For some reason the following things have been huddling together in a corner of my mind, so I’ll go with them…

PARENTS WORRY. It is what we do. We worry for our children, over our children, because of our children and on behalf of our children. Love—human love, at least—causes it; a worry of hopes and fears born of our love. I know all about where this conversation could go, about the Love of God and that perfect love drives out fear, and the ways religion has come to interpret these ideas. And I know religion tries to teach us that worry is a lack of faith. I know that some people say it is a sin. I know all that. But it doesn’t change the fact that we worry. I think that to deny the worry and pretend it doesn’t exist is a lie. We worry. It is what we do. In big ways and tiny ways, we worry.

One of the worries is that you aren’t a good parent. It’s a worry reserved for people who at least want to be good parents, whether they succeed or not. I worry this worry. Will my children learn the right things from me? Will they learn the one or two things I want with all of my heart for them to learn? Will they succeed in not learning the many things I don’t want them to learn? In the end, will I have done okay?

My mom and dad think about this. I can tell. Only for them of course the worry has passed through the years into wonder—wonder about the present status of what was once worried about. My mom mentions it explicitly every once in a while. My dad has mentioned it once that I recall. “I was wondering how you remember me,” he said, “do you remember me as a dad who was there?”

“I guess I remember you as daddy” is the answer I gave, as best as I recall. He deserved a better answer, as does my mom whenever she asks. And I tend to think that everyone who loves me deserves better answers than I give. The quick and simple answers they would like from me do not come easily. I know this makes me hard to love, and it makes it hard to know how—and if—I love in return. I know this. But what am I to say?

AS A TEENAGER I stood in front of a window and looked south to the small pasture of the house where I lived at the time. One of our little goats had gone down, and my dad was out there on his hands and knees, working to resuscitate it. He tried for a while and then he finally stood up, picked up the little lifeless body in front of him, and carried it away. He was wiping his eyes periodically as he walked back toward the house. Dads don’t cry often. At all. Almost never. But I stood there and watched my dad cry, alone in his element. Over a little goat. A simple and gentle little life gone. He had spent most of his life caring for animals, and his career controlling disease in communities of man, but he could not save this one little creature.

I was young, in elementary school, and dad was away on business one Christmas. For reasons no longer important, my mother was too shy in her own way to go outside of the house and drive to a Christmas tree lot to find us a tree. So she went out to our garage and fashioned some sticks into a big triangle, and leaned them against our living room wall. Then with little lights and aluminum foil, she decorated it. I still remember saying, in the myopic mindset of childhood, that her lovingly crafted tree looked stupid. I have come to regret that comment all these years later. It is that tree from my childhood that shines in my memory above others. It was a beautiful tree that spoke of love and devotion and creativity working in the face of limitations imposed upon a person from within and without. It was a symbol of how what is good and loving within us overcomes the lesser things—of how love always finds a way.

And now in two thousand six I have my own family, and our dog is getting old. She can no longer hear and her eyes are getting cloudy. The cold weather stoves up her hips, leaving her to hobble about in the mornings. What I find most beautiful about her these days is a simple thing. Although she cannot hear me, she watches me intently during our morning and evening rituals. A gesture of my hand tells her to come or to go and what path to take. She will stand staring at me until I curl and twitch my fingers, and with sweeping wags of her giant tail she will scurry as best as she can to comply with my direction. I suppose a person would have to see her, to watch her and perhaps to love her to see the beauty of it, but it is a gorgeous thing. It speaks to me of life’s desire to go on living and to find and take what is still good in any circumstance. It is the strength of life that is seen in her weakness. It is a beautiful thing—truly beautiful.

I have known a lot of dogs, and so I know what it means to say that our old dog is a good dog. Some days I could swear she has a soul. And on those days I hope that, wherever our spirits go when we die, hers goes there too. She is so kind and so gentle and so loving that I think she deserves a place like that—a place where she is no longer deaf and her eyes are no longer cloudy and her hips don’t ache in the cold. A place where she can run all day like she is young again. A place where she can sleep warmly all night curled up next to her Master. She deserves a place like that. She truly does.

It is likely that some time all too soon, on a day not far off, I will spend my final day with this kind old dog and the last thing I will ever do for her in her life is to hold her in my arms while her life is ended in what I hope with all my heart is painlessness. But I already know in this realization that she is deaf, and she won’t be able to hear my voice as I hold her close to my chest and rest my face upon hers. She won’t be able to hear the voice that has comforted her and kept her calm and courageous through the years, through all sorts of aches and pains and accidents and injuries. She won’t be able to hear me at all, to have my voice warm and safe and known to trust and hold to in her last breathing minute. My heart will break in that moment, and it will ache on that day, ache for a strong and happy dog of titanic spirit who has finally run out of strength, and whose spirit has finally departed. In that moment a part of me will die a little, for I will not be able to be for her all the things I want to be, nor the one thing I most need to be. And by this I am shadowed even today by the coming sadness.

IT IS the nature of life that in the end we cannot always save the things we love the most. This is what makes the loving all the more valuable—and all the more costly. In the final analysis of life, it is love that hurts the most, and this is life’s greatest and final irony—that the most beautiful thing of all, is also the most painful thing of all.

If it is true that God gave humanity free will in order that God’s love may be chosen, and therefore that it may reach its fullness somewhere tomorrow in eternity, then think of this some night when you are alone. Think of all the horror, so much of it unspeakable, that mankind’s free will has brought to Man. Think of the nightmares of evil we can scarcely bare, and that yet they were somehow long ago worth a cosmic trade in the heart and mind of God. Think that somehow, somewhere, some when, the glory of God’s Love will be worth the agony of every evil. I have thought such a thing in my tears of mourning for all the pain in the world. And when I have done so, I have shivered in the warmth of the day, so enthralled as to be almost frightened by a Love so great. This Love is the God in Whom I hope and trust. This Love is the God to Whom every one of my life’s tears belong.

And this is how I love, for those of you who want to know. I love in the hopes that were never fulfilled. I love in the worries that came to naught and in those which came to fruition. I love in what was hoped for yet never arrived. I love in the longings we have to rescue and save what we ultimately cannot. I love in the triumph of life that makes us succeed in spite of ourselves. I love in life’s insatiable desire to go on living. I love in the face of a triumph beyond words that is made known in all of our frailty, in all of our failure, and in all of our sorrow. I love what the world sees as ugly, because it is made beautiful in God.

HOW DO I love thee? I’m not sure I have ever known. I’m no longer sure I can answer, no matter how far away I go nor how deeply I try to gaze inside myself. I simply love what Is, and I love you as the part of It you are. What I do not know is if this is enough. But to me, it is everything there is.

And for my children, will this be enough? For my children, for whom my love knows no bounds, will they come to know what I know, to see what I see? I do not know. I cannot know. And so I worry. We are parents. It is what we do.

I WAS gratified to see the History Channel air The Man Who Predicted 9/11 this weekend. I’m all for more people hearing Rick Rescorla’s story, so I’m glad the show was aired; even though I don’t think it got across the depth of Rick’s courage and passion.

I think Rick’s story is one of the great contemporary hero stories we have, so I like to encourage people to look into it a bit. Three and a half years ago I spoke to a local church concerning the ideas of courage, dying for others, and living our lives as examples of love. Rick’s story was at the heart of the speech.

To place Rick into pop culture, I will mention the war movie “We Were Soldiers,” which starred Mel Gibson and Sam Elliot among others. Some eight or ten years ago when I had read the book “We Were Soldier Once… and Young,” I had hoped it would be made into a movie, and the movie turned out to be a decent one; accurate except for a couple of scenes. But one person who was never mentioned in the movie (at least as far as I recall) was Rick Rescorla. Interestingly, it is Rick’s image, as a soldier in the heat of battle, that appears on the cover of the original edition of the book. By the time Rick had left Vietnam, he held the Silver Star, Bronze Star with oak leaf clusters, Purple Heart, and Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry. A fellow soldier of Rick’s has remarked, “He was the bravest person I ever saw.”

Rick died in the World Trade Center’s South Tower on 9/11. He is generally credited with being responsible for saving approximately 2,700 individuals on that day, and was last seen heading back into the building a few minutes before it fell, to look for more people to evacuate.

I remember that during my speech, there was one part of Rick's story that hit me hardest. Rick’s wife was quoted shortly after 9/11 as saying, "What's really difficult for me is that I know he had a choice. He chose to go back in there. I know he would never have left until everyone was safe, until his mission was accomplished. That was his nature. That was the man I loved. So I can understand why he went back. What I can't understand is why I was left behind."

In response, one of Rick’s closest lifelong friends and a fellow soldier remarked, "She knew a sixty-two-year-old man with cancer. I knew him as a hundred-and-eighty-pound, six-foot-one piece of human machinery that would not quit, that did not know defeat, that would not back off one inch. In the middle of the greatest battle of Vietnam, he was singing to his troops. If he had come out of that building and someone died who he hadn't tried to save, he would have had to commit suicide… You see, for Rick Rescorla, this was a natural death. People like Rick, they don't die old men. They aren't destined for that and it isn't right for them to do so… There are certain men born in this world, and they're supposed to die setting an example for the rest of [us].”

I DON'T know anything about Rick Rescorla’s views on God or religion, but I am compelled to believe that whenever the chips were down, he lived things right. And for that, Rick deserves one more salute... and a solemn "amen."

(The quotes here are borrowed from THE REAL HEROES ARE DEAD: A love story, by James B. Stewart in the 2002-02-11 issue of The New Yorker. Reference the original story here.)

(I scribbled the basis for this into my journal about four weeks ago. Finally found the time to tidy it up...)

EACH CHRISTMAS season, the university near my home has a night for families. There are horse-drawn wagon rides, pictures with Santa, cookies, punch, coffee, activities for the kids, and little holiday shows.

On our way this year, my family and I stopped at a fast food place to get a bite to eat. As we sat waiting for our food to be assembled and our number to be called, an old and worn man emerged from the bathroom and looked our way. I looked at him, and he called to me. I went over to see what he might have on his mind, although I assumed it was money he wanted. He was drunk, and began with a line which has become pretty popular with beggars these days, “Look okay I’m not gonna lie to you; I drink…”

I always try to help beggars. I always try to give them something. I’m not sure why I do, but I’m pretty sure there are a lot of little reasons. Every human being deserves a few words of conversation. Loneliness is a horrible thing. Maybe one time in a hundred, I will say something that will save a life. Any reason that can cause me to care for somebody else just for a moment is better than any reason that would cause me to ignore them. I read once, when I was a kid, that Gandhi said that if somebody steals from him, they needed whatever they took worse than he needed it. I told somebody that once and they said it was a load of B.S., but I’ve come to decide it is true. I think the alcoholic on the street, with his trembling hands, needs a drink worse than I need another cappuccino. Maybe people who think that’s foolish of me have never had the shakes. I haven’t either, but I figure if I did, I’d want somebody to make them go away. But, I think the biggest reason I give just a moment to help beggars is that I cannot escape knowing that they are no different than I am. Some people will never see this, I know, but it is true. There is no difference between the beggar and the banker. We are both souls fighting a battle to find our way home. We are comrades. Brothers and sisters. Children of God.

I tried not to stare at the blackened flesh of this brother’s nose as he mumbled, and I think his story was well rehearsed although slurred and flawed in delivery. It was not a bad story, especially if I were more naïve. To my surprise, he said he didn’t want more alcohol for the night. He had two dollars and half a pack of smokes he would trade for something to cover himself with and keep warm for the night as he slept out in the cold. I could have almost believed him. I think he truly wanted a cover, but I don't think he was willing to part with the two dollars or the smokes. “Come on outside,” I said. “Let me see if I can fix you up.” I gave him a blanket that I keep in the car for emergencies, and I figured this situation was close enough to urgent. As I brought it out I said, “It has some old grass on it, but it’s clean,” to which he replied, “Hey… what’s a little grass?” and he gave me a genuine smile, clutching the blanket to his chest. Another line I read or heard once back long ago is that there is never a hand too dirty to shake. I fully believe this must ultimately be incorrect, but to date it has still held true for me. I reached out my hand as he began to walk off, and he stopped momentarily to shake it. His hand was like ice. Circulatory problems, I thought to myself. And with that, he shuffled off into the night.

I know I could have done more. It was five minutes of my time and one stupid blanket. I could have invited him to eat with us. I could have bought him a hotel room for the night. I know. All in all I am more saddened that I didn’t do more, than I am happy that I did something. It is a difficult thing to walk a line between being safe and careful with one’s own family, and being as generous as one should be to strangers; to be as innocent as a dove, and as wise as a snake. But it is better to do something, than to do nothing.

As I turned around, through the restaurant window my kids were staring at me, their faces clean and bright, their clothes warm, their bodies healthy, and two trays of hot food between them. And this is the most important thing of all—that they saw this man and I in our exchange. I gave him a moment, a blanket and a handshake, and together we gave my children a sermon more memorable than most preachers can preach. In answer to their myriad of questions, I finally told my kids, “You know when we pray at night, and I always ask God to help us share what we have? Well, that’s what I was doing.”

I share a little. Just a little. But I think mostly, I am waiting for that prayer to be answered more fully.

PRAYER IS not always fully satisfying. When it is only mental, only intellectual, your mind gets in the way. After enough practice in prayer, you learn when it is not real prayer. You talk and talk in your brain, and God feels more like a concept than something real. You pray harder, which is to say you think harder, and the feeling gets worse. So you try to stop thinking so much, and your mind, all revved up with no place to go, starts creating images. It drifts off to some silly thing you need to get done at home, or to what you need to buy at the store, or to the latest gadget you want to buy, or to how mad you are at somebody else and how you hope God teaches him or her a lesson, or to some image you saw in a movie or on television. Sometimes you realize that this is simply what it is like to be human and to have a brain, and sometimes you just feel frustrated and wonder if you’re ever going to be able to pray well again in you life.

But sometimes prayer is perfect. God not only answers you, offering you everything you want, but also and first gives you the questions to ask and the proper desires for the proper things. It feels as though God is right there with you, around you and inside you. You know it is real prayer, because it is at a deeper place in your heart than you can take your self. You are comforted in knowing that you are not so hopeless after all. You know God is right there. You understand that it is not you who prays to God, but rather God who prays for you. And when God prays for you, it is not a prayer you can deny, nor a prayer you can ignore. Prayer like this is what I experienced last night.

It was a very simple prayer. I asked for a single thing, knowing at the same time that it was God asking from within me: For God to help me make my children instruments of his love. It was all so very clear and so very simple, as things always are when prayer is like this. What is it that I am supposed to teach my children? What is it, when all is said and done in life, that I as a parent am supposed to offer them? Just this: To love with the love of God. Nothing else. This is the duty of mankind.

IT COMES as no surprise, really, that as I remained in prayer another portion of the night came flooding into my heart, reminding me of the obvious and unavoidable: That to make instruments, I must first become one.

After my exchange with the drunken and homeless man, my family and I went to the university for the evening’s festivities. At one point, a group of young children performed a song and dance routine upon a stage. All of the little children were girls, except for one very well groomed little boy. As the children danced and sang their little routine, a man standing beside me laughed as he remarked, “You see that little boy? I know his parents. They’re making him so gay.” The remark was loud enough for others around us to hear. A couple of people turned and smiled. One of them laughed. Another man leaned over and whispered something to the first, smirking. I had to walk away. What has become of us, that in response to something as simple and human as a child’s desire to dance, we must think of such things? Why must we take the bright light of a child in his innocence, and darken it with the overlay of our carnal knowledge and moral opinion? For that matter, why must we take human beings in general, at any age, and cast them into categories that make them the subject of moral, social and political debate? What has become of us, that we cannot simply love other people as brothers and sisters at the most basic of levels, as fellow children of God who, like ourselves, are merely trying to find their way back into God’s arms? What vile sickness of arrogance, pride and complacency has infected us, infected us to the point that we no longer feel ill, but rather find pleasure in its symptoms?

In my time of prayer, the heartfelt conviction hit me—unmistakably—that viewing other people in such terms has nothing—nothing—to do with the love of God, and therefore has nothing—nothing—to do with what God calls me to be and do in life.

If you want, go ahead and categorize people. Go ahead and divide them into groups. Go ahead and decide for yourself with whom God is satisfied and with whom he isn’t. Maybe that’s your job, after all. Maybe that is why you are here. Seriously. But not me. I am not here to do that. I am here to love people. I am here to share with them what I have, and to share with them the love of God, which he gives to all of them as freely as he gives it to me. I do not care if a person is dirty or clean, rich or poor, male female or in between, gay or straight, fat or skinny, black white red yellow olive or brown, clean and sober or not, liberal or conservative, sinner or saint, maiden or whore, perfect in every way or a complete screw up, loved by everyone or despised by the world. I do not care. When and if they humbly desire the love of God, I am here to share it with them; no catches, no conditions, no judgments. I am here to be an instrument of God’s love—and instruments do not question the One who wields them, nor where He applies them.