I now know it to be true, what my mentors, parents, and grandparents always said; how the older we get the faster time goes.

The truth is, in my mind I’m still in my 20’s. Y2K just happened a couple of years ago. In the back of my mind I still believe (or maybe even hope?) I could return home to Iowa and pick back up with some of my old high school buddies if life becomes too difficult out here in the ‘real world’ we all jumped into fresh off graduation in 1996.

It’s a sobering thing to reflect upon the fact that I am no longer a ‘young’ adult, and that indeed my cohort of peers are largely responsible for the day to day operations of this world that we have. I would think they should know better.

Of course, so should I.

While humbly acknowledging that most of my days are now in my rear-view mirror, I also think it’s worthwhile to consider the glimmers of hope; the points of beauty I want to dwell in and focus on as I step into the remainder of my days. Life truly is too short to dwell on grievance. It is too short, too valuable, too terrifyingly beautiful to squander in slumber.

For my birthday this year, my family gave me a gift. They gave me a couple of gifts, and I appreciate all the effort they’ve made to make my day as special as they can-but one gift in particular is delighting me right now as I write these words.

They were in a local Hallmark shop to buy me a card, and on their way out my daughter noticed a miniature scene of a mountain with a small courtyard in front of it, the courtyard surrounded by a masonry wall.

Her eyes apparently lit up, and she convinced my wife to make the purchase. I wish I could bottle up the excitement she carried as she explained how “It’s Khazag-Dum!”

Now before the discerning reader can object, let me clarify what that means. Those who know, will understand that Khazag-Dum is an ancient name given to the Mines of Moriah in Lord of the Rings. I had no intention of stealing this place-name or intentionally linking the bedtime-story world of my imagination to Tolkien’s middle Earth.

Still, years ago, sleep deprived and enjoying the freedom of thought that comes from making up stories for my kids at bedtime, I was flailing for a place name that was guttural, a name that I could inflect with a foreboding tone, and our own personal Khazag-Dum was born.

All that aside, I remain deeply touched that these stories have taken up such residence in my daughter’s psyche (for good and probably ill) that she sees this 3-d printed object and immediately thinks of me and these silly little stories I make up. :)

It’s inspiring enough to make me want to dust that project off once again and see what comes of it.

I’ll take my son camping this weekend. We’ve kicked the idea around for…years actually. I’m a bit admonished that it hasn’t happened yet. I promised him this would be the summer, and before I knew it, the summer has nearly passed.

But you know what? This is the weekend I “should” be going to a church conference, an annual assembly where our conference takes care of some business, and Christine and I would be formally recognized as ‘new’ pastors (though we aren’t new to the conference). Due to other commitments and the blazing pace of the summer moving on, it was either this weekend or it wouldn’t happen.

It’s strangely comforting to be in a stage of life where I will tell anyone who will listen, with no shame at all, that if a scheduling conflict arises and I need to choose between letting down the church or letting down my family…it’s an easy choice. I won’t say I exactly look forward to sleeping on the ground, but I do look forward to making good on a commitment I made long ago. These are glimmers of hope I carry.

You might be wondering why I’m only taking my son camping? Why not make it a family affair? Yet another source of joy; part of our family needs to stay home with our new puppy!

Birthdays, puppies, and the unbridled joy and enthusiasm of children—these are the things we were made for, I think. Add some strong coffee and a good book, friends to share it all with and this is a life that is bursting with goodness.

I guess if I were to offer any advice from wrapping up my 47th year and turning the corner into 48, it would be that life is too short, too fragile, and too good to spend letting pixels and news cycles command our attention.

Resistance today, in my humble opinion, looks like coffee with friends and not a screen in sight. It looks like camping out when you “should” be working. It looks like a puppy happily reorganizing a family’s rhythms and routines.

Resistance is carrying a knowledge of our strange new world in one hand, but refusing to clench the other into a fist. Resistance is an open hand, both to receive the good things God offers but also to extend towards our neighbors, our friends, and all those in need.

After all, at the end of the day, at the end of this life, as the song says, we all are just walking each other home.

Here’s to what’s been a pretty good 47 years. I’m excited to see what the next few will bring!

Time is a sacred object I find myself missing and longing for. We all know on a certain level that we all have a finite amount, and so we should treat it as sacred, spending and investing it only on the most valuable of activities, contributing something of value, something of significance so that we leave this world knowing we have improved it somehow by our living.

Yet knowing that all too well on an intellectual level, we still wind up living our lives one dopamine hit at a time, ever more certain that the next batch of pixels will somehow sate our craving.

I walked past a group of women some days ago in one of the nursing facilities where I work as a hospice chaplain. They were clearly family members of a resident, getting ready to visit a loved one who lived there. My guess based only on the appearance of their ages was they might have been daughters and a couple of grand daughters with maybe a great-grand daughter in the mix. They were seated in a lounge area, chatting and laughing prior to (or possibly after) their visit, but what struck me as I walked past was the content of their conversation.

It was very normal. Just family members, checking in with each other and offering advice, the older ones telling the younger ones “how things are”, while the younger ones appeared indifferent at best, possibly amused by the wisdom being presented.

I don’t remember anything about the specifics of the portion of their exchange that I heard on my way walking past. But I do remember as I walked past this group, contemplating how family systems pass down these entrenched observations about reality; how systems actually form perceptions of reality from one generation to the next based on little more than experience and opinion. I had to wonder (as I often do), how would their relative, the resident, contribute to their conversation, were she (or he) a part of it? What values persist as we approach the proverbial death bed? What matters to the matriarch or patriarch, and how does it matter to the descendents being formed in that hallway?

I think a lot these days about what perceptions I’m passing down to my own kids, and how I’m going about it. Lord willing, at the end of my days an important piece of me, maybe even the singular most important piece of me, will live on through those I have formed.

I’m not entirely sure what that means, but I know the world could use more of it. Devotion to a peaceful and loving God who created the world and therefore must delight in our own acts of creation. Viewing life as a long exploration of the many facets and definitions of love including the self-sacrificing part that refuses to dominate or nationalize or otherwise coerce the will or behavior of others. A commitment to pacifism rooted in scripture and a stubborn curiosity about our world, our neighbors, and our inner selves.

These are the fundamentals and yet it seems we spend our time, too much anyways, ensuring that the facade will hold; that the windows remain dressed and spotless while only ghosts are allowed to wander inside.

At the end of the day I am left with this imperfect realization; that I long for meaning to my days; epiphanies to share, transcendent experiences that usher me up and away from the mundanity of this life and all its many cares and responsibilities. Yet the truth is that meaning is found exactly in those moments that I seek to transcend! God breathes through me as much when I’m washing the dishes as when I’m preaching a sermon or sitting at a bedside, if only I have eyes to see it and ears to hear it.

I’m resisting the urge to apologize for my extended absence from this space. I do hope to pick back up on more regular posting in the near future.

Sincerely,

Patrick

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