Reckoning

In a small farming community  near where I grew up was an old man named Cephas. He lived in a plywood and corrugated tin shack in the woods on the edge of the village. Cephas walked into town every day and people said hello and gave him their spare pennies. He kept an old wheelbarrow at his little shack and when it was full of pennies he pushed it into the bank in town where one of the tellers spent the day counting it before exchanging it for folding money. It was the seventies, it was a small town, and things were different then. He was a tall, thin, stoop-shouldered man with a craggy face and bushy eyebrows who wore an overcoat of indeterminate colour and a tattered grey Fedora that he adorned every summer with a jaunty crow feather. I'm told that his government pension cheques were never cashed and he died with unrecognized wealth.

In high school, in another  small town, I dated a girl from a large family. One day we were all packed into the family van coming home from an outing when we passed a drunk on the sidewalk downtown. He was a disheveled and swarthy man, pot-bellied and bow-legged and staggered down the street with a gap toothed grimace as he bent into the wind, his ragged coat flapping open. "Look", my girlfriend's mother said to her daughter, "there's your uncle." 

Decades later, in another quiet village, a stocky man with a long, bushy grey beard and an equally grey mass of hair pulled back into a ponytail began attending our little church. He was friendly, engaging and warm. For fifteen years he lived in the back of a van tucked away on someone's farm. Six months prior to attending our church he somehow found the motivation and the means to move into a small apartment in the basement of a friend's house. He told me his story one Sunday morning, over coffee and oatmeal raisin cookies, mentioning how very different his life was now with his few small possessions and his bed and his walls and windows.  He attended faithfully every Sunday for almost three months, walking several miles to get there and pleasantly refusing all offers of a ride. One day he simply stopped coming and my guess is that it was all too much for him, that he went back to living in the van.

They surprise me when I find them in my memory, the way I'm surprised to look up and see a cat watching me from the window of the second hand shop as I pass by. I realize now that they're a part of me, just as the memory of watching my grandmother smock a yellow dress with bright blue thread for my baby sister is a part of me, or that first job I had as a cook is a part of me, or the solo backpacking trips in Algonquin Park where I met with God, or the way my wife looked on our wedding day as she walked up the aisle towards me. They're things that stay with you, things you can't let go of and wouldn't want to anyway. I turn them over in my mind and realize there isn't any more us, or them; there isn't any more here or there. Cephas, the guy who lived in a van, the drunk uncle; Christ died for all of them, Christ rose for all of them, God poured out his heart for every last one of us, and we are all the same. We're all like Cephas, collecting  our pennies, and we're all like the drunk uncle, just trying to get from one day to another, and we're all like the guy who used to live in the van, a little unsure of who we are, and what it all means, and how we live with the strangeness of it all. I want to honour their memory, these ghosts from my past, by loving the God who loved them and, if I do nothing else, by remembering.

Comments

[Bethany]

Thank you for sharing these memories my friend. Isn't it lovely? Christ meets us, who we are, where we're at...It's that simple and that beautiful.

[so i go]

beautiful piece, my friend.. simply beautiful.

[joanee]

Precious memories ,how they linger-- I remember a grandmother who smocked yellow , blue and pink dresses .I remember her helping me put babies down for their afternoon nap and then making us a cup of the best loose leaf tea .We sat at a big old wooden table with a light summer breeze blowing the curtains while we sat and talked .One of those babies chose to go out of my life but the memmories help .God is good

[L]

I wish I could think of a word that conveys a sense of "I gasp at the beauty, the depth, the meaning, and the worth of what you just said." I pull it all up over me like a good warm blanket.

[rev mommy]

Just reminds me of the verse from John "And I will be with you always."
Always. In all ways.
Your writings inspire me and you are a blessing.

[sexygodsman]

Wow - thanks for sharing those memories. I think we all meet people like that along life's journey, but seldom do we remember them so vividly.

[Ginger]

What a beautiful post. Thanks for bringing a blessing to the start of my day.

[jessie r]

weeping shanty,
fear-filled, grateful
begs the cosmos for forgiveness,
wipes with tears the feet it cannot
bear to walk away forever,
pleads it was not you it feared
lord, hear our cry.
oh please don't go.

[rick]

Beautiful, brother. Thank you for always bringing us to Jesus, When we encounter the ONE, nothing is ever the same. Great post. I really appreciate and admire how you have fallen in love with God and through you, help us fall deeper in love with the One.

Thank you.

[[rhymes with kerouac]]

Bethany - Yes, it is lovely!

so i go - Thanks.

joanee - It sounds wonderful. Maybe one day in heaven we'll all sit down to a cup of tea together. Won't that be wonderful?

L. - Thank you.

rev mommy - It's comforting, isn't it - that promise (and the way He brings these things to heart, as well)

sexygodsman - Nice to meet you! I think memories are imprinted far more clearly in our hearts than our minds. And you definitely win the award for most unique screen name!

Ginger - Thanks. I've been really diggin' the photos on Joyful Woman, btw. Very, very nice.

jessie r. - Thank you so much for that - it's beautiful.

Rick - Thank you. You are always such an encouragement to me.

[Steve F.]

I continue to be amazed at the richness of the experiences God has given me - even when they suck, even when I just don't understand the "why?" in the middle of them. Things like folks who live as if in poverty, but who die with wealth, amaze me. Then folks like me, who live far better than many in my city, but yet who mostly see what's missing - *I* amaze me, too. And yet, there are at least a dozen times a day when I'll think of someone or some situation that has changed me or transformed my thinking, and I'll be glad of it. I'll see a red Ford Ranger pickup, and think of a friend I know who went back to using crystal meth - and how he kissed me on the cheek and cried when I left Kansas two years ago. I'll find a CD or a story that I read or heard for the first time with my ex-wife, and remember the joys we had together. I'll see a fellow with a curly Afro, and remember my first-ever 12-step call. I hear the music of John Williams, and remember driving through the woods to catch my first glimpse of Mt. Hood. So thanks for triggering *my own* memories, brother.

[[rhymes with kerouac]]

Steve F. - Thanks for sharing those with us. And yes, you're right - it is amazing. All those people, all those experiences - they're all inside of us, a part of who we are. . . and God still speaks through them.

[homeless Eriks brother]

The one thing I think about is how I would like to help all the worlds homeless, but can't. I remember the story of the young girl throwing starfish back into the ocean. The onlooker says you can't save them all! And she says no but I helped this one (as she throws it) and I helped this one as she throws another! We all can make a commitment, no matter what size to write a check to our local Salvation Army. They not only supply the physical needs but some times what is more needed... they supply Jesus and fulfill their spiritual needs. Remember them in our prayers also. I often think of the fine line between a person with everything and a person with nothing!!

[[rhymes with kerouac]]

homeless Eriks brother - It's nice to 'meet' you! I don't think God has called any of us to change the world, but I do believe He's called all of us to change our world. It's a big difference - one that took me a long time to grasp and one that you, it seems, 'got' right away. (And I love that starfish story too!)