In times of disruption and stress the really important things become vividly clear and what is not has a way of dropping from our individual and group awareness. 

The new and expensive kitchen countertops become what they ought to be, a backdrop to vital conversations. The new car, the one you wanted to keep spotless, becomes a means to ferry food to neighbors. The Wifi speed ceases to be about gaming or Netflix, but a means to efficiently update family and friends around the world about your safety and wellbeing.

Going to school, being present in a classroom, having a teacher live in front of your children becomes a pleasurable thought, something for which your children and you may now ache. 

The Spar sign you spy on the way to search for a tank of petrol is a warm reminder of how things used to be, just a few days ago.

But, things will come together. Order will be restored. Good outweighs evil with surprising regularity all throughout history.Rebuild, replace, restore; restore, replace, rebuild. Good outweighs evil with surprising regularity all throughout history.

I’m sure you’re feeling anxious today. If not anxious for yourself, perhaps for your children, grandchildren, great grandchildren. You’re worried about what’s happening today and what will happen in the future if all this chaos can occur today. Perhaps you’re feeling fearful today, wondering if normalcy will ever be restored, if widespread civil decency will ever once more prevail.

The thought and the question you find hard to expel may be “will things ever return to order?” I’m sure you’ve wondered how a place with such natural beauty of sea, clear skies, subtropical plants and beauty, and, more often than not, such incredible weather, can be accosted with such random and indiscriminate horror.

I will tell you, dear reader, that from my safe distance it’s understandably easy for you to dismiss my expressions of empathy and want to see through them.

Truth is I’ve had a sleepless night (almost, at least). There is a clinical definition for the guilt I’m feeling from this safe distance while family and friends and readers are threatened and, yes, I’m feeling it and feeling it powerfully.

May grace be yours in the midst of all you are having to endure.

A significant problem with disdain, contempt, rejection, or downright hate, is that it impacts the source more than it (usually) does the victim.

If you (or I, of course) harbor negative thoughts and feelings toward a former spouse, in-laws, parents, or neighbors, anyone for that matter, we poison our own wells. We damage ourselves, and the self-damage usually outshines the impact on our victims.

Hate (or contempt or disdain – people usually like to avoid the word hate with “softer” terms) even though that’s what it is:

• Poisons our view on the world and on all other people, even those we love.

• Even the beautiful things and beautiful experiences are contaminated if we harbor hate for even one person.

• Hate has trouble being contained and its power infects everything we do and see and experience.

• Hate, like all viruses, has no boundaries, and so it indiscriminately invades and spoils even where it’s uninvited.

• Makes us cynical and we become cynical for so long it becomes a way of life, making us contemptuous of those who are hopeful and of those who express optimism.

Love, forgiveness, grace, and goodness are better than hate – yet hate has quite a following.

Grace, goodness, kindness will lift our spirits and open a world of fresh and wonderful possibilities.

Love is courageous and creative. It’s always the best option.

Parenting has tried very hard to teach me a few valuable lessons. Although sometimes a slow learner, and some crucial principles have demanded refresher courses, I think the lessons are transferable to all relationships:

• Identifying and stopping when I’m projecting my history, fears, frailties, failures and temptations onto their motives and behaviors.

• Knowing when to stop talking, when words, shared thoughts and ideas, have turned into chasing, demanding, hunting and “suggestions” have transformed into strong-arm tactics.

• Knowing when my actions, as loving as they may appear, promote laziness or unnecessary dependence.

• Knowing when to stop thinking, anticipating for each of my sons when they are quite capable of planning and organizing themselves and understanding that if they are not, my doing it for them is hardly helpful if they are to ever develop these very necessary skills.

• Knowing anxiety and love are not the same thing and are easily, often painfully confused as they can feel so much alike. 

• Parenting ends; while I will always be their dad, they are no longer little boys who need oversight and my watchful eye. They are men in their own right, both fully capable of life with me and without me. If this is not so, I have truly failed as a dad, and they, as men.

It fascinates me that we often know so little about each other and how little time we take to try to discover each other. 

Occasionally I will play the piano. 

Someone where I live, will tell me they didn’t know I played. 

When I report that amongst other places, I played topless in a flowery skirt for a lua band in Hawaii they are usually taken aback. Sometimes I’ll add that at 12 I played for a stripper named Syringa who danced with a snake.

This is what I mean. There are whole volumes of our lives that others don’t know about and we’d all be enriched (perhaps) if we took the time to find out. We are all more than we can see.

I visited a man in a care facility a while back and met a friend of his who was also visiting. All I saw about him was that he was tall, very tall. I took no time to find out anything about him. I recalled his name because when we both left the care facility the waves and cheers he got from other residents made it clear he was well known.

I was rather embarrassed when I got home and googled him.

This gracious man was a basketball star of national significance and I didn’t even know he played.

“Leave things – parks, campsites, picnic areas, beaches, national parks – better than you found them” is, for obvious reasons, a widely used, helpful mantra.

When applied, everyone benefits.

The communal or public facilities are left clear of litter, things are straightened out, tidied, to benefit those who will next use it. Those departing are better off for having increased awareness of the needs of others, even the needs of strangers.

It becomes a way of thinking, a lens through which we see the world, all it offers, and what we have to offer it.  Exercising such awareness and thoughtfulness leaves us all better off and offers us all a chance to grow.  

I think this principle applies also to people, to all encounters, casual to intimate.

Every encounter can be a positive one. Yes. It can. Even with that very difficult neighbor, that surly in-law, that rude guy at the post office. Your Ex.

You can make it so by how you leave it, how you clean up after yourself, how you take care of who you are and how you respond in the encounters. It’s not that I think everyone needs some kind of fixing but we can leave every encounter with grace, kindness, with an exchange that’s encouraging, even the most difficult of encounters.

I hope you will learn the power of a strong “yes” and a firm “no.”

May you learn to say YES to opportunities even if they involve risk or if they involve venturing into the unknown, learning new things, and breaking unhelpful habits. May you say YES especially if the opportunities involve meeting new people. May you say YES to opportunities to travel, to serve, and to build and to assist in mending broken places. May you say YES to exploring new ideas. May you say YES when you encounter opportunities to offer hospitality.

May you say NO to toxic secrets, to behavior that judges or excludes others. May you say NO to religious teachings that limit your capacity for generosity and freedom. May you say NO to anything that will delay your formal education no matter how appealing or adventurous the idea may be. May you say NO to those who disrespect you or encourage you to treat the adults around you with anything less than utmost respect and close-to-perfectly good manners. May you say NO to those who dismiss your ideas and who treat you as a means toward their disclosed or undisclosed ends.

“Is every intimate relationship worth fighting for? How do you know when to throw in the towel?” 

After much first-hand experience of couples beating incredible odds (addictions, violence, serial infidelity) to revitalize devastated relationships I’m going to say YES. It is probably worth the fight. There are some essential pointers that suggest ending it may be inevitable.

Both people have to be almost equally in the battle. “Almost” because one person is inevitably more motivated than the other. It just cannot stay that way if it’s to survive and thrive. Both people have to acknowledge individual roles in the breakdown. I have no urge to “blame the victim” but it takes at least two to tangle (and tango).

Both people have to acknowledge a commitment to “on-going” truth. I don’t believe every detail of an infidelity ought be divulged but I do believe a couple can commit to “truth-from-here-on” agreement. Affairs (emotional, sexual, soul-mates-only) must end if the couple is to survive and thrive. Both people have to be willing to learn to HEAR the other person – no matter how long or painful the process. No listening; no love.

Given that it is Father’s Day I have to tell you my father was a David who had his fair share of Goliaths. He had many in all shapes and sizes and spread over many years. I’d suggest being fatherless from birth was a Goliath of sorts. I’d suggest the Second World War must have felt much like a Goliath to much of the world and to a 15-year-old boy going off to war before even needing to shave. I guess entering the Indian Ocean off a burning and sinking destroyer to find safety was certainly a frightening encounter. Floating in the ocean, protected from sharks by the oil that has surfaced from the sinking ship is not usually the safe option. Floating for hours – about 30 in all – in oil and debri and being fried in the day in the scorching sun and freezing in the night while hoping for rescue may well qualify as a Goliath. Dad said the men in the water sang “Nearer My God To Thee” and “From Sinking Sands He Lifted Me” and “Abide With Me” a lot. But, he did it. He did it all. My dad was a long way from perfect but I have noticed he was much more imperfect when I was younger than he is now. I guess he improved over time.

Did you know my dad? He owned the tearoom near the top of Blackburn Road next to the Dutch Reformed Church, up the road from Parkhill soccer club. You may or not have known him by name but you may have been a woman in need of milk for her baby. He would have given it to you under the counter as if defying the boss which was, of course, himself. When you tried to pay he may have whispered “take the milk my dear. No baby should go without food. Keep your money for something else the baby needs.” Or, you may have wandered into the shop and said you had no place to stay for a while and he may have said “we have plenty of room here” and given you a bed for a week, a month, even longer. Perhaps you knew him because you faced addiction to alcohol and he was your Alcoholics Anonymous sponsor and he said “just for today” to you and told you he’d decided he’d no longer drink “just for today” until his pledge spanned decades of sobriety. Did you know my dad? You may not have known him by name but perhaps you went to his tearoom where he served bread, milk, kindness and good humor and wrapped the goods with the feeling that you were known, that you belonged.