Time Well Spent (With My Brown Eyed Girl)

Twenty-two years after doing it myself, I’m spending the week watching my daughter graduate from high school—the same high school (though with a much higher GPA).
In some ways it seems surreal; in others it seems so right—kind of cosmically complete.
Watching her this week, I’ve been reflecting on how I’ve spent my life over the past twenty-two years, grieving how fast it’s gone, reveling in the sweet memories and enriching experiences.

Thinking back, evaluating how I spent my most precious commodity—time—I have a few regrets, but the one thing I particularly pleased with is the enormous amount of time I’ve spent with my children. As my daughter, Meleah, leaves my home to establish her own, I’m so glad I took the opportunities afforded me to be in her life.

Frederick Buechner wrote, “When a child is born, a father is born.”

He couldn’t have been more right about me and Meleah—when, at just four years older than she is now, she was born and I was born again (as a father).

We were tight from the very beginning. With her mom recovering from the big smiley face cut in her gut that she came out of, I held her and talked to her and loved her—keeping her close to me as if my primary purpose in life was to protect her, nurture her, love her.

From day one, I ordered my life—work, play, sleep, or lack there of—to maximize my time with Meleah. We were buddies. She wasn’t a burden, but my best friend. I’d leave work early, working at home as often as I could to be with her. When I went back to school I got to keep her all the time, and some of the saddest, loneliest times of my life were when I was alone in Tulsa and she was back home. Once, while way out there, I made the mistake of going to the James Brooks film, I’ll Do Anything. (In case you missed it: Matt Hobbs is a talented but unsuccessful actor. When his estranged ex-wife Beth dumps their daughter Jeannie on Matt, father and daughter have a lot of adjusting to do—the precocious child is overly accustomed to getting her own way. Matt eventually faces the choice of family vs career in a particularly difficult way.)

I couldn’t understand Matt Hobbs’ struggle. My career has never been any match for Meleah, but I did relate to his absolute love for his daughter. Leaving the theater with tears in my eyes, I went straight to the first payphone I could find, called my wife and had her wake Meleah up just so I could talk to her.

Having Meleah at such an early age meant we grew up together. Except I’ve been growing down, so at a certain point she passed me in maturity.

She has always been a princess, but between three and four, she wanted the whole world to know it.

“Don’t call me Meleah. My name is Arial. My name is Belle. I’m not Meleah. I’m Jasmine.”

I’d let her wear whatever you wanted to, which was always a Disney princess costume, and pink plastic princess heels—in which we clacked around town together, the ladies at the bank laughing, saying to one another, “Her daddy dressed her again.”

When I started working at the prison, I chose a shift that afforded me the most time with Meleah, and I’d often pick her up from Ms. Virgie’s and take her to lunch at Red Eye video where we’d eat sub sandwiches and watch Happily Ever After—put on the big screen just for her.

When she was on the verge of adolescence, in an attempt to develop her feminism, I introduced her to Buffy, and as I suspected, she related to her strength, her integrity, her cool, pretty, funny girl power goodness.

As she got a little older, we had more and more fun—hanging out talking—I love when she’d stop by my office late at night on her way to bed and talk and talk and talk.

Time.

I’m so glad for all the time we’ve had. It’s been a lot. Far more than most—yet not nearly enough. It went by way too fast and got over way too soon.

I enjoyed every second of our time, but none more than those middle-of-the-night trips with her and her brother to Walmart for early Halloween costumes or to Waffle House for a midnight snack.

Time is all we have. Time with our children is the most precious time.

One of my fondest memories of our time was when she went with me to Miami for book signings, to attend the Miami International Bookfair, and to sit together on the fifth row in front of the goal to watch the Miami Heat play the Dallas Mavericks—the highlight of which for me was to see her beautiful, beaming face on the jumbo tron.

I could kiss whoever came up with the work-study program. This year, Meleah has worked for me, and that extra half day we got together was more time—precious, sacred, never-to-be-gotten-back time.

I could go on much longer—we’ve packed a couple of lifetimes together in these first eighteen years—but I’ll stop here, and just say once again how grateful I am for the time I’ve gotten with my girl, and to remind all of us that it wasn’t time “gotten” as much as time “taken.” We have to take time, make time for what’s important to us. It’s too easy to waste time, to tell ourselves we’ll get around to managing our time better tomorrow—then we look at the clock and see that another twenty years have passed.

In order for me to be able to say today that I have no regrets when it comes to the quantity and quality of time I spent with my graduating daughter means that nearly eighteen years ago and every day since I’ve made choices (and sacrifices, though that’s not what they seem like by comparison) to make time with her a priority.

Today, you and I will be making choices about how to spend the one thing we can’t save—time. If twenty years from now we are to feel good about how we’ve spent our time, our lives, we’ve got to make the right choices today. Today is all we ever have. Choose wisely.

Ask Not What Your Government Can Do For You

Those deeply concerned about the direction in which our country is heading (81% say we’re on the wrong track) are hopeful that a change in administration will make things better—and it probably will, but, no matter who becomes the next president, and no matter how many smart people he or she surrounds him or herself with, a new president is only part of the solution.

To truly get our country back on track, to significantly address the problems facing our planet, it’s going to take each and everyone of us doing our part. Ask not what your government can do for you, but what you can do for the world.

We’re in desperate need of smart, humane people of strength and integrity to lead us out of the mess we’re in, but rarely do these leaders arise from the ranks of politicians—the wealthy, the compromised, and the power hungry who run for office. Most politicians don’t lead, but follow. Any real and lasting change must come from us, We The People.

Think of the great leaders who’ve changed their worlds: Gandhi, King, Mandela—they weren’t politicians. They didn’t use temporary political power to achieve their noble goals. Impermanent political power is incapable of achieving lasting humanitarianism.

We have too quickly forgotten what Christian theologian and philosopher Reinhold Niebuhr warned a pervious American generation of: “Democratic systems function because they begin from the premise that human nature is corrupt . . . that most of those who gravitate toward power are mediocre and probably immoral. It assumes that we must always protect ourselves from bad government.” And, when you think about it, is there any other kind?

Politicians aren’t the solution to our problems. They are the problems. They regularly campaign against deficits and high taxes and inflation and corruption and act as if lobbyist and bureaucrats are the problem, but they—both Republican and Democrat—are the only ones who create and fund budgets. They are the only ones who make and enforce policy. Their greed and lust for power causes the corruption.

Our future is up to us, not them—unless we continue to follow their lead, instead of leading them—and I’m not just talking about making phone calls or sending emails.

After eight years in which our country and the world is a lot worse off than when they took office, George Bush and Dick Cheney will return to lives of luxury and indulgence. Our lives have been dramatically altered by the way they ignored the warnings leading up to the attacks of 9/11, the way they squandered the goodwill of the world following them, the unmitigated mess that is the Iraq War, their failings following Katrina, the disaster that is our economy, the damage unregulated greed has done to the planet, the regime-like way they have expanded the powers of the executive branch, the way they’ve used fear to strip away many of our individual rights and civil liberties, but they will go back to their big homes and ranches and continue living the good life. They will walk away with their money and power and rich friends to look after them. When told that two-thirds of Americans do not support the war in Iraq, Dick Cheney’s response was “So?” He doesn’t care. He doesn’t have to.

Congress regularly gives themselves a raise, but has yet to give us a living wage.

We are struggling to make ends meet, yet the Clintons have made over 100 million dollars since leaving office.

We are losing our homes, but these people have several. Just recently, John McCain hosted reporters in his vacation home. Shouldn’t we all have a least one before any of us have a second? If we have two homes and our brother has none, WWJD?
We can’t afford to take vacations, but The Clintons spent Easter in the Dominican Republic and Barack Obama went to St. Thomas.

Politicians aren’t our saviors. They aren’t even the answer. At best, they can be part of the answer, but how big a part is up to us. They will follow our lead.

I’m not saying all politicians are the same. They’re not. The ignorant, arrogant, and corrupt can do devastating damage—some of it irreparable. And though I’m for Obama, I honestly believe that Clinton and to a lesser extent even McCain will do a better job than Bush has over the past two terms. I am saying that we need to grow up, take responsibility, stop being so dependent, childishly expecting our Uncle Sam to do everything for us.

Social movements begin in the streets, in churches, in artistic endeavors, in the marketplace. They begin when we begin, when we become the solution the world is waiting for instead of waiting for politicians to solve our problems for us.

Sure, there are some huge problems only government can solve—global warming, extreme poverty, epidemics, ethnic cleansings, etc.—problems governments often help create, but government won’t solve them, or act as quickly or as decisively as is needed unless we lead them to, unless we do it first.

Be active, not passive. Help your neighbor. Be an answer, not a problem. Create a solution to a crisis in your community. Start a movement. Do something. Don’t wait.

Ask not what your government can do for you, but what you can do in spite of it to make the world a better place.

Easter Thoughts

Sitting around the kitchen table sharing a devotion with my family this past Sunday inspired the following Easter thoughts.

Believing in the resurrection of Jesus is worn as a badge of honor by many, as if believing were some sort of achievement, were all that mattered. It is declared in creeds, sung in songs, and proudly proclaimed by preachers. Churchyard signs assert “He is Risen,” and sleepyheads stumble out of bed by the droves to attend local sunrise services where they are told that believing Jesus died for their sins and rose from the dead reserves a spot for them in heaven.

Tragically, the radical message of Jesus, his movement of compassion and justice, have been reduced to a few simplistic steps that can be boiled down to belief. Believe, we are told, and you will be saved. Believe (like us, of course), and you will be right. Believe, and you will be okay.

According to some, there are only two kinds of people in the world: believers and nonbelievers. With great pride they say “I’m a believer.” With brazen invasiveness they inquire “Are you a believer?” But to people patting themselves on the back for believing, the book of James quickly reminds that “the devils also believe.”

How exactly Jesus rose from the grave and precisely what it meant to those who first experienced him and what it means for us today are fodder for endless theological debates, and some have made a career as arguers, defenders of the faith, definers of orthodoxy. But the resurrection, like so many spiritual issues, is a great mystery—not a general unknown, but a specific unknowable.

For me, the real power of the resurrection is not if or how we believe, but how we live. Belief is easy. It’s religion on the cheap. It’s what devils have. True faith is faithfulness. It’s action. It’s deed not creed.

In Jesus’ story of what really matters in life, of how our lives will be measured, he never once mentioned belief. He never said anything about being right or orthodox or following simplistic steps to salvation. He talked about actions, about lives spent helping others.

What matters? What’s really important? The way we treat each other. How we respond to those in need. It’s not pompously saying “I’m a believer,” but consistently being a doer.

Jesus says to us “I’m thirsty and hungry. I’m sick and in prison. I’m in need of clothes and shelter.” And at that moment it doesn’t matter what we say or what we believe, it matters what we do.

To me, on Easter and every other day of the year, the resurrection of Jesus is only a reality in anyway that really matters if you and I carry on his work, continue his mission. Jesus is alive, he is risen, if we do what he did. If we don’t just feel compassion, but are moved by it to extend ourselves on the behalf of others, if we pick up the oppressed, if we share our wealth with the poor, if we do our part to end injustice and inequality, if we spend our lives with the least, lowest, and outcasts.

Rather than saying “I believe,” I think we should say “How can I help?”

This Easter and any random Thursday of the year, I say show me the resurrection by your belief and I’ll show you the resurrection by my actions. For just as faith without works is dead, resurrection without action is as empty as the tomb it touts.

All in all, I Shall Not Look Upon His Like Again

Forty years ago, Martin Luther King was killed, I was born, and our country was being born again—or at least being given the opportunity to.

If we had just had ears to hear—and not just hear, but perceive. If we had just been ready, as a people, as a country.

God sent a man. His name was Martin. But like most holy men sent from heaven, he was largely ignored, and of course, eventually, inevitably, killed. Like Bob Marley asks in Redemption Song, “How long shall they kill our prophets while we stand aside and look?”

His message was one of love. That’s how we know it was from God. For God is love. He that does not love, does not know God.

“At the center of non-violence stands the principle of love,” Dr. King said. “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend.”

He went on to say, “I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant. ”

He, the right, was temporarily defeated, evil momentarily triumphing, triumphing in some ways still, but his message lives on, his hope for equality for all people, his dream.

It lives in me.

Born the year he died, I feel not only a desire to embody the dream, but a responsibility to proclaim it, as well.
Of course, it’s a lot easier now, but standing with Dr. King, boldly being a part of his movement, proudly proclaiming his message, is not without costs. I count them. I stand with him.

Mark me down as a friend of Martin Luther King, a follower of his message, someone who spoke up, for as he said, “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends. History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.”

Where do you stand?

Hear his haunting warning: “He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.”

And what is the message we have heard from him and declare to you? That God is love. That God is light. That filled with love and light, Martin was given a dream.

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”

We’re not in that nation yet. We must repent. We must turn.

“I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made straight and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together. I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.”

We should all have that same dream.

When pressured to turn his back on love, to resort to the same violence being perpetrated on his community, Martin stood strong, saying, “That old law about an eye for an eye leaves everybody blind” and that the “Means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek.” Encouraging his oppressed people to “Never succumb to the temptation of bitterness.”

Cut down at the age of 39, everything Martin did and said was as a young man. He accomplished more in his short life than most of us would if we were given ten long ones. And under enormous pressure, threats, acts of violence, criticisms from every corner, and in the face of staggering odds, he faced down an empire of oppression, like Jesus before Rome, maintaining the moral superiority, never giving in to hate or ego or violence or retribution or retaliation.

Living under the very real possibility that he could be killed at any moment of his young life, Dr. King believed that “The quality, not the longevity, of one’s life is what is important,” adding prophetically in his final speech on the night before he was gunned down, “I just want to do God’s will. And he’s allowed me to go to the mountain. And I’ve looked over, and I’ve seen the promised land! I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the promised land.”

As a people, as a nation, we are making baby steps toward the promised land. Thanks to Dr. King we know what it looks like, know what we must do to get there. Some of us, like him, have even glimpsed it, but we’ve got a long way to go. Yet the darkness and wilderness around us must not make us give up hope. We must press on, these words of Martin Luther King ringing in our ears: “I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality. I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word.”

Please, God, let those have the final word.

Martin was just a man—the greatest man our young country has produced, in my opinion—but just a man. But as far as men go, I’ve yet to find a more true hero, a more worthy mentor.

As Hamlet said of his father, the king, I say of my spiritual father, Dr. King, “He was a man, take him all in all, I shall not look upon his like again.”

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