Tag: godwink

In 2019, I had the chance to finally meet Rocky Elton, a former classmate of my late uncle Darell (who also happened to be a classmate and good friend of my mother’s). My mother had referred to the fun times she had had with Rocky and Darell numerous times over the years, but I had never met him before. Rocky was also Darell’s college classmate at the University of Minnesota, and both were on the Varsity football team as freshmen in 1951, a rare feat for anyone at that time. I never met Darell – he was my dad’s younger brother, and was killed in an Air Force jet training accident three years before I was born. A tragic loss of a wonderful young man, and a loss that I believe my dad felt sad about his entire life.

Rocky and I were scheduled to meet at his home, to go through a book of photos and remembrances that I inherited. I had asked Rocky to sit down with me and share stories and memories of his time with my uncle over 65 years earlier. As we arrived and stepped out of the car, Rocky looked down and saw a gray pigeon sitting on the grass near us. “Well, will you look at that! I used to raise homing pigeons, and I haven’t had any in over 5 years! This one showed up just a few minutes ago, and it’s one I raised – it has my band on its leg. I think it’s Darell come to visit.”

Angels. Moments of Grace.

Sometimes you need an angel, other times you need to be brought back down to earth.

Most of my angel moments have been amazingly uplifting and soul-filling. A couple others have fulfilled their purpose, but in a more humbling way.

I was on a business trip to St. Louis that required me to be in town on a Sunday morning, and I decided to attend church service at the cathedral. I was there early, and the organist/choir director was there setting up and prepping his music. I sat and listened and then got up enough nerve to mention to the director that I sang with my choir back home and read music pretty well, and that I’d love to sit in and sing with the choir that morning. He smiled, pointed to a spot in the pews right in front of the choir (but not in the choir), and suggested “Why don’t you sit down right there and just sing your little heart out?” Check. Message received. ☺

Angels and diners

Stopping at a small diner/old root beer stand for lunch, Ellen and I looked over the menus, asked what the soup was for the day, ordered our drinks… the usual routine. Our server was busy, as it appeared to be peak lunchtime for the little place. When she got back with the drinks and asked if we had decided on our lunch choices, we ordered, Ellen first, then my own, and then I offered the server the menus. Apparently, I forgot that we had picked them up from one of those slotted holders on the wall end of the booth. They left their menus there, rather than collecting and handing them out for each patron. There was just something about the timing of the way she coached me where to return the menus:  “Sir, you can take those menus and shove ‘em….. right back there.”  Check. Message received.  ☺

Angels. God winks. Moments of Grace.

A few years ago, I had the incredibly fortunate opportunity to “follow” one of my sons to Tanzania. He was a new young doctor in the midst of his pediatric residency, and his resident program included a 6-week rotation at the Bugando Children’s Medical Center in Mwanza, Tanzania. My wife encouraged me to follow him to Africa and join him for some time together when his rotation experience was done. He had recently married and she said, “You may never get a chance like this again to spend some time with him. He’ll be incredibly busy when he returns and so will you. Do it!”

So I did. The entire experience was one of our best times ever together, and filled me with admiration for him and his commitment to pediatric medicine. It also gave me the opportunity for me to learn first-hand about more of our world. When I first arrived, I set up at a hotel in a different part of Mwanza than where my son was, as the hospital had the 3 residents staying in a very spartan, downtown building operated more like a hostel than a hotel. His residency program rotated 2-3 residents every 6 weeks to Tanzania, and several times each year would send a medical student to Chicago for an exchange experience. The small hotel I chose was extremely reasonable, comfortable and immaculate, situated 50 yards from beautiful Lake Victoria.  An amazing blessing in itself.

We had tried several Skype calls with him prior to my arrival, and the cultural differences began to show when we had to adjust to the fact that our son’s calls could only be made from one spot in a hallway of the hospital because the internet was so poor. Medical records were on yellow legal pads. There often there wasn’t enough oxygen for the kids who needed it, or they had to make decisions about which antibiotic to use in place of the one they preferred. Sometimes parents had to take their children back home and wait to be contacted when the parts came in for the broken CT scanner, even if they had walked to the clinic, carrying their child for perhaps days. The residents did learn lessons in how to provide medical treatment and comfort even when they didn’t have every treatment or diagnostic tool at hand. The birthing room was a large open room with at least 10-12 women in various stages of labor on gurneys, all going through their deliveries in the company of each other and the medical personnel moving about. I helped

a new young mother in the hallway as she struggled to get her twin babies situated for the first time in her kanga, the sling/wrap used by Tanzanian mothers to carry their babies. Struggling, yet smiling. Like so many people I met in Tanzania.

While enjoying a hot breakfast and wonderful coffee at my hotel, I noticed that the fellow who maintained the fresh fruit on the buffet and smiled so warmly to every guest had what I thought were the exact same Merrell trail runners that I really enjoyed. I complimented his choice of footwear. He was so proud to show them off to me, and I noticed that his were slightly different than mine – they were retreaded with actual tire treads. He took the cast-off, worn-out shoes from some American or European and put entirely new treads on them! As the trip went on, I realized that virtually all the

people I saw wore what was sold by street vendors – used clothing that arrived in huge bales from overseas and got taken apart and sorted for sale by different specialized vendors – baby clothes, shoes, jeans, everything we only buy new or perhaps in a resale shop.

I checked with my hotel to see if I could visit an orphanage near the city, and I located a place that actually specialized in only babies, a “baby home” as they called it. They only kept kids up to 5 years of age. If they were still there at 5, they were transferred to a different orphanage. It was started and run by a woman from England, and she explained to me that if a Tanzanian woman cannot produce enough breastmilk, they bring their child to the baby home, leaving their baby with the home until they can eat solid food. I must have looked a little shocked by this, so she explained to me that baby formula costs at least $60 per month, and the average wage for a worker in Tanzania is only about $40, hence there is no way for most to purchase formula, plus the water is unhealthy for mixing formula. Other babies were from unplanned pregnancies or women who lived in the streets, and they would bring them to the baby home hoping they would be adopted, but also might return when they or the mother’s family could cope with them as an older child. On the day I was there, several children had just returned from being seen by doctors at Bugando Medical Center, perhaps by my son. Here is the heart of my story:  I have 13 adopted siblings, 8 from countries outside the U.S. As I stood in the midst of at least 30 cribs, and then knelt in the playground and was mobbed by dozens of smiling, chattering toddlers in the playground, I could only feel the tears well up inside me and my throat choking closed, realizing that any one of my adopted siblings could have started in a place like this, and likely one not nearly as nice and clean and loving as this place was. Every single smiling child wanted to touch me, and I couldn’t hug them all at once, but I tried!

Truly this place was filled with the Grace of God. It was palpable. I will never forget the experience and the feeling. Lessons from Mwanza. Moments of Grace.

A very good friend of mine took his own life last Wednesday. He had struggled with depression for several years, but I’m sure that the isolation of COVID-19 contributed. How could it not? He had been a multi-site department manager in healthcare, but had lost his job a few years ago, and never was able to shake that loss or shame, never found that “what next?” moment in his life after that. I tried to get together with him a number of times, but now I feel as though it was not nearly enough times for me to feel OK. I tried, but not enough. How I wish I had made even one more effort to reach out to him, have a beer, a coffee, anything. He was tremendously talented and a smart guy in areas that I know nothing of. He always seemed to gregariously attract helpers for any home project or tree cutting adventure, and was quick to lend a hand in return. I don’t think any of us realized, or at least were willing to admit, that he was churning inside so deeply.

A second friend, a fellow who is even a few years younger than me, is holding unconsciously onto the last threads of his life while having been in hospice for the past two months due to a genetic neural disease that has dragged at him for years. I learned so much from him over the years of working together. He had been in the Peace Corps in Ecuador and had a great understanding of Latin American cultural perspectives, absolute advanced command of Spanish, and a love for the benefits that dairy cows and farms can bring to families in developing countries, just as I do. He married later in life, and leaves behind a wife and 14-year old daughter. He was so proud of both, always popping up his latest photos when I’d see him, and telling me how smart his daughter was in school. What a wonderful mentor and example.

A third friend posted on LinkedIn that he had seen his first COVID-19 death notice of someone that he knew, and shared how it hits a person differently, cuts through the arguments, when it is someone you knew. I think that’s true whether it’s COVID-19 or any other cause of loss.

Three friends suffering. Three friends in need of connection. We need to stay connected, especially with the folks that we know in our heart of hearts need help. Just a call maybe, until we can get together.

Moments when we need connection. Moments of Grace. 

In the subdivision where I spent my earliest years growing up, there were several dozen kids within five years of my age, and we all spent summers outside of our houses, often cruising the neighborhood in large groups on our bikes. Simple riding could turn into races once in a while, and my first summer with my new “racer” was an exciting one. It was a rebuilt older single-speed bike, but one that had the skinnier 26″ tires than some of my counterparts who had fatter tires on their bikes. Amongst all the kids, only my oldest brother had a 3-speed. So we started a round-the-block race, which in our case were not city blocks – the subdivision had a cross street only about every 12-15 homes. At the first intersection, we came to a “T” in the road, and the group headed right while I turned left at full throttle. I was looking backward over my shoulder, yelling at my brothers that they were going the wrong way (while I must have been the one going the wrong way, as everyone else turned right). The next thing I knew, I was on my back, looking into the face of a truck driver who had a terrified look on his face and tenor to his voice. As I had turned left, I had ridden my bike full-tilt right into the hood of a Jewel Tea truck. At that time, Jewel Tea trucks delivered small quantities of household goods, consumables, etc. to homes in the neighborhood. Sort of a low-tech Amazon delivery service. I had hit the truck and sailed over the hood, across the entire street, and landed on my back on soft grass in the ditch on the opposite side where the panicked driver was offering me, then all the kids, candy, gum, anything he had that kids might like. He kept saying, “You rode right into me! You rode right into me!” I think that he wanted to confirm to all of us kids that he hadn’t driven into me, that I had ridden into him. Funny, I realize now that we never got his name or his license info or anything. I had to limp my “new” bike home, frame bent and unable to roll the back wheel. The much greater injury for me was that when my dad got home from work, I got punished in the worst possible way – he refused to fix my bike until I had learned my lesson. Six weeks with no bike in the summer.

Someone was watching out for me that day.

Our little St. Peter’s Church had beautiful stained glass windows. It had a small organ, small choir, but we made good music. Our pastor always believed that we could do big things, even if our congregation was small. Even though it was a task that should be performed by a deacon, he taught me how to sing (chant) the Great Litany during Lent, and it remains one of my favorite service elements of the church year. The significance of The Great Litany is deep: It is the oldest original English language rite, dating to 5th century Romans, it is all-encompassing and focuses prayers for ourselves and for the world, and it is the strongest way to begin “keeping a Holy Lent.”

After the service on Palm Sunday, one of our traditions was to strip all the vestments from the altar, and cover all the icons in the entire nave and sanctuary with purple drapes, to be lifted off on Easter. Our parish was very “Catholic” in a sense – they had a very visible Mary shrine, with many votive candles below her. It is believed that sometime the night of Palm Sunday, one of the purple cotton drapes fell from Mary, and onto the burning candles below. It smoldered and smoked, filling the sanctuary with smoke and keeping the fire as a slow burn. Eventually, the fire slowly spread to the floor and first pews near Mary, but continued as a slow fire, almost like coals or embers, they would say later. The heat within, though was so great as to have melted and distorted the brass candelabras standing on the altar nearby. Late that night, a person who lived nearby was passing by the church and noticed what they thought were some low lights on in the church, and when they peered in a window, saw that there flames near the floor in the corner. They called 911, and the firefighters described the blaze as amazing that it was so hot, yet so muffled by the smoke itself, and they were able to contain it with mostly foam, avoiding lots of water damage, but they had to break out a single stained-glass window by the Mary shrine to get at the source. Opening a main door would likely have caused a huge backdraft and immediate spontaneous combustion explosion. In the end, there was lots of smoke damage, several pews and the floor caved into the basement near the Mary shrine, but a lot less structural damage than the firemen expected to find.

The Mary statue hung on a standard plaster and lath wall, not a brick wall, and immediately on the back side of that plaster wall was the sacristy, a small anteroom where some of the nicest ones of the pastor’s vestments were kept in big, flat drawers, and on top of those drawers, just lying on the top of the table, were the candles set up in preparation for the upcoming Easter services following Holy Week, basically directly behind Mary. Remember that the sanctuary was hot enough to have distorted and melted brass candelabras. Behind a simple wood door and plaster wall, the Paschal Candle lay unblemished. Not melted, not marked, not damaged in any way. We held our Easter Vigil and Easter weekend services at a neighboring church down the street, and we used the Paschal Candle that had been prepped the week before.

Thank you, angels.