January 21, 1975: Jonathan James Dunham

Jon and Whothey in Venezuela, circa 2008

Today is the 37th birthday of my brother Jon. As far as I know, he will spend the day somewhere in Brazil with his beloved sidekick, Whothey the donkey, and maybe a family that has invited him in for beans and tortillas. Or he might be walking in a ditch somewhere, too. Who knows. I hope to catch up with him via Skype later as we have not talked since Christmas. Sometimes he is in a place where he cannot get on a computer, so we will see.

Like all brothers, Jon and I have had our love/hate moments. He is pretty stubborn and I am probably the best guy he knows so I have no idea what the problem has been. But the truth is I know he loves me and there are few people I love or look up to more.

One of the best things about Jon is that I think he has a very good sense of who he is. He has a good understanding of his identity, which I think is rare. People with a strong sense of self are as interesting as they are unique. I think this is because when we know ourselves a genuine confidence emerges that most people just do not have.

Sure there are plenty of people who exude confidence, but more often than not it is a confidence that is founded on insecurity, of not knowing who they are. The result of that is arrogance. It has been my experience that the root of arrogance is not confidence, but rather the opposite, a severe unsureness about who they are.

Anyone who has been around Jon understand that he is exactly the opposite of arrogant, but he is confident nonetheless. I think that kind of assurance liberates him to care about people but at the same time to be free from the opinion of others. He is unaffected in the best possible sense of the word. And those are the most fascinating and interesting kinds of people in my opinion. They are not bound by trying to impress anyone; they are free to explore and they lead us to some very interesting places.

Growing up, Jon had a merry little band of followers, who understood his unaffectedness, and were willing to tag along and see where it all would lead.

Some of my favorite stories were of the time they made the front page of the local paper, The Daily Boomerang, for setting off a rather large smoke bomb late one night in the bar district of our small Wyoming town. Cowboys running around like lunatics everywhere. A crime for which they were never charged, but take full credit.

Jon liked romantic movies, especially after a large bean dinner. He and my younger brother Joe would often attend a new release with seven or eight other high school friends and add, at the most romantic and amorous moments, their own musical score. Beans are the musical fruit after all.

My mother was not so much under his spell as others.

One morning after Joe spent the night in jail, having been arrested for throwing water balloons at cars, mom confronted Jon,

“I wish they’d throw you in jail!”

Jon acted more than a little confused. He claims to this day he was in the “library” studying. We have our suspicions.

All that to say, Jon has a way of endearing himself to those who know him. He is genuine, articulate, caring and humble. He knows who he is and we all want to be a little more like that.

A few years ago the New York Times did a feature on him and his travels. I think the writer did an excellent job at the end of the article of capturing who Jon is and how people feel about him, when he caught up with Jon in Venezuela:

“Over a breakfast here of Pepsi and arepas, the corn-based bread that is a staple of the Venezuelan diet, Mr. Dunham quietly ate under the beaming look of the cook, Ada Boza, 47, a housewife in Colinas de San Lorenzo who has prepared food for Mr. Dunham while he has stayed here. She lives in a shack across from where he is staying.

“Jonathan came into our lives a few days ago, and has shared with us his good spirit,” said Ms. Boza as she doted on him and other visitors. “We will miss him immensely when he moves on.”

I think anyone who has met Jon misses him. I know I do.

____________________

An excerpt from the New York Times. Also you can follow Jon’s progress through South America at his blog: Whothey Y Yo

“A Global Journey, Relying on Kindness and a Donkey”

JONATHAN DUNHAM is walking the earth. Assisting him in this endeavor is his donkey, named Judas. They have stopped to rest for a few days in Colinas de San Lorenzo, a slum in this dusty town on the cattle-raising plains of northwestern Venezuela.

On a recent Sunday morning, reggaetón blared from a house near the abandoned shack where Mr. Dunham has been sleeping on the floor. Barefoot children wandered up to his hovel, petting Judas. They giggled and stared at Mr. Dunham, 33, whose disheveled look evokes that of a graduate student for whom surfing, or maybe foosball, is high art.

“Are you an athlete?” one of the children asked him. “Or a missionary?”

“No,” Mr. Dunham replied. “I’m just a guy.”

In fact, Mr. Dunham is just a guy searching for the meaning of life.

His quest began more than two years ago in Portland, Ore., where he was working as a substitute teacher in the public schools. One day, he decided to start walking south, down through the western United States. From Texas he crossed the border into the northern Mexican state of Tamaulipas, where he stopped for a while. He said he hoped to walk for two more years across the rest of South America until reaching Patagonia.

In an interview here, Mr. Dunham retraced his tracks. He said a family in Tamaulipas allowed him to care for some of their dairy cows while he stayed with them for several months. It was there that he honed his Spanish and his milking technique. When he left, they gave him a donkey to help carry his load: a few books, a bit of food, some secondhand clothes.

Mr. Dunham named the donkey Whothey (the origins of the name are obscure), which in Spanish is roughly pronounced Judas. Now 4 years old, Judas is something of a minor celebrity in parts of Latin America. The donkey and Mr. Dunham arouse curiosity wherever they go.

“Judas is not just any donkey,” El Heraldo, a newspaper in Barranquilla, Colombia, reported last October, when public health officials barred him from entering the country because of sanitary rules governing the import of donkeys. “He was born and grew up in a beautiful and well-managed hacienda.

“Jon is a well-mannered and shy biochemist,” the newspaper continued in its description of Mr. Dunham, who did in fact earn his college degree, from Denison University, in biochemistry. “He was unsatisfied with living in the materialist realm, with the eternal anguish of getting the dollars for the gluttony of consumer society: laptop, new car, Chanel No. 5, cellphone, the latest release by Madonna or Shakira.”

Well, sort of.

The precise motivation for Mr. Dunham’s travels is not entirely clear, even to him; perhaps it never will be, though at a minimum it is a journey of self-discovery and endurance. In the meantime, newspapers along his route have reported that he was walking for world peace or to set a world record or to spread the word of God.

“THEY always find something to say,” Mr. Dunham said of the reporters who beat a path to meet him and Judas.

Read the full story at: New York Times

Wives and Husbands

The Dunham Crew, circa 1978

I was fortunate enough to grow up in a home where I had no doubt that my mother and father loved each other. Unfortunately, I know this is not the case with everyone. I know that many people grew up in homes that were plagued with fighting and anger and violence. Moms and dads who said and did horrible things to each other and to their kids. Husbands and wives who gave up on each other because they couldn’t figure out how to get along, or someone who was too selfish to try. I hope that wasn’t you, but statistics tell us that more than likely your parents are no longer together. And I am sorry for that. I truly am.

My parents will have been married for 45 years this past December. That is a really long time to be with someone. I have lived with myself for 42 years and I am pretty much sick of it.

I think they would be the first to tell you that they didn’t do everything right. For starters they got engaged after only knowing each other for about 6 months. They were driving across Canada and my dad, lying down in the back seat of his 1966 Pontiac Gran Prix woke up in a stupor and asked my mom if she would marry him. She said “No,” but a few months later agreed (via the US Mail) to tie the knot.

My mother has often said that she had no idea what she was getting into, but if she had…she trails off a little at that point. After a little reflection she ends with, “It is not how I would recommend getting together with someone. We hardly knew each other.”

But somehow they have made it work.

They were stubborn for one. My mother was a farm girl from near Kalamazoo, Michigan. My father a gritty, under-sized kid born without a left pectoral muscle (which he reminds us of incessantly to make sure his sons remember how much he has had to overcome) from the small town of Clinton, Michigan. He recently wrote in his memoir that he once killed a chicken when he was about 5 or 6, convinced he could get it to lay eggs by hitting it on the head with a hammer.

So they are tough people, if not all that bright, and I think that helps in marriage. You just kind of power through the rough spots until it gets better.

But my parents were very tender with each other too. I can remember coming into the house on occasion (probably I was in high school which makes it even worse) and they would be slow dancing in the kitchen, maybe smooching a little. Ugh, disgusting. “Get a room you two!” I would shout and run to my room slamming the door wondering what I did to deserve such punishment.

It was gross, but deep down you knew it was pretty cool that your parents were in love.

They had their fights too, like any couple, but I do not really remember the details. I can remember once or twice the conversation getting a little loud and heated behind a closed door. And I recall seeing my mom crying a time or two. It was rare, but it happened.

The thing I noticed is that they always seemed to resolve things, one way or another, and that gave me a lot of confidence in them, in our family, that we would be alright.

When my dad retired he took up a strange hobby. He was a professor for 30 years or so and loved visiting various college campuse. Not long after leaving the University of Wyoming he decided he would buy a new car and he and my mother would visit every college in the United States. Literally. That is something like 3000 schools I think, and hundreds of thousands of miles of driving.

I am not sure what mom thought of this idea, but she went along and for several months I think things went pretty well and they had a good time.

Needless to say they spent a lot of time in the car and you can only talk so much, so my mother decided she needed something to help her pass the time. So she bought a little battery-operated keyboard that could rest on her lap and on which she could pound out her favorite hymns mile after long and lonely mile.

I am not sure when the switch flipped for my dad, but eventually that little keyboard got under his skin. At the next rest stop he got her a “present,” a nice set of headphones she could plug into her keyboard. He claims he was just looking out for her, wanting her to enjoy the rich tones of her Casio. Uh huh.

I am not sure that there is a single secret for wives and husbands to make a marriage work, but Peter hits on a couple things that makes a lot of sense, character traits that I saw in my mother and father. And as I said, they’ve been together almost five decades.

The Unfading Beauty (3:1-6)
Peter writes that woman is beautiful not because of how she looks or does her hair or the clothes she wears, but because of her gentle and quiet spirit. He writes that women should be submissive to their husbands, to defer to their leadership, to trust them even if they are dummies.

He gives the example of Sarah who went along with Abraham’s lame brain plan to tell everyone she was his sister. God had to step in twice to protect her from a couple of very powerful men they encountered.

It does wonders for a man’s confidence to know that his woman will stand by him, support him, believe in him and even let him make mistakes when she knows better. Men will go to battle for a girl who respects him, maybe doesn’t always agree with him, but shows respect nonetheless.

When I think of my mom, I think this is how Sarah must have been. My mother has strong opinions and she shares them, but she respects my dad, lets him lead. She has maybe the most quiet and gentle spirit of any woman I have ever known, and she has wielded that quiet spirit like a sledgehammer (metaphorically speaking) when it comes to dealing with my dad; very effective. Lord knows he has made mistakes and probably made moves she disagreed with, but she has stood by him through them all. And that’s impressive and beautiful.

Consider as You Live (3:7)
Peter’s advice to the husbands is a little more succinct:

“Husbands, in the same be considerate as you live with your wives, and treat them with respect as the weaker partner and and as heirs with you of the gracious gift of life, so that nothing will hinder your prayers.” (3:7)

First of all I am not theologian, but I think he use of the word “weaker” is a really unfortunate translation of the word “poieo. This word is translated literally dozens of ways, but the overriding sense is “to produce, or bear.” What I think Peter is getting at here is that men, you need to consider the fact this person because she is part of you, just like Eve was “produced” or borne from Adam’s very side, so you need to consider this person as a part of you.

I think it drives women crazy when they think they are not being heard or listened to. I am not expert on feminine psychology, but I have noticed that women like to talk and process things verbally. They have an innate need to share things like feeling and emotions and opinions and dhat do you think about my haircut and did I tell you the Smith got a new dog and I am not sure that is a good idea with the little baby, etc, etc.

Men are not really wired this way. We usually work things out in our head and then act. It is the reason things get done in the world and simultaneously the reason the world is such a mess.

Peter says the husband is to consider her. Listen to her, consider what she has to say. She is an heir with you, she is part of you. Listen to her. I think this is why he throws in that part about your prayers not being hindered. You don’t listen to your wife, then why would God listen you?

There is no doubt my father was the primary decision maker in our family, but it is equally clear that mom was his chief counsel. I know that they would spend many hours discussing and considering together what to do and how to lead our family. I know that he considered her, listened to her and valued what she had to say. And I am sure that played no small role in their success as husband and wife.

1 Peter 3:1-7

Living with Rulers and Masters

Arbys. Not the one where I worked for one day.

Most of us have had a least some experience with having someone else be in charge of us: a parent, a boss, a coach, a teacher, perhaps an older sibling. And I am sure we have all good bosses and bad bosses, good coaches and bad coaches. And even if we had generally good parents, they weren’t perfect and so you had to endure some truly unbelievable parenting from time to time. (I could tell some stories and probably will.)

Some of the best authorities in my life (aside from Mom and Dad, they really were great were guys like Coach Deti. He was a short gnome of a man. He was the football coach at our high school for about 40 years. His father had been the coach for about 40 years before him. Our stadium is called Deti Stadium. He was P.E. teacher by day and would roam the halls in sweats, muttering something about the single wing offense or something. He always had a stopwatch around his neck; his weird idea of a man necklace, I guess. Maybe he thought he might run into a new kid in the hall and want to check his 40 yard dash time.

He was unorthodox to be sure.

Coach Deti was my Driver’s Ed teacher one summer and e very day we’d go out to practice driving. The routine was always the same:

“Ok Dunham, let’s practice driving to the dry cleaner. I have some stuff to pick up for the wife.”

And then, “Ok Dunham, let’s practice driving to the bank,” or “let’s practice driving to the grocery store,” and so on until the lesson was over and all of his errands had been run. I heard from some other kids Coach had taken a job delivering phones books in the summer, so they had a lot of practice driving “to the next house.” On the last day we got to practice driving to the Daylight Donuts, where he met up with some of his old cronies to talk about the good ol’ days of Laramie High football. He bought me a bear claw.

We all thought coach was a little odd, but we all loved him and would have done anything for him. Mostly because we knew that he really cared about us.

At the end of my sophomore year I was considering not going out for football. I had broken my arm that fall and didn’t get to play much. To be honest, I didn’t imagine I would get much of a shot to play the following year so I figured I would just not go out and no one would notice.

One day as I was walking to class I saw Coach Deti coming down the hall opposite me. I just looked straight ahead not wanting to make eye contact, but he spied me. “Dunham get over here.”

“Ok, coach.”

“Now you get on out there for football next year.”

“Ok, coach.”

And that was it, I went out for the team. He was a good coach because he cared enough to find me and tell me (in his own weird, but charming way) that I was wanted and needed. Good coaches know when to do that. And good coaches are pretty easy to play for.

I have had other men who have spoken into my life over the years. My dad’s good friend, Norm Tyser, was my boss at the sawmill. He told me I was slower than a snake’s butt in December and I better pick up the pace. That hurt a little, but I appreciate now those words of instruction and encouragement. I use that phrase with some regularity now.

Gary Dodds was my boss at the Dodds’ Bootery, a family shoe store in my hometown. I worked there for a year after high school before our family moved to Europe for my dad’s sabbatical. Towards the end of my tenure there, he noticed I was getting a little lax with my customer service and hustle. I remember him pulling me into his office in the back.

“Now I know you’re getting ready to leave and to go on your trip,” he told me, “but you have a month left.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And I know you are ready to move, but you have to finish up well. It’s only a month.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You can do anything for a month. You can eat a poop sandwich for a month.”

I had never heard that expression before, but I got his meaning. And I appreciate the things I learned from Mr. Dodds in those months at the shoe store.

Good bosses are easy to work for, but we don’t all get good bosses all the time. By far my worst employment experience was the one day I worked at Arby’s. My dad had been hassling me about getting a job and to quit laying around on his couch all day eating Cheeto’s or I’d have to start paying rent. So Arby’s was the quickest thing I could find.

I was scheduled to start on Memorial Day for breakfast. I know, you knew Arby’s had breakfast? Not many people thankfully because they might have gotten the weirdest sandwich ever if they had come on my first day. I show up for work expecting to go through some sort of training and roast beef certification, but it was just me and the boss. He took one look at me and started digging in a old box in the corner.

“Here, put this on.”

It was a crumpled up Arby’s polo. I held it up and I am pretty sure it was a women’s extra small.

“Do you have any other sizes?”

“Nope, that’s it. Put it on.” It was like a half shirt. Good thing this was the 80s.

Ok boss what’s next? LIke I said, I was expecting training, certification. Let’s just ease into this whole fast food business.

“You’re on grill. We’re cooking breakfast. I’ll be on the register.” Wait a second!

“How am I supposed to know what to cook?”

“Pictures of the food are on the wall. Eggs are in little fridge in the corner.”

And with that he was off. I was left standing in a puddle of roast beef grease, holding a spatula and my shattered dreams of ever working fast food for more than one day.

I had no idea what I was doing, but I did my best. Fortunately only two customers came in that morning, the last two breakfast customers in the history of the Arby’s franchise.

Peter tells that one of the things we are going to have to do, one of the things that God expects from us is that we would be submissive to every authority, every leader that we have in our lives: a boss, a coach, a parent, whatever. In our culture that is a pretty offensive and strange expectation. We are taught to question authority, to stand up for our rights, to assert ourselves and our own will. God just sees things working a little differently.

Actually Peter points out that if we live submissive, respectful lives there are some real good reasons to do the right thing, to submit to authorities even when that authority may be unjust or incompetent:

The Ignorant Talk of Foolish Men (2:13-17)
Nothing is as odd or quiets the criticism of others as quickly or thoroughly as one who submits, does good and shows proper respect. It is really difficult to criticize someone who is respectful and does their job well regardless of the leadership situation. Eventually you just run out of bad things to say about that person. Peter puts it this way “For it is God’s will that by doing good you should silence the talk of foolish men.” (2:15)

Suffer For Doing Good (2:18-22)
It is commendable, remarkable really, to both God and people, to follow the example of Christ and to suffer for doing good and to endure it. We may not understand it, but when someone suffers for doing the right thing, we respect that. “How is it to your credit if you receive a beating for doing wrong and endure it? But if you suffer for doing good and you endure it, this is commendable before God.” (2:20)

Entrusting Ourselves (2:22-25)
Christ was able to endure insults, humiliation and shame without retaliation by entrusting himself to God, the one who judges righteously.

I have thought about this one a lot over the years. I think it is about the hardest thing on the planet to not retaliate when some one wrongs you; to lash out, to throw a punch when attacked. Peter writes, “When they hurled insults at (Jesus), he did not retaliate; when he suffered, he made no threats. Instead, he entrusted himself to him who judges justly.” (2:23)

There is something very freeing, I think, coming to the conclusion that we do not have to stand up for ourselves, we do not have to defend ourselves when someone comes after us. We can trust God to defend us. This is totally counter-intuitive, I know. Sounds a bit sissy-ish, especially given our American ethic of power, something I think we share with the Roman Empire that dominated the world at the time of Jesus. But I think it works. And I think it is true.

God will defend us if we will stop our ridiculous attempts ate defending ourselves.

1 Peter 2:13-25

Dec 30, 1966: Paul and Sandy Dunham

Paul and Sandy Dunham, December 30, 1966

On this day, 45 years ago my mother and father tied the knot. This is remarkable on several levels, not the least of which 45 years is a really long time. I think it takes a special breed of person to remain so committed after so many years. I think more than anything it takes stubborn people to be married for 45 years, which both of my parents are.

My dad probably gets the bad rap of being the only stubborn one of the two (I think visiting thousands of college campuses over the last 10 years or so qualifies as stubborn), but do not be too quick to discount my sweet 107 pound mother as not having a firm disposition of her own. For about 5 years she ignored the groanings and complaints of her sons and refused to order a hamburger without asking the cashier to “hold the bun.” Who does that? A stubborn person that’s who.

Few people probably know the story of their meeting. My parents met in May, I believe, of 1966 at a Campus Crusade for Christ meeting at Michigan State University. In the words of my father, “Most of us sat on the floor during the meeting and that night I found myself in the front row opposite a very pretty girl in a blue dress with a full skirt gathered at the waist. She had short blond hair that was sort of ‘puffy.” She had a great smile and I made eye contact with her a couple of times…. After the meeting I was up and across the room to introduce myself. I really don’t remember much about our conversation, but I did manage to get her phone number. She recalls I kept calling her Sally,” the name of an old girlfriend.

On their first date a few nights later, my mother fell asleep in the movie.

It is a little miraculous they got married at all to be honest.

Later that summer they ended up as counselors at a Salvation Army summer camp in upstate New York. On the way home, a whole summer after first meeting my genius father decided it would be a good time to pop the question.

“(On the way home to Michigan) we drove the northern route so we could go to Niagara Falls and then through Canada on our way to Detroit. Sandy gave me a break and drove part of the way across Canada so I could get some rest. As I lay down in the back I asked her if she would marry me to which she responded, “No.” Some times she thinks she should have stayed with her first instinct.” No kidding.

But he stayed with it. He wrote her letters all that fall and I guess eventually wore her down. Sometime before Thanksgiving that year, she wrote him and said she would marry him.

My parents are far from perfect and they have had their bumps in the road, but they have given me and my brothers a very loving home and have always been committed to each other. They have never given up. I think they would tell you that is the key to a long, happy marriage. Don’t ever give up.

I love you Mom and Dad.

Into a Spiritual House

Our home on Barrett Street.

My dad had a saying he would use a lot when the four of us boys were growing up. More of a declaration than a saying I suppose. It would go something like this. Someone would do or propose something that didn’t quite sit right with him. Suddenly he would retort, “Not in my house!” Or the derivative, “As long as I am paying the mortgage, then you will do it how I say we do…and do it!” The last little part always coming after some incoherent mumblings under the breath about how things were different in his day and kids these days, that kind of thing.

I think it is safe to say we had a different way of doing things.

Anytime a friend came over to spend the night on a Saturday, they had to go to church with us the next morning, which explains why I didn’t have any friends.

For our annual Thanksgiving Day football we used to shovel our front lawn, piling feet of snow on the sidewalks.

When we went on trips we never got a enough beds at the hotel for everyone to sleep on. “We’re not here to sleep,” my father would say. This practice lead to some pretty awkward moments looking back including one time I brought a girlfriend to my cousins wedding; she met my parents for the first time and ended up having to sleep with my mother in a double bed. It was either that or the floor next to the bathroom. We had about eight of us in the room for two nights.

To be honest I thought this was all perfectly normal, until I went to college and got to talk to people from the outside whose families believe it to be a basic human right for everyone to get to sleep on a mattress on vacation. I was shocked to find out we were the only family on the planet to do that. I felt a little like I had just escaped from the Dunham Family Compound or something.

But my dad, maybe my mom, but I know that my father did not really care what other people thought. He was doing things the way he saw best. I think it is one of his greatest strengths. He was building his house, his boys, according to a different set of values, a different way of looking at the world.

My parents shopped at garage sales because they wanted to be able to take their boys to see the world. We never had a new car or new furniture all the time I was growing up. I am not sure my mother ever bought a new item of clothing. She thought Goodwill was just fine for her. To be honest this irritated my dad who always tried to buy her fancy clothes. She would just respond, “Honestly, Paul!”

In spite of our eccentricities (and I think every family has them) our house was a great place to be. There was a lot of love there; I know this because I felt it, but I also saw how our friends wanted to be there. I don’t remember too many meals when we didn’t have an extra guest or two. I am proud of how my parents built our house.

I think it is interesting that Peter uses the metaphor of a house to describe what God is doing with his people. A house is where a family lives, where meals are shared, people laugh and cry together. A house is a roof under which values are learned and passed down, young lives are built into something, hopefully good, sometimes into something less than that.

Peter writes that God is building us into a spiritual house, a living house, put together in a different way, but one that is acceptable to Him. He continues that Jesus Christ is the foundation, the chief cornerstone for this house. LIke my father, in this house, we do it his way. And I think for Peter this means just one thing, we suffer, we serve, we lay down our lives for others. In this house, we are all about “offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.”

Peter mentions three distinctives that characterize this spiritual house of God:

Rejected and Chosen (2:4-8)
Jesus was rejected by most people, but chosen by God. I often wonder why the religious people in those days were so dense. Jesus was awesome: he was healing people, told great stories, could do all kinds of amazing miracles with fish and loaves and wind and waves. What’s not to like?

The thing is that Jesus kept talking about something that drove most people nuts. He kept talking about love and sacrifice and serving. The Jews lived under the thumb of the Roman empire. Everyone believed in an ethic of power and domination. That’s just how things were done. You dominate those against you. You certainly don’t love them and serve them, or die for them! They stumbled over that. And ultimately had to do what had always been God’s chosen plan. He let them kill him, because he loved them.

Not a People (2:9-10)
There are privileges to being part of a family, to belonging to a house, so to speak. You have a place to lay your head at night, a meal, clothing, you get to go on vacation sometimes. But it also means you have things you have to do. In our house it was to pull dandelions, pick up dog poop and shovel snow. I am sure there were others but those were the big three.

Peter reminds us that at one time, we did not have a house a family, but that God made us into his people, people that belong to him. And as such we have certain privileges and responsibilities. God has chosen us to be his people, a new priesthood, to live and declare out his values, his way of being in the world; out of darkness and into light. Priests are  a special link, mediators and representatives between God and humanity; that is part of what it means to be in the house of God.

Live Such Good Lives (2:11-12)
I know, like every kid, that my parents sometimes embarrassed me. Thats is kind of part of the gig. In the case of my mom and dad it was usually s for trivial things like wearing a teal green track suit that made him look like some kind of giant Easter egg or my mother ordering hamburgers at McDonald’s and asking for them to hold the bun. The BUN! Who does that?

Rarely have I stopped to consider if I have embarrassed them. I don’t know that my parents were all that concerned with our family reputation, but I know that I did some pretty stupid things growing up (and as an adult). I have probably also done some things that have reflected well on them. The point being, that whether I like it or not, what I do has an impact on the Dunham name, good, bad or indifferent.

The same is true of our spiritual family, our spiritual house and Peter’s encouragement to us is to remember that we should “abstain from sinful lusts” and live differently, “that they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.” (2:12)

[1 Peter 2:4-12]

The Separated Life

Readying the Van for another adventure, circa 1990

I think I am like most people in that I spend more energy and emotion than I should trying not to be the weirdo. Oh sure, I like to think that I am unique and special and all that, but deep down the reality is I don’t want to be the oddball, the dummy wearing Bugle Boy jeans when everyone else is wearing Levi’s. I am pretty sure this actually happened in the 8th grade at one point.

There is something kind of innate within us that wants to be part of the herd, not get out there too far on our own. We like to be around what is familiar, what is like us. We feel safe there, probably like a zebra–if he wanders to far from the herd those crazy stripes really stick out like some weird Girl Scout cookie. Stay in the herd and your safe.

Cain was the first traveler. The first tourist, sort of. He was told by God to leave his place, where he had grown up [and murdered his brother by the way] and go wander the land. He really didn’t like that idea; too vulnerable, too out there, even though God said he would protect him. So he said thanks anyway and headed for the city, figured he would settle down, get married, have some kids, build a wall, live the life of the masses.

In no other place I know of do you feel more different and disconnected from what’s going on around you than when you are a tourist in another country. Being a traveler enunciates differences: an understanding you have a different way of seeing the world. Want to feel strange? Strap on a fanny pack, some long socks and sandals and head overseas.

Perhaps the most acute experience I have had with this was a time my brother and I were driving through some German town, a city really, in an old 1973 Volkswagen bus our family had shipped over from the States. If you know my family and our history with the automobile you will not be surprised to learn that this particular vehicle could only be started by pushing it manually [down a hill if you are lucky and/or blessed with foresight] until you reached terminal velocity [approximately] at which time the clutch would be released, and in turn would, after a series of violent mechanical epileptic convulsions [hopefully] start the engine.

The trick with driving this kind of vehicle is to not stall, ever. Because if you do, someone is going to have to get out and push, and they will no doubt be cussing you under their breath the whole time.

And I don’t know how many of you have been to Germany, but Germany is where they make a lot of cars, a lot of nice cars. Our Volkswagen in fact was a German car, but that was a different era and if you think driving a VW van in Germany would help us to blend in, well you would be wrong. Very wrong. No, Germans drive new cars, expensive cars: Mercedes-Benz, Audi, BMW. They drove fast, with precision and I’m just guessing here, I don’t think any of them had to drift start to get to work in the morning.

Anyway, my brother and I are in one of these German towns, Audis flying past like we are a couple of old ladies on our way to bingo. Suddenly we hit a red light, which normally we would run without conscience, but we had to stop because there was a car in front of us. When you have to push to start your car you don’t stop for much. So red lights, especially in crowded cities were viewd mostly as a “good idea,” but not always as “necessary.” In any case, any time you had to stop always created a a bit of  tension with our starter situation the way it was. But we were cool. Just a Volkswagen at a red light; nothing strange or out of the ordinary to see here.

Now I am not totally sure who was driving at this point. The details are a bit hazy so many years later. And that part is not really all that germane to the story. Suffice it to say that once the green light came up the restart did not go so well. A little light on the gas, a little quick on the clutch. A violent hiccup and cloud of smoke and we were dead in the water. Stalled.

The rest is really a blur. Traffic begins to move, Germans speaking in tongues cursing the idiots holding up progress up ahead. Cars start whizzing past us. The tension begins to mount.

Fortunately this wasn’t the first time this had happened. And so one of us (pretty sure it was me) reacting with catlike reflexes, threw open the side door of the van like a SWAT team, and with sudden, Herculean effort (like when a father is able to lift an airplane off his trapped daughter’s leg) the car begin to roll. It moved slowly at first, confused/angry/annoyed Germans looking at us out their windows as they sped by, slowly gnawing their morning strudel. We picked up speed, my massive muscles and sinews straining against what had to be the several tons of rusted metal and bolts and baling wire and wood paneling we called a car.

Finally we reached adequate speed, the clutch popped, the motor turned and started. Whoever was pushing (I forget) jumped in, collapsed on the floor pulling in deep breathes of precious oxygen. Off we sped to our next adventure at approximately 25 miles per hour. The humiliation, soon enough, would be far behind.

It is never fun being the weirdo, being different. And yet there is something really cool about it too. That is one of my favorite stories and one of my best memories with my brother. I laugh every time I think of it. In retrospect, I am glad we had that old bus. In retrospect.

Peter reminds us that in our calling as strangers, tourists and travelers in this life, we are different, we are separated from those around us. Like Cain we are simply travelers here, temporary inhabitants and as such that kind of puts us on the outside of things. Peter uses the word “holy,” which in spite of whatever theological baggage that word may carry for you simply means “set apart.” It means that we are to see ourselves, understand and experience the world from a position of separateness. And at times that feels like driving a 1973 VW bus when everyone else is in a Mercedes Benz.

I am not going to go into a detailed discussion here of all of Peter’s thoughts on holiness, but I wanted to make a few observations related to being different, to being set apart:

Being Holy (1:13-16)
I think when Peter encourages these people to be holy, what he is really asking them to remember is that they are different, they are strangers and as such there should be a certain distance between them, how they see the world and how they act in the world. “Do not conform to the evil desires you had” literally means do not connect with them, remain separate, unaffected.

Not that being cool is the goal, but some of the most intriguing people I know are those who seem totally unaffected by the opinions and trends of the crowd around them. They are kind, nice, polite, sociable, but totally unaffected by what others think. And they are just going to do what they think is right. To me, that is holiness and I like it.

From the Empty Way of Life (1:17-21)
It would be a mistake I think in Peter’s mind for us to think that our life as travelers, as strangers in the world, is based on some corruptible financial economic system: silver and gold. To try to buy or earn holiness with someone fro within the same system from which we are trying to extract ourselves would be like trying to pull ourselves out of quicksand with a rope attached to the quicksand. Kind of futile.

This is the key point of the Gospel: to separate us, to make us holy, God had to be Himself separate. “You were redeemed…with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect.” (1:18-19)

Now that You Have Tasted (1:22-2:3)
I am honestly dumbfounded at times at kids. Put something new to eat in front of them and they will tell you, without even tasting it that they don’t like it. And reasoning does not work. “How do you know you don’t like it, you haven’t even tasted it?” “I don’t like it.” End of discussion.

I think Peter’s thought here is, I know this life of God is different, it looks weird, and no one likes to be different. But taste it. It is sincere, it is eternal, it is good. Taste it.

[1 Peter 1:13-2:3]

Being a Tourist

Me and my youngest brother, Joe, in Sri Lanka, circa 1981

Anyone who has traveled can tell you that there are certain realities to being a tourist. When you step outside your normal sphere of existence, whether it be into another city, another state or another country your perceptions and sensibilities change and things you do not normally think about push their way to the front of your mind.

First, you notice that you are an outsider, strange, a stranger.

A few months ago I sat on a Kenya Airways flight en route to Nairobi when a unfamiliar sound came over the intercom. For me, that is almost always the first moment I realize I am an outsider, when I start to hear people speaking in another language. There is something about language that lets you know your place.

There are other things that clue you in to the fact that you are an outsider: the food, the clothes, the housing, the smells, the way everyone seems to know where they are going except you. It is one of the most clear, precise, unnerving, exhilarating feelings in the world to be a stranger in a strange land. It is an interesting tension between excitement and terror.

I remember the first time my parents to me and my three brothers [ages 4 to 11] to Greece. We got off the train in Athens and my dad told me to not let go of my youngest brother Joe. “They steal little blonde-haired, blue-eyed boys like him in this place,” he said with a look in his eye that told me he wasn’t joking.

I grabbed him tightly, scared. I remember thinking “What kind of place is it where people steal little boys? This isn’t like home.”

Of course, the longer you stay in a place the less frightened, less strange you feel. About a week later I think instead of holding on to Joe I would push him out a few feet in front of me. I put a sign around his neck: “Free Kid. Annoying, but doesn’t bite too much.”

I like it that Peter starts his first letter to the churches by calling them strangers in the world (1:1). In other places he calls them aliens (2:11). I think he wants them to remember that they are tourists in a foreign land. I think he had to remind them because it is an easy fact to forget. It is easy to get used to your surroundings, to fit in, for a place that is not your home to become your home.

I think that Peter does not want them to forget who they are, where they come from, their real home. Have you ever been around someone who goes to a new place a suddenly picks up an accent? Like a girl from the South going to England and all of a sudden she sounds like the Queen?

That’s annoying. You’re from the south. You like grits. And it’s pronounced “Y’all.”

Secondly, being a tourist means that you are on a mission.

I do not know of anyone who left home on a trip except that there was some reason or purpose behind it. [Note: Actually I do know one person who is on that kind of trip, but for him I think it is more of a philosophical statement which is itself a reason for traveling. Can a non-reason be a reason? I digress.] Everyone has a reason for going: it may have been something as simple as wanting to see the World’s Largest Ball of String or as profound as visiting the grave of a parent.

The sense of mission, a goal, a target is very strong when you travel. We have a place to go, something to see, a destination to reach. And I think the goal is different. For my father that first trip was about going around the world. For my mother it was making it home alive and with the same number of boys with which she left. Mission accomplished.

I am not saying that people at home do not have goals or a mission or even a vision for their life. I just know that on the road, as a tourist, the sense of destination is much more acute in my experience. Nothing like a road trip to awaken the sense within you that you are going somewhere.

Peter reminds his readers that they are going somewhere too. “In (God’s) great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never spoil perish or fade–kept in heaven for you.” (1:3-4, emphasis added).

Two destinations for these travelers: a living hope born out of Jesus’ victory over death and an inheritance in heaven. Eternal hope and life. An inheritance that will never end. Two tickets, please.

Third, I think that being a tourist makes you more aware of how tough life is. Things come more easily at home. We know where the grocery store is, the bank, the gas station. We can read the traffic signs, we know the shortcuts. We know the best restaurants and the one to avoid. We know the culture, we know how things work.

But when you are on the road, in a foreign country things somehow just become a lot harder. More than once I can remember driving around late at night just trying to din a place to sleep. One time in the south of France, my brother TIm and I literally almost drove our car off a cliff trying to find a youth hostel. We made it safely, but our car was broken into that night and we lost most of our stuff.

Peter writes, “Now for a little while, you may have to suffer grief in all kinds of trials.These have come so that your faith…may be proved genuine.” (1:7). And that’s what every tourist finds out later. It was the hard stuff that kind of makes it worth it. You tell stories about the hard times, the time you almost drove your car off a cliff, the time you got robbed. The pain is kind of what makes it worth it, the trials become what you cherish and what you remember.

Finally, I think that as a tourist our curiosity is heightened. We try things we would not normally try. We ask questions, visit places, inquire about things in a way that we do not when we are in familiar surroundings. I couldn’t even begin to count the number of times my dad would engage people and ask them about some place we were on our way to visit, where should we go, what should we do, what should we see, what was the best way to get there.

I don’t know why Peter includes the little details about the prophets and angels being curious, longing to look into the things of Christ. They were intrigued by it, they searched carefully and and with great intent. Maybe he didn’t want them to take the journey for granted. Curiosity helps us to appreciate things, to look at them more carefully.

I have always loved traveling. I have always loved being on the road in spite of the strangeness of it. I love the challenge of going new places, discovering new things, regardless of the difficulties and struggles it entails. I hope that I always stay curious, that I stay eager to learn. And I love that our journey is a spiritual and our destination is both with and to God Himself.

[1 Peter 1:1-12]

Dunham El Salvador Adventure

When I was about 10 years old, I remember my father coming home from his job at the University of Wyoming for dinner. As me, my three brothers and mother settled at the table, my dad stood up, hands firmly planted on the table and announced, Charlton Heston-esque,

“Pack your bags! We’re going to New Guinea!”

We all looked at each other, wide-eyed, looks of wonder and slight disbelief on our faces.

“Right now, or can we eat dinner first?” my mother asked quietly.

It was maybe 6-months later that we were bound for the wilds of the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea for a year of adventure that would change my life. During this time I learned that life in other parts of the world can be very different, people suffer and struggle in ways that are foreign to most Americans. I am forever indebted to my parents for affording me this perspective from an early age.

San Salvador Community Outreach

From July 9-17, Grace and I will be traveling with my mother and several other friends to San Salvador from our little church, cityChurch, in Morgantown, to volunteer at the San Salvador Great Commission Church Community Outreach Project.

DONATE SOME STUFF

We would love to take some needed supplies. If you would like to donate here are some items we need:

• school supplies: notebooks, pencils, crayons, colored pencils, paper ….
• medical supplies: multi vitamins (kids or adult), bandages….
• toys / games (small / lightweight): deflated soccer balls, puzzles …

You can mail or drop off items [no later than July 1, 2011] to the Dunham Casa [that's Spanish for house] or contact trey.dunham@gmail.com to make arrangements!

We will be working with impoverished children and their families, striving to love and encourage them and the church team there. Some specific things we will be doing include:

• Teaching / tutoring classes for the kids in the Children’s Program at the Help and Development Center
• Teaching classes at the community school
• Cooking lunch for 125 children through out week and cleanup at the Center
• Recreational activities such as kids’ parties with piñatas and games for the children at the Center
• One evangelistic outreach with the children’s parents and the people of the community

Follow the Dunhams on Twitter

Grace and I will be making regular posts from the field [technology permitting] and we would love to have you follow us at: twitter.com/treydunham.

Support

We would love to have you join our team by both praying for us and supporting us financially. For sake of time and ease, we are using PayPal to accept donations [non tax-deductible]. We have a few team members who may need additional help, so we would like to be able share with them as well. Thanks so much!

[DONATE HERE]

being a doormat: a God who fails [pt 2]

one time i had a dream that i saw jesus. and i am pretty sure it was him. i dont know how or why i feel this way, but when i woke up i just had this sense that it really was him.

i dont remember the circumstances i was going through at the time. i know that i really needed to know that God was close and that he cared about me. and so i had this dream. it was really intense. and i was crying in the dream and when i woke i was crying, my pillow was soaked. weird, i know.

i realize that it is an odd thing to claim to have seen jesus in a dream and maybe that puts me, in your mind, in the company of the spiritually-out-there, like the lady who grilled a cheese sandwich and jesus’ face appeared in the crust. i accept that it is kind of strange. maybe the important thing is not whether or not it was actually jesus. to be honest i have no idea. it sure felt like it and at the time i was pretty convinced so maybe that is what is important here.

over the years since, as i have thought back on that dream and that night, what has stuck with me is not so much the fact that i think i saw jesus, but just that he really didnt look like what i expected.

first of all, he was kind of short. i always thought that jesus would be tall; the kind of guy that towers over a crowd, but in my dream jesus was short, barely 5′ 5″ if i had put a number to it.

second, he was more round than i would have thought. kind of a bulbous nose and chubby cheeks. his beard made his face look like a big circle: deep, round eyes.

i think i imagined him to be a little more refined; probably the more chiseled, european jesus we had the picture of in our basement bathroom growing up. the one that looked more like a superhero and less like a mascot for a fast food restaurant.

i remember being a little put off and to be frank disappointed by him. i knew it was him and there was some peace in that, but underneath i was a bit incredulous that this was the guy weall made such a big fuss about.

hopefully this doesnt sound disrespectful because that is not my intention at all, i just think that maybe i had built him up to be something that he really is not. i had created a jesus in my head that was maybe inconsistent with reality, or with my dream; you know what i mean.

that’s the problem with jesus i think; never what you expect; never quite living up to expectations.

____________________

i grew up in a house with four brothers and father who was a PE teacher and a mom. it probably goes without saying that sports, aggression, violence and mayhem were pretty standard fixtures in our home, and one of our favorite activities was the After Dinner All-Star Wrestling Extravaganza.

this happened pretty much every night without fail. my mother cleared the dishes [i dont think, with five men in the house, she ever scraped a plate in her life. our dog samson never got anything but dry dog food; talk about disappointment]. we prepared the Ring.

the “Ring” of course was the living room. the coffee table was cleared from the center of the room and moved towards safety along with other breakables such as lamps. i say “towards safety” because there was never really a safe place, epic wrestling matches know no boundaries. they ranged far and wide, and if we were lucky ended up in the basement or front yard.

when we were young the damage to the house was minimal, however as we progressed into high school and beyond the brokenness of stuff started to accumulate. i am not sure how many of our couches ended up propped up by a pile of bricks, but it was more than one. i dont think my parents ever bought a new piece of furniture. ever. and wrestling is the reason i am pretty sure.

there was never any set card for the night’s matches. pretty much it was an all out rumble and whoever dared enter the ring was fair game. being the oldest, and by default the largest, for most of our wrestling years i pretty much dominated, but i have to give the young guys their credit. we had some pretty epic battles, plenty of rug burned knees and more than a few bloody noses. matches pretty much ended with tears or blood. something about those fluids that just dont make it fun anymore.

throughout all the chaos in the living room, my mother would try to remain inconspicuous and uninvolved, quietly placing the dishes in the dishwasher, wiping down the counters. this of course was impossible. the Main Event was always reserved for her.

any of the boys would and could be the Challenger. it just kind of depended on who thought of it first. once the idea got into one of our heads, the lucky young man would run into the kitchen, tackle dear old mom and drag her [or carry when we were big enough to do so] protesting vehemently into the Ring.

my mother had no innate understanding of sport or of competition in general. as a cheerleader for the Mendon Magi [she was Miss Magi her freshman year], she chose to cheer for whomever had the ball regardless of it it was her team or not. her swiss-like neutrality when it came to sport was a constant goad to my father’s sense of equilibrium and balance in the universe. how she could root for both teams was beyond his ability to comprehend.

but hope springs eternal and every night, my swiss mother would end up in the Ring opposite a now sweaty, bloody savage of a son, easily twice her size, ready to tear her limb from limb.

the hope, of course, was that this would be a fight; that my 98 pound mother would stand up for herself, rage against the indignity of having been dragged like a sack of potatoes into this melee. that she had had enough and was ready to put her foot down.

this, to our utter disappointment i must say, never happened.

instead she would fall to the carpet and, face down, lay motionless, limp as a dishrag. and all without having been touched at all by her would-be assailant.

and it did no good to apply an arm bar, a chicken wing, half-nelson, near or far side cradle. any move applied with the intent to bend her to the will of her opponent was met with absolutely no resistance. it was like wrestling with a pillow. no, not a pillow. a pillow at least has some rigidity albeit minimal. this was like grappling with a towel. and anyone who has tried to assert its dominance, make a show of strength and a spectacle of an ordinary bathroom towel knows what an entirely disappointing exercise this is.

____________________

there is something about a fight that invigorates us. i am not sure what it is. and maybe it is more of a guy thing, the punching in the face. i have not really done it all that much, but i guarantee you about every guy on the planet has envisioned himself knocking someone out, wondering what that would feel like. girls i think are different; they fight with words, verbal guerrillas, but the reason is the same; we like a good fight. and we like to win.

i think the apostle peter was a fighter. he would have been the first one in the living room, clearing out the furniture, getting ready to brawl. knuckles clenched and white; eyes narrowed. probably a scrap of meatloaf from dinner wedged in his beard.

and i think he thought this was how jesus was wired too. maybe what peter was hoping for. the jews had long been under the iron fist of the roman empire; they were looking for a fighter, someone to lead them to military and political freedom.

there were moments i am sure when the disciples got excited: jesus casting out demons, making the jewish leaders look like a bunch of fools with his wit and intelligence. thousands followed him, hanging on everything he said and did.

even in the garden of gethsemene, after he had spent most of the night at dinner talking about death and dying and leaving and abandonment, even then, when the roman detachment came out to arrest him and asked for jesus, and when he said “i am he” they all got flattened. peter probably thought, this guy is a fighter. he’s not going to back down to anyone, not even the romans. i can get on board with this.

and so peter grabbed a sword and took a swing at the servant of the high priest; chopped off his ear. let’s get it on!

it had to surprise and i think disappoint peter to some degree when jesus rebuked him, commanded him, “put your sword away! shall i not drink the cup the Fther has given me?” [john 18:11]

i would have been disappointed. i would have wondered, what in the world? what kind of leader is this who just lets them arrest him? who goes willingly to trial and what?! even to death? what kind of weak God is this?

i know that we often read peter’s denial of jesus in a voice of fear, as if he were afraid to be associated with him. i think i read it more in a tone of disappointment. i dont know that guy.

and maybe he didnt. and maybe we don’t. what do you do with a God who fails, who doesnt meet up to your expectations? what do you do with a jesus who seems to quit, to give in, to let others have the best of him?

it is a tough question.

nietzsche wrote in his book, the genealogy of morals, that is was the most unbelievable thing about God, that he would die. what kind of a God is that? a God who will not fight back. a God who lays down, like a doormat. i think it is a fair question.

and i think it is a question that forces us to ask ourselves if we are on board. can we follow a leader who instead of fighting, died a humiliating death on a cross? what do you do with that?

being a doormat: sucker punch [pt 1]

i have never been sucker punched.

at least not in the traditional sense, you know, where some dude walks up and just lays one into you. fist right to the face. that’s kind of the cool way to get sucker punched, if there is a cool way. at least you have a good story then.

i have been sucker punched in less impressive and truthfully, stranger ways.

one time someone, totally unprovoked, threw an apple at me. i’m not lying. i was walking home probably around 11 or so at night. a car drove past me as i walked on the sidewalk. all of a sudden i felt something hit my arm. i looked down just as a grannysmith rolled into the gutter. [my friend stu, or maybe it was brent, would later call it a "drive by fruiting." wah wah.]

kind of in shock i looked back at the car, its taillights red in the distance wondering if that had just happened. the thought crossed my mind but it was now too far for me to throw the apple back at them and try to take out their rear windshield.

so that was a sucker punch of sorts. but i am not sure that really counts.

my brothers invented a game called Check Your Prostate! not long after we found out my dad had prostate cancer [i know, sensitive] and that felt a lot like a sucker punch; a gross, disgusting, immature sucker punch. [i can see my mother and sisters-in-law rolling their eyes right now.]

i am pretty sure Check Your Prostate! doesnt really count either.

my sophomore year of football i got in for one play, a kickoff against central high school in cheyenne. i remember running down the middle of the fields, eyes locked on the skinny kid with the ball thinking i am going to knock that kid into the middle of next week. i think i weighed about 125 at the time, but that wasn’t important; i was fast and we all know that force equals mass times acceleration and i was about to accelerate him about three feeet deep into the turf.

US track and field fans will certainly remember the name jon godina; a multiple time olympic medalist in the shot put. a hulk of a man, probably 6-6 and close to 300 big ones. and quick like a cat; you have to be to throw a 12 pound shot out over 70 feet.

what you may not know is that jon went to central high school in wyoming. in fact, he played football there and was a senior on the team my sophomore season playing for laramie high. and it just so happened, without my foreknowledge i might add, that i was, on this particular play, his blocking assignment.

have you ever seen one of those homemade videos of a car sitting at a stop light, seemingly unaware that it was stopped in the middle of a railroad track. and then, out of nowhere the crosstown express flattens the car and sends it two miles down the track.

that was me when godina launched into me full sprint. never saw it coming. one moment i had a bead on the ball carrier, next i was remarking to myself what a clear and beautiful afternoon we were having as my body lifted into a slow arc across the horizon.

kind of like a sucker punch. never saw it coming.

i picked up my mouth guard now covered in grass and dirt and my left shoe that had become dislodged somewhere mid-flight. never did find our bench. they found me huddled next to the hot dog stand after the game.

over the years, there have had plenty of “emotional” sucker punches. the time in high school when michael mora stole gatorade from my mini fridge at football camp felt a little like a sucker punch. we were on the same team for cryin’ out loud! who steals from a teammate?!

the time my prom date left with the captain of the diving team. definite sucker punch. that one hurt.

the thing about a sucker punch is that you don’t see it coming, so you cant really defend yourself; you can’t get your hands up in time to ward off the blow.

____________________

maybe that is the worst part about a sucker punch. you don’t get the chance to defend yourself. it just comes in and gets you, then it is gone, like an apple-tossin’ gangsta in the hood.

for some reason we live in a world where we are oriented towards standing up for ourselves. maybe it comes from the early days of our country where we were getting taxed to death by the brits and some ornery folks decided to get even they should dump a bunch of tea in boston harbor and then maybe organize an army to liberate us from england altogether.

we really dont  like people who intrude and the right to defend ourselves seems inalienable; probably why they included the amendment with the right to bear arms [not arms bears; stephen colbert's worst nightmare].

when i was in high school we used to have this ritual , a celebration of the end of the football season, on the last day of practice, the seniors would choose one freshman to be their “partner.” what happened next can only be understood [maybe] by those who have been on a team, especially a football team, where much of what takes place during a season flies i the face of logic.

there is a lot that happens that just does not make sense to those on the outside. this was one of those moments

here is how it went:

1. the freshman would cinch down his helmet, mouth guard, jock strap, etc. and stand with his heals on the goal line.
2. his partner, the graduating senior, would take his position on the 10-yard line and check to make sure everything is properly secured, then usually assume a position similar to a printer getting ready to explode out of the starting blocks
3. with both parties in place, and then entire team looking on, the coach would blow his whistle and the festivities would begin.

now, it is important to remind the reader that this whole ritual was meant to be a celebration, a reward for the years of hard work and dedication put in by the seniors. this was a moment for them to cherish, to relish, to enjoy. or at least that was what they told us.

once the whistle blew, the senior would take off, given 10 yards of turf to build up as much momentum as possible before sending the inert freshman hurtling into the dusky, late-autumn Wyoming sky.

of course everyone enjoyed this spectacle immensely. everyone, except the human punching bag, who at the sound of the whistle, had to strain with every ounce of machismo and courage in his weak, frail frame not to turn and run home to his mother, sucking his thumb all the way.

you see the deal was that, as a freshman, you had to take the hit. if you flinched, moved, ducked, dodged or God forbid, fell to your knees begging for mercy, you had to do it all over again. the point [was there really a point?] was it was  free shot, a sucker punch from a friend. and you were not allowed to defend yourself.

i guess there was probably a moral buried in the whole thing somewhere: something like, football players really are barbaric idiots, or the like.

it is hard to describe how hard it is to not try to throw up an arm or turn your shoulder just a little to lessen the blow; the desire to, even in some small way, put up a fight, to defend yourself, is so instinctive. but you dont get that chance. you just have to stand there and take it. wasn’t fair, just kind of how it worked.

luke mickelson picked me as i remember. who knows why. it was an epic hit in my mind and you write poems about the epic stuff so that’s what i did [cf. SENIOR HIT DAY]. on stormy days i can still feel it in my bones.

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the world we live in is filled with injustice. kids are starving all over the world and dying from stupid things like diarrhea because they do not have clean drinking water. young boys and girls are wondering why their fathers and mothers have abandoned them. husbands and wives are wondering if God has abandoned them because they are barren. the innocent suffer and endure endless wars, ignorant to the reasons they began in the first place.

this morning my cat pooped on my couch, for no apparent reason other than it hates me.

and all of us are helpless, unable to make a change, to defend ourselves against the onslaught of war and disease and famine and injustice that comes against.

and all we want to do is to fight back, to stand up for ourselves. to make things right.

it is hard to stand by idly. it is hard to not do anything. but sometimes that seems to be the only option. you just tighten up the chin strap and hold on.

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A QUESTION for YOU: i realize my blogs don’t exactly inspire a lot of comments or discussion, so i thought i would maybe start asking a few questions of you, the reader, to hopefully inspire some dialogue.

so here is my question: have you ever had an experience where you felt like you had to take the hit, where someone took a punch [literally or figuratively] at you and you knew you just had to take it, or maybe you didnt have the chance to even defend yourself? how did that feel? how has that experience shaped you?