COMPASSIONATE, CURIOUS, CLASSY

SHE WAS A HIGH SCHOOL CHEERLEADER. The fact is that she was everyone’s cheerleader. If you knew her at all; she knew you. She was compassionately curious.

For many years she worked at Webster High School in Tulsa. I don’t know what the sign on her office door said, but her unofficial role was student counselor. Oh, she didn’t tell you how to apply for a scholarship, or help you pick a college to apply to. She dealt in matters of the heart, boyfriends, parents who didn’t understand, that kind of stuff. She was a full-attention listener and cheerleader to all—especially students.

Throughout her life she dug into the details of people she would meet. Nosey isn’t the right word (although applicable). She was genuinely interested in people. Everyone mattered to her.

A conversation with her of late might go something like this: “Well I had another new nurse today. She’s a lovely girl, but I don’t know that I like this guy she’s shacked up with, and her poor kids, I don’t know where their next meal is coming from much less a Christmas present and a warm winter coat, and the little girl? We don’t know where her daddy is.”

[NOTE TO SELF: Remember to make a donation to that fund Mom helped with to give kids school supplies next fall.]

Her concerned inquisitiveness and intense cheerleading was well-known and valued (most of the time) by me, my brother, our spouses, our kids and our kid’s kids, and by her siblings, who are all gone now except for Uncle Bill and her nieces and nephews. They all knew she loved them.

Last night, Saturday, December 19, 2020 at about 10:00a, I was on the phone with my niece. She was by Mom’s side in a hospice room at Mercy hospital. She told me that a nurse had just been in to check on her. The nurse wondered how she was hanging on. Maybe she didn’t know Mom is a fighter. The nurse asked Ashley if she knew of anything Mom could be waiting for. Ashley told her that it was probably because her Grandma didn’t want to miss out on anything.

An hour later, she passed.

My guess is that Dad met her at the gate, and she began to tell him about all the nice doctors and nurses who cared for her, even that one that she “couldn’t understand a word they said,” and about how tired they all were from helping the COVID people.

Then in my limited understanding of heaven, Dad probably said, “Let me show you around. There are a lot of people waiting to say hello. And good news—we can hug here.”

And mom would say, “Did so and so make it?” And then she would say, “Can you get an ice cold Diet Dr. Pepper here?”

DRUMS.HEARTS.WOMEN

I first met Danny, as he was known then, in the Fall of 1974. He was 15. I was 23. I had just moved to El Reno, Oklahoma, from Tulsa to be the youth director at the First Baptist Church, Dan’s church.

We connected right away. He was an aspiring drummer. I was a drummer. Drummers can talk for hours about paradiddles and snare tensions. Dan loved nuance and I did too. Every time he would buy a new album (that’s a vinyl record that plays music for those under 20) he would bring it to our house and we would listen. “He’s got to be playing double bass pedals on that!” he would say, or, “I wish I could tune my toms to sound like that.” All of that would serve him well. He became one of the best sound engineers around. Any band loved to have Dan mixing their sound. He would study a room for hours, moving mics just an inch or so, tweaking knobs and sliders, switching a cable trying to isolate a hum; all behind the scenes stuff to make the experience great for the band and the audience.

One of the very first of many memorable experiences with Dan came early in our friendship. His parents we’re going out of town over night. The lived just a few houses up the street from where we lived. His mother asked My Amazing Missus if we would sort of keep an eye out since Dan would be home alone. Early, on the morning after that night, I drove by their house and noticed his dad’s car in the driveway with the rear end up on a couple of wobbly jacks. I stopped by—just curious.

Turns out he and a couple of buddies had taken the car for a drive the night before. He knew Ralph would have taken note of the odometer reading. Their hope was that by running the car in reverse, those miles would come off the odometer. FYI, it doesn’t work.

“Oh man, we shouldn’t have done that!” is a close approximation of what he said, revealing the fact that you can’t turn back time either. Or can you?

Yesterday, Dan’s wife Peggy held a beautiful memorial service for him. These are the hardest, when a beautiful life ends way too soon. Can’t we please just run this thing back a few miles, a few months, a few years? At this memorial service was a number of Dan and Peggy’s friends from those days when I got to be their youth director. I stood at the back and looked at them and remembered. Rewound the tape so to speak and in my mind watched those times again. Times that for me and My Amazing Missus shaped so much of who we are today.

One evening years ago, Dan called and wanted to come by to talk. As I’ve said this wasn’t unusual. I remember it like it was yesterday. We sat on our back porch and he anxiously told me that he had decided to ask Peggy to marry him.

I assumed he was telling me this so I could share in the celebration, but he was really seeking advice, some guidance. At first I assumed that maybe it was because I was his wise spiritual mentor. No. It wasn’t that. Basically he was concerned that he would be asking for the hand of a girl he probably didn’t deserve (as least in his mind). He wanted to marry a girl that he considered out of his league. He was asking me for my adivce because he understood that was exactly what I had done.

He was concerned with messing things up. He was worried about how her parents would react. He was afraid she would say, “Sorry, you’re nice and all, but…” Anyway, not too many months later, I had the privilege of marrying them to each other. I’m proud to say it is one of the many, many marriages I’ve officiated that actually worked out.

I got to do youth ministry for many years. I still have wonderful relationships with some of the “kids” that were in our youth groups. In fact, one of those kids is now my daughter-in-law!!! Dan is one that I’ve stayed connected with all of these years. We used to work in downtown Oklahoma City. We would often meet for lunch at a Chinese restaurant on the mezzanine level of the Sherton Hotel, where he unsuccessfully tried to open my taste buds to the wonders of egg foo yung.

I made a career change to a company that was in the beginning stages of building a new computer network. Dan had become an expert in that area, again a testimony to his relentless pursuit of nuance and perfection. He built our network that is essentially still the core we depend on. Later on our CEO mentioned that the company was needing a new member for the board of directors. I reminded him that Dan had experience in bank auditing, he knew a thing or two about our company by this time and he was a CPA. Dan joined our board and served masterfully until just months ago.

Funny thing about that CPA thing. Maybe you’ve heard the horror stories about people trying and trying to pass those exams. Best I rememember, Dan just sort of decided to sit for the exams, approaching it with the same nonchalance, but not the arrogance, of Donald Trump taking that cognitive test they give the elderly to see if they should still be feeding themselves with a fork. Dan, like Donald, passed with flying colors.

Dan was the kind of guy who would find that funny without offense. He and I could talk about anything: something we heard on NPR, which is better—cover bands or tribute bands; and lately, matters of the heart.

Just a short time ago, Dan told me he had something he wanted to talk about. Maybe he has a new album, or maybe he’s discovered a new trick for how to mic a drum set. He wanted to talk hearts.

He was facing heart surgery and he knew that I had been through that. It was kind of like the talk we had about the marriage proposal. He wanted to talk to someone who had been there. Dan and I learned long ago that we could not BS one another. He could always see through me.

Here’s the thing. He and I both had good hearts. We both love our wives and our kids and grandkids deeply. We both are tolerant of the life choices of others. Today that is called liberal, but for us we just considered it grace-full.

But while we have good hearts, we have flawed hearts—the physical ones. When we talked, I told him he would be fine. I meant it. I mean they sawed me open, borrowed some vein from my legs, wired me shut, sewed me up and a few weeks later I was back to some level of normal. That was my experience. It was not his.

In Dan’s final months, I was a lousy friend. If I were saying this to him I would use the word shitty and he would appreciate the honesty of that.

The fact is my heart was selfish. I couldn’t bear to see him so frail, not Danny. I didn’t have magic words for him or for Peggy. I was inadequate and so I became negligent.

How I wish now I could jack up the back of the car and run the odometer, and time, back. I am so grateful for the few moments yesterday at Dan’s memorial with the people who hold Dan and Peggy dear—old friends, family, musician buddies and those who were touched by Dan. We wore our masks and our Hawaiian shirts. It was the most colorful memorial I’ve ever been too. Just the way he would have wanted it.

Good bye buddy.

THE HORNY BACK TOAD

IF YOU NEED ME, I’ll be going back to the howling old owl in the wood, hunting the horny back toad.

It was late 1972. We had been married just a few months. We saved every coin we could find and somehow managed to buy two tickets to see Elton John at the Civic Assembly Center in Tulsa. I would like to think I remember him playing “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” there but it wasn’t released until almost a year later.

Anyway, this post is not really about that concert, or the set list. It has more to do with the song’s lyrics written by Bernie Taupin. I’ve pondered these words many times over the years. I think it’s about lost innocence or maybe something even uglier and more sinister. I know this: I was rooting for that young mongrel. Cheering for his escape, for his enlightenment, for a flood of grace for him, hoping he would find that toad.

[if you’re wondering about the lyrics, I’ve included them below.]

Have I ever been able to relate to the song; like, did it ever resonate with my soul? Not so much. Until lately. When it comes to this genre of music/lyrics/poetry of soul-searching, the one that I probably felt most close to was the U2 song with these lyrics:

I believe in the Kingdom come
Then all the colors will bleed into one
Bleed into one
But yes, I'm still running
You broke the bonds and you loosened chains
carried the cross of my shame,
of my shame
You know I believe it

But I still haven't found What I'm looking for
But I still haven't found What I'm looking for

Until lately, I don’t know that I’ve ever felt “the victim”. And it would be a mockery of the idea for me to even suggest that now I do. I don’t. Now though, there is something about Bernie’s words that have struck a strange chord with me—a courage or maybe just an escapism that sounds really appealing.

Back to the howling old owl in the woods
Hunting the horny back toad
Oh I've finally decided my future lies
Beyond the yellow brick road

What’s beyond the yellow brick road? I don’t know. What is the yellow brick road? Is this the same yellow brick road that Dorothy and her three friends wandered down only to get to the end and find out that already had what they were looking for?

I’m still not sure what I’m looking for: home, courage, a heart, a brain? I know this for sure, I’ve finally decided my future lies beyond 2020 with its politics, hatred, pandemic and all. Maybe:

I should have stayed on the farm
I should have listened to my old man

Thanks Elton John for the great music. Thank you Bernie for these haunting lyrics. MOST OF ALL, thank you Sara Bareilles for the amazing interpretation of the song.

PLEASE PUT ON A GOOD SET OF HEADPHONES, THEN CLICK THIS LINK AND LISTEN TO SARA.

GOODBYE YELLOW BRICK ROAD
Music by Elton John. Lyrics by Bernie Taupin.

When are you gonna come down?
When are you going to land?
I should have stayed on the farm
I should have listened to my old man

You know you can't hold me forever
I didn't sign up with you
I'm not a present for your friends to open
This boy's too young to be singing, the blues

So goodbye yellow brick road
Where the dogs of society howl
You can't plant me in your penthouse
I'm going back to my plough
Back to the howling old owl in the woods
Hunting the horny back toad
Oh I've finally decided my future lies
Beyond the yellow brick road

What do you think you'll do then?
I bet that'll shoot down your plane
It'll take you a couple of vodka and tonics
To set you on your feet again

Maybe you'll get a replacement
There's plenty like me to be found
Mongrels who ain't got a penny
Sniffing for tidbits like you on the ground

So goodbye yellow brick road
Where the dogs of society howl
You can't plant me in your penthouse
I'm going back to my plough
Back to the howling old owl in the woods
Hunting the horny back toad
Oh I've finally decided my future lies
Beyond the yellow brick road

SIX THINGS

Part 1: SIX DECADES

I had plans.

For a while, there seemed to be a lot of talk about tattoos. I was spending time with young artists then so maybe the heightened discussion was more about proximity than time. Occasionally, I would be asked if I had a tattoo or would I ever get one. Maybe; if I could think of something worthy of the pain and permanence. One day I decided, that if I were to get one (which I haven’t) it would be this, a simple sentence in maybe Courier or Helvetica: “BEST BY SUMMER OF 69”. Yes, a “best buy” date like on a carton of milk. I wrote a post about this back in October 2018.

Why the “summer of 69”? I graduated from high school in 1969, and still find that summer memorable and good. I’m sure I’m guilty of ignoring the counsel of Ecclesiastes (7:10):

“Do not say, “’Why were the old days better than these?’” For it is not wise to ask such questions.”

But as Bryan Adams sang in his song, “Summer of 69”:

Oh, when I look back now
That summer seemed to last forever
And if I had the choice
Yeah, I'd always wanna be there
Those were the best days of my life

Oh, yeah Back in the summer of '69, oh

Here we are in 2020 and I’m in the middle of the summer of my 69th year, speeding toward the completion of my 6th decade. I had plans to celebrate this summer. I actually designed a t-shirt for my grandkids for the “Summer Of Pops!”

Remember the “Summer of George” on Seinfeld? It was kind of like that.

And just as the Summer of George didn’t go as planned, the Summer of Pops was doomed by mid-March. Maybe all of this is punishment for my arrogance in declaring a summer of big ideas, fun and adventure for myself.

While my 69th summer has not gone as planned at all, in many ways it is shaping up to be one of the most memorable. I’ll admit to a heightened awareness of almost everything—the bad, the ugly and THE GOOD. I savor each rare time that we get to be with our kids and grandkids; friends and family.

Just the other day we got to spend time with Jeremiah who is in his first summer—truly a summer of firsts for him. He is beautiful, bright-eyed and curious. There were times I was sure he was going to give himself whiplash trying to keep his eyes on his big brother who was bouncing around the room like a pinball. Maybe that’s what I mean by heightened awareness—for all of us in some ways. We are seeing life through a lens we’ve never seen before, and feeling life as if all our nerve endings were on high alert—whether it’s our 69th summer or the 1st.

Jeremiah and Malachi

Part 2: SIX FEET

That’s the definition of “social distancing”. I can live with that. I am an introvert—confirmed by testing and analysis. So, all is well.

Probably the first store I will visit when and if I ever leave my house again will be a bookstore. I love bookstores. I love the quiet isolation. I don’t like it when someone comes down the same aisle I’m on. Virus or not, I don’t want to be within six feet of another person on a bookstore aisle. But that’s really more like physical distancing isn’t it; at least for me. Whatever it is, it creates a challenge to relationships that calls for a creative response.

For example, my mentor Doug Manning decided to offer a grief counseling group using Zoom, the online video meeting tools. Word spread and now he has a problem. People have raised their hands all across the land and even in Canada and Australia wanting to join in. How do you do a meeting across time zones? Apparently, Barbara Striesand was right: “People who need people are the luckiest people in the world.”

The social distancing I can deal with, even appreciate, but the relational distancing is weighing heavy. Let me explain. Maslow says one of the key psychological needs of us humans is BELONGING. I agree. Belonging is more than a membership card or knowing the secret handshake. Heck, I have an American Express card that says, “Member since 1989” which makes it one of the groups I’ve belonged to the longest, but I don’t know anyone there. I don’t know if us AMEX members have a team song or club meetings. It just doesn’t feel very relational.

I want to mention a couple of other groups I belong to in one fashion or another just to explore relationships and belonging a little more deeply. Let’s start with the family of my Amazing-Missus. Even before we dated I felt welcomed from the start. I was invited to eat meals around their table (which was an offer only a fool would pass up). Once I began to date their daughter/sister the welcome warmed into something else, a sort of acceptance, but not yet what I would call belonging.

We married young. I was afraid if I didn’t “put a ring on it” right away, she would see the light and send me packing. On our wedding day she was 18 years and 3 days old; I was 21. I’m pretty sure there were some in the community that were surprised that our 9-month anniversary came and went without news. “Why would E.J. and Betty’s baby daughter Arlene marry him, unless…”, must have been whispered among a few of the church-lady circles. Just to throw them off we waited eight years to have our first bouncing baby boy.

After the wedding, I felt officially like I belonged. The Cox clan are generous, grace-giving folks. Her siblings are my friends and I cherish their company, their wisdom and their sister. But even in family, belonging extends only so far. Although she has been a part of the family she and I have made for 48 years and was a member of her nuclear family for 18, that is still HER family. There is a bond there, it is beautiful and it is as it should be. I belong and am a part of the story until they start telling stories about their childhood days, then I step to the margins with the other brother-in-law and sisters-in-law. We’re okay with that. We’ve heard the stories so many times we feel like they are our stories too.

As I’ve said, I’m okay with the current definition of social distancing and some physical distancing. I could not bear relational distancing.

Part 3: SIX MILES

The other group where I BELONGED for a time was a community, an actual little town. You could draw a six-mile circle and pretty well include everyone with maybe the exception of a farmer here or there. There were some who said of this proud little community, “If you’re not born there, your not from there, and you’re never going to belong there.” That’s probably been said or felt about many tight-knit communities. If you can drive through the town cemetary and see only about six family names, you’re likely to live in the margins there.

A little more than a year ago, we drove to Dubach, Louisiana, to spread some of the ashes of my dad who passed. It was his hometown. We wanted to leave the ashes at the graves of his parents and some of his siblings. As is the case with many small towns, there were more headstones in the cemetary than actual living residents of the town. And in this one 90% of them seemed to be named “Fuller”. There were an equal number of Colvins, Hamiltons, and Smiths. (I’m using a new math here.)

Back to Hinton. We moved to the town of Hinton in 1991. I would be working at the bank, in a non-banking role, thankfully. But mainly I would be the youth minister at the Baptist church. A role I loved. Despite the conventional wisdom about not being able to BELONG if you came in as an outsider, we always felt more than welcome. It had little to do with me. My Amazing-Missus and our two sons put down roots there and added to the beauty of this community.

We now live beyond the six-mile circle, but a part of us will always belong there. That’s the way it is with relationships. They can withstand some geographical distancing as long is there is some tie that binds.

As I said, I can endure a six-plus-mile geographical distancing. I cannot bear the relational distancing. I need to be a better friend. To all those I’ve offended and hurt; I am sincerely sorry and in need of forgiveness.

Part 4: SIX DEGREES

You’ve probably heard about the theory of six degrees of seperation? Check this out from The Guardian:

In a world of 6.6 billion people, it does seem hard to believe. The theory of six degrees of separation contends that, because we are all linked by chains of acquaintance, you are just six introductions away from any other person on the planet. Recently researchers announced the theory was right - nearly. By studying billions of electronic messages, they worked out that any two strangers are, on average, distanced by precisely 6.6 degrees of separation. In other words, putting fractions to one side, you are linked by a string of seven or fewer acquaintances to Madonna, the Dalai Lama and the Queen.

You have probably said more than once: it’s a small world. You know when you’re talking to someone and you find out they know someone who went to school with your mom and…

Recently, I received a message from a girl I knew back in high school days. We went to different high schools but the same church. I haven’t seen her since those days. She messaged to ask about a relative of mine. I asked how she knew this person. Turns out she used to live next door to my uncle and knew him well. It’s a small world.

For all of our distancing, for all of our closing ourselves off and dividing into tribes, in all of the shrinking of our six-mile circles. It’s still a small world after all. It is still true that God SO loved the WORLD (whether we like them or not) that he became flesh and dwelt among us.

Part 5: SIX STEPS

Unless there’s a 12-Step program for pandemic gluttony, I’m going to strive for a Six-Step program of my own making. Surely I can manage that; one step at a time. Actually the first three of these come from Micah 6:8 in The Message.

Step 1.) Do what is fair and just to your neighbor.

Step 2.) Be compassionate and loyal in your love.

Step 3.) Don’t take yourself too seriously—take God seriously.

Step 4.) Listen.

Step 5.) Consider the lillies.

Step 6.) Remember the story of the Sixpence.

Part 6: SIXPENCE: The Story

“Every faculty you have, your power of thinking or of moving your limbs from moment to moment, is given you by God. If you devoted every moment of your whole life exclusively to His service you could not give Him anything that was not in a sense His own already. So that when we talk of a man doing anything for God or giving anything to God, I will tell you what that is really like.

“It is like a small child going to it’s father and saying, ‘Daddy, give me sixpence to buy you a birthday present.’ Of course, the father does, and he is pleased with the child’s present. It is all very nice and proper, but only an idiot would think that the father is sixpence to the good on the transaction. When a man has made these two discoveries God can really get to work. It is after this that real life begins. The man is awake now.”

—C. S. Lewis (1898-1963) in Mere Christianity