"We Really Are the Grass!"

In my job at SAMS (South American Missionary Society->Society of Anglican Missionaries and Senders), each month one of us on staff writes a letter which goes out to our donors along with their receipts, sharing news, stories, or reflections on mission. May was my month, and I was a bit more personal in my reflections than is usual. At any rate, it seemed suitable to post my thoughts here, so here it is:

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May 2010



Dear Partners in Ministry,


“All flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers, and the flower falls,but the word of the Lord remains forever.” (1 Peter 1:24-25)

Entering my 50th year this month, I was greeted by an old friend (a year younger than me), who commented, “We really are the grass!” Though 50 may be in the rear-view mirror for many of you, those of us approaching it still see it as a landmark of some significance, and wonder at how fast it is coming (especially those of us who were convinced we’d be raptured some 30 years ago)! This and other more serious events have caused me to think a lot recently on the transience of human life and accomplishments.

My actual birthday coincided with a visit to Virginia to the house my grandparents built 75 years ago. My aunt had rented out the place since her parents passed away, but facing financial hardships herself, had finally had to sell it. This was the last time anyone in our family would be able to gather under that roof or enjoy the spacious yard which had been the scene of so many cook-outs and croquet games. It was the final tract of a 17-acre “Crumbaugh Village” on the edge of Falls Church, and though it was no Monticello, it had stood all these years as a monument to my own connection to “the Greatest Generation.” Knowing that the new owner will likely demolish the building or renovate it beyond recognition made its passing from the family even more sad.

The emotional impact of that, however, was blunted by the fact that the same week my father-in-law had been hospitalized in Richmond with a failing heart. This came as a shock to us all, as for the past 20 years he has kept to a vegetarian diet, walked several miles a day, and done all he could possibly do to avoid just such a fate. God’s love and grace was evident in many ways while he was in the hospital (including the fact that 26 family members were able to visit, some driving from as far away as Montana), and he is home now receiving loving care from his wife (who trained as a nurse years ago). Despite the fact he is once again amazing everyone with how healthy he appears, the doctor’s long-term prognosis is not good.

The incarnation of Christ, and the way he lived his life (“Look at him! A glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!”) teach us that this life is to be enjoyed and lived to the full. But Jesus never lost sight of his mission in this world, and the eternal consequences of what takes place here on this earth. We, too—as individuals and as a society—have a mission to fulfill in this life. While we don’t want to be “too heavenly minded to be any earthly good,” we need to keep focused so that when the Master returns (whether at the last trump or in a personal invitation to Glory) he will find us diligently doing the work he has given us to do. As the plaque on my neighbor’s kitchen reads: “Only one life, ‘twill soon be passed. Only what’s done for Christ will last.”

Blessings,


Dana Priest
Donor Relations Associate

"Babies Are Happy..."

Last night my daughter asked me to draw a baby crawling. I did so (in my typical Disneyesque fashion), with a short-sleeved shirt, long pants and socks. Then she did her 7-year-old version (evolving from stick-figure to a beginning sense of mass and perspective), but when it came to clothing the crouching figure, she asked how to draw a diaper. Then she asked how to draw diapers by themselves, and did three of different sizes across the top of her drawing. She asked about the different kinds of diapers she had worn and then asked how spell "HUGGIES" and added that in large capitals at the bottom. She then informed us she was drawing a diaper ad, and asked what else an ad would have in it; I suggested she put a price in one corner and label the three diapers across the top "Large," "Medium" and "Small". Then she added other smiling baby faces around her full-figured baby and explained "Babies are happy when they wear Huggies!" I told her that was a great slogan ("What's a 'slogan'?") and she asked me to write it above her big "HUGGIES".

I've often thought I could have made a decent living on Madison Avenue (if I could only shed my conscience), but I attributed my fascination with advertising to certain teachers I had, especially in Jr. High, who stressed educating us as critics of media, and advertising in particular (we had to collect or journal examples we saw of "snob appeal," "sex appeal," "bait-and-switch", and other tactics). I thought I could be successful in the field because I could identify (and then master) the tricks.

My daughter, however, has largely been shielded from mass media. We don't have TV, rarely listen to radio, hardly ever purchase a newspaper, and what magazines we may have had subscriptions to have almost all lapsed. I'm not sure where she got the idea to create an ad, much less where she got her sense of layout, design, and her ease with summing up the whole appeal in such a snappy little saying.

I guess maybe it's not all "tricks" that can be learned. Partly it must be innate.

The Browniest Christmas

Charlie Brown: I think there must be something wrong with me, Linus. Christmas is coming, but I'm not happy. I don't feel the way I'm supposed to feel. I just don't understand Christmas, I guess. I like getting presents and sending Christmas cards and decorating trees and all that, but I'm still not happy. I always end up feeling depressed.

Linus Van Pelt: Charlie Brown, you're the only person I know who can take a wonderful season like Christmas and turn it into a problem. Maybe Lucy's right. Of all the Charlie Browns in the world, you're the Charlie Browniest.

The opening scene to A Charlie Brown Christmas keeps running through my head, and not only because my daughter watched it in a constantly-alternating pattern with greatly inferior sequel, It's Christmastime Again, Charlie Brown, for several weeks leading up to the holiday. I had a rather Charlie Brown-y Christmas this year, the Charlie Browniest in quite awhile.

From an early age I have identified with Charlie Brown, and the first TV specials are a touchstone to my childhood (though I admit I started losing interest somewhere between A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving and It's the Easter Beagle, Charlie Brown). The first portion of scripture I memorized was Linus' quotation in the Christmas special from Luke 2 (for one of my earliest attempts at being a director and staging a Christmas play), and much of my own artwork, and some of my sense of characters and dialog, were developed from copying Peanuts comics as a child.

But my problems with this Christmas are not Charlie Brown's. I'm not suffering from "pantophobia", and I certainly DON'T need more "involvement"! The commercialism of the season is not particularly vexing (any more than it has been since Charlie Brown first declared, "I won't let this commercial dog spoil MY Christmas"), and I don't need Linus to "tell me what Christmas is all about." I know all of that, at least in my head...

Charlie Brown's disappointment at not receiving Christmas cards gets more to my own feeling. I am missing people, and the human connection that I associate with the holiday season. In particular, I am missing my grandparents, around whom the holiday always revolved prior to their passing in 2003, one month apart, when my daughter was less than a year old. I don't think my family has yet figured out how to celebrate the day without them. John Irving writes in A Prayer for Owen Meany, "Christmas is our time to be aware of what we lack, of who's not home," and that rings very true.

Missing Grandma and Grandad as people is understandable, and even I suppose admirable in some ways, but the fact of the matter is I also miss their gifts. I never figured out exactly where they got their money from, but every Christmas (at least while they were able-bodied and capable of shopping) my grandparents would go all-out, and we could count on there being a mountain of presents beneath their tree. Being together as a family was good, but most of my youth and for periods of my adulthood we lived close enough that we did that pretty much on a weekly basis. The Christmas dinner was always good and a major part of the day, but really it was just a repeat of the Thanksgiving meal a month later. No, what made Christmas unique, as far as our family gathering was concerned, was the exchange of presents, the majority of them coming from my grandparents. Without them, and with the rest of us on fixed incomes or being underemployed, no one can afford to be Santa anymore, and when Christmas is mostly about presents, the death of Santa leaves a serious hole in the holiday.

I don't want or believe Christmas to be all about presents. There is much that I do by myself, with my wife and daughter, and with my church in worship and service that are clearly more focused on the spiritual reality of Christ's birth and the day that celebrates it. But getting together with my mother, sister and aunt, it is hard not to lapse into those expectations of Christmas Past when we could see how much we were loved by how much money someone spent on us. And it's hard not to want to do for my daughter what was done for me (wrapped in the haze of happy nostalgia as it is), even though I can now see the folly of it.

So, this is an area where my character needs development...

Of Bradley and Broccoli

Some of the best "character bits" in fiction are inspired by observing real-life exchanges. Sitting in a local restuarant with my family over the weekend, I overheard a conversation--or rather, a monolog--which I would love to draw on if I were writing a play about sibling rivalry or family estrangement. Behind me was a young father with his two children, a 2-year-old girl with light curls in a high chair at the end of the table, and a dark haired boy of about 8 (wearing a dark expression) in the opposite booth.

They caught my attention when I overheard the father suddenly gush, "Did you say 'BROCCOLI'? Did you HEAR that, Bradley? She said 'BROCCOLI'! Wasn't that PRECIOUS? Say it again, dear! ...YES! That is BROCC-O-LI! ...Do you LIKE that BROCCOLI? ...Does it taste GOOD! ...No? Do you want to put that BROCCOLI in Bradley's HAIR? Isn't that CUTE?! Oh, DON'T make a face like that, Bradley--she isn't HURTING you! What am I DOING? I'm calling GRANDMA on my CELL PHONE! Yes I AM! And then you can say 'BROCCOLI' for GRANDMA! Mom! Hi! Guess what your granddaughter just did? ...No, she just said, 'broccoli'! ...No, 'BROCCOLI'. REALLY! Listen! Go ahead, dear! Say it! Say, 'BROCCOLI'! Say it! 'BROCC-O-LI'! Go ahead! You can do it! ..."

[I'm tempted here to lapse into a Bill Cosby routine: "Eight hours later: 'Hang in there, Mom! Drink some coffee, walk around! Come on, Erica, say "Hello"!' Wouldn't do it! Finally hung up the phone, and as soon as I did, she started, 'HELLO! HELLO! HELLO!' THAT'S my girl..."]

In the restaurant, though, all I could think about was Bradley five or ten years from now in therapy discussing why he never felt loved or accepted by his father, and why he has troubles in his relationships with women, his sister in particular.

So much of family strife and an individual's struggle with identity begins early in life with parents who just aren't aware of the messages they are communicating. While on the one level I found this Dad's enthusiasm with his daughter's expanding vocabulary goofy and endearing, I think there was definitely some potential damage being done in the relationship between father and son. And as a parent I need to heed the lesson of keeping my enthusiasm and obsessions in check where they might unwittingly harm my relationship with my child.

If I were to draw on this experience creatively, I might use it in the opening scene to a play dealing with adult siblings trying to wrestle with the brokenness in their relationships with each other and with their parents. They could meet in a restaurant, where this scene was taking place in the background, offering comic relief but also reinforcing and maybe shedding some light on how family relationships break down in the first place. [Shades of the Logician in Eugene Ionesco's Rhinoceros...]