Letter I wrote my Dad in 2003 on his 74th Birthday.

Dad:

Today is your 74^th birthday. Happy Birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday dear daddy, happy birthday to you. That song seems much longer when you sing it, doesn’t it? Anyway, the reason I am writing this is I have decided to see what is in my heart on your birthday.

            As I have told you before, the life you are living is a classic. When you were still a young man, you dramatically converted to serve Jesus and over the years your dedication has come to inspire not only those around you, but I suspect even you. By that I mean, I bet when you look at fifty years of dedication to the same master, your respect for the master is renewed and your sense of who you are, the servant of one master, comes clearer than ever to you. You are steeped in riches of the soul, one of the richest men I know, in that way.

            This piece I am writing is about you, but inevitably, me as well; in fact - you and me.  Sometimes in life the opportunity arises to do what we believe to be the right thing and ever so often, doing it makes us feel better about ourselves too. So, yes this is being written as something of a thank you letter to the man most important in my life, but I must admit, it is also being written in part because I believe it will make me feel better about me and maybe especially you and me. I also think I am trying to tap a little of your inner strength for myself, through this process. So you see, I am not doing this strictly out of the goodness of my heart. In fact, it might be more apt to say, I am doing it to see what goodness is in my heart; thanks in no small part to you.

            Several years ago when Earl and I were playing tennis on one of his visits to Knoxville, where we lived at the time; it was hot and we were giving each other a real struggle. Neither of us is a great tennis player, but we are both old-fashioned competitors - I wonder where we got that? Anyway, we were sweating and pounding the ball back and forth at one another in the hot summer sun and I was beginning to consider giving up and letting him win or at least just not trying so hard, after all what did it really matter in the long run which one of us won this tennis match. 

            But then it occurred to me all of a sudden - this was what life comes down to. We are repeatedly faced with challenges and obstacles causing us to have just such inner conversations and one of the voices always seems to want us to give in or take it easy and the other says no, stand up and fight, give it all you have. These exact words may not have come to me in that instance, but the conversation goes sort of this way. 

A voice said, “look at you out here about ready to pack it in and say, you’re a better man than me, you win. Look at you, you’re just another creature in the universe, your life does not matter any more than the millions of others that have come before it or the millions that may come after it. It is all for no reason. Nothing you ever do will matter for eternity, so why do anything? These moments you are stringing together are as inconsequential as all the other moments of time, the universe smiles and frowns equally on every particle of matter and ultimately rules them all equally inconsequential.”

But as that voice was having its say, the other voice was preparing its response. This other voice can be quite persuasive too, when it takes a mind. The second voice said, “Get thee behind me Satan or whoever in the hell you are, but before you do, I want a word with your butt. What do you mean it all means nothing? Not only are you wrong, but the truth is exactly the opposite. Everything I do is profound, for when I think, it is the only time in history that anyone will ever think exactly that way, and when I talk, it is the only time in history anyone will ever talk exactly like that, and every time I look at a sunset, it will be the first and last time anyone ever comprehended it in just that fashion. 

So, look how wrong you are. Everything I do, and everything anyone does is spectacular and unique, and it goes together with all other phenomena, all other matter, to comprise this beautiful system that makes me and yes, even you Satan, possible; even necessary. So, don’t talk to me about eternal uselessness. 

You see that strapping young man over there on the other side of this tennis court? That’s my brother. He is important. Every breath he takes is precious, not just to him, but to me, to my sisters, to my mother, to my father and all those who know and love him. That connection we all have, that passion for our own lives and for the continuation of the lives of others we become acquainted with on this planet, is the realest thing in this universe. Yes, realer than you Beelzebub. And I have another thing for you to think about. You see these hands and feet and you hear this voice and you see and feel the results of the workings of this mind? Well, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Before I leave this planet I plan to show you a few more things. If you are going to hang around me, you might want to bring a pencil and paper because I plan to show you the difference between useful and useless, what is needed and not needed. For starters, what is useless and not needed are your words of discouragement.

            Some day within the next several decades, I will cease to occupy this old body and at that time, whatever new process begins then after living is done, will take over and my current way of being will be finished. But between now and the end of this living process, I am going to give every tennis ball hit in my direction a quick ride back across that net and if it comes back I will swat at it again. There will be all of eternity for the next process, for these old bones and this flesh to intermingle again with the other living things. But right now by virtue of whatever accident or cause there may be, I have breath, I have strength, I have desire and I am going to give an account of myself on this planet.”

            Needless to say, that first voice turned his tail and ran and I did not hear from him again for some time. In case you are wondering about the tennis game, your favorite never-can-do-any-wrong son, Earl, broke the wooden racket he was using, Tanga’s by swinging it forward and stopping it too quickly – not even hitting the ball- so we went in and got ourselves something cold to drink. He was apologetic as they always are.

Of course all the apologies in the world were not going to bring back poor Tanny Bea’s Tennis racket. Remember that time you got to feeling guilty about taking toilet paper from the men’s room at J.P. Stevens and went in and made restitution? I keep hoping Earl will get under similar conviction about that tennis racket, but it’s been over fifteen years now.

           

            Perhaps the greatest miracle any of us will ever be part of is our own birth. Life, that’s what Viennie Mae James and John Wesley McCullough gave you and that’s what you and Joyce Elizabeth Spearman gave me. This gift is not one that we need worry about repaying or compensating anyone for, it is too valuable to ever be able to do that anyway.  However, there is something we can do, I believe, and that is to seek as much as possible to create an understanding between ourselves and those who gave us life and between ourselves and those who come after us. This understanding should be sought not to perpetuate myths or provincial attitudes toward people or ideas, but rather to line up vertical time with horizontal wisdom, remembrances of yesterday, hopes for tomorrow, united in the rich community of the present.

            My earliest recollections are of you reflecting back to me my worth as a person. You expected grown action, lofty thoughts, fast feet, a true heart, respect for authority and I tried my hardest to meet your standards. Remember the time we dropped mama off to get her hair fixed and I asked you how fast our ’57 Plymouth would go and you said, we could find out and so you had me get down in the floorboard beneath your feet and mash the gas with my hands. I guess you figured that if you let me mash the gas with my hands, any disappointment in how fast the car could go would not be because we did not give it everything we had. You steered and I pushed with both hands on the foot feed, gritting my teeth, trying my best to “mash that dal thing plum through the floorboard”. It was a two-lane road, the one that runs in front of Rehobeth Baptist Church.

            Of course, looking back, a man wonders how he survived sometimes, doesn’t he? I mean I doubt very seriously if the lord would have had much sympathy if we had wound up wrapping that thing around a tree or something, acting like pure fools that way. My guess is if we had prayed and asked him to stop the bleeding in our necks after our terrible accident, he would have just smiled and said, “Come up hither, my children, before you kill somebody else.”

Happy Birthday, Dad.