Finding the opportunity to seek forgiveness, participate in repair or restitution with people whom I have hurt may result in their expressing forgiveness. While hearing such comforting words warms me, self-forgiveness remains difficult.
Do you have similar battles?
I know this is a particular struggle because having known what is right, good, wholesome, I have not always done what is right and good and wholesome. I find this painful to admit and address. Knowing better was hardly helpful.
While it is no excuse, I am aware that I am not too different from many.
When I am feeling down it feels as if my failures speak louder than any successes. Despite the knowledge that “people are more than their actions” shame seeps and runs deep and makes me feel vulnerable and fragile. It can be a physical sensation.
Again, I must ask, do you ever feel this way?
When I am at my best, I can humble myself, accept my imperfections and that I am a forgiven person.
Admitting I am flawed is key to my freedom which leads me to self forgiveness at which point freedom fills my soul.
I’ve been asked a few times why I’m a rideshare driver for Lyft and Uber.
The answers are easy.
It keeps me from spending money at local hardware stores.
I tend to drift into a few, earnestly thinking and believing I am good at fixing things, you know, minor home projects like remodeling the kitchen, adding a bedroom, after decades of knowing otherwise. Truth is, I’m not. I have hardly ever finished a single repair, paint, assemble, project I ever began and I have unused equipment to prove it. I’d rather drive a few hours and make a little cash than buy stuff I end up never using and see it sitting wherever I abandon it until it burns my eyes.
When I drive for Lyft and Uber — yes, New Castle, you have at least one rideshare driver I know of — I get the joy and privilege of meeting people who I would probably never otherwise meet.
Read the car correctly and there are riders who really want to talk and will tell you their life stories, most of which, if well-penned, could be best sellers, even movie franchises. Many riders simply want to rest or catch up on phone time after a very hard day’s work. Some sleep. That’s fine by me. It gives me time to be thankful for all the home-projects I am avoiding and calculate all the money I’m saving by not buying the John Deer foundation digger thing I found most attractive and fully believed I needed a few days ago.
I have long prayed that God would permit me to travel and teach young adult students who are rich in almost everything but money and who live in places I couldn’t find on a map. If I drive hard for a week I can earn enough money to fly anywhere in the world where I’m invited.
Paying my own way means I don’t stretch budgets of campuses in some of the most economically vulnerable and challenged countries on Earth.
My three trips, scheduled before 2024 closes are to Santiago – then home, Accra, Lome, Nairobi, Worcester, – then home. After Thanksgiving, it’s Bujumbura. If I drive it means I can go to such destinations. I think my prayers have been answered.
When I drive for Lyft and Uber I get the joy and privilege of seeing parts of the city of Indianapolis (and Anderson, Muncie, St. Louis, Fort Wayne, Elwood, Madison and Columbus, Indiana) I would never otherwise see, and there is beauty, stunning beauty everywhere, just as there is everywhere on this gorgeous planet.
I like to drive because I meet biblical characters. The woman caught in adultery cried her eyes out in my car one morning before 7am. The 19-year old told me God would never accept or forgive her for what she’d just done and cried all the more when I told her that would be most uncharacteristic of the God I’ve encountered.
I’ve driven men and women to and from all the major hospitals who express overwhelming joy in simply being alive.
When women ride with me and I hear them on their phones negotiating extra hours with three part-time jobs, scheduling care of several children – for their own and for the children of neighbors and friends – while also learning a language in a new country, I want to declare my 2013 Lexus holy ground.
Deep breath now: when 4 young men in their late teens got a ride from an abandoned fast-food parking lot and, after a short while started to tell me their stories and revealed that all had lost a dad, uncle or friend in a violent death, and all had been with someone who was dying, and that there were five weapons in MY car (among the four of them) and when I asked why and almost as one they said WE HAVE TO and I drive off leaving them behind, regretting I could not sit with them and hear more and more and more.
Yes. Long sentence. Full of run-ons, just like the conversation we had in the car.
Lyft? Uber?
It’s beautiful I tell you.
Maybe one day this week I will stay home and paint a room.
Apart from thinking outside of the box (kindly forgive the cliche) my challenge to myself, my sons, and those whom I have the joy of teaching, is to think alone. Have thoughts, plans, aspirations, that are not determined or shaped by commercials, fads, friends, or even by immediate and extended family.
This is a tough but liberating challenge. I encounter people who appear terrified to allow an independent thought to cross their beautiful minds. They give a sideways or backward glance seeking affirmation before the thought is permitted to step out.
The joy of owning their own thoughts, exploring unique possibilities even within their own heads, it appears, will not be theirs.
The fear cripples into conformity.
Seth Godin, speaker and top-selling writer, used the term “sheepwalking” in Tribes to describe mindless following.
I’ve extended his metaphor:
“Sheep-thinking” – borrowing thinking from others for fear of having an original or contrary thought.
“Sheep-talking” – sounding just like everyone else sounds, something particularly noticeable in churches and faith movements.
“Sheep-feeling” – to feel what everyone else feels, not in empathy or solidarity but in being caught up or swept up by the emotion of the moment.
“Sheeping” has become my catchall when it’s happening within me and I hear or see it around me.
Photographed in #Curitiba, %Brazil, with permission,
If I say I love someone, I will invest the time required to hear what he or she wants to say.
Listening, like love, has no gimmicks, no tricks.
It is expressing genuine interest. It is putting my own concerns aside for a while and entering someone else’s world. It’s rewriting, reshaping, re-writing, nothing I hear. I will listen as if I am appreciating fine, complex, beautiful art, a masterpiece. I will not “listen” as if I’m engaged in a competitive game of verbal tennis. I will listen as one who has much to learn rather than hide behind the covert belief that I’m the one with much to teach.
Such arrogance neither hears, nor listens well, or accurately.
The arrogant listener hears what he or she wants to hear. Arrogance reshapes what’s said into what the listener prefers.
When I think “I”ve heard it all before” I’m not listening.
Listening opens new worlds for the speaker and the listener leading each down a path of brave discovery. It’s a mutual risk.
The loving listener listens to what is said and unsaid, without rearranging either.
The listener enters another’s world, then departs with it untouched, understood, admired, no matter how beautiful, troubled, complex, that world may be.
Illustration by Siggi Berg and used with permission.
“I have the most generous mother. Now 80 and strong as an ox. I remember her asking me to go for a drive some evenings as a teemager. She would chat to me about people who had less than us. We never had lots. She would have an envelope with money from her housekeeping and we would stop and I had to pop it into the letterbox (of people in need) without being seen. She never told my dad or anyone else. It taught me at a tender age that tithe was not always meant to be bought into the storehouse but sometimes distributed where the need was seen. I value her influence in my life. I have tried to emulate her motherly wisdom.”
Thank you for your beautiful letter. Your mother’s generosity and her habitual acts of generosity are inspiring. What’s also inspiring is that you, her son, recognize it and appreciate it. Your mother has etched an indelible memory into your whole being.
I have no doubt that you too, are a generous man. How could you not be, after what you experienced?
I continue to believe that generosity is a very powerful agent for goodness — not only for the recipients, but also for the givers.
My sons, both of them, are in love, each with a woman who’d make any dad proud.
The first time I met Nate’s girlfriend I dressed for the occasion and wore a tie that bears a collaged image of both boys when aged about 12 and 8. Thulani’s head resting on Nate’s and they both have broad smiles. I donned the tie with playful snarkiness declaring, with zero subtlety, exactly where Nate belongs.
Harli visited a few days later and won my heart.
“Open it,” she said handing me a gift.
Treasure fell from the envelope. She’d re-produced the tie with updated images, my sons at 26 and 22, smiling as broadly from another necktie.
On Fathers Day I woke to this text which I publish with Harli’s permission:
“Happy Fathers Day, to a man I idolize. You welcomed me into your family with open arms and you single handedly raised two honest gentlemen that are so lucky and grateful to have you. I hope you enjoy your day!!”
The woman has no idea that my most ardent prayer for my sons was always that they learn how to love and that they be gentlemen.
Thulani met Alaina over a year ago and has gone so far as to purchase a ring. Last Saturday he ordered roses to surround a spot near Bow Street Bridge in New York City’s Central Park. Out for a walk the couple walked by at some distance from the bridge and the flowers caught Alaina’s attention.
“What if they were there for you,” he said.
On his knees, at the bridge, Thulani popped the question. Cameras rolled and the perfect moment of their shared joy was caught for all to see, you and me, and generations yet unborn.
From there the couple headed to a restaurant where forty of their friends waited in a reserved private room to welcome them, and welcome them they did!
Thulani coordinated all of this.
Alaina knew none of it.
I talked with my daughter-to-be the day after the engagement and I got to feel some of her joy.
Yes, I am looking forward to the wedding. No date is yet set. I am looking forward to their complete fulfillment as husband and wife. Truth be told, I can hardly wait to have at least 5 or 6 grandchildren.
I have enjoyed the run up to this event, rehearsing with Thulani, his speech to request Alaina’s parents for her hand in marriage, the design and purchase of the rings, receiving a most gracious text from my son to declare how he had learned about love from how I have loved him….
But, my real joy goes even deeper than all of that, if that is possible.
Try telling someone from my part of the world (Indiana, USA) a bad-weather story.
In seconds you will be interrupted.
No matter how deep the snow, severe the ice storm, or how strong the wind was, your “listener” will trump you.
The “listener” is not listening. He or she is waiting to speak, aching to one-up you, waiting to debate, waiting to win! His bad weather story will dwarf yours, no doubt about it.
It’s not a conversation.
It’s a duel!
I am convinced that in Indiana one cannot have one’s own weather and let it be.
This phenomenon is not restricted to weather-talk or to Indiana. Try telling friends in South Africa about your game reserve experience. In split seconds you will be told a more intense, more dramatic event that occurred in another better, bigger, greater game reserve than the one you enjoyed. Other similar topics: the best curry, the worst flying experience, the worst customer service, lost luggage tales, a recent surgery or illness.
Really listening, being present for each other, takes love and discipline. It takes the ability to hold our tongues if we want to enter the world and the experience of another. The temptation to crowd out that world with our own (bigger, better) material can be very strong.
Being present for each other is a gift.
Hold your tongue, give liberally.
I’m enjoying this memoir very much and commend it to you.
Your “spirituality” is not measured by how much you (or I) read the Holy Scriptures, sing hymns, pray, clap your hands, run around a sanctuary with a purple flag, dance to contemporary religious music or reject those who do.
It’s not determined by how much you visit your place of worship or how much money you donate to its causes.
It’s not affirmed by your title (if you have one) or the ornate design of your robe (if you wear one) or the position you hold in the hierarchy of your faith tradition (if you’re part of one).
But, it is affirmed by your willingness to take responsibility for your life, your choices, and the good use of your skills and talents.
A biopsy of the validity and integrity of our faith and spirituality is revealed in how we treat people, especially loved-ones and strangers; how we love our enemies, offer hospitality, respect, regard, love those who reject our beliefs.
Do you clean up after yourself?
Are you wisely generous to a fault?
Do you love those who are different from you, whose lives might be in direct conflict with what you believe?
Do you love others by listening?
If you take full responsibility for yourself, become extraordinarily generous with what you have, embrace diversity, and love others by listening, you will fast-forward your “spiritual” growth.
Actually, you will put it on supercharge.
It’s not your title, the reach of your authority, how many of your memes “go viral” or the crowds who respect and adore you.
Rather, it’s how you respect and love and respond to those who don’t.
And now the boy is a man, engaged for marriage……. #graceupongrace
Have a good weekend – there are several things you and I can do that will ensure we have a good weekend.
Reach out with affirmation to a family member who does not routinely hear from you. Recall good memories you share. Talk of the joy you knew together. This act of connecting will leave you with positive feelings and you will have done something good for another.
Give time or treasure to a loved cause or to a person or family in need. While the act will benefit the recipient it will also have positive kickbacks for you. You will have done something good and you will enjoy the knowledge that your actions have resulted in a story that will be told and retold.
Even if you do not consider yourself a writer, put pencil to paper and write a sentence or two about the beautiful things that have happened in your life, then, let it flow. Without concern (yet) about punctuation or grammar, get out of the way and let the sentences multiply and grow into a paragraph or three. You will soon experience the benefits of bringing to the surface of your thinking the beauty that has been yours.
Very early morning landing in New York – from Delhi
“What parenting advice could you offer my wife and me,” said the delighted dad, “my son is 16 months young.”
Above all, love your wife with joy, freedom and courage. This will reduce and deflect loads of the anxiety that naturally tries to derail all childhoods.
Lavish your baby, then young child, then pre-teen and teenager with affirmation and affection. No matter what you and your wife face, when you come home from work, or he returns after time away, or when he wakes in the morning or in the middle of the night — baby or teenager — be glad to see him, and, say so. Verbally express the joys your son brings you, to each other, and to him.
Teach him to talk Joy.
Regard the ages 5, 8, 12, 14 and 16 as transition ages. At these times discuss with him your parental plans (your mutually agreed upon plans you’ve made as parents) to do less and less for him, while expecting more and more from him. Yes, even at 5 — point out that he can make his own, age-appropriate decisions. Include him in planning and establishing his growing independence. Plan your parenting so that by his eighteenth year your parenting roles are accomplished and he has all it takes to be an interdependent young adult.
Hold in high regard the beautiful idea that you parent (the verb) for his sake and not yours.
Our new painting will go up in my home-office this week….. from Friday this week, both of my adult sons are launched and living independently of me. Oh the joy; oh the niggling pain. #graceupongrace
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