Brought Out by the Shore

Hold on to the thread  
The currents will shift  


Glide me towards  
You know something's left


And we're all allowed 
To dream of the next


- Pearl Jam / Oceans



From the the age of 8 until about 18, my entire year revolved around the last week of July. My grandparents and some extended family took me down to Paradise City. Well, technically, we drove six eternal hours from southwestern PA to kitschy, crowded, overpriced Ocean City, MD. 

Every day was like awakening on Christmas morning, but this was a seven-day festival of doing, mostly with my good friend and cousin Jason, and the gifts never quit. We had our fill of go-carts, wave runners, water slides, and boardwalk prattle. Yet the best moments occurred during times between the scheduled touristy amusement. I wouldn’t call it waiting, but more like joy.

We outran hundreds if not thousands of breaking waves, hordes of gremlins lunging after us and withering into the sand. The building we stayed in featured a pool and parking garage for skateboarding. It had elevators, 11 stories of open balcony with close proximity to soarable items like grapes and balsa wood airplanes. We sat on the boardwalk, crafting (mostly) harmless pranks of anonymity. 


Our late teenage years at the shore where definitely a let down from all the castle building, boogie boarding, wiffle balling, sand crab catching bliss of our younger years. Jason and I became concerned with the things that young adults should be doing, too busy and mature for simple fun. 

What compelled us to move beyond the wonder of child hood and early adolescence? Was it the new responsibilities and freedoms? Too little sleep? Certainly, there’s something beneficial about boundaries and your grandparents vacation fund to help you through the week. 

One mistake was trying to recapture the same joy and feelings of the old days.Vacation fun became manufactured, more in the atmosphere and reflection on the past.  C.S. Lewis wrote that you have to be surprised by joy. Joy is never found by directly searching for it, but rather happens while doing other things. And that's exactly how pure, remembered-like-it-was-yesterday joy came upon us as children.

These days, a different set of my extended family makes a yearly visit to the east coast, just north of Ocean City MD. I stand, watching my children playing with their cousins. I reflect on the past as I witness real -time joy unfolding all around me. I'm thankful for the chance to genuinely do the simple and fun horseplay that I've been after all along.

The beauty and enormity and power of the shore make me feel small and humble.  Yet at the same time, with the land behind me sloping down to the sea, to the left and right the coast converging upon me, and the ocean rising up and out all the way to the sky in front of me, my place on the waters edge appears to be at the center of a universe.

Joy by reflection and surprise. A sense of smallness and importance. Both perspectives are true, I think, brought out by the shore.

simple small

The wear pattern in the tread of a shoe tells a story. Deciphering soles is part of my job as a physical therapist, but the truth is that I've marveled at them for fun, for quite a while. Amy rolls her eyes, "There he goes shoe gazing again."

I think she knows of the place barely above the corner of her mouth. It speaks volumes about her condition, so I study it while listening. I've tried reading that place on casual acquaintances and clients at work, but it doesn't seem to say much about those you don't love.

These are but a few small places that are good to notice. There are many others, like the cow licks in my children's hair, the blemishes all over our kitchen table, and the areas in my back yard where grass slopes gently into crystal stream.

I've been noticing these things for a long time. It always seemed that some people have an eye for it, or just care to notice more than others.  I didn't know that the simple, the small, the commonplace hold special revelation of God. I didn't know it was cool.

Some of my favorite writers, like Ann and Gordan and Billy, to name just a few, are constantly reminding me that it's good to notice the simple and small. They are relaying ancient wisdom from prophets and mystics.

And it's true. God is in the small things. Noticing it is good for you. Appreciating the meaning and beauty and complexity is like a magical formula for gratitude and goodness. Really. Try it.








"Do you find something unique in one leaf, pulled from a tree full of leaves that any reasonable person would say are identical? Or did you want to be a reasonable person?"

every other tuesday

Do you know that thing where Christians are big mouthed, ego driven hypocrites and charlatans who enjoy judging others while doing nothing to give feet to their delusional beliefs?  

I don't actually know anyone who believes all this about Christianity (or is honest enough to express that to me). I'm just going by the internet, where there seems to be a lot of awful talk about Christians.

I'm sure there will always be people who justify their deception, their manipulative use of fear, their hatred and small mindedness and plain stupidity in the name of the Lord. Jesus himself talked about wolves in sheep's clothing. And I'm just not buying all the Anti-Christian Internet Hero talk.

Take every other Tuesday at Lighthouse Church, for instance.

Every other Tuesday, a small army of people from our modest church wake up and put in an 8 hour work day, then drive through hell (route 83 rush hour traffic) to get to the church by about 5:00 p.m. There they prepare dinner for at least 30 kids, many of them too small to feed themselves. So they feed them, clean everything and everyone up, and even put the little ones into their jammies before the parents return from Bible study/kid respite at about 7:30.

What's the pay for the miracle of the feeding and the chasing and the entertaining of 30-some  children who aren't even relatives? With the bonus of leaving the church between 7:40 and 8:00 in order to prepare for work the next day? I'm sure you can guess.

Lighthouse values life. We value families, which are good for parents and for children. Many of us prefer the much harder, quieter, soul saving work of our beliefs to the loud spouting about them.

Lighthouse has given thousands if not hundreds of thousands of dollars to organizations that support and serve children. You want to talk commitment? Members of our church have adopted. Others have provided foster care. Others have regularly, painstakingly supported families who have done these things with none of the glory of being an adoptive parent.

 And by painstakingly, I mean wall poop scrubbing. I just don't see any ego involved with scrubbing poop off walls. That's some of what goes on at our little Lighthouse, just like thousands upon thousands of churches across the face of the earth.

So the next time you read of bad or self serving or stupid Christian behavior, please give a nod to all the stories about small acts of kindness and huge acts of crazy love offered in the name of the Lord, each and every one of them being plain hard.

Writing good and bad things about Christians will always be easier and less rewarding than the kind of stuff that goes on every other Tuesday at Lighthouse. 

"...for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also."

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Levis craft

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I've been in charge of our chuches Little Lambs class of 4 and 5 year-olds for about five weeks. Todays class began when one of the children found a package of paper lunch bags. He opened the drawer below to reveal a package of cotton fuzz, then proceeded to stuff some fuzz into a bag.

My reactive thought of "Hey, put those back" was transformed, possibly miraculously, to "Hey, my first craft!"

Not knowing why the bags were there or whose they were, I imagined there was no better use than stuffing them with cotton. Neither could I come up with a reason to delay the craft to a later, more traditional craft making point in the hour.

So I instructed everyone to grab a fist full of cotton fuzz and a paper bag. I offered to write their name on it and help them draw anything they wanted. My ladybugs were pretty weak but I could draw a mean T-rex and catfish. They colored the bags. There was glue involved, if for no other reason than to fulfill the Biblical gluey mess in Sunday school mandates.

The children then held their custom bags of cotton as we talked and prayed and read a portion of Genesis chapter 18 about Abraham and Sarah. I immediately quizzed them.

"Who was Sarah? Why do you think she kept saying, 'I didn't laugh...I didn't laugh?"

Then we went outside with our bags for a Neature Walk through the real cathedral. Because nature is neat and, y'know, God created.

We talked about seasons and weather. We saw birds and talked about God providing food for them. Each child picked a small purple lilly, snagged a short stem of blooming ornamental pear tree, collected a pine cone or two, and snapped off a small piece of the bushes that line the church.

No Little Lamb is bound by our useless distinctions between weed and flower. Dandelions were a precious commodity, rare today. I saw Levi literally leap to capture a random piece of tanbark as if it were a $100 bill being blown by the wind.

"Whatcha' got there Levi?"

"It's a piece of wood that I thought was pretty."

"Oh ! Nice find."

He proudly plopped the item into his bag. It was the greatest single piece of tanbark my eyes had ever seen.

We went back inside to sort and applaud the mornings treasures. We discussed some of them until Kevin lightly tossed out the word snack. Kevin, oblivious to clocks, knowing not the minute or the hour, perfectly identified snack time. So we had a snack, and that just about wrapped things up.

I was tempted to make my own bag to help remember some of the treasures I came across that morning. But instead I thought to write them out, put them in this here craft.

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you never know

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Amy and I haven't been talking about our ongoing training and qualifications for foster parenting. This is where we are. I'd like to remember.

Our intention is to foster and hopefully adopt a child through the Bair Foundation. The training and numerous checks and balances are a hassle but certainly understandable. The agency learning about you and you learning about yourself and what you're getting into is a valuable process that cannot be accomplished through a questionnaire or lecture.

Why are we doing this? [I ask myself some times]. Because we have room for another child in our hearts and home. Because there is a need, and our faith calls us to action, and we take it seriously.  

During our final training session today, the social worker told us that about 10% of people who begin the process both qualify and choose to follow through with fostering. They know what they're doing, offering all they can to set your family and the adoptive child up for success.

But they also plainly tell you that "you never know." Some seemingly perfect placements go poorly while others expected to be rocky end up doing quite well.

You never know. So they suggest that you pray. That scares me, quite honestly. They're plainly saying that the deal doesn't make much sense for reasonable people. Maybe it does for a family that faces fertility issues, but even then...

I've had daydreams during training, seeing visions of feces smeared on the walls, living room curtains ablaze, coming home to find Amy struggling to apply a physical restraint. Each of these circumstances were specifically addressed, so maybe I was paying attention for the most part.

Hell yes we are scared. We're scared by him/her, unnamed and without a face, full of every behavioral and psychological issue, bound by miles of red tape and inconvenience. But by Gods grace most children come with a name and a face and without every worst case scenario.

Maybe we are idealistic, naive, and looney - Amy and I rushing to help one child in the name of the Lord. We're not acting out of some kind of obligation or guilt. But in our minds we tried on a relatively secure future, comfortable, trusting in ourselves, looking back and wondering why we didn't try.

I'm wondering if that's the worst case scenario.

So we're praying about it. Because you never know.

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