Ancient Truth | Modern Sound

Over the summer school breaks out and life moves from the regular rhythm of learning into holiday mode.  For my kids this has meant summer classes, a trip to Grandma’s in Scotland, visiting their new home in the Netherlands, and a short vacation in Vienna.  A pretty normal summer for us - which makes us a strange family - but on the other hand it all seems normal to us and I spent half my time this summer trying to entertain my kids because they were “bored”. 

But, on the other hand, this is not a normal summer.  We have had the usual complaints of boredom from our youngest who doesn’t like being away from the discipline of learning and school.  Weird kid.  Yet, in the back of her mind, she knows that a new school is coming and that will present its own challenges.  With my sixteen year old the challenge of a new school is not lodged in some recess of the mind but is front and centre.  As she puts it, “It will be a nightmare”. 

As parents we know a couple of things they don’t yet.  First, we know that we will be there for them.  The reality of fanmily is that it is often taken for granted.  And, second, we know that God goes ahead of us preparing our way and making for us a home and a church family.  Already there are friends waiting for my children and a home which honors God to support them.  Our faith tells us that in every city in the world there are those who are faithful.  In these early years the girls do not know these certainties but they will see the power of them in the future. 

It is a different matter for my son who heads off to college.  As we move in the direction of Europe he will stay in the US and attend engineering school.  This distance scares the parents and excites the child.  We want our son to stay in the world of parental certainties longer but he knows that the time for that is over.  And we know it too even if it makes it no easier to let him go.

When my son reaches college he will be faced with some pretty big choices.  Is he ready?  I am certain he is not - he is certain that he is.  I am biased and so is he.  Yet the truth will come out soon and as I let him go I have only the promises of his baptism to reassure me (because his dress sense and taste in music surely does not).  At baptism we gave up our son to God and claimed His covenant promise that he had called my son by name and that forever he would be in his care.  As my son starts engineering school I have never in my life clung more closely to that promise.  Anyone who has ever parented a teenager knows that depending on their choices is a fools errand.  Which leaves me clinging to the promise of God which, probably, is where I should have been all along.

Today is Pentecost Sunday, the birthday of the church.  Although the church was born in Jerusalem and was in the earliest days pretty much a Jewish sect God’s actions at Pentecost show clearly where He was leading his church. 

⁵Now there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven. ⁶When they heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one heard them speaking in his own language. ⁷Utterly amazed, they asked: “Are not all these men who are speaking Galileans? ⁸Then how is it that each of us hears them in his own native language? ⁹Parthians, Medes and Elamites; residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, ¹⁰Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome ¹¹ (both Jews and converts to Judaism); Cretans and Arabs-we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!” ¹²Amazed and perplexed, they asked one another, “What does this mean?”

There are times when you read the bible when you read a question like that and you just want to slap the guy.  Dude, how stupid are you if you cant get the point of God talking to everyone in their own language.  The point is - the door is open to everyone. 

So it was on Pentecost Sunday I find myself in church sitting next to a Nigerian family and worshipping alongside Indians, Tamils, Indonesians, Americans, other Africans, Dutch, several English, and another Scot.   We sang songs that we all knew, read from familiar scriptures, and said the Lord’s prayer.  When we greeted each other there were the immediate differences (Nigerians dress well to go to church, often in bright traditional robes, a colorful spectacle) but there was also the peace that comes from shaking the hand of a man you have never met yet somehow you know.  That is what it means to be a Christian, it means knowing the essence of another human being and knowing that human essence is grounded in being a created child of God our Father. 

This week President Obama nominated Sonia Sotomayor as his choice for the supreme court of the United States.  Much of the talk centered around a quote made by Judge Sotomayor some time ago about the richness of the experience of a Latino woman when compared with others.  There is no doubt a story to tell in that woman’s journey.  Justice Thomas has a similar story and it is eloquently told in his biography “My Grandfather’s Son”.  These are two great American stories but to emphasise them goes against the notion that God teaches us at Pentecost and I think ultimately makes for a poor supreme court justice. 

Pentecost was a time when God got to the heart of the matter and overcame our individual stories and dealt with us in essence.  God said, I don’t care if you are Cretan or and Arab, I am going to deal with you just the same way.  I will demand of you the same and the rewards of heaven will be open to all too. 

I can’t help thinking that bringing our differences to the centre and making them the definition of our humanity makes for bad law and poor judges.  Better instead to behave like God at Pentecost and demand the same from all and let all have access to the riches of grace. 

It was at the apex of my teenage narcissism that I sat before my mother and father and confessed the latest and greatest disaster of my adolescence.  I knew this one was different though.  There would be no talking my way out of this problem, indeed, my mother and father and even the rest of my family would this time be effected by my choices.  It was going to be bad.

My dad was a big guy and a tough guy and as he silently came to the boil I remember my mother saying to him, “Tom, he needs our forgiveness”.  I was stunned, but it was the moment in which I grew up.  My mother’s forgiveness changed the course of my life and since that moment I have tried to pay the two of them back by trying to be someone they could be proud of and glad they had forgiven.  Strange that I had experienced the power of forgiveness before I understood why it was so powerful.  It would take a few years and a Christian conversion to work that out.

Today, my mother has Alzheimer’s disease.  If you have watched the movie “The Notebook” you have seen the romantic version of the story.  In the movie a great love story is retold and in the telling a woman is released from the prison of her mind to remember her husband and family.  It is cruel to see the movie end with mother retreating back into the world of dementia not knowing who is in the room or what that story is about.  Gena Rowlands played the mother in the movie and did justice to dilemma of families affected by the disease.  The real notebook though is different.  My mother waits in a hospital ward with other older women waiting for a place in a care home for those who have the disease.  It is a sad Victorian hospital that has seen better days.

I never had a close relationship to my mother.  In fact, I often had the thought she was more than slightly mad.  I am ashamed of that thought today.  Dad worked of course, and being paid by the hour, he worked every hour he could (especially time and a half for Saturdays and double time for Sundays).  Mum looked after the house.  In that house - one bathroom and about 2o00 square ft. - lived ten people.  My grandfather, my older sister and her two kids (married at sixteen and home again by nineteen), my younger brother, two younger sisters, and mum and dad.  That, I suppose, is the reason why my mum was slightly mad.  I don’t remember her smiling much and don’t really remember her having fun.  Always cleaning and cooking and doing “piece work” to help make money for the family.  What does live with me though is the memory of my mum and dad taking a mattress out and laying it on the floor of our family room to make their bed up each night.  There was just not enough room. 

Today, lying in the hospital bed, my mother knows who I am but doesn’t remember my children.  Or that I am married.  She asked my brother once, “How is your mother?”.  My father visits every day and chats with my mother whether she recognises him or not.  There is no notebook to read and no magic to make her return to who she once was.  And yet “The Notebook” isn’t completely off the mark.  For on occasion the disease shows the relationship that was once there between mum and dad.  My own formative years were at a time that was full of struggle for my parents as they tried to just make ends meet - I can hardly remember them having fun together.  But mum now occasionally seems to regress to a time when it was just her and Tom and sometimes, just sometimes, you see in her eyes the love they had together 50 years ago. 

 When I write this blog I sometimes wonder, what’s the point.  But seeing my mother in the grips of this disease has made me realise that even the most trivial things in life can be glorious and significant.  Take away the power to know your spouse or your son or your grandchildren and what is left?  Not much.  Thinking again about my mother also has made me realise that parenting can all boil down to a moment’s decision.  That’s an unforgiving test which my mum passed but I fear I will not.  Who knows when that moment will come and if so, will I be ready?  Are you ready?