I appreciate Leslie’s reflections here and hope you do too.

Almighty God,

Our times are in your hands.  Our pasts, with their long disappointments, are there.  Our unknown futures are there, too.  In your hands.

Remind my sister that these things are true, even as life without good work feels long and dry and pointless.  She is in your hands.

You gave her the ability and the heart to do her work.  Please open this door and make her successful as she walks, with you, through it.  Who can close the doors you open?

I ask for your help in her interview today.  Calm her.  Excite her.  Ready her tongue and her mind so she’ll interact with grace and poise and skill.  Give her a sense of your abiding presence.  Make the time enjoyable and give her glimpses of why you’ve gifted her the way you have.

When the interview is done, help her give the time over to you.  Grant that she might surrender every next, unknown step.  Teach her how to surrender what’s next into the largest hands imaginable.  She already trusts you, which is why she’s asked for prayer, so be for her what no other power can be.

In the name of the most effective, creative worker, Jesus, I pray.

Amen.

Seated around a platter of grapes and cubed cheese was a sphere of laughter, circling memories of a shared acquaintance, a splendid friend and teacher; a set of stories about the places we have been, the families who have loved us, the work we’ve done and cherished; a cast of hopes, dressed in summer clothes and looking for tomorrow to come; the clear common purposefulness of living in light of grace and trying to put our best efforts inside that grace.  These were some of the pieces of my meeting at a couple-congregant’s home, and it was joyous.

I read this in church this morning and thought to put it up.

This is a reading to the men who are our fathers.

As you stand today in celebration, in remembrance, in prayer, with hope and joy and fear in your hearts, I remind you that you are a man.  I remind you that we—in this church, in this community, in this city, in this world—need you because of that.

We don’t need your skills necessarily.  We don’t require your cultivated talents, though they can be useful.  We don’t need your ingenuity or your success or the long list of things you’ve done or hope to do.

No, what we need is less, or more.  We need you.

You should work hard, be diligent in vocation, and perhaps that creates the background of manhood.  Still, there is a greater vocation than your productivity.

This is not a common message, even on Father’s Day, but it is true.  This church, this city, this world, and all the people that make up the world as you know it, need you.

We need you to stand up today in a million ways as you leave the beautiful space that is this sanctuary, to step down the blocks of the city and to re-present the divinity you are reminded of by coming to worship.

We need you changing the worlds of your jobs or homes or play places by your small and large acts of faithfulness and elegance and goodness and power, coming in the form of stopping violence whenever you meet it, quelling wickedness in all its clothes, and stalling the principalities of the anti-kingdom.

We need you pleading by your presence for justice that comes through men who love with all their hearts, who encourage when life doesn’t, who inspire when situations break the spirit.

We need you leading the way in loving perfectly and without fear, surrendering your pride and your ego and offering them in the hand of God in order to gain something greater and better and deeper.

We need you taking the first position of serving and working and toiling for the good of those around you, especially when those around you cannot return your good efforts.

We need you raising children, whether those you conceived with women you love, those you conceived with women you don’t, or those you did not conceive at all because all of them need a father and because there’s no reason you can’t be that man.

We need you praying however you can and to do it daily because only God can be the strength behind and under and around a good man.

We need you loving the women in your lives, be they spouses or mothers or sisters or friends or women you don’t know because they are all precious and strong and valiant and expect us to treat them accordingly.

We need you living up to the words in the greeting, “Happy Father’s Day,” taking every word seriously, pursuing your happiness and that of others, embodying what it means to be a generative, creative man who gives and loves and serves, and living one day at a time like it is precious and filled with grace.

We need you living in response to the grace of God, and so, finally, the Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face to shine upon you, and be gracious to you: the Lord lift up his countenance upon you, and give you peace. Amen.

The kind woman, dressed in gardening gloves and a salt and pepper afro, told me I had all I needed.  In my cart were the replacement botanics from when I over-watered our ten-year-old peace lily two months ago.  I had pots and a window at home.

We talked about the herbs I was thinking of buying.  She told me a few stories of sick plants she couldn’t revive.  When we turned to my fears for destroying the plants I wanted, a reaction to my latest failure, she said I needed food, water when the soil felt dry, and, according to the cards sticking up from the plants, low light.  She was cool, didn’t smile, and her unshakable confidence was sunlit.

For weeks I had been convincing myself that tending to a plant, with simple tools of light and water and occasional talk for ten years couldn’t sit next to one mistake, even if that one mistake undid those years of attention.

My gardening helper confirmed that growing something, nurturing something, building something took less than I thought.  She said what I knew: after years of growth, things die, and sometimes by our own hands.  Here’s to dropping my fingers in dirt.

Sunday, after a long day of many feelings, mixed moving things that take forever to settle, while Dawn and Bryce slept, the only noise came from the evening news, and then, a tiny, outstanding clap took all the lights and sounds and assurances that come from electricity.  From my home and all around, with one exception two blocks away, in the home on Greenwood, everything hushed and mirrored the contours of my insides.  Rolling over the neighborhood, flashing really, was a blackness, a darkness, a peace.  It was one of those preparatory moments, like the ones the preachers rushed into us in my childhood, the stories they told to convince of us of hell and hardly love, and at the same time, the dark moment was filled with contentment; there was no fear.  With the clap that blackened all of Hyde Park, it felt like Sunday, it felt like a day when I’d come closer to what happens when God comes.