Heading to South Africa I stopped at the bookstore in Concourse A before my first flight and saw Malcolm Gladwell’s “Talking With Strangers.” 

I decided against it.

This was for sheer care and concern about whomever would be seated next to me on the long-haul from Dulles to Cape Town ‘cause if I sat with someone reading a book with that title I’d go into immediate oh-no-please-don’t mode.

It’s not that I won’t or don’t talk to strangers but when you have to read a book about it it’s likely you’ll want to get your money’s worth and practice on the first one you see and before you’ve even finished the book and haven’t gotten to the when-not-to bits.

Oh, I know, people have met their Dreamboats on flights and are ever so grateful for Pan Am’s delay between Idlewild and Fort Myers 45 years ago when the stranger to whom they chatted is now still by their side.

I know it happens.

Most encounters are short-lived and, thankfully, benign.

I’m glad I didn’t get the Gladwell book and I’m sure it’s as good as all his others but I couldn’t.

Just couldn’t. Sheer care for the man or woman with whom I’m about to sit just wouldn’t permit it.

Sorry, Malcom.

• Allowing each other to change, to acquire new, positive habits and attitudes. We say it’d be nice if this one would change this about herself and that one would change that about himself, but just let them try. Someone in the family will sabotage whoever seeks self-reinvention. Change in one requires shifts from all.
• Allowing each other to be refreshingly spontaneous, to grab hold of exciting opportunities, to seize moments of joy. We like the idea of all of that but soon enough others will rally to reign him in or get her under control. Mr or Miss Courageously Happy will find sharp curtailment from those committed to dim and dreary living. 
• Welcoming, permitting each other to take personal growth risks. Risks are encouraged so long as they are limited enough to be no risk at all.
• Letting go of the dream or the ideal and accepting reality. Despite our best efforts families rarely turn out as we’d hoped.
• Identifying the cumulative power of all of our combined family-yesterdays. This is to accept that generations of family history have the power to shape our immediate experiences and our tomorrows. Understanding we are not as autonomous as we may think is a hard pill to swallow. 

In a world where you and I and children are often told we can be anything we want to be, I’d suggest we all:

• Be kind to others, aware of others, and make room in our hearts for those who are less fortunate than we are, understanding that “less fortunate” may (or may not) have to do with money and opportunity. 

• Be assertive, be clear about what we need and what we will and we will not do while understanding that being assertive is not the same as being stubborn.

• Be generous with our time and resources by doing our part to empower others when and where it is possible. Promoting others ahead of ourselves almost always results in rewards that come in beautiful and unexpected ways.

• Be as prepared as possible for our daily tasks and for achieving our short and long term goals. Doing our homework will not only save a lot of time and energy and probably money, it is respectful to those with whom we will need to interact. 

• Be forgiving. Very few people – although there are some – intend to hurt others. May we offer a wide berth to the failings and frailties of others given that we may find the need for similar treatment from others. 

• Be inclusive with others by reaching out beyond our established circles and established routines.

Are you discouraged? Are you at the end of your tether? Looking for answers? Seeking questions?  

Look for the spark, the spark of life, it lies within, deep within you – and it is a good place to start when wrestling with discouragement. 

Finding answers, uncovering the antidote for whatever is at the heart of discouragement is not somewhere “out there” as an empowering truth hiding in a new, or old, book you are yet to discover.

It is not in some powerpoint presentation from a speaker you are yet to hear or on a social media platform seeking to solve therapeutic issues.

It’s not lurking to be revealed in some undiscovered podcast. 

The spark is deep within you.

It is located within you in the place where spirit meets soul, the ven intersection where thinking, planning and your longings, even confiused longings, overlap; the place where desire for worship and the need for vulnerability and transparency merge into one large inner-venue, the place we typically call Self.

The deep place – this beautiful and holy atrium within you – is not easily identified or accessed and yet it drives everything about you (and me).

Also, although it deserves full attention, it will, ironically, not be found in a hurry. Oddly, we are usually very familiar with this place in the inner-Person and yet can live long lives offering little or no attention perhaps in the manner an indifferent spouse may do in a failing flailing marriage.

The spark within the Self, the beautiful Self will not race nor be rushed, but while it is raced, rushed, scheduled, it is unlikely to turn from spark to a comforting, leading flame.

Want to find it?

Get a pencil, paper and a quiet place and sit, sit, sit and think and resist the urge to pick up your phone or check your email.

When you have calmed your inner-being, try to answer these questions: 

What do I really want?

What do I have to offer?

What am I really good at?

Do this for a few hours every week by lingering in this holy space and let the words flow into phrases until they find their sentences and let the sentences run free, unmonitored, released to declare whatever it is this deep place within you wants to declare. Do this for a while – days, weeks, months, make it a repeated retreat of habit – and there is a real possibility your anxieties and any sense of desperation will find inner-calm and your inner-spark will emerge and build into a guiding light to renew and refresh your life and connect you with things far more important than the distractions your phone and so much else, will persist in providing.

Of course I believe in Santa

I saw Santa at the Children’s Museum with a feather of a child pleading her case. They were locked in discussion, a confessional of sorts, as she entered into detail of her every Christmas wish. Hands, eyes, and all of her face enticed Santa closer lest he miss a detail living so clearly in her head.

“Oh, you want, oh, I see it. Why yes, of course. Perfectly,” Santa said, his voice tapering off into her ear, “I will see what I can do about that.”

Then she nestled into his side, her shoulders comfortably enveloped by his plush red suit as if to declare her mission accomplished. He was a perfect depiction of everything I imagined him to be and the sight easily immersed me in the voices and music of my own Christmases past.

Santa came all year round to our home. I’d look through the window in April or mid-August and Santa would be strolling up the driveway on his return from visits to every home on the street. He’d be wearing dad’s shoes and one of his ties underneath the tatty red coat, but I knew better than to expose his identity. I wanted to believe in Santa and he in turn needed me to believe. Such faith had rewards. I knew better than to dash my own hopes. I wasn’t ready to lose my trust in Santa for anyone and certainly not by my own hand.

He couldn’t resist visits to the whole neighborhood and would drop in from time to time and inspire children toward good behavior, perfect obedience at school, and remind them to count their blessings one by one. At every appearance in our home we’d sing “The Little Boy that Santa Clause Forgot” and we’d all have to cry. He insisted on it.

The lines “he didn’t have a daddy” and “went home to play with last year’s broken toys” really got us going.

It was clear he sang to all the children of the world who’d had to skip childhood and who had known poverty; children who’s fathers had gone to war or whose fathers or mothers had fled their families.

Donning the suit, surprising the children, was our Santa’s way of making the world right.

His visits created intrigue in the neighborhood, and to every child he repeated the promise that this Christmas, no child on this street would be forgotten. As far as I could tell none ever was.

The last Christmas we had together was in August of 1994. We were riding in a car and in the curves of Bluff Road when spontaneously he began to sing, “Christmas comes but once a year.”

The car became a holy place as I heard once more of the boy who “wrote a note to Santa for some soldiers and a drum and it broke his little heart to find Santa hadn’t come.”

The tears we both shed required no encouragement for we both somehow knew this would be the last time he’d sing this nostalgic hymn.

Now this old song is top of my list of Christmas songs.

The melody emerges randomly in my awareness, most particularly when faced with children who are in need. I have had to silence it at all times of the year.

It was the little girl’s confidence, Santa’s grace, and the loving parents looking from the side that caught my attention last week. She touched his flowing beard and told him her every Christmas dream and I found myself listing my own requests with childlike zeal.

It gave me renewed hope that you and I, the real Santas of the world, could deliver a more hopeful tomorrow for “those little girls and boys that Santa Claus forgot.”

(First published December 9, 2000 in the Indianapolis Star)

Thulani woke from an afternoon nap and came down the stairs and screamed siren-like and sobbed using his whole body. 

By the time I reached him,  tried to comfort him, my hold had to shift from hug to tight restraint until he convulsed a little less then relaxed to reveal a carpet nail in his underfoot.

Nathanael’s breathing had been bothered and when I mentioned a musty stairwell carpet, Dr. Yancey wanted it gone and I spent the afternoon ripping, tearing and hauling the carpet off a stairwell and repeatedly examined the newly exposed hardwood for missed nails. I ran my open hands carefully over each stair but missed the one which sat flush and satisfied in Thulani’s foot.

The boy hung from my neck until we reached the living room sofa and I used my full body weight to lock his kicking legs. He froze seeing I was about to remove the nail and watched me remove it and puked into my chest. The warm flow spewed, two or three reverse gulps, from his anxious being and eased its way down my shirt, the sludge forming a sloppy mucus curtain which dangled between us, the closeness trapping the flow as I waddled to the basement and stripped him. While maneuvering his frame from arm to arm, I removed my soiled shirt and dumped our soggy clothes into the washing machine. We got upstairs and when I had drawn a bath I eased Thulani off me and into the warm and soapy water.

“Daddy,” he said, “that’s why I need a mommy.”

When the tensions had eased he was sorry for saying he needed a mommy. I told him he was right, that everyone needs a mommy, that some of us could do with three or four while some have none.

My sons, men who get up and go to work everyday and are trying to lead honest good lives and who text me for cash on occasion even when they have their own. I love you. You are incapable with anything you do or don’t do of dislodging or upsetting that love. Thank you for the ways you keep in contact with me, far more than I ever did with my dad.

My very quirky brother and sister and Marianne in Germany. We are all on different continents but we might as well live in the same house with shared day-to-day details. Your knowledge of my frailties and my fallibilities is comforting especially when I live at times as if I have none.

Our parents, Mavis Iona and Ernest William Greer. Hard workers, both. Generous, both. Nephews and nieces and great nephews and great nieces spread around the world – you are loved.

The fabulous congregation of whom I am the commissioned ruling elder. You used to surprise me with your generosity and kindness expressed to the world around you but I am no longer surprised. This is my fifth year with you and you have trained me to expect your counter-cultural responses to a world in need.

The men and women whom I know who know how to manage and handle their great wealth and use it as a means to ends that have nothing to do with pride or power. I delight in observing your grace. I mourn for those, several of whom I also know, who parade their wealth and use it as a club.

My friends, new friends, old friends, and former friends. Thank you. I am learning. I am trying to learn. I respect you all, every one of you, as my teachers and I am trying to get the best out of the toughest lessons.

My rich history of travel and teaching in upwards of 50 countries. None of it deserved, all of it, every bit of it, a gift from the Open Hands of God’s Grace.

The two women who made me dad. You did not have to make me a dad and yet you found me. You found me when I was not looking for you and I am grateful, very grateful. Your sons have done you proud and I hope I have lived up to my promises to you. Contact me. You are welcome in our lives.

The two men who fathered my sons. We don’t know each other and probably never will. But, I do know this: there are beautiful aspects to each of your sons’ natures and characters and strengths that could only have come, at least partially, from you. Rejoice and be glad along with the loss and deprivation you must surely have known and still know. Contact me. You are welcome in our lives.

The men and women who taught me at Northlands Primary and at Northlands High School – and the handful of music teachers I had along the way. Thank you, thank you very much.

Readers, men and women across the world, who’ve accessed and used my newspaper columns. You give me purpose and hope and I thank you.

Those who tried hard to teach me to count.

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone.

Now it is time to roast some potatoes.

My interest in writing for newspapers is the birth child of recuperating from an unexpected heart attack – I was in my early forties. 

Warned not to walk or get too excited for at least 3 weeks following 5-stent surgery, out of desperation I studied local columnists in the Indianapolis Star and decided that there was every reason I could make a similar contribution to my immediate community. It was close to Christmas and so I penned a column about – Christmas, of course.

“Wished I had gotten this a few days earlier,” responded the editor, “write on issues of faith, church, and we will run you once a month on Sundays.”

After a few years of monthly Sunday columns, rotating with a local rabbi, Catholic priest, and an imam, I transitioned to appearing weekly on Saturdays which I did for about 5 years. One day I decided I had said everything I ever wanted to say to my faithful readers in Indianapolis in 700-word weekly segments and quit.

But, I was bitten. I loved the dialogue with readers. I loved the love-mail and even enjoyed the hate mail. In response to a political column one reader wrote that I was “slow and stupid.” Seconds after reading his scathing assessment of my views I called the phone number in his email signature. 

“Ok,” he immediately conceded, “you are stupid, but you are certainly not slow.” 

The editorial columns I often thought would elicit little response got the most and the other way around – this, and so much more, fascinated me.  

While writing for The Indianapolis Star I visited Durban in 2001 and took the audacious risk of dropping in unannounced on the then editor of The Mercury, Dennis Pather. 

He graciously agreed to meet. 

Hoping for a weekly 700-word slot from the USA, Dennis dreamed up “You and Me” and the first of the daily columns was published a week later in late March 2001. 

Writing daily for The Mercury and doing it for 22 years – a newspaper published 14,225 kilometers from my home – seems absurd to some friends in the USA. 

It makes perfect sense to me. 

I love KwaZuluNatal and its vibrant culture. I need the connection to my homeland and, having grown up in Red Hill, I need the connection to my home city. Writing as I do about healthy relationships and vision and leadership helps to keep me somewhat sane. It helps me to maintain healthy boundaries, sharpens my thinking about families, and intimate and business relationships. I like to think it helps me be a better dad and therapist and human being.

That the column has lasted as long as it has is a joyful surprise to me, really it is. 

I think I have come to KZN about 4 times to speak at schools and churches and breakfasts and lunches. The response has been overwhelming and humbling and the many events – often oversold – are etched in my memory as life-giving moments when things are tough here in the USA as they often are. 

I track my trajectory with the column with vivid memories usually related to deadlines. 

I have written columns with a 4-year-old sitting on my hip, typing with one hand, because my other arm was holding infant-Nathanael, my other hand holding his bottle. 

My sons are now 24 and 20. 

I’ve stolen Wi-Fi from coffee shops on the famed Route 66 to meet a deadline while the boys and my sister and I were driving to California. I’ve written for The Mercury and answered reader emails on a flip-phone while traveling on trains in Eastern Europe. At a time when I was writing a series of You and Me columns about essential family conversations, I tried to have a deep conversation with my sons about my inevitable death. 

My older son raised his hand, as if in school.

“When you are dead,” he said, “do I have to write your columns?” 

“Do the Frozen,” I said. He knew exactly what I meant.

See you in tomorrow’s paper……

Rod Smith

When granted power, any sort, be careful what you do with it. 

The “power” you have may be political, or it may involve your neighborhood, some committee you are on, or your family, and, how you handle the power afforded you is the ultimate measure of who and what you are, it’s a very fine measure of your “spirituality.”

It says it all – right there – in how you treat the poor, the disenfranchised, those, who for whatever reason, even if it’s their “own fault” that have no power in your presence.

Who and how you hire or fire, include or exclude, is very important.

Pad your own nest at the expense of others, use your power to the detriment of others, to lord it over others, and, well, you’re demonstrating your lack of integrity and setting yourself up for a mighty fall.

A broad sweep of Scripture quickly reveals God’s views on the misuse of power.

It is not pretty.

You may have noticed, God seems always on the side of the underdog.

Was there ever one as powerless as the woman caught in adultery?

We know how that set-up, that power-play ended. The self-righteous men, educated as they were, as “right” as they were, got Jesus’ back up, found themselves backing up and backing out, tails between their legs. They quickly learned – or did they? – that Jesus really is more interested in being loving than in being right even though he was both.

I’ve seen horrible misuses of power and done it myself.

And, it is so often done in the name of doing what’s right and good and holy, when it really is an expression of holier-than-thou nonsense or a scam for taking advantage of others in the name of entitlement or self-importance.

Power, even temporary power – and it always is temporary, is very important.

Handle with prayer, care, and humility.

In years of ministry I’ve seen a lot of death and attended many funerals. 

I’ve ridden in the hearse, often for miles, and chatted with funeral directors about all sorts of things, to arrive at a graveside to help a mom and dad remain steady to drop farewell petals into graves. I’ve buried students. My students. Just out of high school. I’ve spoken at the memorials of a handful more where fellow clergy officiated. 

Very sadly, as the cliche goes, all of this comes with the territory, not of leading a congregation, but of being human. If you live in a community. If you know people. If you try, even a little,  to love people, you will walk some distance on this path.

While each death, anticipated or sudden, has its own gravity, when I become aware a teenager has died in a car wreck, whether I know the family or not,  it slays me. I want to go to the family. I want to show up. I have to hold myself back. Stop myself from interfering in business not my own with people who surely already have a support system and a church and a caring community.

I implore you as I implore myself, let no trite cliche insult a family at a time of untimely unreasonable outrageous loss. 

Show up. Be present. Say nothing. Offer no explanation. You have none. 

There is none.