Taking a break today from The Last Innocent Age. I was thinking about this topic today, and on my way to my office this morning I guess I wrote this entry in my mind. Once again I have been thinking about, and considering the love of God. How much He loves us. How we can't outrun that love, out wrong that love, fall outside the bounds of His grace, or ever push Him so far away that He won't come rushing back, even more determined than ever to love us relentlessly.
We live in a world that is increasingly lacking in open demonstrations of love. Especially when you are a little older, have been through the minefield-laden holocaust of a divorce, failed your hyper-religious upbringing a few hundred times and slowly...over a period of time that somehow rushed by while you were fighting to catch your next breath...became something or someone you never thought you'd see looking back from the mirror.
I get accused of being a bit too honest on this blog from time to time and I know it's often true. But I do that because I realize that inside of us we all carry something...or several things...that we would love to unload and bare for the world to see, if only someone else would do it first. If we could see someone with problems like ours, coming clean and being honest and finding redemption and hope and happiness...maybe we could open up about our dark secrets and the things that haunt us and the things we can't seem to forgive ourselves for. The pictures that are emblazoned on our memories that we can't make go away. The voices that keep screaming in our ears.
There has to be an icebreaker, it seems, and sometimes thats me.
The last few days I have been wrestling with my own relationship with Jesus Christ and with how I think I've failed Him, and disappointed Him, and betrayed Him, and let him down. I get so mad at myself for being so darned human. I feel like the worst Christian in the world, and maybe I am, but compared to who? For every Billy Graham or Mother Teresa, there has been a Craig Daliessio. A scoundrel with dirt under his nails and a sack of shame and doubts and regrets slung over his shoulder. For every Terry Chapman, Paul Walters or Steve Allen or Jerry Falwell or Steve Berger or Dave Lewis, (men whom have been my pastors and my biggest spiritual influences at one point or another in my life) there are ten Jim Bakkers' or Brennan Mannings. Men who loved God deeply, but who couldn't find the release from the voices that screamed at them in the wolf hours when their honest mistakes turned to serious consequence, and their well intentioned dreams shattered like glass.
To talk about others would be here-say so I speak only of my own experiences. I know I love God. I know I don't like living that love for God the way a lot of other people do. That's part rebellion and part common sense. I'm not like others. Now granted, there are elements of living my faith that are universal. But most of my walk of faith will be uniquely mine and strictly between God and me.
Again for the last few weeks I find myself wrestling with the question of whether God really loves me, really forgives my mistakes, really wants the best for me, really sees nothing of the failures, sins, faults, shortcomings and broken pieces that make up my character. Does He really only see a child He adores? Does He really forgo the judgement for the stupid, rotten, selfish things I've done in my life because He already punished Jesus for them? Is the consequence of my actions really all the punishment there is for a believer? Is God really broken hearted over the distance I have allowed to come between us?
I have learned the answers to all these questions is a simple yes.
I learned it again...as I so often do...through my parenthood.
I was showing a friend of mine a video of my daughter singing at her talent show and the whole truth was illustrated there for me. Here is the link: Morgan Singing at her Talent Show When you open it up and play it, you will hear...immediately after she is introduced...a very loud "YEAH!!" in the background. That would be me. I was thinking about this today. Is my daughter perfect? Nope. Does she have issues? Yes...in fact right now my little girl is wrestling with some things I never thought she would be wrestling with. Things far too complex and confusing for a 13 year old girl. Has she done things that disappointed me? Yes, of course. But I realized something as I was writing this today...she has done things that have disappointed me...but she is not a disappointment to me. She can never be. She is my daughter. She is the love of my life. She is my reason for getting back up when the world knocks me down and she is the fire in my breast that burns in the darkest night and makes me press on. When you watch the video and you hear me yell...that is what God does for us. I thought about this today. God is wildly, passionately in love with you and He is your biggest fan! He is not like an earthly Father. He cannot turn His back on us. He turned His back on Jesus instead. He does not punish our sin...(assuming we are believers) our sin is punishment enough. The awful loneliness and isolation of separation from the only Father who loves us perfectly is more punishment than most of us can bear. Do I get upset with my daughter? Do I feel let down or saddened sometimes? Yes. But I never ever stop loving her! In fact, because I know her, and I know her heart and I know how demanding she is of herself...I am usually broken and sorrowful because I know there is no punishment I could ever dream up that would be more harsh than the one she is dishing out to herself immediately.
I have a friend whose eldest child is going through a period of extreme rebellion. He has become someone and something my friend never saw coming and my friend has spent a lot of nights in tears and sleeplessness over his wandering son. The young man won't talk to his mom but for some reason he has begun opening up to his dad. His dad is infinitely tougher and more strict than the boys' mom, and for a while the boy hid behind his mothers' leniency. But over time, the young man realized that he actually wanted some structure and he started gravitating towards his dad. We were talking about it once and my friend told me he thinks it's because, despite his being tougher...his son never once doubted that his dad loved him.
I wish we could get to that point with God. I wish I could stop stiff-arming Him and rejecting Him so that He doesn't get to reject me like I think He will. I wish I could stop fighting with Him over things He doesn't want to fight over.
I am going home Friday after 3 weeks away. I am going to see my daughter for the first time since the middle of May. I won't ask her what trouble she has been in. I won't check to see if she has clean clothes on or whether she has brushed her teeth. I won't check the condition of her bedroom or of her heart. I will simply smile as big as I am capable of, grab her in my arms, kiss her head about a thousand times, tell her I love her over and over again, and love my daughter as much as I am able to express.
That's what God wants to do with us. We all run from Him. That's our nature and if you doubt me, look no further than Adam. As soon as he sinned he covered and hid. God had never been mad with Adam before. Adam didn't even know God could get mad. But as soon as he failed, and he heard God walking through the neighborhood for a visit...he ran and hid.
If you are running and hiding...stop. Your Father doesn't care what you've done. Let me emphasize that. He does not care what you've done. David was an adulterous, murdering, liar whom God called "The Apple of My Eye" and described as a "man after my own heart". Peter was a foulmouthed, impulsive, reckless, fisherman who quit under pressure more than once. But God loved them both. God loves you recklessly, wildly, unselfishly, unconditionally, passionately, and without limit.
God doesn't care what you've done...He misses you terribly. He is that voice yelling loudly when you attempt your dreams. "YEAH!" He wants you to come home to Him and just be yourself. He doesn't want you to follow anyone else's prescription for repentance. Just come home. If you could listen closely for just a minute...that's what He would be saying..."Just come home. We can't heal this if you're over there and I'm over here...just come home to me" Just let your Daddy love you. He misses you more than you realize.
He has never stopped loving you...
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
Sunday, June 5, 2011
The Last Innocent Age...25 Hours in a Day...The Games we Played, the Things we Did
Every neighborhood...probably every region of the world for that matter...has their own games that the kids played growing up. I'm not talking about playing baseball or football...we certainly did that. I'm talking about the funny things we did to entertain ourselves when we weren't playing sports. The games we made up on cottony-thick summer nights when we needed to run to avoid the mosquitoes that were so big they had landing lights. The tales we told, the hobbies we engaged in. The innocent practical jokes we played on the neighborhood.
Monroe Avenue was built in 1960, and as such it was an "old school" neighborhood with telephone poles. Since about the late 70's, they bury all utilities, but back then they used telephone poles. It might seem like a nuisance and an eyesore...and it probably is. But a good portion of the fun we had on that street revolved around either the poles that stood on the curb at every third house, (and only on one side of the street) or the wires that were strung across and between them like a giant web. We played wire ball almost daily. This is were you throw the ball up in the air and you try to hit the wire. (We used a "pimple ball" or a tennis ball). If you hit it and your opponent dropped it, it was a single. Hit it on the way up and it counts regular, if you hit it on the way down and your opponent dropped it, it was a HR. We tied old Converse "Chuck Taylors" together and threw them over the wires. Johnny Wilkins, Richard Ferraro and I lost a sinker or two wrapped around those wires while we were practicing our casting techniques on winter evenings when it was too cold to go fishing.
The poles themselves were the most user friendly things on the street. The were a pole for a basketball backboard. They were the backstop for stickball games after we took the cinderblock wall down. And they were "homebase" for about a dozen different versions of tag or capture the flag that we made up as we went along. They were the end zones for legendary touch football battles in the street.
Probably the one game we played the most using the poles was "Up and Down Tag". The poles defined the base. The object was simple. Whoever was "it" was in the middle between the pole at the Riccio's house and the one at Mr. Lowman's house. A distance of about 50 yards. All of us would spread out behind the imaginary line that ran from the pole across the street. Behind the line was safe. Once you crossed the line, you couldn't go back, you had to run down to the other pole and cross that line to be safe. The guy in the middle would try to tag you. if you got tagged, you stayed in the middle with the original "it" until everyone was caught. then the first guy who had gotten tagged became "it" for the next game. We would play this game for hours. Sometimes we played a version of it with a wiffle ball where the "it" could throw a wiffle ball at you and that was how you were tagged.
We played a version of capture the flag that they called "Relievio". We were all divided up into two teams. The two poles represented our home base and the "jail" where we kept the prisoners we captured. We designated one jailkeeper each, and the rest of us ran and hid behind the houses. (This was in a day when virtually nobody on our street had fenced-in yards. A few families did because we had dogs, but mostly we all ran through each others yards at will and nobody cared) The object was to capture opposing teams players and take them to your base where they were now in jail. When you caught someone, you had to say "caughty-caught 1-2-3...no jailbreaks!". That was the official lingo and that meant the person had to stay in your jail until his team mates came to set him free.
This was going on simultaneously on both ends and it was a lot of fun that lasted deep into the night. It was nothing for us to be out in front of the houses playing beneath those street lamps until 11pm and our parents never gave it a moments thought. They knew we were out there, they knew all the kids on the street, it was as safe as anyplace else. We played "Buck Buck" which has it's origin in Philadelphia. We played wall-ball. We played a game that had no rules and no real intention except to scare us all. The game was created by Frankie Messick who was older than most of us. A little history is in order to introduce this one. Behind the houses across the street from mine was an area of public space. It stood between the backyards on that side of the street and the public park. It was a no-man's land. The county owned it and they cut the grass once a month, but it was really ours to run wild in. There was a big creekbed that ran through it where we had enormous fun. The creek was dry most of the time except when we had big rains. At one end of this area was a grove of trees we called "Heinyaland". They were calling it that when I moved there so I have no idea where the name originated. I do know it was really nice by day and creepy as can be by night. On those thick summer nights, sometimes we'd go back to Heinyaland and play a game called "Heinyaman". Frankie Messick would go back there first and hide in the darkness...usually inside the boughs of the willow tree. Then we would all go marching in to face his inevitable attack. He would come running out of the darkness howling and menacing and we'd be scared witless. We knew he was there...we knew he was coming...and he still scared us.
We played wiffle ball and we held our own roller derby. We all had those noisy steel-wheeled roller skates and we made an oval in chalk out in the street and we re-enacted the roller derby we watched on TV.
Tommy Riccio, Johnny Wilkins and I would take a trip down to the "Chelsea Swamps" where our beloved Nonesuch Creek was, and bring back dozens of cat tails. Or "punks" as we called them. We'd let them dry for a week or so and then we'd light them at night, convinced the smoke kept the mosquitoes away. We pretended to be smoking cat-tail cigars and we would blow the smoke at each other. each summer we got fireworks and we'd use the punks to light the fuses. They have a unique aroma when they burn and I can still smell them if I think about it.
We built models. Models of dragsters, and battleships and airplanes. We collected butterflys. In fact that was a big hobby for most of us on the street for a lot of years. We knew all the species and which ones were the hardest to find. Johnny and Richard and I always sought the elusive Zebra swallowtail and the Mourning Cloak.
We had chemistry sets and microscopes. We had erector sets. We built elaborate tree houses and ground forts. One fort even had a working fireplace. We built a 9 hole golf course in the public ground behind the houses one summer. We built goal posts for our football games. When the summer rains would come, we'd take my 2 man inflatable raft and float down the creek in the rapids that suddenly developed.
We had lemonade stands in the summer and snowball fights in the winter. We would hide between parked cars and hop the bumpers of those who drove down our street in the snow. You'd run out, grab the bumper and let the car pull you along.
We were fascinated by UFO's back then. It was the rage in the mid 70's. Me, Tommy, Johnny and Kevin would lay out in the big park on a blanket at night and watch the stars to see if anything strange happened. it never did, but we never lost the wonder of looking up into space.
We ran and laughed and imagined and dreamed. And the last thing we wanted was for the nights to end and to have to say goodnight and go inside. They don't make video games that capture what we had back then.
...we packed 25 hours into a day. We'd sleep, and dream, and wake up to do it all again the next day.
Monroe Avenue was built in 1960, and as such it was an "old school" neighborhood with telephone poles. Since about the late 70's, they bury all utilities, but back then they used telephone poles. It might seem like a nuisance and an eyesore...and it probably is. But a good portion of the fun we had on that street revolved around either the poles that stood on the curb at every third house, (and only on one side of the street) or the wires that were strung across and between them like a giant web. We played wire ball almost daily. This is were you throw the ball up in the air and you try to hit the wire. (We used a "pimple ball" or a tennis ball). If you hit it and your opponent dropped it, it was a single. Hit it on the way up and it counts regular, if you hit it on the way down and your opponent dropped it, it was a HR. We tied old Converse "Chuck Taylors" together and threw them over the wires. Johnny Wilkins, Richard Ferraro and I lost a sinker or two wrapped around those wires while we were practicing our casting techniques on winter evenings when it was too cold to go fishing.
The poles themselves were the most user friendly things on the street. The were a pole for a basketball backboard. They were the backstop for stickball games after we took the cinderblock wall down. And they were "homebase" for about a dozen different versions of tag or capture the flag that we made up as we went along. They were the end zones for legendary touch football battles in the street.
Probably the one game we played the most using the poles was "Up and Down Tag". The poles defined the base. The object was simple. Whoever was "it" was in the middle between the pole at the Riccio's house and the one at Mr. Lowman's house. A distance of about 50 yards. All of us would spread out behind the imaginary line that ran from the pole across the street. Behind the line was safe. Once you crossed the line, you couldn't go back, you had to run down to the other pole and cross that line to be safe. The guy in the middle would try to tag you. if you got tagged, you stayed in the middle with the original "it" until everyone was caught. then the first guy who had gotten tagged became "it" for the next game. We would play this game for hours. Sometimes we played a version of it with a wiffle ball where the "it" could throw a wiffle ball at you and that was how you were tagged.
We played a version of capture the flag that they called "Relievio". We were all divided up into two teams. The two poles represented our home base and the "jail" where we kept the prisoners we captured. We designated one jailkeeper each, and the rest of us ran and hid behind the houses. (This was in a day when virtually nobody on our street had fenced-in yards. A few families did because we had dogs, but mostly we all ran through each others yards at will and nobody cared) The object was to capture opposing teams players and take them to your base where they were now in jail. When you caught someone, you had to say "caughty-caught 1-2-3...no jailbreaks!". That was the official lingo and that meant the person had to stay in your jail until his team mates came to set him free.
This was going on simultaneously on both ends and it was a lot of fun that lasted deep into the night. It was nothing for us to be out in front of the houses playing beneath those street lamps until 11pm and our parents never gave it a moments thought. They knew we were out there, they knew all the kids on the street, it was as safe as anyplace else. We played "Buck Buck" which has it's origin in Philadelphia. We played wall-ball. We played a game that had no rules and no real intention except to scare us all. The game was created by Frankie Messick who was older than most of us. A little history is in order to introduce this one. Behind the houses across the street from mine was an area of public space. It stood between the backyards on that side of the street and the public park. It was a no-man's land. The county owned it and they cut the grass once a month, but it was really ours to run wild in. There was a big creekbed that ran through it where we had enormous fun. The creek was dry most of the time except when we had big rains. At one end of this area was a grove of trees we called "Heinyaland". They were calling it that when I moved there so I have no idea where the name originated. I do know it was really nice by day and creepy as can be by night. On those thick summer nights, sometimes we'd go back to Heinyaland and play a game called "Heinyaman". Frankie Messick would go back there first and hide in the darkness...usually inside the boughs of the willow tree. Then we would all go marching in to face his inevitable attack. He would come running out of the darkness howling and menacing and we'd be scared witless. We knew he was there...we knew he was coming...and he still scared us.
We played wiffle ball and we held our own roller derby. We all had those noisy steel-wheeled roller skates and we made an oval in chalk out in the street and we re-enacted the roller derby we watched on TV.
Tommy Riccio, Johnny Wilkins and I would take a trip down to the "Chelsea Swamps" where our beloved Nonesuch Creek was, and bring back dozens of cat tails. Or "punks" as we called them. We'd let them dry for a week or so and then we'd light them at night, convinced the smoke kept the mosquitoes away. We pretended to be smoking cat-tail cigars and we would blow the smoke at each other. each summer we got fireworks and we'd use the punks to light the fuses. They have a unique aroma when they burn and I can still smell them if I think about it.
We built models. Models of dragsters, and battleships and airplanes. We collected butterflys. In fact that was a big hobby for most of us on the street for a lot of years. We knew all the species and which ones were the hardest to find. Johnny and Richard and I always sought the elusive Zebra swallowtail and the Mourning Cloak.
We had chemistry sets and microscopes. We had erector sets. We built elaborate tree houses and ground forts. One fort even had a working fireplace. We built a 9 hole golf course in the public ground behind the houses one summer. We built goal posts for our football games. When the summer rains would come, we'd take my 2 man inflatable raft and float down the creek in the rapids that suddenly developed.
We had lemonade stands in the summer and snowball fights in the winter. We would hide between parked cars and hop the bumpers of those who drove down our street in the snow. You'd run out, grab the bumper and let the car pull you along.
We were fascinated by UFO's back then. It was the rage in the mid 70's. Me, Tommy, Johnny and Kevin would lay out in the big park on a blanket at night and watch the stars to see if anything strange happened. it never did, but we never lost the wonder of looking up into space.
We ran and laughed and imagined and dreamed. And the last thing we wanted was for the nights to end and to have to say goodnight and go inside. They don't make video games that capture what we had back then.
...we packed 25 hours into a day. We'd sleep, and dream, and wake up to do it all again the next day.
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