I wish we knew each other and could sit together in a coffee shop or a Wimpy and chat over breakfast and hear about each other’s lives. If we could, I’d assume – knowing I could be wrong – some things about you, that are true for me, and it would make it very comfortable for us to talk:

• You want to do better in your relationships – especially with the people who are really close to you. You want to love better, listen better, and you want to learn what it means to really get behind and support the people you love and all whom you know. We could talk about this. It’d probably be good for both of us.
• There are times that things from your past, or even your early childhood, “visit” you. They surface in your mind, even lunge at you in your dreams, and you wonder how and where and why it is all stored within. It happens to me. I like to explore these memories. Maybe you’d like to as well.
• You wished you could, or regret that you were not, more comfortable about loving and enjoying your parents. You so want or wanted them to happy and fulfilled but it was not easy for you to express this desire and now you face the occasional regret.

The Mercury / Monday

Embarking on the Fearless Journey

The power of repair, of change comes, not because you buy a new car, get a new job, or ditch your wife for a new one. It begins nowhere else but in the deepest recesses of your soul.

For the journey you (“we” – I am on it too) will require a steel will, pencil and paper, humility, and an open heart.

Then…

1. Face yourself. It’s impossible to be genuine with others while you are fooling yourself. Tell yourself the truth about yourself. Unwind, dismantle, your self-lies and pretensions and sophistications. Despite your fears, you will probably not fall apart. My hunch is you’ll “fall together” and become a more beautiful than you can imagine.

2. Open up. Be more vulnerable. Let others, but not all others, in. Tell people who love you what terrifies you. Expose your masks, the facades you fear losing. Tell them about what you fear will be exposed. But, take your time. The cover-up has taken a lifetime. It won’t be repaired overnight, or without pain.

3. Set yourself on a “highest good” track: for yourself first, for others, second. Do no harm and try to avoid people and organizations that do. Promote the empowering and the wellbeing of others. This is most tangibly done through acts of generosity, service, and forgiveness.

(If you “like” it, please “share” – thanks.)

What goes on in your parent heart? I know what goes on in mine, I think.

Mine’s like the furnace – something not usually found in South African houses – in middle of winter. The furnace never turns off. My parent heart (or head) is working, thinking, planning, hoping, watching.

There are times it’s distracted, but it’s never off duty. There are times it’s filled with anxiety and it can feel like it’s tumbling out of control.

There are times love doesn’t always feel like love and feel like something quite different. It can feel like rising anger or a lightning jolt of protection. I see it expressed as I unwittingly scan the surroundings for dangers and potential dangers.

I experience my heart as hoping beyond hope and wanting the seemingly impossible for my sons. I experience it as sometimes ignoring my own needs and placing all things on hold until I know what the boys may need.

My heart (or my head) is constantly shifting through priorities, trying to identify what is crucial from what is necessary to what is mere waste. Sometimes, really only occasionally, it feels broken by a lapse in a son’s integrity or a harsh word or a moment of son-to-son betrayal – but it is thankfully, quick to recover.

Tell me what yours is like – please.

“But there is one thing that has power completely, and that is love. Because when a man loves, he seeks no power, and therefore he has power.” – Rev. Theophilus Msimangu, Cry, The Beloved Country by Alan Paton

The Mercury / Thursday

In the biblical parable of the prodigal who returns after squandering his inheritance the father runs to meet the now-humbled son and celebrates his return. A massive party ensues. He who was unreachable and in a distant land (no Facebook, no Snap Chat) discovered the harsh truths of diminishing then vanishing resources and his desperation sends him home as one willing to be his father’s hired hand.

The parable, the subject of a million sermons and interpreted by the greatest of artists over thousands of years, is about the father’s love.

He is generous. He is patient. He is forgiving.

He’s spent, we can safely presume, years watching for the son’s return, and when it happens, he is overwhelmed with joy with no a trace of recrimination expressed in his vulnerable, exuberant welcome.

Of course the dad could be hurt again. He could use the return as a “teaching moment” but he doesn’t. He loves with abandon.

I don’t know what went on in his heart (and it is a parable) but I do know what it is like to receive my father’s love after years of distance and rebellion.

Dads everywhere – please reach out to your sons and daughters today – young child, adult, local or distant, and express the love for your sons and daughters that is burning beautifully in your heart.

Written rather rapidly but written by request….

Five things to say to my children… (well, according to age, of course)….

1. I like to think that nothing you do or don’t do will ever diminish my love for you – but – given that I am human, tainted, and “fallen,” it’s not impossible. This cuts both ways. While I hope you will always love me, I understand that our mutual imperfections may get in the way. Nonetheless: I love you. I will seek your highest good as much as I am able. When my love for you is challenged, I will try to always give you the benefit of the doubt.

2. We are separate people. You are responsible for you. I am responsible for me. I try to give you the most advantageous position as far as I am able, and according to our (limited) resources, but ultimately making your life successful is your responsibility. I will support you. I will encourage you, but essentially who you are and what you become is firmly in your hands and will live and grow within your unique dance with God, your community, your skills, talents, dreams, and desires.

3. I will never measure your success by wealth or possessions or fame or any one of measures commonly associated with success. For me it will always be measured in the manner in which you treat people, all people, people who are weaker, stronger, richer, poorer, people who are different from you, people who love you and those who don’t. If you hobnob kings but you cannot treat those who serve you as if they themselves were royalty, I’ll see you as having a lot of growing to do. This, too, by the way, cuts both ways.

4. Life has an odd and gracious ways of giving us (you and me) second, third, fifth, even sixth chances. Take them. Screwing up here and there is expected and human – but at least have the wisdom, unlike me, to learn from your mistakes. I’ve learned from a lot of mine (apparently not all) but my deepest regrets are attached to the fact that it usually took me such a very long time to do so. Do better than I have done at this – please.

5. While it is convenient, resist making decisions about what kind of Person Jesus is and what kind of Being God is from what you see in the church. It’s a travesty, really, that God and Jesus and the Beautiful Holy Spirit have been reduced to the Sunday Hymn sandwich or the antics of a “modern” worship leader prancing with a guitar, or a cool pastor who has mastered the pulpit and PowerPoint. None of that, none of the best of all of that, ever comes close, even nears (and I don’t care where you are told it is all happening) the Creative and the Dangerous and the Enthusiastic Nature of the All Powerful God and the Humble and Edgy, Inclusive Person of Jesus and their Playful and Powerful and Unsettling Representative in the form of the Holy Spirit. Together, and separately, They are ALL nicer and more and more and more than I have ever known any church anywhere to be able and brave enough to portray. This said, find a community (church or not) – serve it, be a part of it, and play your part. You’ll never become fully who you are unless you are committed to a group of people whom you can love and will love you in return.

The Mercury / Tuesday – re-run, by request of hard-copy readers / Victims Abound

There are victims everywhere – and, here’s the kicker, there may be one within you, or me.

Resist him. Don’t placate her. He’s out to get you. She’ll persist until she gets her way.

Unless he or she is willing to grow, any expectation to grow up, become stronger, to cast aside the victim mode, will be resisted.

Don’t give in, don’t placate, or soften your serve – be kind but treat people as strong and capable.

Perversely there are rewards for being a victim.

Easily offended, rapidly bruised, ever on the lookout for any who may infringe their fragile sense of self, be it for race, gender, sexual orientation, language, or size, victims crave attention, demand coddling and expect social waivers.

The backlash, if you expect someone who trades upon his or her victim status to grow up, is inevitable.

It’ll be tooth and nail. You’ll be called names – the nicest of which may be uncaring or unloving.

But you will potentially spark the best in people.

You will foster growth and see the victim emerge from his or her victim-hood and contribute to your community in helpful, creative ways, rather than suck the life out of everything as victims are often prone to do – even if he or she is living within you, or me.

Free gifts we can give to everyone we encounter – intimate or casual:

We can give each other room to move, freedom, space, permission to be different, and separate. No permission is required given that all people are already free. It seems some do not know it or believe it.

We can offer each other a positive attitude, a can-do spirit, an approach to problems and requests with a cooperative, and creative drive. We have all had the draining experience of legitimate requests meeting automatic resistance.

We can give each other the benefit of the doubt, the stance that assumes no malice when things don’t run according to plan. An air of suspicion can kill any relationship, casual or intimate.

We can offer each other a listening ear before leaping to conclusions. It’s discouraging to talk to someone who is not listening or who has decided he or she already knows what you want to say.

We can offer each other hospitality, a welcome, a metaphorical or even a literal embrace, an attitude that says “you are welcome in my life for this moment and I am glad you are here.”