For These and All Thy Blessings...

Today is a day for remembering. But this isn't a story about the memories you might think I ought to be writing about today. 

At the head of a column of sweating and twitchy children clad in smothering black wool, gold piping, white epaulettes, smart white-topped hats, and gleaming white shoes, each of us asking the God of our own understanding to help us not drop our horn, or pants, or brains, there stood a man. He commanded the kind of respect from this marching, maturing, smelly, and slightly addled (on even the best of days) concoction of adolescence that might have rivaled the respect given Alexander the Great. This respect wasn't a product of intimidation, force, or compelled by fear. When this man looked into our faces , he met our gaze with kindness, and a twinkle in his eye that invited us to create, to learn a new way to play together. And that was the root of the respect we so rightly offered. The man was incredibly kind. 

This collection of unformed teenage angst, tensed with anticipation would have gone to the wall for this man; a man who ended our summers two weeks early, who ate up every Monday night of the fall semester, who made us wait to eat nachos until after halftime, who took us to Opryland that one time instead of DisneyWorld. We would have gone to the wall (and to whatever comes after the wall) for this man. 

Because he believed we could make beautiful music together, and because he showed us how, we believed him. He taught us how to walk, all over again. He taught us how to breathe, all over again. And then he taught us how to put all those things together. The man taught us to be good, very good at doing these things together. And he was proud. And he told us that we were special. He taught us about legacies, about being proud to so something well, all of us, all together. He told us we were good. We believed him. And we loved him so. 

As we rounded the last bus, which was parked all cattywompass, the waiting crowd roared to their feet, whether they really thought they liked us or not. The air rippled with Indian Summer fervor. The sound hit like a brick, bouncing off everything, knocking my brains and lungs somewhere into the soles of my feet. We had been warned about this sound. They all said it was for us. But we knew the sound was really for him. There would be none of this if not for him. And that noise, the kind of noise that is so loud you feel it inside your chest, continued to rise. It seemed to insist to us that we were indeed ready to do what the man had taught us. Instead of feeling pressure to be perfect, we seemed to settle into the noise, letting it polish us, one last time. We put ourselves entirely to the task at hand. 

And then the sound went dead. Vision tunneled. Everything seemed to hover and hum.  Babies and little kids even sat still. Grandmothers stopped digging in their bags for a hard candy. All the dads stopped flipping burgers outside of the concession stand. 

We sorted out into clumps and smaller lines and columns all along the sidelines. And then, the announcement...the salute...the sound off...and in a miracle of sound and fury, the pride of an entire county owned the joint, played their guts out, knocked UIL judges for loops, and made our parents weep with joy...and him, too.  And we were beautiful. Mighty. Slick. Famed. 

And we were his. And he was ours.

For many people, it would be easy enough to simply say that Butch Crudington taught band. But my God, how powerfully reductive that statement would be. He taught us the value of doing something together, of drawing on the things that we had in common, of making beautiful noise TOGETHER. He taught us to listen to each other, to balance each other out, to dress to the right, to roll from our heels to our toes so that our steps would be smooth and clean. And those lessons stick with a person, long after we left the band hall. Yes, he did teach band, but he taught us how to be good to each other, how to be good WITH each other, and dared us to BE GOOD, to be our best selves, to put all that work in motion.  And those are lessons that last a lifetime, that inform vocations, that help friendships last the tests of time and distance, that make us better partners, better teachers, better musicians, and better human beings. It's tempting to think of his baton as a kind of magic wand, a talisman, some kind of powerful tool that he used to bewitch us into being good.  But his hands, his eyes, his voice, and his very heart really did the hard work of teaching us. And those were simply miraculous. 

When my mother told me Mr. C had died, I thought about the legendary line spoken at Lincoln's deathbed, "Now, he belongs to the ages." I think that's just about right for my teacher, the man who stood at the head of a column of children, and taught them to be good. I also thought about the volumes of sound we put into the atmosphere with him, for him, and how some of those waves must surely still be bouncing and echoing off of the particles in the very highest stratosphere, maybe we even played loud enough for some of that noise to have gone into space. I imagine our best shows, our most perfect notes clinging to each other, streaming still, beauty extending and lengthening and rebounding off the very walls of creation.  And though my heart is heavy, that thought makes me smile. 

Childhood ends. We wade into adulthood, and spend decades sifting through what to keep and what to throw away from our formative years. I keep these memories. I memorize them the way I memorized the fight song--like my life depends on it. Learning to play together, to make something beautiful, to create, to perform, and to be proud are the root lessons of a life well lived. I am grateful to have been Mr. C's student. I'm grateful that he knew how loved and special he was to so many of us. We wrote him love letters twenty feet high, defacing public streets to proclaim our love and loyalty to him. And we can still tell him we love him every time we make music, every time we can walk across a room without falling down, every time we encourage those around us to be their best, and check our tuning. He knows as he is fully known. And that is more miracle than any of us could ask or imagine for our teacher and friend. 

May he rest in peace, and rise in glory. Thanks be to God. 

Mil besos,

rmgj 

eleven hundred days: a retrospective

Have you reckon'd a thousand acres much? have you reckon'd the earth much? 

Have you practis'd so long to learn to read? 

Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems? 

Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poem

--Walt Whitman

We are each other's harvest; we are each other's business; we are each other's magnitude and bond.

--Gwendolyn Brooks

So, I love you because the entire universe conspired to help me find you.

--Paulo Coelho

we are good at a lot of things, and getting better every day.  one thing we are not great at is taking pictures.  but i have all these snapshots stored in my brain, envelopes full of mental polaroids...

the envelope marked first date would have pictures of the teenage girls who complimented your beard on our first date (remember how long it was!), of us eating breakfast tacos at the farmers' market, of the grin i couldn't wipe off my face for days afterward.  

in those earliest days, there are pictures of a flock of wild turkeys, trails in the woods, rivers we swam in or drove across, funny little diners and fancy little diners and splitting whatever chocolate thing is on the dessert menu.  meeting family, meeting friends, meeting all the other people who are important for us to know--collages of cousins, kin, co-conspiritors--all those faces we love and who love us.  pictures of road trips--of monuments and moments, of menu screens for podcasts and menus for new things to try, stories and backstories, laughter and tears, learning something new every single second.  

we have packed and cleaned and moved and cleaned and unpacked and repacked and cleaned and moved and unpacked...a lot.  no photo album would be complete without a picture of us changing out the fan in our bedroom, or painting miles of walls, or brushing sawdust off of...everything, assembling boxes, sorting through what to keep and what to throw away, sharing advil and icepacks and snuggles and snores. 

there would be a picture of me sleeping, and a picture of you watching your zombie shows on Saturday mornings, pictures of the dog and cat whining and hissing at each other from opposite sides of the baby gate, pictures of us making dinner in our impossibly tiny kitchen, me watching you watching football or you watching me count stitches in my latest attempt to be crafty. 

all these moments, tiny snapshots...they sparkle and glitter and shine.  i continue to be utterly amazed and grateful that i get to share them with my beloved. 

mil besos,

rmgj

Lent 2015

He came to save us...to save the world. He still does it every single day. One time, he even went all the way to hell, and back again. He did it for you. He did it for me. He did it, and would do it, all over again, even if there was only one of us left. He did it for people who have no idea what or who or how he is or was or will be. He did the one and only thing he was ever born to do--he saved the world.

There’s no magic in what Jesus did in his life, and with his life. Oh sure, there are big and giant events of the radically unexplained all in and around and through and beyond his life. But there’s no magic. There’s just love. There’s an absolutely transcendental refusal of the will to power, and a daily acceptance of the fact that we are broken and dying, and the only real way any of us can be saved or be called good is to love and be loved.

Jesus lived fully committed and enfleshed to that reality, and stood eyeball to eyeball and toe to toe with the broken and dying world, and did the least rational and most redemptive thing he possibly could have done, and just loved the hell out of it. Loves the hell out of it. Loves our sharp and pointy edges and wheezes and insomnia and hardness and forgetfulness and spite...loves us down to the bottom of where all those things wrestle, and sits down with us in it, and wipes our faces, and helps us get back on our feet, and put our faces to the sun, and start to become whole and...holy.

 Jesus talks to Nicodemus about being lifted up the desert, like the brazen serpent of Moses, during the forty years of wandering. See, that serpent was a healing talisman, and it went up, at the head of camp, at the same time and with the same attention and fervor that the Tabernacle went up. It was huge, and way up high, so to be seen from most every vantage point. The Children of Israel had been tasked with treading upon the adder’s head for even longer than they had been wandering in the desert, and this desert seemed to have an abundance. People were bitten, people died. It was unpleasant. It was not unexpected or unheard of. But it sure made the going tougher than it already was. A remedy was lifted, and all anyone who was bitten had to do was look at it, and be healed. 

Sometimes, we get too deep into the fancy business of church or trying to live self-actualized and adult lives, and we get bitten. And it stings. The sting reminds us that we are actually kind of fragile, that no matter how hard we try we may still be caught off-guard. When we come to that kind of understanding about our brokenness--by being broken, it’s hard to look up. It’s hard to look at Jesus and see that the love he lived and lives is the only way to get better. We feel bad for falling, in the first place, for not seeing a snake in the grass when we should have been paying closer attention than ever, and maybe we feel like looking up is like taking a get out of jail free card, and that’s bad, because we’re not playing by the rules.

We get caught up in the pain and shock and hurt of the bite, of the blood and the mess, and forget to look up, because OH MY GOD, NO ONE HAS EVER FELT PAIN LIKE THIS EVER, EVER, AND IT MUST MEAN I’M ALL ALONE AND FINALLY GOT WHAT WAS COMING TO ME. Or maybe that’s just me. When life bites, and it’s always when I least expect it, always at the worst time possible, always when my defenses and reserves are running low, it’s hard to remember to look up, to see Jesus and his love lifted up in front of me, and sometimes, it’s just hard to meet his gaze, to admit my weakness, my inability to save myself, my lack of vigilance and competency laid bare for Jesus all the world (or so it feels) to see.

But I know that’s the only way to not die in the dust, with the curse of the ages clinging around my feet. I know it’s the way back to life, to love, and to the deep joy Jesus offers us with a life among God’s people of all shades and shapes and sensibilities. I know it’s the way I remember the some of the very best and deepest things I know--that God so loved the world.

That’s you.
And that’s me.
Every single day.

 mil besos, rmgj