Steve Dublanica's Blog, page 14

Bad Tippers in The Hands of An Angry God

After my daughter started playing soccer on Saturday mornings, we quickly settled into a little routine. As soon as the game’s over and the soccer moms and dads finally finish stowing their foldable living rooms into their SUVs, I take Natalie to Panera’s for breakfast. She always orders a strawberry smoothie. Me? Coffee and a breakfast wrap. This past Saturday, however, as I gave my breakfast requests to the cashier, I noticed she was nervous and hesitant inputting my order into the computer. 

“What size coffee again?” she said. 

“Medium,” I said. 

“And what kind of smoothie?” 

“Strawberry.”

Pursing her lips, she ran her finger along the touchscreen, looking for the correct icon. “I’m sorry, sir,” she said. “It’s my first day.” 

“It’s right there, Crystal,” the manager shadowing her, said, pointing. 

“Take your time,” I said beatifically, “We’ve all had a first day once.” Behind me, a customer grunted. 

After a little while repeating what I wanted and watching the manager guide the new hire, my order was complete. Pulling some bills out of my wallet, I stuffed them into the tip jar. “Have a nice day, miss.” 

“Thank you, sir,” the new girl, said. Then I grabbed my cup and headed for the bank of coffee urns behind me.  “Go wash your hands, Natalie,” I said. “They’re sticky with Gatorade.” 

“Okay Daddy.” 

After watching my daughter toddle to the restroom, I went to fill my cup with Mountain Roast. The customer who had been behind me, however, was making a bit of a scene. 

“I don’t have time for this,” the man – an expensively dressed fifty-something with perfectly coifed hair he probably spent all morning blow drying – snapped. “Why is this taking so long?” 

“I’m sorry,” the new girl said. “It’s my first day.” 

“You should have thoroughly trained her before you let her wait on customers,” the man told the manager. Poor Crystal’s lip began to quiver. 

The manager, a middle-aged woman who looked like she’d just been transferred from corporate, tapped the new girl on the shoulder. “Take a break, Crystal. I’ll get this.” Then with speedy efficiency and a pasted-on smile, she entered the man’s order. “I’m sorry for the delay, sir. Your order will be up soon.” 

The man harrumphed and walked away – leaving no tip. Walking up next to me, he looked at the expensive watch on his wrist and shook his head. “People have gotten so used to that easy unemployment money,” he said. “That they don’t want to work. Now businesses have to hire anybody.” 

Boy, did he pick the wrong guy to talk to. 

“Yeah,” I said. “They should all be happy running back to jobs that under-employ or overwork them, don’t give them sick days, health care, vacations, overtime, mess with their schedules and pay them next to nothing. What ingrates.”

“Whatever, pal,” the man said, realizing he had not been communing with a kindred spirit. “A job is a job. You don’t always have to like it.” 

“SINNER!” I shouted. 

“What?” the man said, backing away, frightened.   

“Thouest harangueth a new server on her first day and then placeth no gratuity in the proffered jar?” I bellowed, draping the priestly stole I always carry in my pocket over my shoulders. “I hear the jingle jangle of a million stolen tips! The cries of a million severs bereft of wages! Repent! Repent! For the Day of Judgement is at hand!”  

“Hey, all I wanted was a muffin and some coffee.” 

“Thou walketh into a restaurant and treat servers like chattel? Have you no compassion? No decency? Dost thou treateth everyone this way?” 

“Uh, someone call the police.” 

“Wait!” I said, slapping my hand to my forehead. “God has blessed me with a vision! I see people gathered around a casket and, instead of shedding tears of grief, they are bitterly saying, “Now departeth a man who always took but never gave.”  

“Now wait a minute…” 

“There goes a man who cared naught if people noticed his rapine parsimonious! There goes a man who treasured lucre over the human heart!” 

“Can I just get my coffee please?” 

“The man in the casket is you, brother!” I said, jumping onto the counter. “And woe unto your wretched soul, because God sees all and knows all. He knows when the smallest sparrow falls to ground!  He is more inward to you than your most inward part and higher than your highest! Do you think your stinginess and mendacity has escaped His gaze? It has not. God knows when you do not tip!

“Preach brother,” the new hire shouted. 

“Woe unto you with hearts of stone!” I shouted, letting the Holy Spirit rock and roll. “For a man who does not tip is like a someone trying to thead the eye of a needle with a camel – and that shall indeed do a numbereth on your ass!” 

“I…I…” the man stuttered.

“And saying ‘They don’t have to like their jobs?’ Thou placeth burdens on your fellow man, don’t raise a finger to lift them, and then tippeth not to boot?  Instead of stiffing these little ones, it would be better for you if a BMW were tied around your neck and thoust sunk into the depths of the sea!” 

“Amen!” a customer shouted. Then the air filled with the sounds of a gospel choir singing “Highway to Hell.” 

“Change your ways!” I roared. “Repent or you shall be cast into the fires of hell where for all eternity your flesh will be ripped from your body by grotesque serpents with razor sharp teeth! Where for all eternity, your blood will boil, your bones will burn, and your barrel will be reduced to a putrid black slime! And for what? Not tipping because your muffin did not come fast enough? When people throughout the world do not have enough food to eat? 

“Hallelujah!” my daughter yelled. “You tell ‘em preacher man!” 

“Cheapness is the way to the City of Woe!” I cried. “Tight-fistedness the path to Eternal Pain! ABANDON ALL HOPE YE WHO DO NOT TIP!” 

Then I began praying fervently over the man.“Demon of Entitlement, I cast you out! Beelzebub of Miserliness, I cast you out! Moloch of Insidious Indifference, I cast you out!  Depart the soul of this poor creature and maketh haste to Hell!”

The man fell to the ground, his eyes suddenly flickering with yellow reptilian flame. “Your mother works triple shifts in Hell!” the exposed demon shouted. “If she doesn’t like serving, let her get a real job!” Then the possessed man’s head started spinning on his neck, spewing streams of green vomit like a lawn sprinkler. 

“Gross,” Natalie, said.  

Showering the man with coffee, the holy water of waiters everywhere, I yelled. “The power of love compels you! The Patron Saint of Waiters compels you! Our Lady of the Eternal Gratuity compels you!” 

“It burns,” the demon screeched. “No, it’s coffee – it really burns!” Then, slimily oozing out of the man’s mouth, the devil plopped onto the floor, grew a thousand legs, and skittered out the door like a perditious centipede on crack cocaine and into the Trader Joe’s parking lot. 

“Oh, sweet Mary,” the newly exorcised man sobbed. “I didn’t know.” 

“Now, do you finally see the light?” I asked.   

“I didn’t know they lived on tips….” 

“Do you see the light?” I shouted.  

“I didn’t know I’ve treated people so badly….” 

“DO YOU SEE THE LIGHT?” 

“Yes!” the man said, leaping to his feet. “Yes! Jesus H. Tap Dancing Christ! I have seen the light!” Then he started somersaulting down the length of the restaurant while all the people in Panera, swept up in the Spirit, began dancing, leaping and spinning through the air – their voices mixing with the choir as they joyously belted out, “Let Us Go Back to the Old Landmark.” Natalie was especially into it. She loves to dance. 

“Another lost soul saved!” I shouted, gyrating on the counter. “Hallelujah and Glory Be to the AutoGrat in the Highest!” Then I felt something tugging on my pants. 

“Daddy,” my daughter asked. “Is my smoothie ready?” 

“Whah?” I said, shaking my head. From the moment that disgruntled hair product junkie finished saying, “Now businesses have to hire anybody.” I was lost in rapturous reverie. I never said a word to him. 

“Are you okay, Daddy?” 

Smiling, I patted my daughter’s head. “I was just daydreaming honey.” 

“About what?” 

“Sometimes, Natalie,” I said. “You’re Dad likes to think he’s on a mission from God. Now let’s get your smoothie.” 

The post Bad Tippers in The Hands of An Angry God appeared first on Waiter Rant.

There Will Always Be Horses

After my wife got her second dose of the Pfizer vaccine on Saturday, she told me, “I’m starting to feel like shit. You’ll have to take Natalie horseback riding tomorrow.” 

“No problem,” I said.

“Have you ever ridden a horse?” 

I had to think about that for a minute. “Not since I was at YMCA camp,” I said, after a long pause. “Forty something years ago.” 

I wasn’t going to be riding any horses, however. My daughter’s Daisy troop had organized a field trip to a local stable and I was going as a substitute chaperone.  Fact is, I’m a little frightened of horses. The last time I was near one at a county fair, I was intimidated by its massive size and power. “If he wants to stomp me to bits,” I thought, ‘There’d be nothing I could do about it.” 

After making sure Natalie had her cowboy boots on, a full water bottle and an overly thick application of sunscreen, we got in the car to make the short trip to the stable. “Are you excited?” I asked her. “Uh huh,” she said, rather unenthusiastically. 

“Don’t worry, it’ll be fun. Horses are very nice.  Just watch out for the poop.” 

Pulling into the parking lot, I spied a gaggle of small girls wearing their Daisy vests by the main gate. As we walked toward them under the hot sun, I began to worry that Natalie would be intimidated by horses like me and, if I was nervous, she’d get nervous. “Cowboy up,” I thought. “You’ve got this.” I needed have worried, however. The moment she saw a pony near the gate, her first reaction was to walk up to it and stroke its forehead. “That’s a pony,” Natalie said, looking at me over her shoulder. “Not a horse.” 

“What’s a mule then?’ 

“Oh Daddy. You don’t know anything.” 

A young woman wearing jodhpurs and scuffed riding boots came and introduced herself, organized the little girls into a line, and then took them into the stables to feed the horses. “Remember ladies,” she said, “Never get behind a horse. That makes them nervous because they can’t see what’s going on behind them. Always approach them from the front. Now who wants to go first?” 

Natalie, who always whines when asked to do chores or retrieve her heavy bookbag out of the car, was the first to raise her hand. Grinning, I watched her dig her scoop into a pile of grain, pull out a heavy load that she needed two hands to carry, and then fearlessly trot go into a horse’s pen. As the guide held its bridle, Natalie brushed against the horse, laughing as she dumped the equine’s dinner into a bucket. 

As the girls each took their turn, I looked at the horses on the other side of the stable – much bigger than the ones the Daisy Scouts were feeding.  A large brown one caught my eye and then, as if she knew I was staring at her, (Or him. I couldn’t tell.) she raised her great head and returned the gaze. Lost in her big chocolate eyes, a curious feeling of unreality settled over me and the world, with all its cares and troubles, disappeared. 

“Daddy,” I heard my daughter say, her voice sounding very far away. “Look.” 

Spell broken, I turned away and saw another horse licking grains out of my daughter’s cupped hands with its large tounge. “It’s tickles,” Natalie said, laughing. Personally, I’d be leery of doing such a thing, but there was my little girl, doing something her father could not.   It wouldn’t be the first time – nor the last.  

Then it came time to go for a ride. After being fitted with helmets, we sauntered over to the enclosure where the guide stood each girl next to a horse, placed the reins in their right hands and, to my consternation, asked the parents to hold the bridle. Faking confidence, I slipped my hand into the ring near the horse’s nose and muttered, “Nice horsey.” The horse, however, was quite placid and ran its tounge over its lips, as if saying, “Another day, another kid.” With the aid of several staff, the guide got the girls into their saddles and, after the parents moved away, began trotting the horses around the ring. One of the Daisies started crying. Oh well, there’s always one. Then I took out my phone and started to take the obligatory pictures. 

Natalie was quite at ease on her mount; standing on her stirrups, leaning forward and holding the reins with what I thought was good form for a first timer. Then, as her laughter carried across the warm spring air, I was suddenly very glad I’d taken my wife’s place. Moments like these are precious and we never know how many of them we’re going to get. “This is the good stuff,” I said to myself. “This is what makes everything worth it.” When her ride was over and we were walking away from the paddock, Natalie stopped and asked me to take off her helmet. Then, as I fumbled with the buckle, she began to cry. “What happened?” I asked.  

“You pinched me,” Natalie said, rubbing her neck. 

“I’m sorry, honey.”  But when I stooped down to survey the damage, there wasn’t a mark on her. 

“Hey,” I said. “You’re okay. Not even a scratch.” But Natalie was looking at the horses, her tears now turning into wails. My daughter has a tendency to be a bit somatic, often using distress over a minor or fictious physical concern to express deeper emotions, so I knew what was happening. Picking her up, I kissed her cheek and whispered into her ear. “Don’t worry Natalie,” I said. “We can come back here again one day. There will always be horses for you to ride.” Her response was to blow snot on my shirt. 

‘C’mon,” I said, carrying her back to the stables. “There’s more to see.” 

“Everything all right?” the guide asked me. 

“Just upset the show’s over.” 

An hour later, the field trip ended. While Natalie was busy wrapping things up with her troop, I walked up to the big horse I saw earlier. Reaching out slowly, I stroked her neck and looked into her beautiful eyes; letting that peaceful unreal feeling wash over me again.  It was the same feeling I experienced when encountering that deer in the forest long ago.  Thaumazein. Wonder at the sheer existence of things. For a moment, I was a child again.

A while back, I read an article about horses being used to aid cancer patients in their recovery; something about stress relief and endorphin flow boosting the healing response – I can’t remember exactly. But as I stood in the presence of that majestic animal, I knew the wonder she evoked might also provide comfort those who could not be healed, those patients facing death. That queer sensation we get when wonder strikes us, when “the familiar becomes infinitely strange” is a reminder that nothing – neither horses, my daughter or even a beautiful spring day – can account for their own existence, leaving us to marvel as to why anything is here at all.  

Far from being an “unreal” feeling, it is a revelation that reality is far greater than we imagine and that, in the end, we are sustained by something far bigger than ourselves. You can call that “something” God, Brahman or, as George Carlin joked, “The Big Electron.” But even when we are at our lowest ebb, even on our deathbeds, we get reminders that wonders, like seeing a horse in hospice, never cease. The Big Electron just keeps on giving, whether we deserve it or not, again, and again and again. And in our delight, we all become children again – a time when seemingly infinite possibility lay before us. Kids always want something to look forward too. When facing the end, wonder can return to us to that state of innocent expectation, the hope that there will always be more to see; that we haven’t arrived at the end of our lives, but only the beginning.

Patting the horse, I told it, “I shouldn’t have been afraid.”  Then I rejoined my daughter and drove her home, contentedly listening as she babbled excitedly about horses.  As I guided my car along the highway, I thought about Natalie crying. Perhaps those horses also stuck her as wonderous and she didn’t want the moment to end. Children are like that. But, in time, I hope Natalie will realize that Wonder will always be there for her and that the “good stuff,” despite life’s struggles, never ends. There will always be horses.

And and much, much more. 

The post There Will Always Be Horses appeared first on Waiter Rant.

Deserve’s Got Nothing to Do With It.

I was eating at a local diner when a man, a busybody if there ever was one, decided to plop down next to me and start asking questions about the food pantry I run. After explaining how every bit of food and money we give away is donated by generous townsfolk, he asked a question I’ve heard a million times.  

“But how do you know the people who come to the pantry deserve the help?” 

After swallowing a bite of my sandwich, I said, “You go to church?” 

“Yes,” he said, a little taken aback. 

“So, you’ve probably heard that bit from Gospel? You know, when the righteous are being welcomed into heaven and God tells them, ‘Take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world? For I was hungry, and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty, and you gave me something to drink, when I was in prison you visited me?’ – you know the rest.”

“Wait a minute….” the man said, starting to look very uncomfortable. But I cut him off. 

“And then the righteous said, ‘When did see we see you hungry and feed you? When did we see you thirsty and gave you something to drink? When did we see you in prison?’ And God replied, ‘When you did it for the least of my brethren, you did it for me.’” 

“Listen,” the man said. “That’s all well and good. But if people are donating money and food, they need to know who’s getting it. Don’t you think? Lots of lazy people out there, living off the hard work of other people.” 

“But did you notice something?” I asked. “Nowhere in that passage does it say that those people – the least of our brethren – got help because they deserved it.” 

“So, you do help people who don’t deserve it,’

Channeling Clint Eastwood, I lanced the man with my thousand-yard stare and said, “Deserve’s got nothing to do with it.” 

“Now if you’ll excuse me,” I said, turning back to my sandwich. “I’ve only got a few minutes for lunch. Have a nice day.” 

I listened to man’s clothes rustle as he slid off his stool, the echo of his footsteps on the hardwood floor, and the tinkle of the bells above door signaling his exit. The showdown was over. Looking at my watch, I smiled. 

It was High Noon. 

The post Deserve’s Got Nothing to Do With It. appeared first on Waiter Rant.

Slow Down

“Steve,” my boss said over the telephone, “Can you come down to my office for a minute?” 

“Sure thing,” I said, wondering what was up. My boss is a “hands off” type of supervisor. As long as I get my job done, he stays out of my hair – a blessing after years of dealing with tyrannical restaurant owners and dysfunctional health care administrators. But when I walked past his receptionist, I noticed she had a sly smile on her face. “You’re in trouble,” she said. “Go right in.” 

Muttering under my breath, I wondered who I’d pissed off. Even though my job requires me to be a “professional nice guy” I occasionally have to tell people things they don’t want to hear. When you work for a municipality, the taxpayer always thinks they’re right. 

“Steve, come in,” my boss said, waving me into his office. The Mayor was seated by his desk. Oh boy. I must’ve really stepped in it this time. 

“What’s up?” I asked.   

“Were you driving car 101 at 11:30 AM this morning?” 

“Yes,” I said. “I was driving surplus food over to another food pantry.” 

“Well,” my boss, said. “We received a complaint about your driving.”

“Me?” 

“A citizen was behind you on Route 65. They said you were driving too slow.” 

“Come again?” 

“They said you were driving so slow that they were late for their appointment.” 

“I was going the speed limit!” I said, “It’s 35 MPH!” The Mayor started chuckling. It was then I realized my boss was pulling my leg. 

“Steve,” my boss said smiling. “I’ve never, ever had to reprimand an employee for driving too slow. Usually, the opposite, actually.” 

When you drive a municipal vehicle, you are a representative of the government and trust me, the citizenry watches you like a hawk. Therefore, I always drive the speed limit, never run the yellow, refrain from honking the horn to express my vehicular displeasure and never, ever give anybody the finger. But I knew there was more to it than that. 

“I’m not surprised this happened,” I said. “I drive like an old man now.” 

Well,” my boss said. “I thought you’d get a chuckle when you heard this. No worries.” 

Back behind my desk, I thought about my thirty-six years behind the wheel. Like most people, I’ve had my share of accidents and a couple of speeding tickets but, overall, I’m a good driver. In my younger years, however I was loved driving fast – slaloming on serpentine roads, taking corners at speed, racing guys on empty highways and doing the Rockford turn to show off. My favorite car movies are Bullitt and Drive. Of course, I don’t do stuff like that anymore –mostly – but I’ve always told my wife I’d like one of those stunt driving courses as a birthday present. But as I hit my fifties, without really consciously thinking about it, I’ve slowed my driving way, way down. I guess as the grey hairs have taken over my head, I’ve developed a better appreciation for physics and the fragility of the human body. I don’t run yellow lights, drive the speed limit and have become so hyperaware of children that I crawl out of my driveway now. I’ve become the old geezer I used to hate getting stuck behind. 

After work was over, I picked up my daughter at her after school program. As always, I had a snack for waiting for her, an apple and chocolate milk.  On the drive home Natalie prattled on about her day while I kept an eye on my vehicular brethren. Cresting a hill overlooking a lake, I saw the placid waters below blazing with violet, orange and purple light, mirroring the low hanging winter clouds the setting sun has set ablaze. For a moment sky and water seemed as one. It was beautiful. Then a horn honked. Slowing down to take in the view, I must’ve pissed off the guy behind me. Pulling over, I let him pass, being rewarded with an Italian salute in the process. That made me two for two that day. 

“Look Natalie,” I said. “Look out the window, Isn’t that pretty?” 

“Very pretty,” my daughter said, unenthusiastically. What? Did she even look? Did she see that moment of fortuitous and delicate beauty – that transcendent whisper about creation’s goodness? Probably not. Probably thinking whatever seven-year old’s think. Probably tired of her old man pointing at angels in the sky. Oh well. 

When we pulled into the driveway, my daughter jumped out of her booster seat and plopped down next to me. “Now you’re going to teach me how to drive,” she said. 

I laughed. “Please, you’ve got nine years before you start driving.” 

“No,” she said smiling beatifically. “Teach me now.” 

So, with my daughter on my lap, we drove down our quiet residential street. Of course, she wanted to go all Steve McQueen, slewing the wheel left and right, but my hands were over hers, gently guiding her back on the correct path.

“Good job, honey,” I said. “You’re driving!” 

“Go faster Daddy!” 

“Uh, this is fast enough.” 

Reaching the end of the block, I let Natalie turn around we drove back into our driveway. “Again! Again!” she cried. 

“One ride to a customer.” 

“Was me driving breaking the law?” 

“We were totally breaking the law.” 

The sun had slipped below the horizon and I wanted to get inside to begin the evening routine – homework, dinner, bath time, story and getting my girl into bed. That can be an ordeal at times and sometimes I rush the process so my wife and I can spend some time alone. But Natalie wanted to keep pretending to drive so, as I listened to the engine ticking in the frigid air, I let her. There was no rush. My daughter may have ignored nature’s transcendent pyrotechnic show, but something told me she’d remember driving with her dad for the rest of her life. It was then I realized why I had started driving like an old man. For much of my life I’ve been focused on getting quickly to my destination, ignoring the scenery slipping past my eyes. Now, at my age, I don’t want to miss anything. Leaning forward, I planted a kiss on Natalie’s head, smelling the shampoo her mother used to wash her hair. It was yet another beautiful moment, another murmur of life’s sweet glory. I may have missed or ignored many of these flashes of grace as I’ve driven though life, but I knew if I just slowed down, they would come again, again, and again. Life is merciful that way. 

Taking Natalie into the house, I smiled. I was indeed two for two that day. 

The post Slow Down appeared first on Waiter Rant.

Take Your Hands Away From Your Eyes

“Daddy,” my daughter said. “Is magic real?” 

“You mean like when a magician pulls a rabbit out of a hat?”

“Yes.” 

“That’s not magic,” I said, “That’s an illusion.” 

“What’s an illusion?” 

“Remember how I made that coin disappear?” I said, referring to the only feat of legerdemain I’m capable of. 

“That was cheating!” Natalie said. “You hid the coin in your fingers.” 

“But until I showed you how I did it, you thought it had disappeared. An illusion is tricking people into thinking they’re seeing something that isn’t real.” 

“Is God a trick?” Natalie said.  

Stunned, I tried formulating a good answer. “God and magic are two totally different things,” was the best I could come up with.  

“Okay, Daddy,” my daughter said, not sounding entirely convinced. Then she skipped away, six years old and already a skeptic. 

Sitting on the couch, I wondered why my daughter though God was a trick. I know she already suspected the Tooth Fairy was bogus – same with the Easter Bunny – but as Natalie’s little brain is coming together she’s beginning to see the contradictions contained within the legends of childhood. Eventually she’ll realize it’s all nonsense. But will she eventually toss God into dustbin along with St. Nick, leprechauns, fairies and all the other fairy-tales of her childhood?  

As I was pondering this, I remembered something that happened to me when I was a child. It was a hot summer morning and I was at Boy Scout camp in the Adirondacks; hauling a rucksack stuffed with food for ten people back to my campsite. Only twelve years old, I huffed and puffed in the humid heat, filling the air with curse words I’d just learned as the heavy rucksack’s straps bit into my shoulders. The day before someone had broken into my footlocker and stole all my money  – which meant I couldn’t buy candy or soda at the commissary anymore. Worse, my bunkmate was a psychopath who liked immolating toads and salamanders with a flamethrower he’d fashioned out of a can of bug spray and a lighter. Watching those creatures shudder as the flames washed over them made me sick to my stomach. I hated camp. I hated the kids in my campsite. I wanted to go home. 

Filled with anger, I shucked the heavy rucksack off my back and sat on a rock. My grandmother had died only few months earlier; my first real experience with death. In past summers she paid for me to go to a YMCA camp that I’d really enjoyed. There the counselors were loving, encouraging and most of all, they wanted us to have fun. Boy Scout camp, however, was like being in the army; run by men who were all about “toughening us up.”  Overwhelmed, I put my head in my hands and started to cry –  thinking of my grandmother, my stolen money and those reptiles writhing helplessly in the flames. On the cusp of adolescence, I was already thinking life was going to be anything but honest, brave, clean and reverent.  After a while my sobs ceased and, when I finally took my hands away from my eyes, I discovered a beautiful buck with huge antlers standing above me. 

I was too surprised to be frightened and, as the buck and I regarded each other, a queer sensation washed over me. Despite the fact deer were commonplace around camp, I found myself marveling how this particular animal gotten had gotten here.  Not how it had snuck up on me or why it hadn’t run away but rather why was it here at all.  What what had once been familiar had become ‘infinitely strange” and, in that moment, the buck suddenly seemed like a rabbit pulled out of a magician’s hat. Like any child watching a magic show, I laughed with delight which, of course, made the buck run away –  but I never forgot that moment in the forest. 

Getting up from my couch, I walked over to the dining room window and watched my daughter playing in the backyard. As Natalie ran around chasing the dog, I remembered the first time I held her in my arms. Even though I’d been expecting her arrival for months, when I first looked into her eyes I was struck by the same feeling I had when I encountered that buck. How did this beautiful child get here? Now Natalie is six and headed for the first grade. Baby fat gone, she can now read, write, ride a bike, and is already boy crazy.  She also possesses a ferocious intelligence. How many six-year old’s do you know asking if God’s a trick?  But smart people will always doubt God’s existence. How could they not? The concept is chock full of contradictions – especially now. As the coronavirus steals more lives from us and we see videos of a man writhing to death under a policeman’s knee, the benevolent deity of our childhoods seems like a childish fantasy. If God is good, how can such things happen? There are people who’ll say it’s all part of God’s plan but, if terrible suffering is part of his grand design, then he is quite simply, a monster. Then again, many religious types are monstrous too. Aside from the sickos who’ve used God to steal people’s money and innocence, church pews are packed with bitter folks who, pathologically feeling inferior to others, cling to a the promise of an afterlife where the tables will be finally be turned and they’ll get to watch their supposed betters shudder in the flames. Nice huh?

If Natalie is as smart as I think she is, she’ll notice all those nasty contradictions and run from them. But will she throw the baby out with the bath water? After seeing her share of heartbreak and the evil men do, will she conclude God is a nothing but a childish dream that she must rub from her eyes? It could happen. There’s a couple of atheists rattling around who might tell her it’s all hocus pocus and alakazam. Like all children, my daughter’s innocent sense of wonder will eventually be overwritten by the struggle of life. Like her father, Natalie will probably go through periods of agnosticism and disbelief and there will be very little I can do about it. No religion, philosophy, book or guru can tell you about God. They have their uses, obviously but, in the end, God is something everyone has to figure out for themselves.

Forty years have passed since that day at summer camp and, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve had more and more of those little experiences: when the sudden appearance of something beautiful fills me with wonder – what the old Greek’s called thaumazein. Wonder at the sheer existence of things. Deep in my bones I’ve been reminded, over and over again, that I am a created thing –  that I didn’t will  myself into existence. In seminary, I was taught nothing, no person, planet, black hole or atom can explain why it exists in and of itself. Everything in the universe is contingent or depends on something else for being here and, if you wind back the clock and examine the great chain of causality, you’ll eventually arrive at a point where there must have been a first cause – that which created something out of nothing. Since that “prime mover” has no cause it must simply exist in and of itself – uncreated and beyond time – and makes everything that is real, well, real. That “something” is what every major religion, despite all their differences, calls God.

But so what?  All those philosophical gymnastics I’ve described in admittedly abridged detail mean very little to us struggling in the here and now. Even if you acknowledge (And that’s a big if for many) that there’s a God who got everything moving, you could be forgiven for thinking he just lit the fuse of creation and then walked away like a hands-off father or worse, a deadbeat dad refusing to acknowledge his paternity. Or is God so beyond us that he’s just an utterly unknowable “brute fact” – a wholly Other who, enthroned on the far shore of infinity, reigns with serenely sterile indifference while allowing us to shiver in the cold? Such a God, would, in point of fact, be cruel, leaving creation “something considerably worse than a nightmare.” So what is the point of us being here in the first place? “To suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” while God basks in the admiration of his angels? Natalie will eventually questions like this. What shall I tell her? 

On the way home from the grocery store yesterday, I was thinking of Natalie’s question when a rainbow suddenly apperared. Vibrant and glorious, I gawked as it hung regally over the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. Created by a confluence of rain and light, I knew it was would disappear before I pulled into my driveway, I also knew it was completly unnecessary. Rainbows serve no functional purpose – we don’t need them –  but their beauty surprises and delights us all the same. That bow in the sky reminded me, yet again, of the needlessness of my own existence. For if the Source of all is uncreated, timeless and totally sufficient in of itself then it needs nothing.  Not majestic bucks in the forest, rainbows on a summer day or my little girl’s delightful smile. But they’re here anyway – they live and move and have their being. That tells us something. When you get something wonderful that’s unmerited, undeserved or even unasked for that is, quite simply, a gift. Theologians will tell you the “gift” of creation emanates from the overflow of God’s ecstatic joy in the delight of His Being and is for made for His pleasure. Sounds slightly narcissistic at first glance but, as we all know, giving someone a present usually makes us feel good – the happiness of the recipient gives us pleasure – so I’ll cut God some slack. That rainbow reminded me that beauty, in all of its needless gratuity, whispers that our lives are pure gift and that such a gift can only come from pure love. Love not only makes the world go round, it’s why it’s is here at all. 

As I drove, I thought about how beauty also tells us that God is not some sterile and indifferent Other. He may be infinite but his very distance from us is actually a wonderful and necessary thing. For much of my life, I’ve been frustrated by the fact that I can never know everyone’s stories – that there were so many unknowns among people, so many differences, that I’d never be able to figure out what made them all tick. I now realize that, far from a curse, distance – mystery –  is a blessing. If everyone was the same as me, if they weren’t different, nothing would surprise or delight me. I’d have nothing to look forward to. But the very fact people are other than me is what fuels my desire to write about them and that is a desire that will never be quenched. I now understand distance is part of God’s gift. It tells me the stories will never end. That there will always be more to see. That there’s more fun around the corner.   

A wise person once said, “distance is the soul of beauty.” We can only appreciate beauty from afar.  If we didn’t then everything would just be part of ourselves – monotonous and dull. Distance is what allows beauty to happen. And infinity, that distance between God and us, is the space where His gift creates everything that, in all its differences, is not Him.  Infinite love creates infinite diversity. “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.” Not some of it or part of it – all of it. Difference is good. But now, as we live in a society riven by differences – atomized into like-minded bubbles chattering about blue state versus red, rich versus poor, men versus women, black versus white, old versus young, insiders versus outsiders –  differences, far from being good, now seem like a curse. Differences frighten us, so we try and control people and turn them into copies of ourselves, to bend them to our will.  And whenever we seek to consume, hoard, possess, commoditize, or homogenize something beautiful instead of delighting in it, when we try to erase that distance, we rob it of its joy. That’s when differences becomes ugly and an excuse for every kind of violence. In such a world they’re can only be winners and losers, the conqueror and the conquered, the powerful and the powerless.  Beauty is never the cause of violence but it suffers violence every day. 

When I got home, as predicted, the rainbow had vanished. It was a nice little gift – something that brightened ny day. But what should be my response to that gift – the gift of creation? Well, gift giving is always a two way street. When you give a gift you’re hurt when you don’t receive a thank you. There are misguided ethical purists who’ll say gifts should be given with no expectation of gratitude but that’s just simply inhuman.  Have you ever gotten a gift but, when you tried to thank the giver, he or she just brushed it off and said, “It was nothing.” Then their gift, bereft of reciprocity in its intent, was nothing but a ploy to make you feel indebted to the giver. Far from being a gift, it was a manipulative power play, a kind of  coercion – a form of violence to make you feel small.  Gifts and gratitude should always be exchanged with happy grace. Of course, sometimes getting a gift can be hard – especially when that gift is totally unexpected.  Sometimes we’re embarrassed because we have nothing to give in return or feel guilty because we’ve never given the giver anything.  And sometimes, especially when the gift is from someone we’re angry at, we ignore it – leaving the giver with his or her arms out stretched and the gift unwrapped. I’ve been guilty of that many times in my life. But then again, so have all of you – perhaps even recently

In April, as the coronavirus was taking tens of thousands of lives and forcing us to struggle with fear, grief, isolation, economic insecurity and death, springtime arrived. While people were dying alone in droves the flowers bloomed, trees reclaimed their leaves, birds sang and delicate butterflies began their dance on the warming breeze. But for many of us April was the “cruelest month” and, in our anguish and fright, we often ignored the beauty resurrecting around us. Dare I say, some of us even found it offensive? Sort of like when you’ve had a bad breakup and can’t stand the sight of lovers walking arm in arm? Around this time the comedian Jim Gaffigan delivered a bit entitled, Spring Arrives for Those in Lockdown on CBS’s Sunday Morning. “But, you know what?” Gaffigan said at the end of his spiel, “It’s still spring.  It’s a time of renewal and rebirth, a promise of better things to come. Instead of being disappointed about staying at home right now, we should be thinking about the possibilities of the springs in the future. You know what? I can hear the baby birds singing, and I see the leaves growing, and I don’t know, I guess it gives me hope.” Then, with an unsure look he said, “Did that sound believable?” 

Yes, Jim. It’s believable. Why? Because we will all eventually emerge from our winter of our discontent and the beautiful, in all its wanton extravagance, will still be there. That’s because the source of beauty is infinite and, therefore, can never be hurt. It is always patient and kind. It does not envy or boast. It is not proud, self-seeking, easily angered and keeps no record of wrongs. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Beauty – infinite love – never fails. It is a not blaring trumpet or clanging cymbal but a whisper of gentle persuasion, always breathing stories into our ears. If you failed to notice one of those beautiful tales, don’t worry about having missed out. Beauty is merciful beyond measure. For in God “nothing is lost, and the substance of hope lies in the knowledge that God has given – and will give – again.”

My dearest Natalie, God is not a trick. We are the ones who conjure up the illusions. All those contradictions involving God you’ll hear about aren’t really about Him at all. They are about us.  When finite beings try wrapping their heads around the Infinite, contradictions are bound to happen. In the end “God” is just a word, a symbol of how we perceive Him – the story we tell about ourselves. Small wonder human beings screw it up. But the only proper response we can make to this endless bounty – to beauty, to difference, to God’s gift – is to love one another. To say “thank you” we must honor and cherish the differences between us; to show mercy in turn and listen to one another’s stories – to let people just be. We must love one another as God has loved us. That’s not easy, but we have to try.

One day my love, you will overcome by sorrow and despair but, when you stop crying and take your hands away from your eyes, there will always be something beautiful to see. Never stop looking for rainbows and fireflies – for sunsets, music, poetry, art, and, perhaps one day, the smile on your own child’s face. Always look for the beautiful in people. Love their differences and try to hear their stories. Most of all, unlike your Dad, do not be afraid. For God holds all differences in harmony and peace; even the ultimate difference between us and Him – that we come to an end. We may not be able to grasp the infinite but the Infinite easily embraces our frailty and finitude in joy. So don’t worry about some kind of afterlife because there is no other life, just this one, and it is infinitely greater than we can possibly imagine. That means, Natalie, there will always be something new to see. There will always be more fun around the corner. There will always be time to play.

The party will never end. 

Postscript: This essay was inspired by a wonderful book entitled The Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth by David Bentley Hart. The author was quoted extensively and, if I’ve made any errors regarding his views, the fault is mine alone.

The post Take Your Hands Away From Your Eyes appeared first on Waiter Rant.

Ex Nihilo

A little while ago, a friend of mine said, “You know what death is like?” 

“Not having died,” I said. “No.” 

“Nothing.” 

“Come again?’ 

“It’ll just be one big nothing,” he said. “Do you remember what you were like before you were born?” 

“Nope.” 

“Death will be just like that. Going back to that nothing.”  

“So,” I said, sitting back in my chair. “You believe you came from nothing?” 

“Yes.” 

“No previous lives? You weren’t the king of France or his scullery maid?” 

“Reincarnation? That’s a fairy tale.” 

“Well,” I said. “Lots of people would disagree with you, but let’s stick with the ‘from nothing part.'”

“Uh oh,” my friend said. “I’ve got you started.” 

“Can you make something out of nothing?” 

“I…..” 

“You cannot,” I continued. “It’s impossible. The gulf beyond something and nothing is an infinite qualitative difference. To be fair, even ‘nothing’ is something. But you’re talking about a nothing that we can’t even comprehend. NO THING.”

“Are you going to talk about God now?”

“Not at all,” I said. “But if you were, as you say, nothing before you were born and, since the difference between nothing and something is an unbridgeable gap, then anything that emerges from that abyss, void, or whatever you want to call it, is different from nothing on an infinite qualitative level. So, even if all that remains of you after the universe has cooled to an soup of elementary particles a zillion years from now is the forgotten fact that you were once here – that tiny sliver of something would still be infinitely greater than the nothing from which you say you emerged.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” 

“Logic’s a bitch, my friend. If you came from nothing then it’s impossible for you to ever be nothing again.”  

“You’re very strange.” 

“So is making something out of nothing.” I said. “But we’re here anyway.” 

The post Ex Nihilo appeared first on Waiter Rant.

Stealing Fire

I was huffing and puffing on the Stairmaster at the gym a few weeks ago when I noticed a woman staring at me. In her early forties, she was fit, pretty, and wearing a tight workout garment that accentuated her shapely physique. 

Since I don’t suffer from the delusion that all women find me attractive, my first thought was that was that I’d suffered some kind of wardrobe malfunction or had toilet paper stuck to the bottom my sneakers. A quick glance downward showed my shorts were still on and my workout shoes free of bathroom debris. When I looked back the woman was giving me the up from under look, which she had to because I was five feet above her. Our eyes locked for moment and then she turned away, fiddling with the weight stack on the outer thigh machine she was using. 

I figured she was scoping me out to make sure I wasn’t a perv. When a woman is on one of those machines it’s not polite to stare. Trying to avoid the “creepy gym guy” appellation, I practiced chastity of the eyes and stared at the monitor displaying my heart rate. One hundred and thirty beats per minute. Right where I wanted it. Then, after what I thought was an appropriate amount of time, I looked back up. Having dismounted from her apparatus, she was chugging water when her eyes slid over me again. This time I smiled the harmless smile I’ve practiced for years. Just another middle aged guy trying to avoid a heart attack. Nothing to see here. Then I went back to staring at my monitor. But, when I glanced back up, I caught her looking again. This time she turned her head like she’d been caught doing something wrong. 

My next thought was this women has seen me on television when I’d been promoting my books. But my fifteen minutes of fame was years ago and I can count of the fingers of one hand when someone has recognized me on the street. Then again, I’ve encountered a lot of people working in psych. Maybe she was patient from long ago. Once when I was in the mall a young man pointed me out to his friends and said, “That guy tied me up at the hospital!” Talk about awkward. Luckily those moments have been rare but, while I’ve forgotten the vast majority of those endless faces, I’m sure quite a few of them remember me. But asking this lady if I’d ever thrown her into a straightjacket probably wouldn’t go over very well. 

Then the woman started doing calisthenics and stretches in front of me. I have to admit myself control faltered a bit and I snuck a peek. Not bad at all.  Then I wondered why was she doing this little dance in front of me. There were more spacious areas where she could have performed this routine. If she thought I was creepy she would’ve moved over there. Then again, maybe she thought I was harmless and didn’t care. For a moment I uncharitably wondered if she was screwing with my head – a look what you can’t have kind of thing.  But this woman was at an age where she was probably beyond such stuff. Then it hit me. I don’t suffer from the delusion that no women find attractive either. Maybe this lady thought I was desirable and was flirting with me. If she was, she was out of practice. A recent divorcee? Then again, with my grey beard, I may have reminded her of her grandfather. I was never good at interpreting these signals. It was all academic in any case. I’m married to a beautiful woman and, while I’m not dead, I’m not on the market either. 

The woman finished her exercises and disappeared. I kept plugging along until the calories expended counter hit five hundred and then went to retrieve my daughter from the gym’s daycare. “Did you have fun exercising, Daddy?” she said. 

“Yes,” I lied. “It was very nice.” 

“Will you buy me a smoothie? I was a good girl.” 

“Sure.” 

We walked over to the gym’s little café and Natalie hopped on a stool in front of the counter. I ordered a strawberry smoothie and, knowing it was too much for her, asked the worker to split it in two. While we waited my daughter looked at a huge guy doing bench presses. “Daddy, are you the strongest man in the world?” she said.

“Nope.”

“Yes, you are.” 

“There are men and women who are stronger than Daddy, sweetheart.” 

“One day I’ll be stronger than you?” 

I smiled. When Natalie is twenty I’ll be sixty-five. “I think you can bet on it,” I said. 

Our smoothies arrived and, as I sat  slurping next to Natalie, we talked about kindergarten, Frozen characters, where she wanted to have her birthday party and the people she wanted to invite. Turns out she likes a boy named Billy – and Connor and Matthew and Caleb. She’s not sure about David. “He’s mean sometimes. But sometimes he’s nice.” Man, this stuff starts early. 

“You can invite the whole class,” I said, patting her on the head. “Don’t worry about it.” 

Smoothies finished, I paid up, tossed a dollar in the tip bucket and then knelt next to Natalie, trying to zip up her winter coat. That’s when I saw that woman again. She was sitting on a lat pulldown machine and looking straight at me. But this time a look of sadness was on her face. Pretending not to notice, I got Natalie zipped up, took her by the hand and walked towards the door. Another pretty woman walking in looked at me and smiled. But this time I knew why – I was a daddy with his little girl. “She’s so cute,” the woman purred, as she passed by. 

“She looks like her mother, thank God,” I said. That elicited a laugh.  

On the car ride home, I thought about the woman who’d been looking at me. If she was indeed checking me out, I’d be flattered. Nice to know I’ve still got it. Then I thought about the sad look on her face. Was that because seeing I had a child marked me as unavailable and she was disappointed? Or sadness because that she had wanted children but didn’t have any? Perhaps she did but didn’t see them much because of custody thing. Maybe she couldn’t find the right guy or was just looking for fun. Maybe she was widow or had lost a child. Maybe it was all in my head; a projection of my wish to still be considered desirable. There was no way to know. Thousands of faces have flown past me through life – whipping by like glowing embers driven by the firestorm of time. Avid its rush, that reeling blaze! Those sparks can illuminate or burn us, frighten or inspire us, and, every once in a while, set our hearts afire. But, for the most part, they just fade into the darkness of memory. Human faces are glimpses into a mystery we’ll never truly know. 

Looking at Natalie in the rearview mirror, I thought of all the faces she will see. Like me, would she be frustrated as they flashed and flared but slipped from her grasp? My daughter loves looking at people and asking questions about them. Natalie’s teacher’s told me my daughter’s a natural storyteller and loves to draw, assembling her doodles into little books telling stories only she understands. Even now, she’s trying to catch those embers as each minute bursts in the burning room. One day Natalie will be indeed be stronger than me. If she’s the chip of the old block I think she is, eventually she’ll surpass me. Maybe she’ll wrestle all those ephemeral sparks onto paper and weave them into stories better than her old man ever could – restoring again and again / The smallest color of the smallest day.  Like Prometheus, she will steal fire from the gods.  

Walking into my house, I kissed my wife and then went upstairs to take a shower. When I was done I looked at myself in the mirror and sighed. Time was indeed consuming me. My hair is greying, my skin is sagging in places, an age spot appeared on my forehead and tomorrow my muscles would be sore. I don’t bounce back like I used to. Despite losing weight, feeling better and toning up, I knew I was starting to cool down. One day I’ll fade into darkness –  but not yet. They say youth burns brightest, but the most luminous objects in the heavens are stars in their death throes – saving their greatest fire for the end. Maybe that’s how it’ll go with me. Thinking of that woman’s gaze, I smiled at myself. 

Maybe, to some people, I’m still a hot number. 

The post Stealing Fire appeared first on Waiter Rant.

You Have All The Time In The World

“There’s someone her to see you,” one of my volunteers, said. 

“Who?” I said, not looking up from my paperwork.

“A couple with two kids. They said they need to talk to you.”

Even though Christmas is just under two months away, the food pantry I run is already busy preparing for the holidays. In addition to the Thanksgiving food drive that’s already underway, I have to prepare for our annual toy drive and our adopt a family program – when my clients submit wish lists that are given code numbers and anonymously matched with donors. As soon as our school supply drive ends in August I start reviewing all the families, double check addresses, phone numbers and count how many children we need toys for. Then I send out mailers to the clients, recruit businesses to be drop off points for food and toy collections, set up the adopt a family website, get the artwork made up for print and internet ads, get the town’s civic groups, churches, scouting organizations, and schools on board, call the newspapers, arrange for volunteers to help me and spending countless hours trying to make it all work. It’s detail oriented, painstaking work that requires a lot of focus. In addition to all that, several of my clients were in crisis. The last thing I needed was an interruption. I had work to do. 

Sighing, I put down my pen, stuck my head into the waiting room and bid the family entrée into my office. “How can I help you?” I said as the couple sat in the client chairs in front of my desk. Standing next to them, their two small children stared at me wide eyed. 

“We sign up for food pantry,” the husband said in broken English. 

“Are we too late for the toys? Christmas? ” the wife asked. 

“No,” I said. “The deadline for applications is tomorrow.” 

This happens every year. Just before the application window closes, two or three families sign up for our holiday programs at the last minute. They’re usually new to the area, hear about our offerings and are anxious to make sure their children benefit. But signing up a new client is another detail oriented task requiring time I can’t really spare. Pulling out an application, I handed it to the father. 

“Here’s our application form. Go home, review it, get all the paperwork listed on the form, and bring it back to me tomorrow.” 

“Oh,” the wife said, hauling a file folder out of cavernous purse. “Everything I have.” 

I groaned inwardly. I’d have to sign these people up right then and there. Staring at the pile of holiday wish lists on my desk waiting to be reviewed, transcribed and coded, I wondered when I’d find the time to finish them.  I really wanted these people to come back tomorrow. Then I looked at the couple’s young daughter, who was about two, and remembered something I’d heard a couple of days before. 

Last Saturday evening, while my wife and daughter were at a kiddie party, I did something I hadn’t done in a long, long time. Getting in my car, I drove over to the Byzantine Catholic Church in the next town and slipped into a pew. Staring at the bejeweled screen in front of the altar covered with icons, I took a deep breath and closed my eyes, the smell of incense conjuring up images of my long dead godfather celebrating the Divine Liturgy. I thought of when I used to go to services regularly; when I was young and idealistic –  back when I thought any of this stuff made sense. Then the middle door of the iconostas swung open and the service began. “Blessed is the Kingdom of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, now and ever, and forever.” 

As the priest chanted through the intercessions of the Litany of Peace, I smiled when he sang, “For those who travel by sea, air, and land, for the sick, the suffering, the captive, and for their safety and salvation, let us pray to the Lord.” When I was a child, I would imagine all the people flying high in the sky smiling down on me saying “Thanks kid.” Now with shrinking legroom, packed flights, usurious baggage fees and those miserable pack of pretzels they give you in coach, air travelers need all the divine intervention they can get. I wonder if God has elite status with the airlines. Probably not. 

Eventually it came time for the Gospel. “Wisdom! Be attentive!” the priest chanted as he processed in holding the New Testament above his head.  My godfather used to joke the priest was really saying, “Shut up! You might learn something important!” Then the priest sang the story of a father who’s little girl was dying and beseeched Jesus to come to his house and heal her. But, as Jesus made his way to the man’s home, he was crushed by the crowds who wanted a piece of him. A woman, who’d been suffering from bleeding for years, jostled her way through the crowd and touched Jesus’ cloak. “Who touched me?” he asked the crowd. But no one fessed up.  

“Someone touched me,” Jesus said. “I know that power has gone out from me.” Then the woman who touched his cloak, realizing she’d be found out, fell trembling to her knees and told him that she was the one who touched him and, in a moment, had been miraculously healed. “Daughter,” Jesus said. “Your faith has healed you. Go in peace,” But then a neighbor came and told the father of the sick little girl that it was too late. She was dead. Hearing this, Jesus said to father, “Don’t be afraid; just believe, and she will be healed.” And you know the rest of the story. Jesus went to the man’s house raised that little girl from the dead. 

Reading finished, the priest began his sermon, a beautifully simple reflection about interruptions. He talked about how, in our daily lives, we get stressed out when people or events block us from doing what we want to do. When people make demands on our seemingly precious time – when they bother us with their problems. “We want to do everything on our schedule,” he said. “We hate being interrupted. Look at how none of us answers the phone any more, letting it go to voicemail so we can decide whether to answer them or not. Look at how we get upset if someone cuts us off in traffic or interrupts our leisure time. It stresses us out! Even when we do charitable work, we want it to be on our time, when we feel like doing it. But life just doesn’t work that way,.” Thinking about all my holiday tasks, I shook my head ruefully. 

“Can you imagine what was going through the father of that dying girl’s mind?” the priest said. “Her time was running out and the crowds were preventing Jesus from getting to her. How crazy that must have made him!” As a father of a little girl myself, I know I’d have gone nuts. “Jesus however,” the priest continued, “Was always being interrupted. But he didn’t see interruptions as a bother. He saw them as an opportunity. That’s why he stopped and talked to the woman who touched him. He didn’t brush her off or chastise her. He took the time to make a connection with her and still found time to raise that father’s child from the dead. That’s because the Lord knew there’s always time for what is important. We must follow the Lord’s example and see interruptions not as a burden, but as an opportunity to learn something new. He call us to connect to people where they’re at in the here and now –  to take life as it comes, not as we want it to be. If we do so, we’ll hear the wisdom life is always trying to teach us.” 

Looking at the little girl in my office, that priest’s words rang in my ears. Taking a deep breath, I reminded myself this family was only asking me to do what I’m getting paid for. As we talked, I learned this this family had fled to America from a very difficult part of the world. They had left behind their culture, language, family and friends to give their children a better life in the New World. I imagined my wife and I sitting in those client chairs as my five year old daughter stared wide eyed at a stranger asking questions. I wondered how I’d handle uprooting my life in such a drastic way – having to ask for help to feed and clothe my child and get her Christmas presents. It isn’t easy, especially for men, to ask for such help. I thought about my comparative life of ease. I thought about my house, my full fridge and all the toys in my daughter’s room. That’s when I realized that supplicant dad was a better father than me. 

Application finished, I showed the family around the food pantry and they shopped, filling a cart with food. When they were done, I grabbed a basket of stuffed animals I keep around for these situations and told the children to pick one. They were tentative at first but, under their mother’s gentle prodding, they started picking through the basket. The little girl took the smallest toy we had. ‘You can have that if you want,” I said. “But I think this teddy bear has your name on it.” As the girl and boy hugged their new toys happily, I knew this was the best thing I’d accomplished all week. Like the woman who touched Jesus’ cloak, it’s entirely possible these children would remember this small moment for the rest of their lives. That, after the ugliness of their former homeland, getting those toys might, consciously or unconsciously, instill in them a sense that people could still be kind, that the world was still a good place. And if I had shooed this family away because I was anxious about getting my paperwork done, that opportunity would’ve been lost

After the family left, I played my favorite recording of The Divine Liturgy of St, John Chrysostom on my computer and listened as its haunting and beautiful words filled my office, When the priest sang, “That we may be delivered from all affliction, wrath and need,”  I remembered that, in a very small way, my job is to be the deliverer of such Providence. Swept up in my own selfishness, ego and desire to control things, I forget that sometimes. How many of those “interruptions” that’ve driven me crazy over the years were actually opportunities for connection that I’d squandered? How many times – not only in my job – but in my marriage, family, friendships, and human interactions great and small did I fail people?  

We think our time is precious, even to the point of equating it with money. But thinking of time in terms of profit and loss only lead to frustration, making us parsimonious with our attentions and hardening our hearts to those opportunities for wisdom always swirling around us. Ignoring people to save time doesn’t make us rich, only poorer. So, the lesson of Jesus and that dying man’s child might be this – try not to get frustrated with interruptions because time does not belong to you. It is not a commodity we can control or hoard. As a wise man once said, “Time is the moving image of eternity.”  We’re just along for the ride. So shut up and listen to people. You might learn something. Besides, you’ll eventually get to where you’re going anyway.  

You have all the time in the world. 

The post You Have All The Time In The World appeared first on Waiter Rant.

The Wolf, The Lamb, & The Cigar

I driving to meet a friend at the cigar shop when my stomach started grumbling. Which was odd since I had only eaten dinner an hour before – a healthy meal of baked chicken, brown rice and a gigantic salad. But since I had done an hour of fairly intense cardio after work, I figured my body was crying to replenish its glycogen stores. Time for pizza. 

Across from the cigar shop was a pizza joint that I’d been frequenting for years. So, I walked in and ordered a Sicilian slice. As I was waiting for it to warm up, the young man who’d been working behind the counter since I started going there greeted me warmly. 

“Hey,” he said. “How ya doin’?”  

“Good, man,” I said. “You?” 

“My boy started first grade today. Can you believe it?” 

“Wow, it seems like he was born yesterday.” 

“How’s your girl?” 

“Started kindergarten.” 

“No shit?” the counterman said. 

“But your kid’s In real school now,” I said. “Homework and everything.” 

“It seems like last week that he couldn’t walk or talk.” 

“I hear ya.” 

“Where’d the time go?” the counterman said. “You notice that it just zips by?” 

I grinned. The counterman wasn’t out of his twenties yet, but we were both sharing the same experiences despite our twenty-three year age gap. 

“Trust me,” I said. “It only gets worse. Months go past by like days.” 

“Listen to you two,” a voice behind me, said. 

Turning, I saw a lean senior with a full head of white hair smiling.  

“I’m seventy-two,” the older man said. “You guys don’t know nothing yet.” 

“But you still have your hair old man,” the counterman said. “You look good. What’s your secret?” 

“Never did drugs,” the senior said. “Though I did like drinking. But no coke. None of that stuff.” 

“Lots of ladies?” the counterman said, winking at me. 

“Quite a few,” the senior said, wistfully. “But the secret to my good looks is regular masturbation.”

“Well,” I said, “You won’t be sweating prostate problems.” 

The old man’s eyes widened in surprise. “You got that right, kid,” he said. 

When I was young, I bristled at being called a “kid.” Now I love it. That’s because, soon, no one will say it. 

“What did Woody Allen say about jerking off?” I said. “Don’t knock my hobbies?” 

“Beats collecting stamps,” the old man said. 

My slice came up and I paid up, tossing a dollar into the tip jar. 

“Thanks, man,” the counterman said. 

“My secret?” I said to the senior self-pleasuring aficionado, “Always tip. You’ll live longer.” 

The old man laughed and I walked outside, taking a careful nibble of my hot pizza. Despite my diet, I do allow myself the occasional indulgence. I read somewhere you sometimes have to eat a fatty carbo-loaded mess to tell your body it’s not in starvation mode. That there’s still food aplenty. 

Across the street, I saw my friend in the window of the cigar shop, holding two cups of coffee and talking to Forest Ranger Ringo.  I knew one of the coffees was for me – decaf black. My friend Is very generous and often does things like that. Smiling, I thought of the counterman and the old man. A nice little conversation, a snippet of transgenerational solidarity that says, despite age, we are all in this life together.  

Entering the shop, I was greeted by a chorus of hellos. “Professor,” Big Mike said. “How the hell are ya?”  

“Hanging in there, Mike,” I said, heading into the humidor to grab a cigar. Then I settled iinto a seat next to my friend and lit my stick up.  All around me guys with nicknames like Shoes, Terminator, Tony Trains and Mikey Questions were yukking it up.

For a couple of hours, I sat back with my smoke and listened to the stories swirling around me. The patrons were, as always, an interesting mix of people –  cops, fireman, truck drivers, restaurant owners, judges, lawyers, politicians, doctors, an actor, insurance salesmen, retirees, rich guys, the financially strapped, drinkers and teetotalers, thin guys, fat guys, a quartet of Hasidic Jews, one Turk, a Greek Cypriot, an Israeli, Arabs, Persians, African-Americans, Irishmen, Italians, Dominicans, a Chinese guy, Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians, MAGA hat wearing dudes, war veterans, widowers and the newly married, the young, old, healthy, infirm, sane, crazy, the well dressed and slobs, the loud and the quiet – and one brave woman. The entire world was in there, happy and laughing. 

Smiling, I took a draw on my cigar, enjoying the nice conversation and friendly fellowship. Yet again, I was seeing another snippet of life, another sign that we’re all in it together. Perhaps this was another “signal of transcendence” whispering in my ear. Maybe I was getting a glimpse of the peace that so eludes us on earth – but also a reminder that, despite all our differences, it was still possible. The wolf will live with the lamb; the leopard will lie down with the young goat. The calf and the lion will graze together, and a little child will lead them. There will be food aplenty.

For a few hours, in the most unlikely of places, I listened as angels swirled in the smoke, murmuring rumors about a blazing joy that could be waiting for us all. Not a bad night. Not bad at all. 

The post The Wolf, The Lamb, & The Cigar appeared first on Waiter Rant.

A Walk Among The Tombstones.

Yesterday I went looking for a homeless person who probably wasn’t going to accept any help. 

“Have you seen this person?” I asked two DPW workers doing landscaping in a nearby park. 

“Try the supermarket,” one of them told me. “Might be there. Walks around town all day.” 

“Thanks.” 

I’d parked my car next to the homeless person’s squat so, to save time, I cut through the local cemetery on the return trip. Maybe I’d find my client napping in the shade of a mausoleum. As I passed by the graves I noted the names. Since I’ve lived in my town for four years some of them were familiar to me. One name caught my eye. 

Examining the headstone, I saw a father and daughter lay below me.  The father died of old age. The daughter died in the 1970’s at the age of eighteen. The name of the wife and mother was pre-engraved on the stone but there was no date of death. That’s because I knew the mother and she was very much alive – but I’d caught a glimpse into why she was the way she was. It wasn’t the first time I’d made such a connection. 

When I was in high-school, I had a teacher who was a world class grouch. A staid, conservatively dressed man, he was a strict disciplinarian – so much so that my classmates and I couldn’t stand him. But one day, during a school concert, I heard him playing the violin and was struck by the powerful emotion he conjured out of his instrument. As he expertly moved the bow along the strings, I heard a tremendous longing that somehow made him more real – as if his true self had been hidden until that very moment.  Baffled by what I had witnessed, I asked a priest on the faculty about it. “Art’s only child drowned in a swimming pool when she was small,” he told me. “He and his wife never got over it.”  Tragedy had struck both that old woman and my teacher and they were forever changed.  

I can’t think of anything worse than losing a child. When you become a parent that fear worms its way into your soul. You shouldn’t think about stuff like that often, but that worry is always rattling around somewhere. I know several people whose children died and I’ve never asked them the question I’ve always wanted to ask. “How’d you survive?” In almost all those instances the unfortunate parents probably kept going because they had other children. But, like my old teacher, I only have the one. The most haunting epitaph I ever read was on the grave of an only child. “The unfortunate Parents ventured their all on this frail Bark. And the wreck was total.” I doubt I’d ever survive such a calamity. 

My twin brother died in the womb, a heartrending event that my parent’s somehow got past; but it left a deep imprint on my psyche. One of the many reasons I entered the seminary was to avoid the possibility of losing a child, to avoid that “wreck.” But life did what life did and, years later, I found myself holding my wife’s hand as she was pushing Natalie out of her body. Standing in that delivery room, a fear that had been boiling inside me for years finally breached the surface. What if my daughter suffered the same fate as my brother? The obstetrician, somehow sensing my distress, said, “If anything goes wrong, I can get that baby out in a minute.” Then Natalie popped out healthy and perfect. 

I’ve spent a good part of my life not trusting that things will work out. Whenever life’s going my way, whenever I’m happy, I get the sneaking suspicion that it’ll all turn to shit – that the other shoe’s going to drop. That dynamic’s fucked me up in ways too numerous to count. It’s poisoned relationships, sullied successes and stolen joy from my happiest moments. I still struggle with it but, when I held my newborn daughter’s in my arms I got the powerful sense that Natalie was forever. Looking into her eyes, I glimpsed a flash of eternity. Not an endless procession of dates on some cosmic calendar – but a timeless and living now. Natalie would never end, I thought. Neither would I. For a moment, things looked like they might work out after all. 

Back at the homeless person’s empty squat, I came crashing back to earth. Kicking aside the fast food wrappers, empty cigarette boxes and a bottle drained of rotgut, I was reminded that life can go horribly wrong. For those parent’s who’ve lost children, things did not work out. And I’ve been around too long to ignore the fact that people are crushed by sorrow, disease, poverty, violence and depravity every day. I like to play theologian on this blog but, when I encounter people who’ve lost so much, I often think I’m bullshitting myself – that I’m just trying to convince myself into believing what I want to believe. And I really don’t want my faith to be truly tested. As a father who lost his son to disease told me, “It just sucks. That’s all there is to it.” The reality of his suffering is unknown to me – and I pray it always will be. I want tragedy to leave me alone and let me keep prognosticating from my online ivory tower. 

As I took my walk among the tombstones, I suddenly felt old, useless and played out. I can’t even get a homeless person to help themselves, much less think I possess words of wisdom for anybody. As a critic on Goodreads once said of my books, “He comes across sounding like an out of work priest.” There are days when I think that statement is spot on. Every grave I passed was asking questions I could not answer; every epitaph a testament to sorrow and loss. “Many great dears are taken away / What will become of you and me?”  I have no sacerdotal credibility. I don’t have any answers. Perhaps it’s been foolish and arrogant to try. 

Heading toward my car, I came across a grave decorated with flowers. The person six-feet under died long ago but someone was still taking the trouble to remember them. Looking at the flowers, my seminary trained mind remembered a passage from the Gospels: 

“Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God doth so clothe the grass of the field, which to-day is, and to-morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?” 

When people read this line, they usually think that Jesus is telling them not to be anxious about life – that God will provide. If you’ve lost your kid, however, that might ring hollow. But there’s another way to look at those words. They proclaim that meaning can found in the most unlikely of places – that there’s an “otherness which lurks behind the fragile structures of everyday life” pointing to a reality greater than we can comprehend. These “signals of transcendence” are all around us. And you don’t need theology books or a guy like me explaining it to you. Whether it’s something as simple as summer grass or lilies in a field, life is always whispering the truth into our ears – we just have to listen. But that’s not easy.

Looking at the flowers on that grave, I knew someone still missed the person buried below, that  they yearned for them. Thinking about the longing sounding from my old teacher’s violin, I knew that if Natalie was ever taken from me, I’d be filled with the same terrible yearning – that all I’d want would be to hold her in my arms again.  Anyone who’s lost a loved one to death understands this desire. It’s is universal to the human condition. And yet, in that unlikely place of human fragility and pain, another signal might be beckoning – that our desire to see our loved ones restored is a faint and imperfect echo of what is to come. In ways we cannot comprehend or imagine, it hints that death is not final – that the other shoe never really drops. Things might work out after all. That every tear shall be wiped away. Of course, I’m talking about resurrection – a hope beyond hope. But humankind, throughout history and in a myriad of ways, has always felt the whisper of that promise tugging on its soul. In our heart of hearts, none of us really wants to disappear. 

Getting into my car, I figured I was probably thinking like an unemployed cleric again. Some people, especially those who’ve lost children, might dismiss my musings out of hand. I wouldn’t blame them. I could be totally wrong. To be honest, when I write this stuff, I sometimes feel ridiculous. What do I bring to the table, really? People have told me I have a talent for finding hidden connections and teasing patterns out of everyday happenings – but others have said I’m just a bullshit artist, trying to convince people what a “deep guy” I am.  Leaving the tombstones in my rearview mirror, I shook my head. Maybe there are no signals of transcendence – no “rumors of angels.” What you see is what you get. Maybe I’ve always been full of shit. 

But I’m not wrong about our longing for those we’ve lost. That’s true. That’s real. Suffering sucks and sometimes there’s no point to it but, for my sanity, I have to believe it points to something beyond this vale of tears.  It could all just be confirmation biases on steroids, but maybe my very need to believe in something more, caught up as it is in anxiety and wishful thinking, is yet another signal – an affirmation that life is indeed wonderous, strange and will confound our expectations. Magical thinking? Perhaps. Perhaps not. 

Back in my office, I shuffled paperwork, but I couldn’t get those tombstones out of my head. I’m just like everyone else on this earth; clinging to a frail bark in the middle of a vast and roiling sea. One day I will sink. Leaning back in my chair, I wondered if Natalie will decorate my grave with flowers. Would she be filled with longing every time she looked at my name etched in stone?  And when my daughter remembers her old man, she might think he was just an eccentric guy with his head in the clouds, listening for rumors of angels that weren’t there. Despite all my shortcomings, failures, vanity and ignorance, I hope she’ll understand that was the only way her father knew how to be. But I also pray Natalie will never live in fear of that other shoe dropping, that she’ll always nurse a hope beyond hope that things will work out.

Maybe that will be my epitaph.  

The post A Walk Among The Tombstones. appeared first on Waiter Rant.