Leaning Forward

The Chester

Most of our family is in church today, scattered around the state. Our prayers will most likely have a similar theme. Mike, Christie, and I, along with our spouses and children, will be expressing gratitude to our Heavenly Father for the gift of our earthly Father, Chester Henry Holmes, Sr., on the occasion of his 85th birthday.

We gathered in Greenville yesterday for some family time and birthday wishes. I believe today we are thanking God for his influence, leadership, and guidance over our lives. We are blessed to have this Christian man as our dad.

The tribute could cover a few pages and words kind of run empty when trying to express such profound thoughts. So, in short, I just want to thank The Chester for showing us faith, demonstrating a model of biblical marriage, providing each his of his children with a great education, teaching us to laugh, and being such a consistent provider over the span of our lives. When our mother was declining under the assault of Lou Gehrig's disease, he cared for her in a way that instructs us about tenderness and commitment, the stuff of "in sickness and in health" even now. Each day we are thankful for him. I'm thinking we're talking to God about our gratitude today.

Happy birthday, dad! You're the bomb.

Five Saturdays. Five.

Summer is a sports dead-zone . When the college baseball season ends its mostly the doldrums. Professional baseball is too slow. Fishing is boring. Wrestling is fake. NASCAR is just people going fast in circles, and I see that every day. Professional golf is a sleeper. Now, the Olympics are so politically biased I can only cheer the Amercans from a distance.

But, in five weeks, give or take a few days to allow for kick-off classics and all the hoopla of season openings, it all changes. It's football time again. On September 1, the Citadel Bulldogs and the Charleston Southern Bucs will tangle at Johnson-Hagood Stadium. It'll be a good game, a fun day, and a time for me to spread myself around both sides of hte stadium. As a Citadel grad I've got to cheer for the Dogs. It's part of the loyalty thing they drill into as cadets. Rain or shine, win or lose, there they are, the faithful alumni shouting our greatest cheer---"block that kick", "block that kick" ---the refrain after the other team scores a touchdown. Still, it's good to don the blue and white and go out for some good times.

As a trustee at CSU now, I'll need to cheer on the Bucs too. I love that school, the staff, administration, faculty, students, the coaching staffs, the athletes and what they represent---integrating faith and learning. Not sure if my trusteeship demands me to hope they beat my alma mater, but I will voice my support and pray for a safe and great game.

But I regress. In five Saturdays life takes on fallness. Well, it'll probably be 105 F at the Citadel-CSU game, and even with a 6:00 p.m. kickoff it won't be November. But, football season signals that the change of seasons is in the air. The parking lot will start smelling like barbecue, and the attitudes of fall will start to apear in our scorched behavior. It's a nation-wide phenomenon, the shift to football season. Small college towns will become alive with people as fans migrate to their stadiums. After the summer heat, there is a return to life.

Last week my dad sent me a CD. He is a record collector and has thousands of just about every genre. Searching through them one day he discovered an Andy Griffith album, recorded back in the fifties. He copied it for me on CD and popped it in the mail. The front side is a classic football routine made by Griffith long before his TV run. It is titled "What it Was Was Football". It is hilarious. Listening to it is getting me in the mood for five Saturdays from now.

There's a football memory, actually several. When Brian played high school football for the Riverside High School Warriors, we tail-gated with other parents before the Friday night games. There was a song we played every Friday night, by a the group New Grass Revival, titled "Friday Night in America". Listening to it is another attitude adjuster, the lift of fall football. One of the lines said, "...it's Friday night ya'll"!

So, five Saturdays. Five. Let's play some football. No, let's watch some football.

Being nice, southern style

A routine trip to stuff mart turned into a learning lab the other day. On the way out the doors marked "exit", while others were using them to "enter", I deferred to an older African American man, saying, "After you, sir". He stopped and said, "Why did you call me sir? Is it because I'm black?". "No sir, Please excuse me for judging, but, you appear older than me, and my mother always taught me to say "sir" to my elders. Excuse me if I communicated something else." He laughed, said he was sorry, and went on out the Exit, against the traffic coming in.

As a child of the south I was taught some manners. Esther Mae Owens Holmes and The Chester wouldn't let us put our elbows on the table, required the use of "yes, ma'm" and "yes, sir" when we addressed our elders, encouraged us boys to open doors for ladies, discouraged our use of contractions, and taught us not to belch, scratch, or pick our noses in public. In seventh grade they sent me to the DeMint Academy of Dance and Decorum (owned and operated ny U.S. Senator Jim DeMint's mother), where we learned to waltz and foxtrot, bow to a lady, and use more than one fork when those options were placed before us. It was a peripheral education we received at home, how to conduct ourselves in public.

Well, dead limb (the only pejorative I ever heard my Uncle Wallace utter), those bits of decency have been lost in the clouds of irreverence and profane behaviours that are characteristic of totally self-absorbed cultures. It's not religious or spiritual either. I mean, civilized people understand and practice civility because it makes the stuff of life happen with less friction. Superimpose the tenets of faith on top of just plain niceness, well, there should even be more propriety in the market-places. 

Loss of civility means that most behavioral bounderies have been removed. It's every man for himself, "do you own thing", "have it your way" or "I did it my way", a "to each his own" mentality. It elevates my rights over (1) the rights of others, or even (2) the corporate good. A good case in point was something that happened last week, wouldn't you know it, at stuff mart again. Some young men were browsing the store. Their language was loud, vulgar, and what a good many would consider totally crude. So, I politely asked them to tone it down, while pointing to the grandchildren. I better not repeat what they said. John Lewis said, "they were not being nice".

Decorum isn't necessarily spiritual or religious. Decency is a mark of civilized people. Sure, standards of decency differ among diverse people groups and communities usually define them. And, there's no yearning in this heart for a return back to a gentler and kinder time. Give me a break! There's also no desire to censor others or impose my standards of morality on others. Lean forward here, however.

Today I can be nice to others, defining nice in ways that coincide with my faith. I can let my "...speech...always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you should answer each person" (Colossians 4:6). I can always consider others as more important than myself and look to their interest too (Phil. 2:3-4). There's always the possibility that some salt and light will influence the world around us to the good.

It's just being nice, southern style.

The power of a thoughful gift

Every day I am encouraged by the beautiful pen pictured stage left. It was a gift from someone I really had never known up close. I knew him in a vague way and he knew me too. Even though we had attended Wade Hampton High School in Greenville, and lived relatively close, our ages created enough distance to make traveling in the same crowd unlikely.

On the final day of the South Carolina Baptist Convention meeting in November, 2011, Pastor Randy Koon waited patiently at the side of the stage to greet me and give me this pen. I had just completed my term as President of the SCBC and there were family, well-wishers, and friends offering their blessings for what had been a very trying year. Randy Koon waited through it all!

Finally, as he approached, he took the pen from his pocket. As he introduced himself he gently fingered the pen. Then he told me the story. You see, Randy Koon is a craftsman as well as a pastor. There's more. He's a craftsman with a heart and a gift for using his craft to bless and encourage others. It seems he had driven through his community for a long period, days, months, or years being lost in the scramble of my mind. Each day he passed that same old tree stump on the side of the road. Each day it beckoned the craftsman to take a closer look. Finally, one day, he loaded that old stump into his truck, took it to his shop, and let it sit while he contemplated it's rotten state. This old stump was sodden, molded, termite infested, smelly, gnarled, and just about worthless. One day he cut into it and found a small square deep below the durface that was possibly usable. With his tools he carefully cut it out. Then, he shaped, machined, drilled, polished, and fitted the pen that you see in my hand, a work of art, the hand of a skilled artisan.

When he placed it in my hand, he told me the lesson. He said, this pen illustrates how God can take something ugly and horrible, and make something beautiful out of it. You can imagine it is a gift that I will treasure the rest of my days. As I look at this pen every single day it reminds me that God can take people and events and occasions and horror, all meant to harm and defeat us, and turn them to good. It was another one of those "grace ambulances", arriving right on time.

Now, these many months later, a year and a week beyond the hardest trial Harriet and I have ever experienced, this thoughtful gift still speaks the message of God's redemptive work. Incredibly, a thoughtful, hand-crafted gift like my pen possesses the power to touch a deeper place than words, to connect to our need for care and support at a level beyond the comfort of even the most appropriate thoughts. As life continues, this pen---so carefully and delicately designed and produced---announces that horrible things can yield sweet fruit.

More, it awakens my heart to the power of a thoughtful gift. And, even more, to the recognition of the greatest gift, His grace that takes my ugly life and redeems it.

Incredible! 

DIY faith???

So, being handy doesn't necessarily make you a man! And, DIY works in the garage or around the house if you're up to it. But, when the reality craze and the DIY fad moves us to doing faith on our own, or in our own way, it's a disaster. That is, always a mess.

Many lessons are difficult! Two have stalked me consistently over the stretch of my adult life:
(1) that God has given me great and wonderful promises to live by, and (2) I cannot make it without the support, encouragement, and love of other human beings. This has been especially true over the past year. Double down on that!!! DIY faith, where I rely on my own resources, is a bummer.

Loving the Bible gives me an urgency to know and understand it's teaching. Laced throughout are the promises of God, truth that gives us assurance and direction when the way is difficult. In Scripture, every promise was given to a particular person at a pointed time in history. This means that every promise of God must be interpreted in light of the context in which it was written. But, even with that said, every word, even if given to Moses or Abraham or Isaiah, is a truth that is eternal and lasting. So, when Joshua reminded Israel that "...not one promise has failed" (Joshua 23:14), he was certainly speaking about God's provision for the nation while in the wilderness for forty years. But, the underlying truth that touches me now is that God is faithful and reliable in all things. I don't have to live by my own wiles and schemes. I can trust Him and the promsies He has made in history because He is faithful.

There's a warning here too, a danger, very thin ice! We cannot misuse the promises of God to mean how we could define them in this consumeristic, material culture. When God promises us something, it is always a spiritual benefit, sometimes very ultimate in it's fulfillment. We mustn't make the mistake of the health/wealth crowd who would turn His promises into an ATM maching of goodies here and now!

Loners often have trouble navigating life. This is because not one person is the whole enchilada, that is, the perfect package of gifts, talents, abilities, etc. We need other people to gap our weaknesses, provide our shortcomings, endow the places where we got overlooked when the goodies were distributed. Today, culture talks about teams and the value of teamwork and makings of a good team, ad infinitum. Christians can go another step in this partnership thing. We are a body. This is a greater miracle than a team, an inner working that supercedes gears meshing or positions being filled. In the body, we move up a notch in interdependence. With this in mind, we soon know that DIY hinders what should be done by an entire body. Important lesson.

This has been a hard year. But, here we are, a year later, alive and well, and still functioning at 100% of what people our age should be. Many folks have stood with us! And, the promises we discovered in the Word still sustain us! 

Mine is something written by Simon Peter, my impetous blood brothers. He wrote this to Christians dispersed around the Middle East. "Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, so that He may exalt you in due time" (1 Peter 5:6). It may be in heaven before we grasp the fullness of this promise. But, that He gave it to us sustains us till then.

It's not a DIY thing, though!

Get real, really!

It's just sidewalk art! There's not really a river running through it, alligators in the street, or real live threats there either. It's just one more indication of our love affair with what appears to be real.

This obsession with "reality" isn't all that new either. I remember as a child watching the TV program "The Real McCoys", a peek into the daily lives of a farm family, yokels all. It may have been the beginning of a culture shift. Today, we don't want fake or bogus. We desire the real deal, reality TV, even faith that is edgy and raw. As if being edgy and raw actually makes anything real. There's even a popular book that announces Heaven is for Real. Don't hear me wrong. I don't know if the book is a first hand account of a visit to heaven or not. But, for me, heaven was already real. The Bible tells me so!

Truth is, we are suckers for the perception of reality. Shut my mouth wide open, reality TV is as scripted and directed as any stage production. HGTV's House Hunters is not spontaneous searching for a new home. Storage Wars, Pawn Stars, Lizard Lick Towing, Swamp People, and all the other popular "reality" shows are pretense too. They're entertaining no doubt. But, the Survivor guy always has a camera-man and perhaps a film crew whereever he goes. You can get some great tips about living in the wild from him. But, he's not always far from the comforts of home.

Go churchy with me for a minute! This quest for authenticity has a flip side. Culture is also cynical about spirituality and truth. For the past year I have been criticized at times because I'm not angry, bitter, or resentful over the death of our son. Yes, we are immensely sad. There is a hole in our lives and the grief is overwhelming at times. But, we're discovering peace and hope in this trial that is totally real. We've been able to endure this trial because faith is substance, God is near, just as He promised, and we know Brian is in heaven with Jesus. This isn't la-la land or my rose colored glasses testifying. No, it's the reality of what we believe.

In the Bible the Apostle Paul commended younger Timothy for his "sincere faith" (2 Timothy 1:5). The word translated "sincere" is interesting. It is "hypo-critos" with an "a" negative prefix. Literally it is "not hypocritical". It is Biblical faith absorbed into every aspect of life, without pretense. It is being "real", or "authentic" in faith.

Today we are in love with the perception of "real". The pastor with $15,000 worth of caps or veneers, a five hundred dollar haircut, facial features by Mr. Nip and Tuck, air brushed web site pictures, or edgy language, is no more real than the fat pastor in an old suit from Sears. Colorful language, irreverence, or being culturally savvy isn't proof of genuineness. Outer stuff, no matter how real looking, can be fake too.

No, authenticity is an inner grace. It should show in practical ways, a constant about life that keeps us looking up, projecting out. Maybe I'm wrong, but usually genuinely transparent people,  authentic to the core, don't usually have to talk about how real they are. They're just sincere, and you can tell it without them banging a gong.

It's time for us to get real, really! 

Immediately

Len Sweet, writing in Carpe Manana, reminds us that culture shifted a few years ago. Today, vast is no longer the real deal. No, fast is the currency of these times. Almost everything is fast-tracked these days, the motion of life hi-jacked  by the frenzied velocity of a culture on the move. So, everything is instant---well, with the exception of coffee. Instant coffee, even Starbucks Via, is still instant. It's hard to sit for long and enjoy a cup of coffee designed to be made in seconds. Life in the fast-lane is, well---fast.

Our responses to God may be an exception here! He has been faithful to IM His followers in all the millennia of redemptive history. Scripture is replete with accounts of His direction in the life of people He used to fulfill His plans. When we analyze why He chose some unlikely candidates, we find a common character thread in them. Like Noah, most of them, down into the New Testament with Joseph, were obedient. "He did everything that God had commanded him" (Genesis 6:22) was a refrain that echoed in the lives of many great saints. 

In the New Testament, especially in the Gospel of Mark, this obedience is ramped up somewhat. Mark used the word "euthus", translated "immediately", "at once" , and in other quick draw phrases, to indicate the speed with which people responded to Jesus. Whether he healed them, called them, dispatched them, or rebuked them, the people responded in an instant.

Ours is a culture on the move! Yes, even in evangelical circles, obedience is often delayed. Sometimes we cover our disobedience with a layer of righteousness, saying, "Let me pray about that...", "...let's give that some careful deliberation", or, "...let me reflect on that a little...", or some other alibi to cover our reluctance. Delay, however, is disobedience if He has spoken. Our right response is immediate.

Today at Northwood Baptist Church we are emphasizing our immediate respone to His direction. Response stations are established to give us a visible way to say "yes" when He speaks to us. We are learning again the grace of immediate obedience. We cannot move forward until the vertical and horizontal motions are addressed. So, today we are learning about our response to Him.

Grace and peace!

Sweetness

It's hard for me think of any kind of chocolate as bitter! Even the darkest variety is pure sweetness to me. So, it's sacrilege to call dark chocolate "bittersweet". It's the "rose by any other name is still a rose thing". Chocolate is chocolate no matter what we call it. Glory!

Well, there's imported Swiss, all manner of gormet chocolate, and, in a pinch, the chocolate chips right out of the bag. So, here's a nod to the quibblers. I am aware there's chocolate, and then there's chocolate. The point is: I've never met chocolate I didn't like and to speak of it as "bittersweet" is against the tenets of my choco-holistic belief system.

Like life too! To call experiences "bittersweet" is an odd arrangement of ideas in my limited mind. This week comes to mind, the anniversary of our Brian's murder, what some people have termed a "bittersweet" week for us. Well, I know what they really mean and confess to being a pretty practiced quibbler myself. Granted, there is a patina of deep sadness covering our memory banks this week, and perhaps always. Brian was our child and we truly miss him. But, just the same, there hasn't been one drop of bitterness in it, at least not for me.

So, I've reflected on the "bittersweet" thing, trying to reconcile these two competing tastes in my own mind. Truth is, there's no bitter in it though. Nor anger, vengeance, retribution, or any of those cousins of hatred. Take that rotten stuff out, and you're left with sweetness. This may sound odd coming from a parent of a murdered child. Surely, grief is heavy, the cycle unpredictable, and the truth of this loss just gets more real by the day. But, thankfully, again, at least for me, there's no poison. Minus the horrible toxins that eat us alive from the inside out, there's sweetness.

Again, if Scripture is the norm, then "bitter" is not the flavor of God moments. King David wrote, "Taste and see that the LORD is good. How happy is the man who takes refuge in Him!" (Psalm 34:8). Now, I'd need to rehearse a year-long parade of "grace ambulances" to explain how God has been in this entire thing and the way He has given us hope and comfort in an incredibly difficult ordeal. Get real! Our hearts are broken. We are deeply hurt. But, not bitter. 

Years ago my friend and church member Mozelle Baily was told she had inoperable cancer. In her home the next week I asked her how she felt about this diagnosis. I will never forget her reply. She said, "I have had many experiences with my Lord, and everyone one of them has been sweet. I know this will be sweet too". She died just a few months later and I shared that story at her funeral. It is a lesson I've never forgotten. Sweetness. That is the deal.

So, Wednesday, we remembered. We laughed and cried, told favorite stories about Brian E. Holmes (that's a story in itself), and thanked God for blessing us with this incredible son. We hugged our daughter, stood at Brian's grave with Katherine and her brother Alex, and offered a thanksgiving prayer. We talked to the news media. Our mail box was full of well wishes and encouragement. When I closed my eyes last night, John Lewis right beside me, Laura close in the pack n' play, only one word came to mind---sweet.

Sweetness. I cannot explain it. Maybe I'm just too simple. Or, my rose-colored glasses keep me from focusing on the dark side of things. Still, when the bitter part of "bittersweet" is extracted, simple or not, what remains is "sweet". 

Fifty plus years ago I was a beginner at West Greenville Baptist Church. I learned a simple lesson there that lingers even now. "Every day with Jesus is sweeter than the day before...".

You know, as in sweetness!

Grateful

Today I am grateful for the blessings of parenthood, for the joys of being father to Elizabeth Hope Holmes Carpenter, and Brian Eliot Holmes. Of course, the thankfulness extends to the lines attached to their places on the family tree---to Scott Carpenter, John Lewis Carpenter, Laura Elizabeth Carpenter, and to Katherine Williams Holmes. There are more up the line and the connections reach into a lot of directions. Primarily though, today it's about Liz and Brian, and the particular blessings of being their father.

June 25, 1975, and December 17, 1977, are days that changed our lives forever. Liz came into the world in another time, when men were prohibited entrance to the birthing places, labor rooms, and even the OB-GYN floor. My first look at her was through a glass window down in the nursery. My first thought was that she was born with gangrene or some other foot virus. Her feet were black from having just taken her footprints for the birth certificate. I only got to hold her when Harriet passed her to me on the drive home from the hospital, like five days later. My mom and dad drove us home and finally, I got to hold our new daughter. She stole my heart right then and there, the only female rival Harriet ever had. She has been our joy during all the phases of our lives. We love, treasure, and thank God for her.

Brian arrived during my stint as Assistant Administrator of Wayne County Memorial Hospital. And, the times had changed. I was actually in the birthing room when Harriet and I delivered Brian. My role was only as Lamaze Coach---huff, huff, breathe, breathe. It was then that Harriet's head turned a full circle and she said, in that devil voice thing, "This is your fault". It was memorable! How will we ever forget Brian's first introduction to his mother. As the doctor held Brian up for her to see, he peed on her. Welcome to the world baby boy Holmes.

Today Harriet and I are feeling blessed...not robbed! These children have touched us deeply forever. They influence us even today. Watching them grow, search out the ways of life, experience the grace of Christ, live out the tenets of their faith, do the education thing with such success and earnestness, are a source of inspiration and blessing each and every day.

Today we are sad too. The old selfish person that used to live in our hearts all the time comes for a short visit on occasion. When he or she does we have a pity party, feel sorry for ourselves, remember what we don't have, and lose sight of what we do. Then, in reflection, we think about heaven, Brian's words affirming his faith on so many occasions, and his eternal delight in being with Jesus. This helps us rejoice.

Death is real, it hurts and makes us sad. But, it is not more real than heaven, more sure than His promises, and more certain that His presence. They all make us very thankful.

Thank you God for Elizabeth and Brian, and the wonderful cast of characters you have placed into our story. We are grateful---

Remember

Remembering is a challenge. By that I don't mean it's necessarily hard. No, preserving the joys of special people and their touch on our lives isn't all that difficult. The challenge is the extremes. You see, we tend to either memorialize people and events to the point of morbidity, or trivialize them to the point of forgetting. Seeking a healthy way to remember is another of the spiritual graces that may lead us to embrace the joys of the past, and learn to live through the various pains that memories can create. There is a way and we must learn it.

Only recently have the academics of remembering become practical for me. Yes, I've counseled hundreds of people through the agonies of death and loss, and the biblical instruction about memories. Brian's death last year has thrust our family into the ranks of people needing the comfort of times that have shaped our epoch.  We have needed to remember Brian's life, the special place he held in our family over the thirty-three years we were blessed to have him close. At the same time, we have not desired that our home become a memorial or that we would camp out at Dorchester Memory Gardens everyday to talk to him or mourn over him.

Like many other practical life applications, we find the grace of remembering in the Bible. Cynics and skeptics may balk at this kind of reliance on Scripture. Yet, our faith holds that God speaks in His Word and guides us in daily ways. So, the Word advises us about remembering. It's not all that profound, the way of remembering. But, we often overlook it. Church planter and author Paul wrote to the Philippians, "I give thanks to my God for every remembrance of you..." (Philippians 1:3). It seems that the grace of remembering is gilded with gratitude for the remembrance of the place people have played in our lives.

Tomorrow is the one year anniversary of Brian's death. We miss him, all of us in very different ways. Sadness is the order of the day because we would like more time with him. We will visit his grave, perhaps recount our favorite Brian stories, maybe even look through the picture drawer. More than anything, though, we want to thank God for him and for the many ways he blessed our lives.

The grace of remembering begins with simply being thankful! And, we are!