Journal Entries

One of the cohabitants of our home is a golden Labrador Retriever named Lady. She joined our family in the spring of 1998; we think she was about six years old at the time.

At the time, I was actually on the lookout for a big black Lab who could run with Cyndi and Katie. My theory was that a big black dog would frighten any would-be attackers whether or not he was actually scary. I phoned the City Animal Control and asked them to be on the lookout for a scary-looking, yet sweet and gentle, black Lab. A few days later they phoned me back to tell me about a gentle female golden Lab that had been abandoned and was being cared for by a family until she could be adopted. Close enough.

So Katie and Cyndi and I drove over to visit the dog, and we all fell in love with her at once. I remember standing in the backyard contemplating the value of a black dog verses a golden dog, while Cyndi and Katie were sitting on the concrete porch with (soon-to-be-named) Lady draped across their laps. Apparently, the deal was already done; I was just the last to know.

When we brought Lady home I said, “She looks like an outside dog to me.”

Cyndi said, “Sure, except for at night. She can live inside with us at night … or when it is cold … or any other time we let her in.” I was out of the decision-making loop already.

We learned some things about Lady right away. She didn’t like being in water deeper than her belly, and she showed no interest in playing fetch (two core behaviors for most Labrador Retrievers). She didn’t seem to care much about playing or wrestling. She seldom barked, and never barked inside the house. She never made a mess in the house. She only dug in the backyard to find a cool place to lie down, and even then she was discrete about her digging locations. She never chewed anything she wasn’t supposed to chew. She mostly liked to lay around on the floor and lick the carpet.

And, she loved to run.

I realize that all dogs like to run around the backyard, but that isn’t what I mean. Lady loved to go for 2 miles, or 5 miles, or sometimes 10 or 12 miles. She simply loved it. All you had to do was rattle the leash and she would start leaping in the air. She could tell when anyone in the house was getting dressed to go running, and she would just go ballistic. It was the only time in her life that she showed excitement, and she was completely over-the-top. It was often hard to lace up our running shoes because Lady was right in our face jumping and smiling and … well, being overjoyed. The girl just loved to run.

I have no idea how many miles Lady has run in the past ten years, with Cyndi (mostly), or me and Katie (occasionally), but it must be several thousand. I once offered her a running log to keep track of her miles, but she wasn’t interested.

But time and mileage has taken its toll. In the past couple of years we’ve noticed Lady can’t go the distance like she used to. She is good for a short jog around the school, but that is as far as she can go. She still gets excited when she knows someone is getting dressed to run, and she still wants to go, but she just doesn’t have the legs for it any more. We often have to sneak into the garage to get dressed so she won’t know what we are doing, since we feel guilty leaving her behind.

And there is another change we’ve noticed. Lady wants to be close to us all the time.

She has always been independent and self-contained, and content with minimal attention from us. She was happy to lie on the floor and ignore any humans in the house. I often wondered if she was deaf, since she showed such little response to us apart from running.

But lately she just wants to lie on the floor at our feet all the time. She wants to sleep on the floor of our bedroom right next to one of us, right where we put our feet if we get up at night, making a big target for tripping over in the middle of the night. We have adjusted to her being underfoot, and in fact, we like it. She still doesn’t care much to be petted or rubbed for a long time, but she wants to be close to us. It is sweet and tender to watch her follow us around the house.

The reason Lady is on my mind this week is because of a verse I read from my Daily Bible. Psalm 27:4 says, “One thing I ask of the Lord, this is what I seek; that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple.” (NIV)

When I read that verse, I thought first of Lady, who just wants to be in our house lying at our feet, very close. I want to live with God that same way. In The Message, it says, “I’ll study at his feet.” Isn’t that sweet? I want to be just like Lady.

Wednesday morning I was reading from my Daily Bible, from Psalm 81:11-12: “But my people would not listen to me; Israel would not submit to me. So I gave them over to their stubborn hearts to follow their own devices.” (NIV)

As I was reading, the overhead music in Whataburger was, ironically, a song by The Police: “If you love someone, set them free.” I wondered if Sting was thinking about Psalm 81 when he wrote that lyric.

It reminded me of a psychedelic black-light poster my first college roommate pinned on his closet door: “If you love someone, set them free. If they come back they’re yours; if they don’t, they never were.” (I think the line was originally written by Richard Bach, author of Jonathan Livingston Seagull.) It was a very hip thought to hold in the 1970s. I think it was used mostly by those who wanted an excuse to fly away, rather than those who loved them.

It seems like a compliment to hold those we love with a loose grip, to give them freedom to choose us. And it seems God holds us that way.

Well, there is an apparent contradiction, because we know we are also held firmly in the grip of God. For example, Psalm 37:23-24 says, “The steps of a man are established by the Lord, and he delights in his way. When he falls, he will not be hurled headlong, because the Lord is the one who holds his hand.” (NAS)

That verse tells us several things about God, including the fact that we should expect to stumble even as we walk with God, even as he holds our hand. But it also tells us that God has a firm enough grip on us that we will not be hurled headlong. The Message reads, “If he stumbles, he’s not down for long; God has a grip on his hand.”

So God has a firm grip on us to keep us from crashing down and yet a loose grip to let us fly off on our own if we choose. Maybe it isn’t a contradiction. Maybe it’s just grace.

For all of my life I’ve cherished freedom and independence above money or prestige or influence - maybe even above love. I always thought of freedom as a good thing. I always wanted to be in charge of myself, even though I never cared much about being in charge of anything else. I’ve always wanted to do things my own way.

Yet reading form Psalm 81, it appears that when God let his people have their head (The Message says, “So I let go of the reins and told them, ‘Run! Do it your own way!’”), it was a form of punishment, not reward.

The reason I’ve wanted to go my own way was because I thought I knew best. Sure, I’d follow God, since I picked his way from a long list of spiritual options, and I knew best. And if needed, I could take off on my own, because, of course, I knew best. And like that.

But another Psalm that I read, this time on Thursday morning, reminded me that “knowing best” may not mean what I think it means. It may not result in wisdom. My best knowing may be completely wrong. Psalm 111:10 says, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; all who follow his precepts have good understanding.” The beginning of wisdom isn’t my superior intellect, but it’s the fear of the Lord.

In one of our favorite family movies of all time, the Princess Bride, the villain, Vizzini, says, “Finish him, your way.”

Fezzik replied, “Oh good, my way. Thank you Vizzini… what’s my way? “

Vizzini said, “Pick up one of those rocks, get behind a boulder, in a few minutes the man in black will come running around the bend, the minute his head is in view, hit it with the rock.”

And Fezzik replied, “My way’s not very sportsman-like.”

Even Fezzik knew that doing things his own way wasn’t always the best way to do them.

God told his people – if you can’t follow me, go do it your own way, even if your way is not very sportsmanlike, even if your way will end in ruin and destruction.

But what sets God apart from people like us is that he never brushes his hands together saying, “Well, good riddance, they’re finally gone,” but rather offers himself to us and longs for our return. He never says, “I told you so,” but simply welcomes us back.

Sting wrote, “You can’t control an independent heart.” But God can love an independent heart, and hold it loosely and set it free, and love it back with his grace.

That’s very good news for us independent types.

Friday night, Cyndi and I, and our young nephew, Kevin, joined John and Linda at Jim and Judy’s to eat hamburgers and to drool over their new house. It was a great evening of food and conversation, one of those evenings that make you glad you are a grown up. We ate outside on the patio, toured the house and took notes, played with Jim’s horses, and talked through upcoming adult Bible study lesson about Joseph.

After we ate, John and Kevin and I walked with Jim out to the corral to see his three horses. They were very tame; we all spent a lot of time up close with our hands on them, and the horses seemed to enjoy the affection. It was clear that Jim spent a lot of time every day with these horses, riding them and training them and loving them.

John said, “You know, there are so many pursuits people can have to fill up their life and enrich their life. Maybe its horses, or reading, or going to the mountains, or family, or painting, or music.”

I said, “Yeah, too bad that for so many, their pursuit is sitting down to watch TV every night.”

John said, “Why do some people spend so much time and money pursuing a hobby or something they love, but others just settle for the same old thing?”

“Some pursue, some settle. Some people die thirty years before they are buried.”

Later, we talked about watching Jim with his horses, how he put his arms around their neck, had his hands on their head and face and back and belly all the time. It was clear he spent a lot of time doing that, and just as clear the horses loved it. Jim has big thick hands, but they were gentle and loving and tender as he stroked those horses. It was a side of Jim’s personality we had never seen. Cyndi and I have known Jim for 20 years, but realized we hadn’t really known him at all until we saw him with his horses.

I guess we all have a part of our life that most people never see – I’m not even talking about our dark secret parts we try to hide – I’m talking about our pursuits and hobbies that are important to us and help shape us. We may have 20-year friends who enjoy the fruits of our pursuits that show up in our daily life without ever being aware of the pursuits themselves. All these years, I have appreciated Jim without really understanding the impact his hands and horses have on his character. I just enjoyed the results.

I wondered what those pursuits are for me? I would like to think they are reading and writing and running and backpacking and maybe music, but I’m not sure I spend as much time on any of those as Jim spends with his horses. It may be that our heart pursuits are so natural to us we don’t recognize them or appreciate the impact they have on our life and character and personality. Maybe it takes another observer to pick them out?

Sometimes the pursuits of our friends or even our spouse may seem expensive or selfish to us, and indeed they can become self-indulgent escapes from responsibility and life. But those pursuits are so fundamental to character and personality we would lose who we are if we forced those them away. Maybe we even get jealous of the time and money our spouse spends on pursuits, and wish it was spent on us instead. But without those pursuits, we’d be left with a hollowed-out lover who has lost interest.

Psalm 37 says, “Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart.” I believe this is a two-way proposition. As we pursue God, he will reward us with the desires of our heart. And as we pursue the desires of our heart, we will find God.

I won’t forget watching Jim’s hands on his horses. Thinking about those affectionate hands loving on those horses is a picture of how I want God to take care of me. In fact, I came home Friday night and put my hands on Lady, our running Labrador, out of appreciation. It was the least I could do.

 There was a time in my life when I would have thought it crazy to spend money traveling all the way from Midland to Austin just to see a rock and roll concert. Even if the concert featured one of my favorite groups, I was too stingy to spend the money.

I’m beginning to understand music better, now. Live music is more than listening; it’s engaging, it’s liberating, it’s energizing, it’s a full-body experience. And all music is better live – all of it.

I also understand community better, too. I understand the investment required to nurture friendships and sustain community. You can’t just say you’re friends with someone; you have to go be their friend. You have to do friend-stuff together. You have to feed the friendship if it’s to have any value.

So on Wednesday morning Mark and I left for Austin to join my brother, Carroll, and his friend, Gary, for a Wednesday night concert featuring the rock band, Rush. Carroll mentioned it months ago, and when I asked around for Rush fans, Mark jumped up out of his seat.

To be honest, I only know about Rush from my many late-night conversations with Carroll on the telephone. Rush was his band, his era, his music. For me, going to the concert was more about engaging with Carroll than with the music. Because I’m twelve years older than Carroll, we both grew up essentially as only-children. It’s only in these later years that we’ve found each other as friends, as we’ve raised children and played music and rode bicycles and hiked trails and talked politics. It was a joy and pleasure to enter into this part of his life. Carroll is a phenomenal drummer and a creative spirit, so his musical recommendations carry a lot of weight with me. He doesn’t recommend music that doesn’t swing.

However, the concert Wednesday night was filled with rabid fans who were much more like Carroll in their appreciation of Rush than like me. There was an occasional boyfriend or girlfriend or husband or wife who tagged along, but the majority was long-time fans. I know this because they knew all the words to all the songs. And if you know anything about Rush, you know there are a lot of words and complicated songs that stretch back to the early 1970s.  I seemed to be one of the only people in the concert arena who didn’t know every word to every song. That is, me, and the young lady who “sat” directly in front of me and danced most of the evening with arms outstretched and hips swaying. She enjoyed the evening much more than her boyfriend, who kept telling her to sit down.

We all ate BBQ at Stubbs before the concert, where Mark proved his chops to the other guys when he mentioned he’d attended five Rush concerts, all before 1993, his first being in the mid-70s. Carroll was pleased that I had brought along a credible fan, not just another tagalong.

It turned out that pork ribs might not have been the best choice for a pre-concert meal, especially when the concert was in a hot arena and we were sitting up high, past the nose-bleed section and well into the high altitude cerebral edema section. Carroll told me he was lucky he recovered soon enough to race back uphill to his seat in time for the drum solo.

Like a lot of concerts featuring bands that have performed for decades, this was a community affair. There were multiple generations represented in the crowd, including many families with children and even grandparents, all banging their heads to the beat together. Concerts made up of loyal fans are fun because of the presence of community. There are certain lyrics you’re supposed to know and changes you’re expected to anticipate if you’re really a member of the community. Everyone was welcome to enjoy the music, but there was a price to pay if you really wanted be part of the group - know the songs.

Being “one of us” is a powerful drug, and we can’t live well without it. More and more, people do not ask, “Is this true?” or “Is this good?” Instead, they ask, “Do I want to be like you?” If the answer is yes, then they’ll trust your recommendations. If the answer is “No, I do NOT want to be like you,” they won’t listen no matter how correct or true or good it may be. People base their evaluations on community rather than on facts or data.

So after the concert was over, as we walked toward where we thought our car was parked, Gary asked, “Hey Berry, when you see Chicago in concert, do you play air trombone?”

“Oh sure, all night long. But I’m one of the only guys doing it; tonight there were 5,000 guys playing air drums all around the arena.”

It’s all about being in community. And, about music.

This morning after my Thursday Iron Men study class I raced over to Greathouse Elementary School to meet Cyndi and climb on board one of her charter buses headed toward Lubbock. Last year Cyndi applied for and received a grant from the MISD Education Foundation to take all three 5^th-grade classes from Greathouse to the Science Spectrum, and she invited me to come along as an additional adult sponsor. I told my morning study guys three things about the day: (1) the good thing about being self-employed is that I can go with Cyndi on a field trip; (2) the bad thing about being self-employed is that I am always on-call to help supervise a bus full of 5^th-graders; and (3) if I am still standing up in front of the study group at 7:25 AM, keep me out of dutch with the misses and tell me to leave now so I won’t make the entire field trip start off late.

In truth, I enjoy watching Cyndi and her fellow teachers, Patty and Pam, do what they do. I like to watch them teach and corral small kids because they are so good at it and I know I will learn something from watching them.

When they tell stories about teaching, it is always about how hard it is or how they have to administer yet another standardized test or about some particular young hoodlum who snuck into their class pretending to be in the 5^th grade. I like hearing their stories because I like them as people and I want to explore their lives, but watching them in action is better still.

I always learn something useful and worthwhile whenever I observe an expert practicing their craft – and that is true whether the craftsman is a teacher or an engineer or a carpenter or a drummer or a stand-up comic.

Now, I know my three teachers are rolling their eyes even as they read my assessment of them as expert craftsmen, but don’t we all do that when complimented? None of us are very good at seeing how well we use our natural strengths. Our talents are so natural to us we forget that everyone else can’t do the same thing, and we tend to make light of what we do best.

Well, back to the Science Spectrum – one of my favorite exhibits was a small computer display that could draw fractals based on user input. The most beautiful group of fractals were Mandelbrot Sets. I first learned about fractals back in 1988 when I read a math book by James Gleick titled: “Chaos, Making a New Science,” and I’ve been fascinated by them since. It is amazing to me how math equations can begin plotting what appears to be random data, and then after hundreds of thousands of iterations, produce beautifully intricate and complex images.

The most fascinating thing about fractals is their complexity. If you take a small portion of a Mandelbrot Set and enlarge it, the resulting image will have the same detail and complexity as the original. And if you zoom in again on that enlarged portion, the new image will be just as complex. And over and over – the same level of complexity and beauty no matter how close you look. This property is known as self-similarity.

Contrast that to a sphere. The closer you look at a sphere the less complex it gets. If you keep zooming in toward the surface of a pool ball, for example, the three-dimensional sphere will begin to resemble a two-dimensional plane. It becomes less complex and less detailed the closer you look.

We don’t want to be people like that. We don’t want to be the sort of person who loses complexity and detail and beauty when someone looks at us up close.

I hope we are the sort of people who look the same no matter how close someone looks. I hope we are self-similar. I hope the peace and love and joy we wear on the surface looks just as good up close - way, way up close – as it does at a distance. I hope we are the sort of people who can live transparent and vulnerable lives, lives that show the heart of Jesus no matter how close anyone looks.

Well, in fact, I had a great time today with the 5^th-graders. My sponsor duties were simple: stand wherever Cyndi put me and look friendly and helpful and scary and authoritarian all at the same time. One young man who didn’t know who I was, asked me, “Who are you, the police?”

I said, “No, I’m The Man. Don’t stick it to me.”

Being two generations too young to remember the sixties he didn’t know what I meant, but he stayed in line and stopped punching his neighbor.

Sometimes I’m surprised how much I enjoy writing, but my writing history goes back a long way.

I had a Junior High teacher in Kermit, Texas, who would put a funny magazine photograph on the board and ask us to write a one-page story about the picture. We’d stand up in front of the class to read our stories, and then the class would vote by secret ballot on which story they liked the best. The secret-ballot voting worked well for me since I was not a cool guy and certainly not an insider; I was not the kind of guy other kids would go out on a limb to vote for publicly. But with secret ballots, I finished in the top three almost every week. I don’t have any of those award-winning stories in my files (just as well, I’m sure), and I don’t remember the teacher’s name, but I do remember the lay of the room and I remember the bulletin board where she posted the top three stories. And I certainly remember how proud I was to watch the other cool kids stand in front of the award board and read my stories.

But nowadays, the more I write, the more I realize that what I really enjoy is being read. I like to share what I’ve learned, and I like to know that someone out there is reading my stuff. I love to learn new things, but mainly I love to share the new things that I’ve learned. I love to read - reading is my favorite pastime - but I want to share what I’ve read. Occasionally someone will ask me to give a year-end talk to their civic club about books and what I’ve learned that year, and I love it. I always say yes to that sort of request.

Sharing makes my solitary pursuits: reading, writing, running, and all that, seem more important and less self-indulgent. But it’s not just that - I don’t really learn something until I share it with someone else.

But, well, I’ll go ahead and admit it – I also like to write because I am ambitious. I share Donald Miller’s ambition to be the next great spiritual writer. He wrote this, in his book Searching for God Knows What, “I have always wanted to be a sophisticated Christian writer and not somebody who has books on the close-out aisle at Plaid Pantry. Would this be the weekend I would be discovered, the start of a long career writing adventurous, life-changing books for my fellow brothers and sisters in Christ?” Miller was hoping to be a sort of Christian Deepak Chopra crossed with Tom Clancy. Me? I am more of a memoirist.

What Miller wrote sounds so familiar to my ears. I have great dreams of becoming a well-known spiritual writer that penetrates popular culture so deeply that I’m asked to talk about it on NPR and Book-TV, and that I get the opportunity to speak around the country about what I’ve learned. I want to be a Christian writer whose books are sold at Barnes and Noble, and other general market outlets. I realize I may be too much of a Christian insider for general market sales, but that is my dream. Of course I wouldn’t mind having a book or two on the shelves of Christian books stores, but I think we mostly have enough Christians writing to each other.

Through the years I have tried to write chapter-type books, but whenever I get over 800 to 1000 words I start to bore myself. I guess I am an essayist at heart. At present, after great encouragement from my friend Darrell, I am working a book of essays about running and how it has been a part of my search for God.

I recently read Steve Martin’s autobiography, Born Standing Up, which was about his career as a stand-up comic, but which I read as a book about being a writer. I wondered, what if, like Martin, my wildest dreams came true? What if I become over-the-top successful beyond any expectation – selling millions of books and winning literature prizes and international fame (as in, Rick Warren crossed with George Sheehan) and have the chance to speak everywhere and never have to worry about money again. Would I be happy about all that? I don’t know.

But I do know this. I like to write. And I know how important it’s become to my identity and to my personal walk with God. And I like to learn, and I like to share. And I like to imagine someone out there reading. And actually, that feels pretty good.

Last Saturday I joined 14 guys on a hike up and down Guadalupe Peak, the highest point in Texas. It was great. The weather was just warm enough for hiking without a jacket or fleece, and just windy enough to keep us from overheating. Even on top of the mountain, where it’s usually cold and windy this time of year, the weather was pleasant. Sitting on the big flat rock at the summit, out of the wind and in the sun, was very nice. In fact, it was just right for taking a nap. The only thing that kept me from stretching out and sleeping was the fact I had to hike another four miles back down the mountain.

Pete and Tony were the first two men in our group to reach the top, and they made it in two hours. The group I was hiking with made it in 2-1/2 hours, which is pretty typical for me. We had several other hikers who arrived on top after we did; the last one up took only three hours.

Personally, it was my best Guadalupe hike in – well, maybe - ever. My legs and knees felt great and I didn’t get fatigued until well into the second hour. I had better wind capacity and knee strength than I’ve had in years. I don’t know what made the difference except that lately I’ve been doing more core-strength workouts and running more consistently. I was pleased. As I was hiking I could imagine many more trips up the mountain in the future.

This was our largest group of hikers so far, and 7 of the 14 were with us for the first time. I only mention that because this group of men, in a variety of combinations, has made the hike up Guadalupe Peak many times … maybe as many as 15 times, but I lost count awhile ago.

I often get the question: “Why do you keep doing the same thing? Why keep hiking the same mountain over and over?”

Well, it makes no sense to have a men’s class without some sort of field trip, and hiking Guadalupe Peak is the best day-trip we’ve found. It’s doable for most people, yet it’s very challenging (it’s a 3,000′ climb ending at 8,749′ elevation, an 8.4-mile round trip). And it’s the closest mountain range to Midland by several hours.

But the real reason we keep doing this is simple – it’s because men make friends outside. Going through hardship together makes us brothers. Having a shared story of survival binds our hearts together. Men need outside experiences to become friends.

Oddly enough, the hike reminded me of a book I read recently - Steve Martin’s autobiography, titled: Born Standing Up. He wrote, “I did stand-up comedy for eighteen years. Ten of those years were spent learning, four years were spent refining, and four were spent in wild success.”

Steve’s success as a stand-up comic seemed sudden and spontaneous and inevitable back in the late 1970s. He seemed to come out of nowhere and was funny in a way no one else had ever been. Yet he makes it clear in his book that he worked a long time to earn his spontaneous, instant, and overnight success.

Friendship among guys works the same way. It often takes a long time to find instant success. Most of us men aren’t as good as women are at nurturing and cultivating friendships; we have to find things to do together. I know from experience that when I plan one of these hikes I’ll get to know some of the guys better than ever before, and I may even sow the seeds of a life-long brother. But I don’t know which guys I’ll end up with on the trail, or who will talk the most, or who will share my PB&J sandwich on top. Unlike the rest of my planned-out life, I cannot plan friendships. But I can plan friend-producing trips, and I know that many of my closest friends and allies have come from our hours together on the trail.

Friday morning, the day before our hike, I was reading in my Daily Bible about the time when Saul became king of Israel. In the beginning, Saul was just a young Hebrew man who took care of his father’s donkeys. But after he became king, the story says, he went back home “accompanied by valiant men whose hearts God had touched.” (I Samuel 10:26) I wrote in the margin of my Bible: “Before this, Saul was alone; he didn’t have any guys. Now, God has given him valiant men.”

That’s how I felt Saturday evening as I rode in the bus back to Midland with my hiking buddies. I once was mostly alone – at least, in my provincial spiritual world – but now God has surrounded me with these men. Before, I didn’t have any guys; now, God has surrounded me with valiant men.

I am a fortunate guy.

I took Kevin, my 5-year-old nephew and new roommate, to his third round of T-ball practices this week. I haven’t done this sort of thing in a long while and I feel a bit like the Team Granddad. I’m a few decades older than the other adults.

You remember how they used to have Team Moms who brought refreshments to the games and made posters to encourage the players? At least, that’s how it was done when my own kids were playing little-guy sports 15-20 years ago. I realize that having a Team Mom may be considered sexist nowadays, but a Team Dad wouldn’t work at all. Team Dads won’t bring fun drinks or refreshments. “Go without,” they’d say, “It’ll toughen you up.”

“But I’m so thirsty!”

“Here, suck on a pebble. That’s what we used to do back in ‘Nam.”

But a Team Granddad? I guess I could let the boys bounce on my knee after the games, and if their moms aren’t watching, play “pull my finger.” After the practice is over holler, I could be the one who yells, “Hey you kids get off that dirt pile.”

As we were driving home I asked Kevin about his favorite part of practice. He told me it was when he got to wear the batting helmet.

I said, “Oh, you mean when you got a chance to bat?”

“No,” Kevin said. “I mean when I got to wear the helmet. It was all black. It was cool.”

In fact, the batting helmet looked huge on those little guys. It reminded me of Rick Moranis as Dark Helmet in the Mel Brooks classic movie, “Spaceballs.” It looked like the helmet was wearing the boy.

As Team Granddad, it’s sometimes hard to know which kid is mine when they’re out on the field. They all look alike in their baseball caps (“No, Uncle Berry, this is a T-Ball cap”). It reminds me of 20 years ago when Cyndi and I were in the bleachers at a swim meet and we couldn’t tell which skinny little boy in black Speedos and goggles was Byron. They all looked alike from a distance. We didn’t know which one to cheer for.

It’s fun to watch the young boys adapt to the game and to the structure of practice. Some of them already have the stance and body moves of an athlete, but most of them still run with arms and legs flapping, and are usually more interested in drawing pictures in the dirt than the actual game of baseball.

Last week we traveled to Mansfield, Texas to spend the holidays with our daughter (Katie) and son-in-law (Drew) for a few days. Kevin took his new baseball glove (“It’s a T-Ball glove, Uncle Berry”) so he could play catch with Drew. When he showed off his glove, Drew was so excited he ran to the closet and pulled out his own first glove and showed it to Kevin. Drew said, “Wow, first gloves are a lot better now than they were when I got mine.”

They played catch in the backyard for about five minutes until Kevin grew tired of the whole thing. Then Drew showed him how to take care of his glove and to lay it down properly so the fingers wouldn’t curl and make it harder to scoop up ground balls. Drew didn’t offer any lessons on how to curl the brim of a baseball hat, but maybe he’s saving that for next time.

For me, it’s interesting to be doing T-Ball after so many years. I never expected to still be reinventing myself at the age of 51. I fully expected to be settled into routine by now; doing only the things I know well – only the things I want to do. But life is full of changes.

And I’ve changed my mind about changes, too. All the cool books I’m now reading, and all the learned voices I’m now listening to, and all my favorite skills I’m learning, have entered my life during the past five years. Change has been good for me.

Today at lunch, my friend Mark looked into the back seat of my pickup and noticed the booster seat for Kevin, and the stack of take-home papers from pre-school. He laughed at me and said, “Hey, this is all good for you.” He should know; Mark has been one of the biggest change agents in my life these past few years.

I guess I’ll admit that I’m starting to look forward to my next round of changes, whatever they may be. I’m looking forward to who I’ll be next year, or in the next ten years, or in the next century. It turns out that change is a gift, not a burden. Who knew?

I was in IHOP late one evening after a church choir and orchestra performance with a group of musical friends. We were settled into our long table, drinking coffee and iced tea and eating late-night pancakes, when a family came into the restaurant and found a booth. They were dressed up – suits and ties and dress shirts and nice dresses with heels. The nicest suit, surprisingly, was on the youngest member of the group. He was a young boy about 9 or 10 years old, and he seemed to be somewhat in charge of the group. The rest of the family deferred to him.

I couldn’t help noticing this group, if for no other reason than the fact that not many people wear suits into IHOP after 10:00 PM. One of my dinning companions said, “That must be the young traveling evangelist who preached tonight.”

I asked, “Do you mean the young boy?”

“Yes. He is big news among his particular church circles.”

I thought about that scene as I was reading from Kathleen Norris’ book, Cloister Walk. She wrote, “I had come to see both writing and monasticism as vocations that require periods of apprenticeship and formation. Prodigies are common in mathematics, but extremely rare in literature. As far as I know, there are no prodigies in monastic life.”

I never heard that young preacher preach so I have no idea what he said or whether he spoke with the power and conviction or if people were moved to change their lives after hearing him. He did nothing at the restaurant to discredit himself or detract from his ministry. It was obvious from his demeanor and his family’s deference that the young man was used to being the star of the group and used to having people cater to his wishes, but he was polite and grateful. But he also seemed too serious to be a young boy and I hoped he had a chance to return to form once he took his uniform off.

I could imagine how he must have spoken well and performed well and maybe even said things with great spiritual depth. But why would I listen to someone tell me how to live who hasn’t even yet survived Junior High?

I often enjoy breakfast conversations with my friend, Keith, a city attorney, and one of our favorite topics is our common experience in Austin with state government and in Washington DC with federal government. We talk about all the 20-somethings wearing suits and running around from meeting to meeting, representing and advising Congressmen and Senators. Like a couple of old grouches, we complain, “The face of government is a 22-year-old in his first suit.”

In fact, everyone I’ve met or worked with, whether in Austin or Washington, has been bright and clever and insightful and well-informed and polite. I don’t really have any complaints about all the young suits. But I would feel better about the advice given to my congressman if someone at his table had owned a mortgage or picked up their baby from day care. How can they give good political advice about real life when they’ve live so little of it?

But it isn’t just age and experience that makes someone helpful. Wisdom doesn’t always come with age, wisdom comes from God. Kathleen Norris quoted Mechtild of Magdeburg, a 13^th-century mystic: “However good a man’s eyes may be, he cannot see over a mile away; however sharp his senses, he cannot grasp supernatural things, except through faith.”

This is a good counter argument to the notion that there are no prodigies among monks, that spiritual depth takes time to develop. Here she writes that even with maturity and spiritual depth we cannot see supernatural things except through faith.

Many people would like to believe they can achieve levels of insight and awareness into the supernatural, all through their own efforts. But any glimpse we get of God’s things are gifts from God himself.

I don’t expect all my best advice to come from people who are older than me. There are a lot of young insightful people who have spoken wisdom into my life and I’m grateful for them. Some people gain experience, and learn from experience, much more quickly than the rest of us. Some of the voices that influence me the most nowadays are young leaders who are trying to pull the church into the 21^st-Century. Some of them are younger than my own children. It’s my life goal to spend time with people like that – people who can change me, and to spend time with people I can change. Sometimes I’m the mentor, and sometimes I’m the mentee (but never the Mentos – I drink too much Diet Coke for that). But this I know … there are no prodigies among spiritual leaders. It takes time to grow.

Why do I hesitate when I know the will of God? No, actually, the question should be, why do I hesitate to seek the will of God? Me, a man of faith who has known nothing but God since I was born, who made a decision for Jesus at age 7 and never looked back. (OK, so I’ve often doubted the very existence of God and the whole spiritual story, I’ll admit that, but I’ve never doubted the sincerity or sticking power or theology of that young 7-year-old decision.)

But I got off track.

The question is, why do I balk at wanting to know God’s will when I have so many stories of how he’s taken care of us all these years? It’s because I want to know what that will is before I commit to it. It’s because I want choices; because I hope God will give me a list of options from which I can choose. Like the old Sears catalogue used to do (maybe it still does … I haven’t looked at one in decades), listing a good, better, or best suggestion for each product. I would be more comfortable if God’s will came at me in menu form.

Another reason I hesitate is because I know an encounter with God will affect me physically and emotionally and intellectually, and that’s too unpredictable. I hesitate because I’m not sure I can handle whatever comes next.

I remember when a close friend of mine attended a Walk to Emmaus spiritual weekend. It had such a profound effect on his life and his faith and his view of God that his wife told me she wanted to attend a Walk to Emmaus herself, but not until she was ready. She saw the impact on him – all of it good – and she was afraid to go. She had nothing but good things to say about her “new” husband, but she was afraid of the changes she might experience and wondered if she could handle it. Like her, I sometimes stop at wanting to know God’s will because I’m not sure I am equipped to handle it.

One of my favorite writers, Anne Lamott, wrote about how she first came to God. She would stand on the threshold of an inner-city church and listen to the singing, afraid to come further into the building, because she was drunk or stoned and because she was afraid of what might happen to her or where she might end up if she went inside. It took a long time, Sunday after Sunday, before her need for God overcame her fear of the future and she crossed the threshold and went inside to join the others.

I was reading a story in the Bible from Mark 5 about a crowd of people who witnessed a miracle – Jesus healed a wild, uncontrollable, demon-possessed man. Instead of rejoicing over the man’s new life, and instead of bringing other sick and crazy people to Jesus so he could heal them, the crowd begged Jesus to leave their region. They were afraid of Jesus. If he could heal this uncontrollable man, who knew what else he would do. It was way too scary to think about, and they didn’t want to live with uncertainty, so they begged Jesus to leave. “Please, no more miracles, no more magic,” they might’ve said, as if Jesus was Gandalf. The crowd didn’t know if he was a good wizard or an evil wizard, and it was better to take no chances and just ask him to leave. They played it safe, preferring to be left alone rather than having to worry about what Jesus might change next.

Maybe that’s my condition as well – I mean, I don’t want Jesus to leave, but I’m much more comfortable with his small incremental changes – just a tweak here and there on a long campaign to perfect my life – than I am with possible catastrophic shifts that leave me short-of-breath and reeling off-balance.

However, the longer I know Jesus, the more comfortable I am with the uncertainty he brings. The more willing I am to step over the threshold into the big room. The more likely I am to ask him to stay and keep working on me even when I’m afraid of what he might do next.