Thirty Chubby Toes

We just got back from a week of camping.  Well, sort of camping.  When we go on our holidays in summer we bring with us our big tent - one that fits all of us, from the least to the biggest - and that makes nights a little easier.  Our family tends to take up a lot of space when we go places, and staying in hotels all the time just isn't possible.  So, we bring our big tent and set it up in Amma's (my mom) backyard, or in the yards of friends with whom we stay when we wander across the prairies on our summer adventures.

This past week took us to Little Bow Provincial Park, at a reservoir down in the coulees of southern Alberta, where I grew up and where my heart, for the most part, still lives.  The series of reservoirs draws like a scar across the prairies, uninterrupted vastness as far as the eye can see until the earth opens and the glacial till reveals the sculpted break of land.

My inlaws, the Co-Director's parents, sisters, and their spouses and kids all had neighbouring sites.  There were 22 of us altogether - 8 adults and 14 children, the eldest of which - a cousin - was 10.  It was beautiful chaos, filled with love and passion and that bursting bundle of raw emotions that a child becomes when new surroundings, new experiences, and an astounding lack of sleep combine.  I pitied the people next to us.  When we went to the beach it looked like an invading army of munchkins: that beach was owned, pounded by related toes and feets, sandcastled, sand-fortressed, and expurgated under the relentless excursions that brought us to the water, and back.

At the end of the day my littles were done.  I mean well-done.  Eyes that drooped in sleep glowed with manic intensity as they strove to keep on playing, to squeeze every last drop of togetherness and family out of their cousins, as if they had to stock up until the next time they saw each other.  I couldn't blame them.

But eventually, fatherly prerogative overruled my desire to let them play.  But they were filthy.  So I took the two boys and our big girl to the only place in the campsite that had hot and cold running water; a shower room.  Well, showering with all of them would have been like trying to corral a group of slippery eels.  So, we took over the broad counter with two sinks, and I sat them up on the counter and I took a towel and set to the business of getting them as clean as possible.

From top to bottom I scrubbed: sun-reddened foreheads, little bits of stubborn sand at the corners of their mouths (from throwing toys at each other), grit that gathered where sunblock and sweat rested in the little folds of their skin.  Dirty little hands became...somewhat...shiny under my care, though such deep-seated dirt was not going to come clean without application of chisel, a day off work, and a mission statement.  I cleaned them all the way down to their toes.

It was as I cleaned those thirty chubby digits with my towel that I peered up into three sets of eyes - all different, yet all mine; flesh of my flesh, and bone of my bone.  They looked at me, trusting me not to tickle but hoping I would at the same time; trusting that I, their father, would make sure they were ready for the next days' fun.

And I wondered what Jesus thought as he cleaned the feet of the disciples on one particular night.  Did he see them from the beginning, or who they were becoming?  Christ, the greatest of all, became the servant of those whom he loved - even the servant of the one who betrayed him.  There was no action, no potentiality, that brought anyone out of the love of Christ.

I withered under those six earnest eyes.  I looked into them, trying to discern their future: happy, sad, exhuberant, tragic?  I thought of all the endless cliches that surround parenting, especially fatherhood - the sappy, meaningless drivel that is supposed to give joy to someone who's idea of being a father is buying hockey equipment - and I realized that they were all wrong.

I cannot protect my children.  I am neither big enough, strong enough, or powerful enough to protect them from all the things that life will throw at them.  I cannot save them from bullies, from bosses; I am even powerless to protect them from someone intent on bringing one of them to harm: I an neither omniscient, nor omnipotent.

But I am their father.

And because I am their father I can care for them: I can scold them, encourage them, get them dirty and make them clean again - as their heavenly Father made them clean in their own baptismal waters.  Scrubbing thirty chubby toes clean, I realized one thing: of all the memories I hope I make for my children, rather than a toy, or a holiday, or an experience - I hope, I pray, that they remember the day their daddy washed their feet.

And I hope I remember those thirty dirty toes my whole life long.

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Laughter

Laughter

At Little Bow, as always, I ran in the morning.  Unlike other occasions, running at Little Bow is marked by a whole lot of 'up', as I run along the road that snakes its way from the coulee floor the level of the prairie above.  As I ran today, I found myself meditating on the akedah, the biblical story of the binding of Isaac.

Do you know how Isaac got his name?  It means 'laughter' in Hebrew.  The little boy was called laughter because his mother Sarah laughed at the heavenly messenger who told her that God's promise to her husband was going to be fulfilled in her own barren womb.  

I wonder if, so many years later, Mary laughed when her own heavenly messenger came to tell her that God's promise to his people was going to be fulfilled in her - of her, through her.  Do you think you would have laughed?  I think I would have.  The narrativist Luke notes that "she pondered in her heart that which the angel had told her" - I laugh out loud at ponderables every day.  I hope Mary was no different.  I wonder if the angel told her to call her baby "Jesus" because he was afraid there was another Isaac in the making.

The story of Isaac, though, is tainted by near tragedy.  Or maybe it's a farce.  An angel tells Abraham "take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and offer him up as a sacrifice to God."  Abraham is asked to sacrifice his only son in order to prove his own love and devotion to God.  But Abraham is ready, and he prepares to do just that.  He takes Isaac, binds him, and prepares to offer him as sacrifice BUT, at the last possible moment, the angel intervenes.  Abraham has proven his faith.

But there comes a time when another Father is called to give up his Son.  But this time, it's not God who demands the sacrifice, not at all.  This time, the crowd does; the leaders do; we do.  All our judgements and hard-heartedness demands that the interloped who dared to proclaim God's love and forgiveness to all should be judged himself, by our own, more rigorous standards.  Because we who love sin more than forgiveness turn instead to God and demand that he sacrifice his Son to prove his love for us.

But unlike God with Abraham, we do not relent.  We are not welcoming of that kind of mercy.  There is no last-minute reprieve.  There is only the crowd, the cross, the crown, and death.  But even the One tied to the altar intercedes: forgive them, for they know not what they do.

Laughter, indeed.

Because I think on that Easter morning, when the stone rolled away from the tomb and Jesus walked out of the gates of hell, the gates of death and to the glory of his Father, I think, I think, that the garden rang with the sound of a delighted Father's laughter; that the Son was clothed in the best robe and given the best seat at the table, while the proud Father looked at his work and beamed.

It is finished, the Son said.

It is finished, indeed.  And may we find at the end the joy of the Father's laughter reveling in the delight of his Son - his only Son, whom he loved, whom he offered, whom he gave, whom he raised, and in whom he delights.  

Heaven is a Father's un-ending joy, ringing out through all creation.