Blast from the Past

So on Friday I headed east to the thriving metropolis of McCall Creek, Mississippi (m-i-crooked letter-crooked letter-i-crooked letter-crooked letter-i-hump back-hump back-i...for all of you baby boomer elementary school students) to play my part(along with my brother and sister) in a devious bit of subterfuge designed to throw a surprise 80th birthday party for my spunky little Cajun mom. For those of you not familiar with McCall Creek, it is a rural (wow, that is a gross understatement)community about 20 miles west of Brookhaven and about and hour south of Jackson along US Highway 84. There is a post office, a general store next to the lumber mill and the little New Salem Baptist Church...and that's it...really. My mom and dad moved there about 15 years ago from Baton Rouge after my dad retired from the chemical plant. Mom mom stayed there after my dad died in 2004 and has lived in a tiny little home in the middle of the woods. I thought after dad's death that she would want to move in with one of us and escape rural life. As a matter of fact, when they were about to move from Baton Rouge to McCall Creek, I asked her if she was okay with leaving the city and going to Mississippi. Her reply was, "when I left the bayou and the farm at 18, I left on purpose." So I knew she was going because dad wanted to go. At any rate, now she is solidly entrenched in the life of that little community and specifically in the life of that little church. She also feels a strange loyalty to the 45 or so acres that she and dad owned and wanted to always have to pass down to the three kids. That is very sweet and incredibly loyal to dad's legacy...but here's the reality. My sister and brother-in-law have lived for 30 years on property that his family owns in central Louisiana. My brother and sister-in-law, have lived in south Texas for the last 20 years and are in ministry and I don't ever see them moving to that area to serve...and both of their kids live in the Dallas area. As for me...I love Austin and don't have any desire to live anywhere else. But I digress...

So...the three of us plan this little soiree to surprise mom, and invited are family members form Louisiana, church members past and present form both states and a motley little crew of people who were pals and compadres of us three kids from our growing up days at Glen Oaks Baptist Church in Baton Rouge in the late 60's and early 70's. It was a great turnout, and a bunch of all of the afore-mentioned groups made the trek to little McCall Creek (we held it at the New Salem Baptist Church) bringing pot luck dishes aplenty and old stories and pictures to tell and retell. Mom was thrilled and blown away by the presence of faces she had not seen or heard from in years and to think that they had traveled all of this way to honor her was overwhelming. I was pleased and delighted at the crowd, and that it was a fitting living honor for a lady who loves Jesus with every fiber of her 4'11', 80 year old frame, and who not only knows how to pray better than anybody else I know, but genuinely cares more deeply than anyone else I know as well. But...and it is true confession time here...all of these people who were teenagers the last time I saw them...were old. I know...I'M OLD ...so if they are even close to the same age I am, they are old too, but my mental pictures of them were all as teenagers in the 1960's. The truth is I was the oldest member of that crew, so they are probably all writing blogs about how old I looked, but...and this shouldn't surprise any of you...I don't feel as old as they looked. That's not a slam on them or their aging process...it is just the truth...I can't possibly be 56...I know that is what the birth date on my driver's license adds up to, and I did actually get into the Arbor Cinema at the Senior Citizen's price last month, and I have been a member of AARP the last several years to get cheaper auto insurance rates...but those are extenuating circumstances. I am still a young man. I still go to the batting cages once a month and take three rounds of cuts on the 70mph machine, and still make good contact. My girls keep me listening to great music and I genuinely enjoy putting it beside my Beatles, Dylan, Eagles, and Simon and Garfunkel albums. The blast from the past was fun, it was entertaining, it was a connection back to much simpler times...not better necessarily, but important nonetheless. It did seem though, that some of those folks who were there were so enamored with the past, or maybe it was that they are so dissatisfied with the present, that they not only reveled in those memories, but that they longed to stay there and to rekindle the magic of yesteryear. I'm sorry, I like who I am today...I like where I am today...I like what God is doing in the family and the friends around me today...and a quick trip back in the time machine is a delightful break, but I don't want to live there. There is a line from and old Billy Crockett/Milton Brasher-Cunningham song called Walking on the Earth, that says, "...there is no practice life, this is it...". I believe it. I respect my brothers and sisters who believe in reincarnation, but there is no hope whatsoever for me in the notion that I have to keep coming back until I get it right. I honor and cherish the past, but I have been given this day...these relationships...these gifts...these injustices...these opportunities to make amends here and now for my mistakes, and this mercy, grace and forgiveness. I don't even like watching old ball games on ESPN Classic...the time is now... and to quote the the old CCR front man, John Fogerty, "Put me in coach...I'm ready to play..."

Pling...Pling...

dg