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Brothers dancing on the head of a pinSaturday, March 7, 2015
Luke 15:18 Larry and I hitchhiked home to central Illinois from college in northern Indiana. Mom said she had trouble recognizing me in my new beard and long hair. She frowned. She was not happy. Still, she brought us home and we had a nice rest. I wanted to show my friend where I grew up. Without the dairy - Dad sold the cows a few years earlier. A few years later I invited my parents to a wedding. My wedding. Held outside on a summer day beside Lake Mendota in Madison in our big back yard. We were talking about the songs we'd sing. I said, joking, we could sing "Hare Krishna." Mom frowned. My parents were surprised and frustrated by these strange turns I took, up what looked to them like dead end paths into new lifestyles and new religions. Not new, they thought, but old, dead, devoid of hope. More time passed. I came home from California with a haircut. No more beard. I carried my Bible proudly. We stayed up a few nights talking about Christianity. My criticisms of my childhood religion had mellowed, to say the least. The newborn reborn enthusiasm in my heart spilled over into my words, and Mom and Dad didn't seem to mind that some of my interpretations were a little different from theirs. After I returned to California (hitchhiking again), we all discovered that the group I'd joined was famous. Infamous. Rev. Moon's Unification Church, the Moonies. Christian, yes, but with a jiggle and a twist. Mom and I had two years of disquieted conversations over the phone, while I learned to pray as loud as I could every morning in a group of other pilgrims for 30 minutes or so. And I learned how to sell flowers in steel mills. And sundry other spiritual disciplines. Standing in a phone booth in Grand Central Station, under the huge mural of a family friendly Kodak moment, I called the number I knew by heart, my home number. "I was thinking of coming home, Mom." "Well then, we'll be there to get you, David." We met in Rhode Island at my cousin's wedding, and I took the long ride home with Mom and Dad, the whole back seat to myself. For the first time, I knew the prodigal's feeling. This time I recognized, really recognized, the generosity and love of my parents. "I will get up and go to my mother and father and tell them I have sinned, against them and against God." And when I did, they pulled out all the stops. Sitting here remembering, I remember too how my younger brother John was there all those crazy years while I was gone. The brother who laughed like a crazy man when I tickled him. I smacked him in the head once with a baseball bat while we were hitting balls into the cornfield, but he forgave me. They weren't crazy years to him, at least not in the same way. He settled in and settled down. He forgave me for being the wacky prodigal. And I am forever grateful. The fatted calf is for us all - my brother John and my sister Mary Kay and Mom and Dad ... for us all. And of course, the family stretches out from sea to sea. We are all one people. God bless us every one. When you reach out your hand for mine, Lord, as you ALWAYS do, let me grab hold of it and hang on. For dear life. You are the great conductor, and your train is the one I want to be riding, now and tomorrow and forever. |
"Pick us up at the Dairy Queen." Mom was there.