Dear Santa, Thank You

 

Dear Santa, Thank You

I am currently serving on La Crescenta Presbyterian Church’s Pastor Nominating Committee (PNC). The church placed a Santa Claus mailbox out front. On a lark, I wrote a quick note to Santa that read as follows: “Dear Santa, Please send us a new pastor. Preferably a shepherd after God’s own heart” and signed it with my name with a little PNC under it.

It is a miracle, Santa replied. He wrote a most welcome letter, heartfelt and hopeful, full of gratitude and humility toward the Greatest Gift Giver.

I will let the letter speak for itself:

Rest assured, though our journey as a committee has been long and arduous and seasoned with a little heartbreak, we are hopeful. We know God has for us a pastor after His own heart and he will be here in God’s own timing. And, the Lord meets us on the way…

My dad crafted a piece of intarsia, a work of art made from various types and colors of wood and using little, if any, stains. The piece he made is of a Red-tailed Hawk, my favorite bird. He signed it “For ‘Stick’ Together in His grip”.

So I will sign off on this post in the same way…Together in His grip.

jj white

Build Your Trellis

 

jj's trellis

Peter Scazzero from his book, Emotionally Healthy Spirituality (EHS) while writing about a ‘Rule of Life’: “Please don’t be intimidated by the word rule. The word comes from the Greek for ‘trellis.’ A trellis is tool that enables a grapevine to get off the ground and grow upward, becoming more fruitful and productive.”

Under the direction of our interim Pastor Mike Harbert, La Crescenta Presbyterian Church trekked through EHS where we learned that a Rule of Life acts as a trellis helping us to be more intentional and live in Christ and to be more fruitful. Our trellis is a structure that takes into consideration our unique set of gifts and spiritual practices and helps us to focus on God in all we do.

There were eight sessions where we first met as a large group divided into table groups for shared prayer, periods of silence, viewing video materials, and continuing through work sessions. Upon completion of the series many table groups opted to continue for two or three weeks for a deeper look into the material. Our table opted to delve into creating our own ‘Rule of Life’ by sharing our experiences and plans for our own Rule.

Craig, a co-leader of our table-group of six men, brought a package of materials he’d gleaned from his personal study and research on the topic, one for each of us. Between what Craig brought us and the information from EHS we had and have plenty of tools and materials to construct and maintain our own trellis.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been a visual person relying on circuit diagrams, stick maps of microwave systems, sketches of basketball plays, timelines, and stuff like that. For my work to build a trellis I went to PowerPoint, thus the diagram shown above. Over the last few years I’ve grown into a person who has increasingly relied on writing to grapple with subjects and my thoughts about them, thus this post.

If you look at my sketch you might notice there are stakes and cross members that are blank. Mine is a work in progress and likely will be for the foreseeable future. I’ve set my stakes in the soil where the seeds of my grapevine will be planted, or roses, if you prefer. I’ve enriched the soil with a phrase I cling to, “His grace is enough because His sacrifice is complete.” Without grace I have no hope in having a healthy vine or a sound trellis. I am using the stakes to show the various Spiritual Disciplines upon which I will hang my cross members and I have noted in blue the activities I hope to engage in under those disciplines. The cross members I am putting up are the more detailed activities I plan to pursue and that incorporate the basic elements of a Rule.

Build a trellis for yourself.

As noted above, my trellis is a work in progress. I will add stakes and cross members as needed and may, at times, remove some as the focus of my life changes through the seasons. I will be tending my trellis and the vines that grow on it. I’ll need to shore up the connections between the stakes and cross members and make sure my stakes are well grounded and not coming loose. I will aerate the soil, add nutrients, and weed out the harmful plants that crop up so that the vines produce their best fruits and blooms. Ongoing maintenance of the trellis and its dependent vines is critical for my effectiveness and the peace of knowing I make a difference.

I am the oldest member of our table-group and feeling an increasing urgency to finish well the race in front of me -> to have a trellis full of grapes or lovely blooms of roses. As happens in vineyards, we are not always the people who reap the fruits, press the grapes into juice, or age the wine. We are not the only ones who walk among the trellises and enjoy the roses and still others might pick them to display and share. I am content with that.

This urgency of mine to finish well, assuming I can follow through (this is where grace is required for me), is the impetus to build and maintain a trellis, my Rule of Life, and to tend the vines growing on them.

Mind and maintain your trellis.

I believe we all have a Rule of Life, intentional and well-built or not. If not, then it is likely a heap of stakes and cross members with vines choked out with weeds and laying in rot on the ground.

Therefore, I urge you to take stock, build a trellis, plant some vines, and mind the whole thing. I believe you will be healthier and happier for it.

In His grip,

jerry

Author’s Note: Trellises (or might that be trellisi?) come in various shapes and sizes. The photo below is of Ashley’s Trellis, my daughter. She recently completed it and I have every hope of seeing it festooned with sweet peas, some I believe that are descendants from sweet peas at Bass Lake that my Grandma Matt kept. Her trellis is well designed and built with a vision for beauty and bounty and is a reflection of her own Rule of Life. I love it.

Ashley's Trellis

O’er the Bridge – Round the Bend

 

Up the Gabrielino Trail from Gould Mesa...

Whatever our journey; a Walk with God, our life, or a simple hike in the woods we come to points of choice – go over the bridge or not, go around the next bend or not.

This is the unknown. We can plan to the nth degree and still we do not absolutely know what we will find on the other side of the bridge or around the bend, or even on the bridge. We make our choice to move on or not and then go with a mix of faith and trepidation. On a hike we may have walked dozens of times and there we give little thought to the unknown beyond the possibility to meeting someone else on the trail or maybe a view of wildlife. With life, walking with God or not, there may be degrees of knowing the outcome of our choice but always laced with the possibility of surprise.

Crossing bridges is an adventure, rounding curves exploration. As the Station Fire raged on in the back country of the Angeles National Forest late in 2009 I was AT&T’s Radio Planner and Coordinator for California and Nevada (I had no counterparts in other regions). I was tasked with inspecting our microwave stations back in the forest. Okay, I was feeling particularly invulnerable after having been allowed back to our home to find it standing after I was certain to find a pile of burnt rubble and smoldering debris and I volunteered to go up into the mountains to find out how our sites fared. Actually, I didn’t volunteer, I just did it.

I rounded many bends that day and most of the bridges I crossed had been deemed safe by structural engineers. Most but not all. I was able to visit all our sites with the exception of Camp 16 whose access road was still closed due to ongoing investigations into the loss of two firefighters, our team visit to that site is story all to itself, and a sobering one at that.

During my expedition, if a long one-day trek can be called an expedition, I found surprises around several bends; three or four bears scrounging around an abandoned fire base station for food, the Sherriff’s helicopter and its crew at Mt. Disappointment, and then Camp Colby across a bridge that hadn’t yet been inspected.

Camp Colby, now known as Colby Ranch, is a location equipped with a meeting/mess hall, residential and visitor cabins, and other out buildings that all provide the infrastructure for organizations to come for educational, religious, and business retreats. The camp is connected to the communications network via one of the microwave radios I had responsibility for. I expected the camp to have been burnt to the ground, what I found was a miracle brought to us by the Grace of God and fire fighters determination beyond reason to save the camp.

I found people here, stranded and isolated. Their one vehicle was out doing errands and hadn’t been allowed back in. When I showed up it seemed I was some sort of conquering hero. This camp is nestled in the crook of three hillsides and is a wooded vale with one access road o’er a bridge to the Angeles Forest Highway. The folks there told me of the flurry of firefighting activity that had saved their little vale and this is where the heroics took place.

They had plenty of food but no communications and their loved ones had no way of knowing their condition. The radio site here was in perfect condition lacking only the power to operate it. The feed stations along the backbone of the system were in similar condition, some with singed antennas and buildings but all operational. I was able to radio out to our operations people and by the end of the day they had generators in place and the Camp Colby telephones on line.

I was informed later that the bridge I had so blithely crossed had supporting members seared and still smoldering. Our operations trucks arrived with an inspector to allow access after I had left to complete my inspections. I had unconsciously made a choice to the cross the bridge – what if I hadn’t? How long before the camp attendants’ loved ones knew they were safe? Fool that I was, I was operating under some sort of faith and shield.

It seems to me to be the ‘or not’ part of our decisions is where the risk really is. We risk not seeing the miracle, meeting the person that needs us to alter their path of destruction – we risk not seeing the waterfall round the bend or the great vista through the notch in the mountains only accessed by going over bridges, crossing streams, rounding bends, and scrambling over rocks. When I risk the ‘not’, it tends to leave an emptiness where the adventure not taken would have filled a gap.

Then there is the option of turning around and going back. The thing about this option is that we still need to cross the bridge and go back around the bends that got us there in the first place. Who knows what happened to the bridge in the meantime, or what creatures have come along behind us round the bend?

...and back down the trail.

Life is an adventure, walk its path with a greater degree of faith with open eyes for the surprise, the opportunity to achieve something great or to simply gaze over the vista, a vista otherwise known as the rest of our lives.

Always remain in His grip.

jerry

Off the Bench

 

So nice and comfy here, just give me a few more minutes...

Spiritually speaking, I have been sitting on the bench now for quite some time. I hesitate to estimate how long I’ve been picking pine because I would probably underestimate the length I’ve have been sitting on the bench or standing on the sidelines. Some would say I am mistaken with comments like, “Look at the eighteen months you’ve been on the Pastor Nominating Committee (PNC)”, “You are active with the CFC Committee”, and things of that nature. True as those things might be and as deep as the trenches are for a PNC, my heart has been missing in action. If I’m honest with myself, my inaction goes well before taking care of my folks during their end-of-life journey and the pandemic so I can hardly pin this on them.

Truth be told, I have been setting myself up for a ‘well-deserved’ sabbatical and officially withdrawing from all committees, all services – who knows how many alls I could string together with this. It is embarrassing.

I played competitive High School (CVHS Falcons) and Junior College (Glendale Junior College Vaqueros, now known as Glendale Community College) basketball. With the exception of a loosely regulated (by the CIF) Junior Varsity Season in 1971, I came off the bench, though I should have started my sophomore year at GCC, but that’s another long and sad story. The point is, I know what sitting on the bench is and can be and what my responsibilities are. Until I put myself on the spiritual bench, I never took myself out of a game and on the bench - but I knew how to come off it.

Along comes our interim pastor, Mike Harbert, with the notion of putting our congregation though a program called Emotionally Healthy Spirituality which is a mouthful to say so we are calling it EHS. Pastor Mike has also been riding alongside our PNC since the beginning so he is familiar with me and he approached me as EHS planning was underway and told me that a certain elder on our Session told him that I would be a good table leader. Now, I am familiar with this young elder and have been watching her grow as a Christian since she was a wee lass coming into Junior High and going on Mission Arizonas with me. I couldn’t very well out rightly say so no this and thus decided to give it some thought and prayer.

The prayer part is what snagged me because when I mentioned it to the Boss I heard a still small voice that has been absent for some time now and He clearly said, “Get off the bench and into the game.” Okay, the still small voice hasn’t actually been absent, I have had my ears plugged and I've focused on feeling sorry for myself. There was no condemnation in the order, simply an urging to come in and make a difference, grow, and open myself to a new way of living. Again.

I know what I’ve done to myself here with this post. I put myself in a position to be held accountable. It nearly made me run the other way but that is not how I acted when on the bench in the olden days. I’m in the game.

In His grip,

jerry

Put me in coach, I'm ready to play.

Dear Kids

 

Dear Kids,

Along with being married to your mom, being your dad is the greatest of privileges. I love you and wouldn’t change anything about who you are or how we are together. Hey, its’ us! I will not be able to capture all the blessings about being dad to you.

I am thankful that I was able to hold you in the delivery room. I don’t know how your grandfathers could handle pacing in the waiting room until their kids were born, weighed, measured, or even cleaned up. I certainly don’t know how my dad could stand it being half the world away when I was born and not seeing me until I was six months old or so. Being there right then in the moment? Awesome!

All those things listed on the card pictured below? I wouldn’t run from any of them, bring it on. I loved the whole lot of it. Being your coach, from indoor soccer to baseball, basketball, swim meet timer are memories I cherish – being your biggest fan at high school meets and drama gigs – special. I’m not sure I can pick one activity over another. I love walking with you and have having taken you for walks, watching birds, swimming, hiking, rafting…all of it has been a gas, as we used to say.

Mission trips with you to Arizona? A highlight of decades of youth ministry. You demonstrated and continue to demonstrate your caring hearts for others. I must have done something right and that is likely because of amazing grace. I suspect I’ve received far more out of being a dad than I have any right to expect. Just the same, I’ll take it.

Your adult selves continue to grow and mature. You have become outstanding parents and will continue to grow into that role as your kids grow, develop, and change. You are adaptive, creative, and loving in all the ways that are good and right. Each of you has married well and your spouses have grown into excellent parents as well. To see two melded into one and your parenting as a team pulling equally at the traces of the craft of being parents is a real joy.

Your children are a distinct please in every way. They are joyful and I love how they put up with Silly Opa. I love them in unmeasurable quantities just as I do you. Well done children, well done.

This is a glimpse of what it means to me to be a dad on Father’s Day.

Thank you.

Again, I love you.

Dad

Dear Mom and Dad

 

June 1, 2022

Dear Mom and Dad,

There is nothing I would love better than celebrating your 70^th Anniversary with you, sitting around with family and friends grouped around the lawn, the pond, up on the deck. We would raise a glass in a toast, Mimosas likely, and thank all who were there for celebrating such a rare feat of 70 years of marriage, and rightly so.

It might’ve been a bit cool when we started but don’t worry mom, it’ll warm up nicely. In the meantime, we’d be bundled up a bit and be warming each other with fond memories. Dad would be right next to you practicing his favorite pastime, keeping you warm; he was a great one for seeing you comfortable. Snippets of conversations would reach us and just as quickly, smiles would appear on our faces written in family script, age lines, some would call them, we prefer smile lines and expressions of joy accumulated over a life well lived.

I am so thankful for the legacy the two of you established for us. Cindy and I will be celebrating 46 years of marriage this year, Ashley and Matt notched their 20^th this past December, Lauren and Taylor will hit the 9-year mark in September, and Daniel and Ani just tallied up 8 years this past April. Not bad, not bad at all. Thank you.

The dance I will always remember is The Wedding Anniversary Dance in 2001 at Matt and Ashley’s wedding. It was a dance of attrition with the shortest marriages coming off the dance floor first. The last five couples were Matt’s folks Curt and Jean, Cindy and I, Kathy and Lee Craw (yet another couple the two of you had great influence with), Jan and Gene Mauk (Cindy’s parents), and you guys. What a testament!

You guys faced down events, trials, and circumstances that could have derailed the marriage. Well done. You didn’t start it off easy by getting married while the both of you were serving in the US Navy with dad being shipped overseas to Korea while mom was pregnant with me. I suppose that made me a Navy brat, short-lived as it was. You built a home in Torrance then made a big move to La Crescenta, no simple tasks.

Vacations! Oh, my Lord, the vacations we had. Bass Lake, a family destination and where we celebrated your lives, has left a multi-generational mark on us and all to the good. We had great times in Bridgeport California, fishing hiking, reading, exploring… Our family vacations with the Murphys at Balboa Island set up another tradition we still revisit from time to time.

But we cannot talk about family vacations without mentioning the trip we made to Kearny Nebraska in the Lemonwood Yellow Chevy Impala station wagon equipped with a 396 cubic inch engine. Dad had some magical way of packing gear on top of the car, one year it was a tarp arrangement and then he built a plywood box with slopped front and painted to match the car. We camped our way to Kearny to visit the Andersons. Four-corners, Mesa Verde, Grand Canyon, and driving through a tornado warning we had no idea was in effect. All we knew was that I had to stare out the front and call out obstacles as they appeared during lightning flashes because the headlights couldn’t penetrate the downpour.

Thank you for setting the tone for having family vacations.

I think I will finish this letter with a little about your faith and faithfulness and skip the maudlin part where I say how much I miss you and that all the memories I have come flooding back with the simplest of things, Dad’s intarsia, FB memories with Mom, and all the boxes of crap we took from your house and the treasures we are unearthing from them.

The thing that stands out the most to me is your faithfulness to Jesus, his church, and the needy folks he brought to you, people who lived with us for a time of healing, people who you served when they had nobody else. You both served as Elders in the churches you attended and your elderships had the beginnings in youth ministry as advisors and teachers and went from there to leading and guiding the churches. It has struck be recently that your ministry went from leading as elders to the pure ministry as Deacons, the get down and dirty ministry of serving the poor, the hungry, the lonely. I admire you for that.

Signing off now. 70 years is huge, one of the comforting things is knowing the count keeps growing only now in a place where you both are whole again. Thank God!

In His grip and with the deepest of loves,

jerry

People Xxxxx In Nearly Every Seat

 

LCPC Chapel

People Butts In Nearly Every Seat

Brass resounded, a two-piece timpani reverberated, and the Steinway resonated with our souls in the Chapel, a sanctuary for worship, praise, and reflection. The Altos and Basses, Tenors and Sopranos of the LCPC Cathedral Choir raised the roof and the filled the room with an incense pleasing to the Lord of Glory. It was an Easter Sunday done well.

I walked in a little later than I usually like for a normal Sunday and there were only seats here and there and my ‘usual’ seat was filled. Then I saw an opening and dove in to sit between two of my mentors, youth leaders from back in my days as a teenager finding my way into adulthood. They would later become impassioned supporters of me as a youth advisor myself. Without these two and their cohorts the church would be a shadow of itself and we would do well to cherish them, the time we have with them, their contributions then and now, and provide space and time for them to worship which is commensurate with their importance to the Lord.

A lady came in during one of the hymns looking for a place to sit amongst her friends so I slid out and ushered her in to sit between Bob and Terry then moved back a couple of rows while a woman I couldn’t recognize in her mask gave me the best of recognitions for a simple action, her hand to her heart.

It’s Easter! and meeting people’s hearts is the order of the day as we celebrate the most noble sacrifice of all time. These are lessons I learned from the likes of Teri and Bob, Jim, Glen, Alan, Dean, and my folks – so many beloved saints I can’t write them all in. I still learn from them. When the prayers came and the hymns were sung they stood or sat as they can or prefer. Standing or sitting, their hearts knelt and their eyes were on Jesus, a posture they take every day.

A message was piped in from the Sanctuary and a promise of fulfillment was given, a continuation of God’s Kingdom on earth. He calls our name – we pray and sing and answer the call. An infant was baptized and the rite was piped in.

There were people butts in nearly every seat as it should have been. This is the House of God.

Grab hold of the promise, let your heart kneel, and worship the Lamb of God.

In His grip,

jerry