises of the Union.”

In another chapter he shares the story of his high school encounter with the school librarian. It is a Catholic school and she was obviously not hired for her knowledge of books. Conroy is sitting in the library reading Hugo’s Les Miserables. He is cross-examined by the librarian as to why he is reading the book, “are you just reading it for the dirty parts?” “I didn’t know it had any dirty parts” responds Conroy. “Well it’s by Frenchman and you just can’t trust them.” At which point she suggests he read a good book about football and promptly gives him a copy of The Hunchback of Notre Dame (as it so happens, also by Hugo).

The book contains chapters about his favorite used book store in Atlanta (The Old New York Book Shop), which became a meeting spot of local authors and a launching pad for new books by those same authors. We learn about the lifelong impact of his college literature professor and the poetry of James Dickey. If you read this enchanting little book with a notepad and a dictionary by your side, you will end up with an expanded vocabulary and a reading list that goes a long way towards being the Great Books of the English Language. I feel the need for more bookcases!

To Grandson Sean on the Death of Odie, His Beloved Cat

Sean,

I am so sorry about Odie. He was a good cat and I know he was a good friend to you. As soon as I received the email from your mom it was like a switch was thrown in I my brain and some long forgotten memories resurfaced. Growing up the animal I was most attached to was a little mixed-breed dog named Friskie. She was my everyday companion. The house I grew up in had a driveway that came down one side of the house and made a semicircle to the garage on the other side. The inside of the semicircle was fenced for a dog run. There was a little back porch off the kitchen over the garage door. That little porch was my day-dreaming place. I would go out and sit on the floor of the porch, sometimes for hours at a time, and imagine wonderful things, including how I would be the hero of any circumstance when I was grown. Friskie would lay on the porch with her head in my lap for as long as is sat there (except when a cat or another dog would trespass in our yard). With the help of Mom and Dad, I took good care of her. Every year we took her to the vet and got her shots. We made sure she had good food and plenty of exercise. During the winter, Dad would rig a 150-watt light bulb in her doghouse for some heat. And, if it got really cold, we would fix a bed in the basement and bring her in.

In those days, the annual shots for dogs did not include a shot to prevent distemper. One day when I came home from school Mom said that Friskie must have a hurt paw because she was not walking right. We checked to see if she had a cut or thorn stuck in the paw but could not find anything. Within a few days, she was having trouble with both her hind legs and we knew something was wrong. We took her to the vet and he said that he thought she had distemper. He gave her a shot but said that distemper was almost impossible to treat once the animal was infected. We took her home and we hoped – and I prayed for my dog. For a few days she did not get better but her condition did not worsen, encouraging our hope. We kept her in the basement and placed her food and water close to her bed so she didn’t have to walk far. Every day, as soon as I got home from school, I headed directly to the basement to check on Friskie. One day, about a week after the trip to the vet, I saw her perk up as I came down the steps. By the time I reached the bottom, she was out of her bed coming across the floor to me – only her back legs didn’t work at all. She was dragging herself across the floor with her front paws to be close to me. I knew right then that the battle was lost – she was not going to recover. For a couple days this scene was repeated only it was obvious that she was in pain as she drug herself across the floor. That night Mom and Dad set me down and explained that Friskie was not going to get better and that she was suffering. Since she was my dog, I needed to be the one to make the decision. I knew what that decision needed to be though my heart was breaking. The next afternoon I sat with my best friend in my lap for a couple of hours until Dad got home and then I said goodbye to Friskie.

That was over 50 years ago and I am weeping as I write this. God has given us such a great gift in the animals we love and who become so dear to us. I’m not the greatest theologian but I believe that there will be animals in the New Heavens and the New Earth – God wants us to see the perfection of His creation as it existed in the Garden. I wanted you to know that, if I could, I would carry all your sadness for you – but I can’t. I certainly know how you feel and I am very sad for you.

Love,
GP

Pleadings of an Old Man

“And I pleaded with the Lord at that time, saying, 24 ‘O Lord God, you have only begun to show your servant your greatness and your mighty hand. For what god is there in heaven or on earth who can do such works and mighty acts as yours? 25 Please let me go over and see the good land beyond the Jordan, that good hill country and Lebanon.’ 26 But the Lord was angry with me because of you and would not listen to me. And the Lord said to me, ‘Enough from you; do not speak to me of this matter again.’” Deut 3: 23-26


For the first time is several years I committed myself to reading through the Bible this year. It is amazing how many passages, especially in the Old Testament, seem so fresh and new. The one quoted above just seemed to jump off the page and has stayed in my mind for some time. There are four thoughts or insights I had from these verses.

1. Even after being told that he would not be allowed to enter the Promised Land, Moses makes one final petition – he had a strong desire to see the land.

If nothing else, Moses had a keen understanding of the promises of God. Since he is the one that committed the book of Genesis to writing, he knows the promises given to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. I would imagine that thoughts about the land were a daily occurrence for Moses. When God told him that he could not enter the land due to his sin, I am sure this was a crushing blow. Though he did not have access to the New Testament, I suspect his familiarity with God was such that he understood the parable Jesus told about the persistent widow who gave the judge no rest until he ruled in her favor. Maybe these thoughts were in Moses’ mind as he pleaded his case to God one more time.

Moses could stand on the mountain and look across the Jordan to the land. It is interesting that Moses’ prayer was specific about wanting to see “the good hill country and Lebanon.” What he was asking for was not just to be given permission to cross the Jordan but to travel throughout the land. This is a bold prayer and should be an example for us. I know that my prayers tend to be small and timid as if I forget the power of the God I pray to – Lord make me bold and keep me from shortening your arm!

2. Moses, who experienced the burning bush; who witnessed the miracles of the plagues, the parting of the Red Sea, manna, water from a rock; who stood before and spoke with God, says “you have only begun to show your servant your greatness and your mighty hand.”

If this does not give us chills when we think about our future in the presence of God, nothing will. Remember how the face of Moses glowed with the reflected glory of God. It was so bright that he had to wear a veil for an extended period of time because it was more than the people could stand. Wow! And Moses says that this is just a small beginning of what is to be experienced we will be exposed to the full glory of God (and maybe we will never be able to experience the full glory because we are the creature and not the Creator). Again, I am lead to think about how much richer my prayer life would be if I spent even a little time each day meditating on God’s glory.

3. Moses states that the Lord was angry with him “because of you [the people].” Even the godliest of leaders have trouble taking responsibility for their sins.

We probably need to review the backstory just a bit. In Exodus 17, the people of Israel were camped in an area in the wilderness were there was not sufficient water for the people. Moses interceded with God and the Lord told Moses to take his staff and strike the rock. When he did, the rock opened and a stream of fresh water poured out that was large enough to provide water for all the people. This place was Massah (testing) and Meribah (quarrelling). In Numbers 20 the people have reached a place (also called Meribah) where there is no water. Moses and Aaron intercede again with God. God tells him “Take the staff, and assemble the congregation, you and Aaron your brother, and tell the rock before their eyes to yield its water.” Moses instead strikes the rock with the staff instead of speaking to it. This is his sin. So, what’s the big deal? Moses did the same thing he had done before, why was God angry with him? I’m sure there are a lot of opinions about this event. I think that God had Moses to strike the rock the first time to continue to establish his role as leader of the people and as the prophet of God. Forty years later Moses’ role was not in question. On the second occasion God told Moses to speak to the rock and not use the staff. I think this was to make it clear to the people that it was God who brought water from the rock and not some trick of Moses. By striking the rock with the staff, Moses stole some of the glory that was God’s alone. This is a big deal.

God calls some men to be leaders among his people. All through scripture, and especially in the NT, these men are characterized as ‘servant leaders’ and one of the hallmarks of such leaders is humility. One of the greatest temptations for our leaders is to lose some of the humility and begin to take pride in their abilities and talents. When this occurs, they are diminishing the glory due to God. Whether we are in leadership positions or not, we all are prone to the same temptation. Think about how different Moses’ prayer would have been if he had acknowledged his sin openly before the people rather that blame-shifting.

4. The God of mercy says “No” to Moses’ pleading.

What about when God answers the deep pleadings of our heart with a ‘no’? Most of us have probably experienced this at some point in our lives. Sometimes we get angry with God. Sometimes we begin to search for that hidden sin we must have committed that cause God to respond this way. And, there are a good number of other ways we respond to what the country music song terms “unanswered prayer.” Many of the people I have met who clearly demonstrate deep faith live in Africa. And, they have a saying that seems appropriate for the moment: God is good . . . all the time! We don’t have always have a good answer to the “why” question, but we always have a good answer to the “Who” question.