It was four degrees below zero Monday morning, with a brisk wind, making it “feel like” minus 18. To the folks who choose to dwell on the frozen tundra to the north of the Great Plains, like my readers in the Dakotas and Canada, I suppose that’s just another typical frigid Winter’s daybreak temperature. But in Nebraska, it’s relatively unusual and, for people like me who prefer a comfortable ambient climate above 70° inside or outside, it’s rather unpleasant. Shoveling the remnants of Sunday night’s icy snowfall from our sidewalks, I fondly recalled how nice it was last summer wearing just a T-shirt, shorts and flip flops. My bleak, arctic-like experience also brought to mind some thoughts I had put to verse back then about a much warmer day. Enjoy!

Dust blows down the long lane from a
farm house on a blistering August afternoon.
The scent of freshly mowed grass triggers
memories of Summertimes long ago.
I can hear Gershwin’s soft and mellow
“an’ the livin’ is easy” drifting around
inside my head. Forgotten dreams awaken.

Tan proofed children covered with SPF 50
revel in the neighbor’s pool, sparkling
with rippled waves of reflected sunlight.
Their giggly shouts ascend upward
into a cloudless sky on a trajectory
forever outward into our galaxy and beyond.
To the east, within an ancient cloister
solemn monks chant sacred Gregorian.
Heavenly refrains echoed by angelic hosts
wreathe an incense-bathed altar
illuminated by sunbeams from a
stained glass gospel scene above.
Miles away, eighteen-wheelers stream
down concrete ribbons back and forth,
full of something for everyone.
High overhead, hundreds of invisible
travelers sip sodas and snooze, en route
to destinations that seem important.
Somewhere else, rain falls on the just
and unjust.

Why are we so obsessed to find meaning in all this,
the daily ebb and flow of the tides of life?
Is not the unseen hand of God flavoring our
deep evolutionary soup to His own
particular taste and pleasure nonetheless?

And yet professor and peasant alike
anxiously ponder the riddles of the Universe,
standing gravely perplexed in front of their
personal chalkboards of life, yearning to
solve life’s ultimate mysteries,
looking for the same elusive truth
that puzzled even Pilate, who dared to
question its meaning, ironically while
gazing on the answer, the very face of Truth,
the omniscient Christ.

Fifty years ago today, when Richard Nixon was President, gas was going for $0.31 a gallon and a pack of Marlboros was just thirty-five cents, I made the best decision of my life and got married. My wife and I exchanged vows at the altar at St. Richard’s, where the amazing young woman who 13 months before said “I will” actually said “I do.” That rainy Saturday morning standing in front of my cousin who officiated the Nuptial Mass, the Catholic Church and the State of Nebraska officially pronounced us as husband and wife. We turned around to face the romance and reality of our new world, two people joined into one, and took our first steps together into the future, hand in hand, one day at a time.

It has been a journey of triumphs and tragedies, just because life is that way. Our experiences have run the range of just about every card in the Hallmark store, from births to deaths and every occasion in between. Many of the family members and friends who were with us that morning have gone on ahead of us, while the decades that followed gradually added new names and faces to the family tree – three children and nine grandchildren – two generations I sincerely hope will reap a rich legacy of spiritual fruit.

When the honeymoon ends, sooner or later you come to realize that the marriage certificate is just an official piece of paper. The heart and soul of the union, however, is basically one word: selflessness. My wife is an expert at it. She more than any preacher or theology book in my entire Christian experience has shown me on a consistent basis the character qualities of God: patience, kindness, longsuffering, generosity, mercy and that uniquely divine expression of unconditional love, both on the mountaintops and in the trenches. I’ve told her that. She is too humble to see it, but I am blessed to enjoy her silent sacrificial mindset every day. It goes way beyond the thousands of meals cooked and tons of laundry. It transcends her mere mundane role as wife and mother and grandmother into actually practicing what Jesus told His disciples: you’ve seen Me serve, now you do likewise. (John Chapter 13)

I’m fully aware that I have been the beneficiary of the better half of our relationship, often giving her a cross of iron to bear while she blessed me with a lavish heart of gold. Now as the calendar pages continue to fly by, as we do our best to age gracefully I can’t imagine one day without her. I couldn’t be happier to see her gentle, smiling face every morning and to feel her presence next to me at night. I can’t help but wonder why she still cares for tired, old, difficult me.

With our mutual love of literature in mind, let me defer to a quote from Shakespeare to affirm my sentiments: “To me, fair friend, you never can be old, For as you were when first your eye I ey’d, Such seems your beauty still.” You are my best friend, the love of my life, and you’ll always be my beautiful bride. You’re the best, Judith Ann, and I love you very much so. Happy Anniversary!

It seems that last week the prominent national news was more about NFL players protesting than about North Korea, hurricane recovery efforts, or even about the deadly church shooting in Antioch, Tennessee, where one person was killed and seven others injured, all white victims, by a 25-year-old Sudanese immigrant.

No, the headlines were all about football players “taking a knee” during the national anthem – imitating a passive, symbolic gesture started by the then 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who first expressed the defiant pregame posture last year in a protest, he claimed, against shootings of black men by white police officers.

This issue is simple and terribly complex at the same time. Diverse political views and constitutional interpretations usually are. Dr. Martin Luther King’s protests against obvious civil rights injustices in the 1960s were neither silent nor symbolic. During that same time frame of social upheaval, the establishment told Vietnam War protestors to “Love it (the country), or leave it,” a rather stern dictate to a generation sincerely crying out for “peace, love and understanding.” Both controversies were violent and deeply polarizing for the country, each side wrapping themselves up in Old Glory. So I’m supposed to think that this juvenile, misdirected kneed-bending by supposedly social-conscious millionaires has any real weight to it? Have these pseudo-pundits ever heard of Gandhi? Nelson Mandela? Tiananmen Square, 1989?

The Star Spangled Banner, so much more than just a song, commemorates the bravery shown by outnumbered and outgunned American soldiers when they nevertheless defeated the British at the Battle of Fort McHenry in 1814. It celebrates, for all of us, “the land of the free, and the home of the brave.” The flag is not just a piece of cloth. It’s a symbol for what America at its very best has to offer: equality, justice, boundless opportunity, and freedom of expression. Countless brave men and women have suffered, sacrificed and died for what it represents, to make sure the stars and stripes continue to unfurl across our nation every morning. Do those who choose to do so have the right to show disdain and discontent for social and political issues? Yes. Should they show blatant public disrespect for a symbol representing the country that allows them the liberty to do so? I say No. Some things like baseball, motherhood and apple pie should be off limits because of the idyllic goodness they represent. Can any one of those entities be flawed and corrupted? Yes. I’ve had a mediocre apple pie. Do some major leaguers abuse drugs? You know the answer. And yet we continue slicing up the Dutch Apple and scramble to fill the best seats behind home plate. Our government and its representatives can be flawed, too. Stop whining. Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water. Get involved and do something about it.

I find it interesting that the same crowd that applauds the kneelers drawing attention to themselves and their “cause” before kickoff are the same bunch of public haters and arrogant sports analysts who not only criticized but actually ridiculed Tim Tebow for being vocal about the role of his Christian faith in his career and for taking a prayerful knee on the field. Tebow’s practice of humility and thankfulness to God reminds me of a verse from Philippians 2:10-11 that says “at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.” This passage along with volumes of verses from both the Old and New Testaments tell us Who is the ultimate authority and that either now by choice in this life or by compulsion when it’s too late in the next, all will concede to His sovereignty. This silly NFL genuflecting will eventually fade away to another hot news topic, but the reality of deciding who shall be exalted as Lord in my personal life – me and my selfish nature or Christ my Savior – must be faced . . . either now or later. Have you made your decision?

What good is a dull pencil anyway? It’s like a dull mind. Half there, and half not. But I really must have a sharp point. And I can’t do the sharpening the old fashioned way, whittling away at it with a pocketknife. I’d probably cut my thumb open. Then what? No writing at all? Those $1.99 plastic grammar school mini-sharpeners from Walgreen’s that can’t even hone a broken crayon won’t work either. No, I need a precision point, one crafted by the fancy electric pencil sharpener at the office. I even like the aroma of wood being chewed away as the lead point is perfectly polished down to a pin prick. Sometimes I just admire it for a moment, my freshly sharpened pencil, now ready for action on the page. Ironically, the point usually breaks off with its first impression onto paper.

It doesn’t bother me at all to underline phrases and sentences in a book, even in my Bible. Some witty or creative expression that may need my attention quickly at a later date. Recently, I have identified poems I especially favor in a collection of Good Poems, American Places, selected by A Prairie Home Companion’s Garrison Keillor, with a crude “x” next to the title. I must confess, however, that most of the marks have been rendered with –– yes, a rather dull pencil. It was the only one I could find, hiding all alone there among the rubber bands and paper clips and ballpoint pens that must’ve multiplied over time in the darkness of that kitchen junk drawer. Lesson learned. Apparently sometimes it’s okay to work with a dull pencil, or even a dull mind. Just get the job done.

On this holiday which could be preoccupied with football, turkey ‘n dressing and pumpkin pie, can we pause before overindulging to remember the sacrifices of so many who planted and cultivated the America we enjoy today? A salute of gratitude and solemn respect is owed to the common man patriots risking all to frame our uncommon government. To the pioneers who stretched the boundaries of an already bountiful nation even more westerly. To both slave and free man, wounded and struck down in a shameful war over opposing social and economic views of a fellow human being’s civil rights. Yes and even to the captains of industry and the barons of business reveling in profits and growth that only a capitalistic society can yield. To the dauntless inventor, the devoted teacher, the curious explorer –– all dedicated to making the road better for all of us more timid souls on our journey into an uncertain future. To every brave man and woman who gave the last full measure of courage from Yorktown to Kabul, and on all the blood stained seas and soil in between. But mostly, thanksgiving is due to the gracious God in Whom we trust, even as that reverent and crucial sentiment fades away into unpopularity each day. It’s time to repent from the apathy of ingratitude and to arise from the sleep of self-centered comfort before what we hold dear is snatched away and we find this nation too soon added to the list of empires crumbling into the annals of archaeology.