Which month of the year is preeminent? Truth be told there really is no contest, as you’ll discover below. But special holidays and observances are piling up monthly, apparently each month vying for “The Best Month of the Year Award,” in a very odd—and in my opinion—hopeless way. Below is a mere sampling of the madness.
One would think December would win “The Best Month of the Year Award” (BMYA) hands down, boasting as it does of Christmas and, uh hm, Take It In The Ear Day (December 8). Nope.
January weighs in with New Year’s Day and National Humiliation Day (I wish humiliation happened to me only once a year). Nice try.
February embraces Valentines Day (often very similar to Humiliation Day, for guys at least) and Ground Hogs Day. Are you kidding?
March commemorates St Patrick’s Day and National Noodle Month. Even many Irish don’t really care.
April claims National Frog Month and a special Day for Fools (no, not my birthday). Enough said.
May marks May Day and National Moving Month (did I break some law moving last July?). What?
Everybody loves June and the beginning of summer; but June also brags of Potty Training Awareness Month. Close.
July observes Independence Day and—lucky, or not, for all those July 4 picnickers—is also National Baked Beans Month. What no beer?
August is just hot. Why is this even on the list?
September settles in very close to the top of the BMYA list because my wife’s birthday is September—yes, the whole month. September also celebrates National Cable TV Month. If only . . .
November also nestles near number one celebrating Thanksgiving and International Drum Month (is this somehow connected with all those leftover Thanksgiving drum sticks?). Tryptophan!
But the obvious winner of the BMYA is . . . "November, drum roll please" . . . OCTOBER!
You laugh? Consider the following: October celebrates Free Thought Month (which gives me permission to freely think October is preeminent), National Liver Awareness, Hispanic Heritage, Fire Prevention, Disability Awareness, National Popcorn Popping, and Church Library Month (that’s a biggy).
October also features some of the best contradictory observances: Go Hog Wild—Eat Country Ham Month alongside Hunger Awareness, Month of the Dinosaurs beside Clergy Appreciation (maybe that’s not a contradiction), and National—get that—NATIONAL!—Sarcastic Month combined with Positive Attitude Month. And then there’s Halloween (which some might consider a blight on a nearly perfect month).
Plus there are some pretty amazing people who were born in the month of October. I won’t mention any names; just let it be known that October is also Self-Promotion Month.
So, what’s all this got to do with God Sightings, life, faith, and all that important, serious stuff? I’m not really sure.
Maybe . . .
• Humans are incredibly creative and at the same time extremely silly.
• There are way too many things to prevent, be aware of, and celebrate than is humanly possible.
• I am just so ebullient about October I had to write something about it.
Is there a God Sighting in October? You tell me.
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Kids, Eye Glasses, Skateboards, Snakes, and God
I once accompanied a nine year-old boy on a search for his lost glasses. I did it out of duty. And I held no real hope of finding them. I went only to quell my guilt for not searching when we would inevitably go purchase another pair. Plus this particular nine year-old is a delight and even searching for a needle in a haystack with him could be fun.
We parked my truck near the place he remembered last having his glasses—a walking path snaking through our small community and landscaped with large river rocks. He had been at the new skateboard park and I reckoned we had about three quarters of a mile of path to search from here to there. I knew the path well and was naively picturing the most likely places to search. The boy had followed no such direct route, however, instead following the more fun and loopy nine year-old course.
First, we searched the bushes around every rock he had climbed and launched himself off. Next we veered off the path and hunted around a statue of a flying horse he had investigated. Then we left the path altogether and cut diagonally through a parking lot. But even that was not direct. He showed me the sidewalk railing he had climbed over, climbed over it again, and then cut behind the dumpster and finally sauntered through the restaurant, again. It was truly random! Back on the path we peered under every weed in the spot he had stopped to chase a garter snake. He had bent over there and thought that might be the point his glasses slid off, though he couldn’t really remember. Here I engaged in the search earnestly agreeing it was the most likely place. But we came up empty and continued by scouring every dink and dodge he took off the path until we finally reached the skate park.
All the while, we had a fun conversation about snakes and any other stuff that came up. This was definitely not a mathematically precise power walk or even a systematic search. I observed he didn’t so much walk as bounce, light and airy with his feet only touching the ground for the fun of it. I learned the names of various skateboard moves and saw the familiar, I thought, walking path for the first time. We spooked another garter snake and marveled at how fast they are. We talked about likely fishing holes as we walked near the river. We wondered what fun things we could do with the $70 to $100 his new glasses would cost to replace, if we found his old ones. Reversing the Apostle Paul’s meaning “I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child” and I enjoyed every moment of it. Being a nine year-old ain’t so bad.
Maybe that’s what Jesus meant when he called the children onto his lap and told his adult followers to have a child-like faith. Maybe the “kingdom of heaven,” as Jesus talked about it and lived it, is more than a “straight and narrow path” defined by rules and time lines and well defined adult perceptions and ideas. What if the freedom Jesus promised his followers is better illustrated (and lived!) by a young boy turning his search for his glasses into another adventure? What if our pursuit of meaning—and Jesus himself—sometimes became a fun and loopy path? These things I pondered on the way back home.
But I had pretty much given up the search. After all, I had begun the search thinking I would not find what I was looking for (to paraphrase Bono). I would look down at the ground occasionally just because I should. Nearing my truck, I guiltily glanced down again and to my utter disbelief spied my nine year-old companion’s glasses sitting in the landscaping bark neatly folded as if someone had purposefully placed them there.
The nine year-old squealed; his face beamed; we high fived. We danced around as if we had found Jesus’ “pearl of great price.”
“I was just praying we’d find ‘em,” he said. “Jesus dropped ‘em right where you were lookin’.” Immediately my adult mind found a more plausible explanation for how the glasses ended up neatly folded where we had already searched. I wish it hadn’t.
We parked my truck near the place he remembered last having his glasses—a walking path snaking through our small community and landscaped with large river rocks. He had been at the new skateboard park and I reckoned we had about three quarters of a mile of path to search from here to there. I knew the path well and was naively picturing the most likely places to search. The boy had followed no such direct route, however, instead following the more fun and loopy nine year-old course.
First, we searched the bushes around every rock he had climbed and launched himself off. Next we veered off the path and hunted around a statue of a flying horse he had investigated. Then we left the path altogether and cut diagonally through a parking lot. But even that was not direct. He showed me the sidewalk railing he had climbed over, climbed over it again, and then cut behind the dumpster and finally sauntered through the restaurant, again. It was truly random! Back on the path we peered under every weed in the spot he had stopped to chase a garter snake. He had bent over there and thought that might be the point his glasses slid off, though he couldn’t really remember. Here I engaged in the search earnestly agreeing it was the most likely place. But we came up empty and continued by scouring every dink and dodge he took off the path until we finally reached the skate park.
All the while, we had a fun conversation about snakes and any other stuff that came up. This was definitely not a mathematically precise power walk or even a systematic search. I observed he didn’t so much walk as bounce, light and airy with his feet only touching the ground for the fun of it. I learned the names of various skateboard moves and saw the familiar, I thought, walking path for the first time. We spooked another garter snake and marveled at how fast they are. We talked about likely fishing holes as we walked near the river. We wondered what fun things we could do with the $70 to $100 his new glasses would cost to replace, if we found his old ones. Reversing the Apostle Paul’s meaning “I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child” and I enjoyed every moment of it. Being a nine year-old ain’t so bad.
Maybe that’s what Jesus meant when he called the children onto his lap and told his adult followers to have a child-like faith. Maybe the “kingdom of heaven,” as Jesus talked about it and lived it, is more than a “straight and narrow path” defined by rules and time lines and well defined adult perceptions and ideas. What if the freedom Jesus promised his followers is better illustrated (and lived!) by a young boy turning his search for his glasses into another adventure? What if our pursuit of meaning—and Jesus himself—sometimes became a fun and loopy path? These things I pondered on the way back home.
But I had pretty much given up the search. After all, I had begun the search thinking I would not find what I was looking for (to paraphrase Bono). I would look down at the ground occasionally just because I should. Nearing my truck, I guiltily glanced down again and to my utter disbelief spied my nine year-old companion’s glasses sitting in the landscaping bark neatly folded as if someone had purposefully placed them there.
The nine year-old squealed; his face beamed; we high fived. We danced around as if we had found Jesus’ “pearl of great price.”
“I was just praying we’d find ‘em,” he said. “Jesus dropped ‘em right where you were lookin’.” Immediately my adult mind found a more plausible explanation for how the glasses ended up neatly folded where we had already searched. I wish it hadn’t.
Thursday, September 11, 2008
God Sightings in the Gilcrease Museum
Get me within one hundred miles of Tulsa, OK and I get the shakes: an irresistible urge to visit the Gilcrease Museum. I exaggerate not; just ask my family and any one of my million friends. The Gilcrease is one of the finest western art museums in America, featuring Thomas Moran, Charles Russell, Frederick Remington, and others. Besides it's free.
I especially appreciate Remington because even I understand his art. Okay, I can't honestly claim to understand it, but I like it. His art depicts stories I can imagine myself in. For example, when standing in front of his sculpture of four cowboys firing their pistols, riding on wild-eyed ponies "Coming through the Rye," I find myself flinching, trying to duck out of the way of the thundering hooves. I also realize Remington is inspiring me to tell my own story.
I'm not the only one. Larry McMurtry also borrowed inspiration from Remington in the Gilcrease. Remington's stop-action painting titled "Stampede" seems to show up in McMurtry's Pulitzer Prize winning western Lonesome Dove. "Stampede" pictures a drenched cowboy in leather chaps racing his terrified horse alongside a panicked cattle herd. Rain streaks the gray sky as lightning cracks behind them like a whip in the hand of God. In Lonesome Dove Newt and the gang are chased across the prairie in a beautifully similar fashion.
I also find the Gilcrease irresistible because it has inspired in me a desire to know the artists themselves. I am drawn into Remington's stories in art but also into Remington's own story. I devoured a biography on him, finding in those pages a man gloriously obsessed with authenticity in every detail. Remington is credited with changing how artists painted horses and other animals because he studied them in motion and accurately depicted them in art. He even burned a pile of his own art in his back yard that did not measure up to his exacting standards. Each time I visit the Gilcrease, I find myself wanting to know more about this gifted, creative, intelligent man who could tell such enticing stories through color and clay.
An ancient poet once experienced a similar draw to another Artist:
"For you, Lord, have made me glad through your work;
I will triumph in the works of your hands.
O Lord, how great are your works!
Your thoughts are very deep."
At the Gilcrease, I too began to glimpse God's picture, a deeper portrait of life that inspired me to live my story in authenticity. Now when standing in awe in a golden grove of aspen or among a snowflake-diverse group of people, I am drawn into a Story bigger than myself. I dream; I listen; I am inspired. I turn again and again to that strange biography about this Creative Genius who could work such wonder with color and clay.
The Gilcrease reminds me that all of life is an art gallery in which God, the ultimate Artist, draws us into the Story that inspires all others. So, I deeply desire to live out the authentic story painted for me by the Artist of Life. And maybe, like seeing Remington's masterful "Stampede" in McMurtry's Lonesome Dove, by God's grace, someone may glimpse God's story in mine.
That's what God Sightings are all about: seeing the Artist in the art. God may not always speak through a burning bush, passionate prophet, or whispering wind. But God is not silent. Our task is to stand in the gallery and see and hear and know the Creator of our souls: to see God.
I hope these words, my meager art, such as they are, help.
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