Harry

I am sitting, reading. My four-year-old son is likewise sitting, playing.

He glances up and looks at the man on the cover, reflections of whose life are held within.

“Why did Harry Kalas die, Dad?” he asks.

I fumble over my reply, “Well, he was a little bit old… and it was time for him to go to heaven.”

My son responded with another question, but one that told me he had it all figured out already.

“Is Harry in baseball heaven, Dad?”

I smiled, looked at the man on the cover, and nodded.

The boy was right.

Baseball heaven, where spirits play in a field of dreams and the sounds of summer echo for eternity.

The parable of the koala bear

The three-year-old boy lay in bed with his baby brother, making him laugh with assorted smiles, funny faces, and noises.

To add to the entertainment, he picked up a furry koala bear and raised it in front of his brother.

The infant’s smile immediately vanished, and he began to cry at the sight of the stuffed animal.

“Don’t be scared, Brian,” uttered the older boy. “It’s okay. He’s not really a bear. He’s just a marsupial.”

I laughed at his words and smiled.

Indeed, things aren’t always what they appear to be, three-year-old boys included.

Heaven on earth

If there is ground in heaven, I believe it must be covered with a thick layer of fallen pine needles.

If there is music in heaven, I believe it must be the wind brushing against the land as spirits travel through the sky.

If there is an aroma in heaven, I believe it must be the scent of a fire’s transformation of wood into ember.

And if heaven has a heaven, I believe the night sky must shine above it, stars shimmering from the past while the moon carries out its orbital dance.

Glancing up from the campfire, I look toward heaven.

And I find myself already there.

For the Love of the Ball

Illustration by Dewey Saunders

Fathers, sons, and lessons learned:

“For the Love of the Ball” (Main Line Today, October 2009)

Cicada killers

The wasp glided by my legs, slow and low like a giant airliner that somehow takes flight despite its enormous size. Likewise, the wasp seemed to defy gravity, for it carried in its legs a motionless cicada nearly twice its size. Paralyzed by the hunter’s stinger somewhere high above, the cicada floated toward the ground in the wasp’s deathtrap. A macabre flight indeed, this tandem skydive.

Landing on the ground, the wasp slowly and effeciently carried its victim below ground. The grave had already been bored, and the wasp’s young waited within. Soon the two disappeared completely; the struggle between life and death would continue below ground. Inseparable lovers are life and death, one needing the other for its own survival.

Late that night, lying in bed, I listen to the sounds of summer, but all I hear is the song of one less cicada.

It is the song of death. It is the song of life. Two melodies, one chorus.

The cicada sings counterpoint, as does the world.

“Let it be.”

A friend wrote to me today: “Life is only too busy if we let it be.”

It was a shared sentiment. Too often the busyness of life prevents us from getting down to the business of life. That is to say, living.

Days and weeks pass by, weeks turn into months, and pretty soon years are lost, and with them the friendships we let go as we went about the busyness of life.

“Life is only too busy if we let it be.”

It was a much needed reminder.

More importantly, it provided a much needed solution:

“Let it be.”

“…and there was light.”

As I climb out of bed in the dark of night, electrons dance across the static-laden sheets in a crinkling display of blue light.

A moment later and I peer out the bathroom window. Fireflies are busy taking ownership of the night with their random, silent display of flickering lights.

I look skyward and see not a cloud in the sky. In the clearness of the dark night, stars shimmer above. Their long-extinguished light has journeyed through time and now somehow lights the night.

I return to bed with hope in my heart. No matter the depth of darkness, light will find a way.

Hope springs nocturnal.

The snake

The woman’s voice was frantic as she called across the yard to me.

I hurried over to her with uncertainly in my steps, not sure what lay in store for me. Having moved into our house just weeks before, I had met the neighbor just once. Our second meeting, and a call of distress.

When I reached her, she poignantly pointed toward the ground. There, at a respectable distance away, lay a two-foot long black snake.

“Do you know what kind it is,” she asked.

I claimed ignorance:  “No, I’m not sure. Maybe a garter?”

She assured me it was not.

“I’ve lived here ten years and have never seen something that size.”

Now she had me worried. The kids were playing on the other side of the forsythia bushes. What if this little fellah was venomous?

Before I knew it, the woman had rushed to her garage and returned with a shovel. She handed it to me without saying a word, as if our joint course of action was both inevitable and mutually agreed upon.

Again, before I knew it, I had the shovel over my head and sent it traveling toward the snake.

“Sorry, buddy,” I lamented as he lay there motionless.

Soon after, I returned home and went to the computer to identify what I had killed. The irony of going to the digital world to identify with the natural one was not lost on me.

I typed in “garter snake.”

The first photo that popped up on the screen confirmed what I already knew in my heart. I had killed a harmless garter snake. The caption to the photo rightfully fueled my guilt:

“Snakes are among the most misunderstood of all animals. As a result, many harmless, beneficial snakes have met untimely deaths at the hands of shovel-wielding humans.”

Guilty as charged.

Regret filled my heart even as the shovel traveled toward the ground, and remorse filled my heart now. What had the snake done but be found?

In a weak moment – one fueled by misunderstanding, ignorance, fear, and a male ego that felt it necessary to fulfill this new neighbor’s wishes – I had killed.

Sadly enough, I believe these are the very same reasons we all kill, nations and individuals alike. Misunderstanding and ignorance, a fear of the unknown, and our collective ego.

It begs the question: who is the snake?

Nativity

Big sister and big brother, ages 5 and 3 respectively, walked down the corridor of the maternity wing. Tucked behind the glass window where the nurses cared for the newborns, their younger brother, all of three hours old, awaited their arrival.

When they reached the glass window, the two tip-toed and used the window ledge to pull themselves higher.

I pointed to the baby nearest the window.

“There’s your baby brother! That’s Brian!”

The three-year-old’s eyes grew wide. He gazed at his little brother, in awe of this tiny being that for the past nine months had been a mysterious bump in his mother’s belly.

His voice filled with equal parts excitement and wonderment, he simply exclaimed: “WOW!”

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

Flight to heaven

She died two years to the day after her husband. They spent their later years within earshot of the ocean, and called the beach their home.

After the funeral, again two years to the day after her husband, family likewise gathered within earshot of the ocean. I stepped out onto the deck on the brisk early spring afternoon, escaping the noise within. Looking toward the beach, a seagull flew overhead within arm’s reach. A second seagull quickly joined the first, lingered for a moment, and then the two set sail in the sky.

Side by side they flew, their wings carrying them along the coast and into the horizon.

Heaven called, and together they joined eternity.

Sunday morning

The boy sat there in his high-chair eating breakfast. Between spoonfuls of cereal, he looked up and declared:

“It sure is a good day for having a great day.”

I laughed at his words, but at the same time realized how simplistically profound they were. His sentiment unknowingly implies a choice we are all called to make each morning. The day greets us, and we have the opportunity to see it as a great one… or a not-so-great one.

In a little boy’s world, why would there be any choice but to have a great day? If only we all had the mind of a three-year-old.

He went back to his cereal, while I replayed his words in my head.

“It sure is a good day for having a great day.”

Sure is, son. Sure is.

Antiphon of the goose

Sister Moon and the stars shone above, while Brother Fire danced his playful dance below. I sat in the glow of both, their light warming both body and soul. Alone.

Time literally flew by while the world wobbled on its axis, Sister Earth spinning and circling Brother Sun. Wood burned, embers grew brighter, and the moon arced its way across the sky.

In the quiet of the crackling fire, a distant sound made its way across the dark sky. It was the sound of a solitary Canadian goose heading north on its return flight home. Its silhouette flew across the sky as its lonely honking echoed through the air. It was the sound of desperation, or so it seemed. A hapless bird, lost from its flock, flying through the night in a frantic attempt to reunite with its winged brethren.

“Honk-honk-honk-honk-honk,” it sang, the lonely dirge of one who has lost its way. In the somber song of evening prayer, the bird mourned.

Dirige, Domine, Deus meus, in conspectu tuo viam meam.

“Direct my way in your sight, O Lord my God.”

I joined the bird in prayer, hoping its antiphon would reunite it with its flock, calling it back home.

Sleeping moon

Looking skyward, the crescent moon stood out in the winter eve, its light reflecting off the snowy ground. Something seemed amiss, however. When one pictures the crescent moon, the image that inevitably comes to mind is a lunar sliver pointing left or right in the sky. Tonight, however, the moon was on its back, as if she had decided to call it quits and rest in the quiet darkness. Her arched back rested against the sky like an umbrella turned on its end. Each edge of the crescent pointed directly to the sky above it. Not east or west, nor north or south. But rather, up.

In the beauty of the winter night, the moon had gone to sleep, and in so doing, cast a shining example of divine perspective to the world. Yes, even the moon takes a moment to lie down before God and admire the heavens above.

Red fox

Our eyes met at the same time, both of us intruders in one another’s lives.

I looked out the window, sleep still in my eyes, and froze. Likewise, his gaze caught mine. Frozen, he looked in at me from the backyard, a nocturnal creature caught staying out late. We both stared at each other – studying one another – frozen in our surprise. Him at me, and me at him. A single pane of glass separated our respective worlds, and before those worlds could collide, he jogged out of view and back to his solitary world.

I had disrupted his morn. He had enlightened mine.

Visitors

"Robin at Sunset" (Molly, Age 5)

It was a bad day for the worms. Frozen for weeks, the snow-covered ground thawed in one of those misleading warm February days that hint at spring. Mud replaced the snow, and the worms had nowhere to hide.

Just before dusk, the birdfeeder freshly filled, the robins came calling. Well over a hundred red-breasted birds descended upon the lawn from every direction, and my daughter and I found ourselves witness to a winged winter’s picnic. It was as if a piñata had been opened up as the birds frantically gorged in the mud. They flew by our heads without care, their beaks too eager to take advantage of the thaw. They knew better than to think spring was here. The thaw was fleeting, better seize the day!

Excited by the sudden visitors, Molly ran inside and came back a moment later with her notebook, a pen, and some crayons. We perched ourselves in a nook next to the forsythia, where just a few minutes before she was trying to make friends with a rabbit by hurling some lettuce and carrots at it.

Now, sitting with canvas in hand, Molly began to draw the scene before her. Robins frolicked in their manic state, flying, hopping, and pecking all around us. It was a race against time, for the freeze would come in the cover of night and the worms would be safe come morning. The birds gorged, the sky bled red, and the sun began to show signs of calling it a day.

We sat there in our invisible state, witness to God’s creation, and visitors in our own backyard.

Divine shadows

In the brightness of a snowy moonlit night, the shadow of the towering tree is cast upon the earth. Barren branches reach in every direction, and their shadows dance on the snow in their distorted way.

I gaze out at the snowy canvas and envy the moon. Like God, it casts its light from the heavens, an artist curious to see what mark will be left upon the earth.

Branches wave in the wind, and thus wave on the ground. Who is the artist – the moon or the tree? The snowy canvas reveals only beauty, but hints at the answer.

Art mirrors the artist.

Moon. Tree. Shadow. Tis the divine simulacrum.

Floating in a moonlit sky

Christmas day and a cold one at that. Toys and newly opened presents filled his grandparent’s home, but my son stumbled upon an old bottle of bubbles and was intent on breathing life into the soapy liquid.

“That’s a summertime game,” I tried to explain, more out of selfishness than anything else. I was quite content inside the warm house.

The three-year-old and his grandfather won out.

Donning our jackets, we made our way to the front stoop. The air, thin and frigid, raced past as the wind sometimes is wont to do.

After a few unsuccessful attempts, and with a little help from the wind, a bubble came to life.

Michael’s eyes lit up at the sight of his creation, and the wind quickly carried it away.

He continued to breathe life into the clear crystal bubbles, and the wind took each glass ball on an eternal journey skyward. Yes, eternal, for in the chilly air, the bubbles simply would not pop. Rather, crystallized by the cold, they traveled beyond the eye’s reach.

I gazed in amazement at the unexpected consequence of blowing bubbles in the winter air. Dozens upon dozens of crystal balls of breath flew through the sky, carried by the wind to unknown destinations.

Where will the bubbles land, I thought to myself.

Perhaps miles away one pops on the outstretched branch of a lonely oak tree in the middle of a barren field.

Perhaps one meets a bird in flight, surprising the creature as its beak breaks through the soapy ice and is warmed by the little boy’s breath.

Perhaps one of the crystal balls travels through the air to a distant land, where it floats down onto the upturned palm of another boy in another land. For a moment it may sit there in his palm, the boy eyeing it with wonder and delight. Then, without warning, it bursts into nothingness, joining the collective breath of the world.

What’s to say one of those bubbles isn’t still floating in the moonlit sky?

Captured in crystal, the boy’s breath continues on its journey until one day it reaches the heavens, lands in the palm of God, and then kisses that which breathed life into him.

Sacramental snowfall

The heavens open up above today and the first snowfall of the year arrives. The children face the heavens and capture the falling flakes in their mouths, tasting heaven.

The coolness drops on one’s tongue, vanishing all too quickly. It leaves you thirsting for more, the million specs of snow just a hint of heaven.

Wintry baptism. Wintry communion.

Rebirth

Days dot the year when I strive for rebirth. New Years Day. Ash Wednesday. My birthday. Easter. In the heart of each day I hear a voice calling for rebirth . . . a rebirth from harmful habits, to follow my dreams, to be a better person, friend, husband, father. Yet the day comes and goes and the old habits return, habituating a life of daily regret. It is a battle to renew, and why the sun rises each morn, giving us a new day to begin again. Excuses must be discarded, for we have no reason not to follow the hopeful path of renewal. To wallow in regret and fear of failure is timid. Tempting though it is, we must not let the past paralyze us. It is what we do now, not what we did then, that will determine what we will be in the future. So the sun rises, so do we also.

Advent

Driving in the car, my four-year-old daughter gazes out the window in the backseat. Excitment for the arrival of Christmas is building with each passing day, and Molly has been vigilant in keeping track. 

“Is it 15 days until Christmas, Dad?”

“Yes,” I assure her.

To which she responds with matter of fact wisdom:

“It scares me how quickly the days are going.”

“Me too,” I say to myself. “Me too.”