Jason Coleman

I just read an entry Tina made called Mother’s Day Reflections. Go read it; it’s certain to be more interesting and original that this reponse to it. You should know that she wrote it on the evening before Mother’s Day; I’m writing this late Mother’s Day night.

Tina was right: for us this Mother’s Day was just as packed full of stuff as any other Sunday. I did try to be sweet in the typical Mother’s Day fashion: by getting up early to make her a hot breakfast and by buying her flowers.

But I didn’t do a very good job as typical mother’s days go: I didn’t get a card for her. (In a way I want to get defensive and say that cards are only for people who want credit for remembering the holiday but who don’t get up early to make breakfast or didn’t think far enough ahead to send flowers. However, it is a traditional thing to do and I didn’t do it.) I was feeling pretty bad about that. How can you mess up a little thing like getting a card? It doesn’t mean much unless something more meaningful is placed behind it, but it’s tradition, so why didn’t I somehow find a way to get her one?

Now that I’ve read Tina’s Mother’s Day Reflections I think that my worrying over not coming through with what’s traditional misses the mark. I’ve been fussing over celebrating one side of Tina (her motherhood) in some very traditional (uncreative) ways. But if I were to make a guess, she doesn’t want to be left alone to sleep in: she wants to be woken early and driven to the beach. We’ve had a lot of fun in the past walking down the main streets of small sea-side towns.

Guessing again, I doubt that she wants me to take Cora to the park for the afternoon so that mommy can have a few hours to herself. Instead, we need to go to the local recreation center that has the halfpipes and grind rails. Let mommy get out her old skateboard (and a lot of extra pads, please!) and show Cora what made her feel alive when she was a kid.

Finally, instead of taking mom out to dinner so that she can escape her cooking and cleaning chores for one special night, we should have thrown the biggest community cookout of the year. We have neighbors on the front, back, and sides that we barely know. Tina would have loved meeting them and playing host with some shish kebabs and a tub full of home made ice cream.

What do you think about any of those ideas for next year, hon?

Our obligation is to live a life pleasing to the Lord. That doesn’t mean that we must live according to the fashions of the Christian community. If our true obligations boil down to “do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God,” then we don’t necessarily have to be Bible scholars or teachers or even “involved” in some particular church ministry.

Cora has more and more words that she can say now. Actually, she has more and more words that she wants to use, but the same small number of sounds that she can make. As a result, she makes her few sounds and thinks that she’s saying the words themselves. Imagine a vocabulary of 20 words and only the sounds ba, buh, da, dada, hmm, mmn, muh, mum, and nnh to communicate them with. “Mmn” means yes and “nnh” means no, and the rest are up for grabs. Needless to say, Tee and I spend a good bit of time with Cora in conversations that go something like this:

Cora: Muh.

Tina: Oh, you want your mommy?
Cora: Nnh. Muh.
Jason: What’s muh?
Cora: (starting to fuss) Muh? Muh? Muh?
Tina: Milk? You want your bottle?
Cora: Mmn! Muh.

Anyway, I got to wondering what Cora’s weblog entries would look like, were she so inclined to write them. I took a stab at creating a weblog for her here.

When Cora was tiny and I’d hold her bottle for her, she’d often grab one of my fingers in her hand. It wasn’t much of a grip, but it was cute and I was happy to have my baby hold onto me. It felt like she was claiming me, and I was thrilled to have her demonstrate her love, however simply.

Many things about Cora have changed in the last year, and one of them is her feeding routine. She doesn’t often take a bottle anymore, and when she does she lets us know that she can hold it herself, thank you very much. It seems the routine of having my baby explicitly claim me as her own each night has passed.

It seemed temporary enough at the time, but her hold on me was more permanent than I had realized, and here it is months later and I’m still thinking about it. I’m still in her grip. I think I always will be, even though she’s fallen out of the habit of reminding me.

I can imagine a novel where poignant moments for the reader rise from the everyday activity of the characters. A finger-gripping infant could go into the first chapter somewhere to symbolize the dynamics of a relationship between parent and child. That grip could be used to explain why the parent works so hard, forgives so much, and loves so completely.

If the novel were careful to finish what it began, then I’m sure we’d eventually find the grown child hovering over the bed of the elderly parent. Even after so much has changed, their hands would still brush from time to time, saying I love you.

I’ve recently been elected and installed as a deacon at our church. We have about 15 deacons, and we’re charged with taking care of the physical needs of the people and property of the church so that the pastors and elders are free to deal with the spiritual needs. (Justification for deacons in Acts 6:1-4 and qualifications in 1 Timothy 3:8-10)

The deacons at our church work via committees, and I’m serving on the Mercy Committee. This committee handles requests from people in the church and community for help with any needs that they have. Today I did my first “investigation” of a request for help with a rent payment. I had to call the requestor and determine if I thought that he was credible or just scamming the church for some free money. (Apparently this happens not infrequently.) After talking with him and some other people, I think that his need is credible. I reported this to the committee and they have decided to help.

Good, but I have questions. What if I’m wrong? What if money that someone gave to the church to do God’s work ended up in the hands of a con artist because I’m naive? Or the other way around: what if I thought his story sounded fishy and turned him down, but then some honest guy at the end of his rope loses his apartment because some Christians refused to help him?

I currently have a mild case of, “Who am I to make this decision?” If we’d decided not to help him with his rent, I’d have a big case.

Of late, Cora has been falling asleep at night holding onto a fistful of my beard. This little 18 pound sweetheart grabs the whiskers of her irascible 215 pound dad to feel secure as she sleeps. As she lays there in my arms, I swear that she’ll experience no harm that I can prevent or absorb.

I can imagine fathers in Baghdad whose children fall asleep the same way. Those children look to their dads for protection, and those dads feel duty-bound to defend their children from harm. If bombs rain down there those fathers may lose their children, and I feel for them. If bombs rain down there those children may lose their fathers, and I feel for them.

In President Bush’s state of the union address the other night, he mentioned going to war with Iraq to stop a madman. He simplified the question to something along the lines of, “Do you want to stop a madman? Yes or no?” This simplification glosses over the losses of those defenseless children and their protective fathers.

I understand that, rhetorically, one achieves persuasive potency by making an issue black and white and excluding any middle grey areas. But I don’t trust an argument that glosses over the killing of one group of innocent people to protect the lives of another group of innocent people. The true face of “collateral damage” should not be left out of the argument in an attempt to reduce political wind drag with middle America. Call attention to the inevitable civilian losses. Let me see that the man setting them in motion understands the gravity of his decision. Give me the reassurance of knowing that it bothers him.

Indulge me for a minute with the lyrics to John Denver’s Rocky Mountain High.

This song is about a guy who starts a new life. What was his old life like? Who knows. But that life was just a precursor because, at age 27, he was reborn. That probably means a lot of different things to different people: finding a new group of friends; starting a new career using latent talents; living in an entirely different culture.

But for me the attraction of the song was not that my circumstances might change, but that I might change. Something happens — a new person, place, or experience — that causes a break with the old, and a new me is born. The troubles that defined my life so far are the fault of the previous guy, not me. I’m starting from right here, and I’ve got a clean slate. Rocky Mountain High said I could look to the future — to hope for the future — because people can change. You can be someone new, even as late as age 27.

But I can no longer take comfort in this song’s promise of a brand new day dawning at age 27. I’m 28.

I know a few more age-related songs, but none that deal with my current stretch of life. The best I can do is start looking forward to a few years from now when David Wilcox’s song, Glory, will be able to offer some consolation:

After that, it’s The Beatles with When I’m 64

Driving to work on Tuesday I passed a beat up old moving van. Box truck. It was white with paint peeling and missing in places. It was dirty, dented, obviously old, and it looked the sort of exterior that must hide an equally run down and unattractive interior. I imagined all sorts of mechanical trouble from a truck that run down. Suspension problems, transmission, etc.

The company name painted on the side of the truck was “Grace.” That was it. It wasn’t “Grace Moving Co.,” or “Grace, Inc.,” but simply “Grace.” And the company logo looked fine. No peeling or dirt there. It was like the company had just bought this old truck and placed their logo on it, brand new.

The value of that truck was not in the truck itself, per se, but in that truck’s being owned by Grace. Grace listed that truck as an asset on their balance sheet. Whatever I thought of its usefulness, it did useful work for them. Whatever I thought of its reliability, they would repair it when it broke down. Whatever I thought of its appearance, they still put their logo on the side to identify it as theirs.

I saw that truck as a rolling metaphor for the Christian doctrine of grace. That doctrine explains why people who merit very little for themselves are nonetheless seen as inordinately valuable by God. From GraceSermons.com:

And from the Christain Apologetics and Research Ministry:

I heard this joke on the radio this morning.

It’s a cute joke and it made me smile, but it also made me think.

First, I thought about living in a place where, every now and then, everyone has to walk to the front desk to be reminded of their name, or what they did for a living, or who comes to visit them and when. I imagine I’d feel pretty empty walking up there. Who am I? What did I do with my life? Is it a wasted life? Is that why I can’t remember it now?

But then I thought that, as sad as that trip to the front desk might be for someone, the trip back to one’s room would probably be a happy one. Walking to the front desk, you were just an old person, indistinguishable even to yourself from the dozens of other old people that surround you. But then you heard the nurse say, “Why, you’re Ms. Jenkins, and you were a school teacher!” I am? I was? That means I taught thousands of children to read! That’s something to be proud of. I didn’t know I had it in me!