The Quiet

 

From a young age, I understood that my grandfather, Elias Tingle, read profusely.  Part of his daily reading included several daily newspapers in order to keep up with the times. While he was with us, I never quite understood his drive to consume the daily news.

At some point in my life, much later than when he did, I too began my day with a daily consumption of news. 

My media is certainly different from his, of course. I just read a statistic about how much information we now consume at the beginning of our day, compared to someone like my grandfather. It’s astounding.

One of my regrets in life is that while Elias was living, our conversations were limited.  I was too young, too distracted, and that drive to understand the world had not yet set in. The means to understand him… long conversations about life… never happened.  I probably learned more about him from his son, my Uncle Bud, and the long conversations that I did have with him.  Those conversations were through the eyes of Bud, and were slightly tainted due to that, but I would guess his analysis of his father were mostly accurate.

I did in fact witness many adult conversations between Elias, my uncle, and my mother, when Uncle Bud would visit - the kind which involved such heavy issues as the state of the world.  The most serious ones, however, were probably reserved for after my family had departed, since the presence of young ears would have moderated those adult conversations.

I bring this up because I have long recognized the similarity between my grandfather and me.  That similarity involves the way our minds work, the way we absorb and ponder on information, and the effect is has on our demeanor.

The similarity increases the older I get.  One way I see it clearly in the past year is my ability to  transition from gregarious (a term I would never have used in my younger years to describe myself) to quiet and contemplative in a matter of moments. I used to view my grandfather as mostly gregarious.  Over the years, after contemplating his life, I see more accurately that he was in fact more like I just described myself. 

Coincidentally, I am now at the age he was when I first began to understand who he was, and what was important to him.

All which leads to this… in his quiet moments alone and out of his gregarious mode, I picture him pondering on the state of the world, and feeling a great weight on his shoulders, just as I do.  I picture him wondering what his role was, and what he could do, if anything.

In 1976 Elias ran in a Delaware State Senate race and was handily defeated 4,556 to 7,552. It was a great disappointment to him, and a blow to his ego.

That effort to make an impact in the political arena was his last. After a long history of community engagement in various organizations, his voice became more quiet.

I now wonder about why that was the case less than I used to. I now understand a little better what drove him to that quiet place.

 

More Lessons from Kids

 

Sometimes when I’m trying to figure out how God must work, I consider things that happen between our kids and us. I do that because we are in a parent/child relationship them, and since, as people of faith, we view ourselves in a similar way as “children of God”,  I make the assumption our children are there to teach us something about how God views us.

Our kids are older now, so the parenting role of our relationship has evolved. While it has changed over time, a little parenting will always be part of our relationship.

In the recent past, we have had conversations with both our boys which made me reflect on that idea, and how it may be a reflection of our relationship with God.  The conversations were basically the boys telling us about what was going on in their lives.  One of the boys didn’t come right out and ask what we thought, but one did in fact request our opinion about an employment decision he was considering.

I thought carefully about how to answer that question. Honestly, I didn’t have a strong inclination either way, but I wanted to be careful about swaying his decision.

Instead of giving him a straight answer, I explained what I would do if I were in his situation.  I discussed the things I would consider, and the tools I might use to help me make the decision. I told him to let it brew a while in his mind.  And then I let it go. I assured him that in time, he would gain clarity, and the best path forward would come to light.

It didn’t take long, but soon he made his decision. Coincidentally, it was the decision I probably would have made too, but that was irrelevant.

The important thing was for him to figure out how to make difficult decisions, decisions where you have two good options, decisions where there is no “right” or “wrong” choice, but perhaps a better one.

A little back story  – this decision was all part of a situation that had been developing for months. In order for him to even be faced with this particular decision, several pieces of the puzzle had to fall into place first, and that happened over a period of time.

It all reminded me that this is probably how God looks at us when we ask things of Him… in essence… when we ask Him for “His opinion”.  Early on, we are taught to make our requests known to God, and then we expect God to just plop the answer in our laps.  In my experience, it almost never works that way. I do believe God looks for the asking part, but then, rather than feed us a quick answer, He reminds us of what we already know, of things we have already learned by walking with Him.

I don’t think God always wants to just hand us answers to our requests.  He wants a people who grow through having to trudge through difficult stuff. He wants a people who mature over time, a people who become increasingly able to operate out of a knowledge deep within themselves. He wants a people who are increasingly able accept that what He has taught them can be trusted, and that the life they are living really comes through Him.

Lest you misunderstand me… I don’t believe we grow to the point of not needing God. Our lives will be spent in learning increasingly difficult things which we learn by constantly coming back to Him for guidance. 

I fully expect my boys to ask fewer and fewer questions of me.  They will be less and less dependent on my advice.  Is that because they will become self-sufficient?  This is tricky. In a sense, yes, yet at the same time, that self-sufficiency is based on the fact they are carrying within them a trove of knowledge they acquired over a lifetime, not just from Tina and I, but from everyone who took the time to make deposits into their lives.

My boys will increasingly operate out of something that has developed deep within them.  They will live out of a maturity built out of a relationship with their father, their mother, and a host of other people who were dropped into their paths for the purpose of maturing them. And they will live in a constant state of recognizing that there is always more to learn, there are always more difficult decisions to make, always more impossible situations to walk through, and there will always someone there to walk beside them through it all, ready to continue to offer guidance.

Such is our walk with God… always progressing… always acknowledging that there is more to learn… always understanding that we are mere humans.

The Gettysburg Address

(Bliss copy)

Delivered at the dedication of the Soldiers' National Cemetery at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. 

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Abraham Lincoln

November 19, 1863.

 

 Picture:

By The New York Times, November 20, 1863. Online: [1] Cornell University library, December 15, 2005., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=624181