Articles by Philip Gulley at Heartlight

A Time to Weep

Sat, 16 Jun 2007 00:00:00 -0500

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die ... a time to mourn, and a time to ... (Ecclesiastes 3:1-4 NRS).

The morning of my father's operation, my brothers and sister and mother gathered in his hospital room. After a while the doctor came in and said they were ready for surgery. We prayed a prayer and filed out of the room. I was the last to leave, and when I did Dad called me back in. He lifted up the Gideon Bible from beside his bed, pulled out a piece of paper, and handed it to me. "Just in case,” he told me.

I opened the paper and read it. They were his burial instructions, penned during a sleepless night. He went over his instructions, line by line. "I want to be buried at the South Cemetery. Have Bob Bales pick the grave site. He knows where the best spots are. I want you to give the eulogy. If you're not able, ask Pastor Thornburg at the Quaker meeting."

Now it was my turn to care for him. I folded the paper and put it in my pocket. This was a conversation I had never rehearsed and never expected to have. As a minister, I had many conversations like this, but never with my father. Whenever we eat out together, my dad always pays the check. If I reach for the bill, he slaps my hand away and says it's a father's joy to care for his son. Now it was my turn to care for him. Full circle. But it didn't bring me joy.

They wheeled Dad away. Six hours later the doctor came out, a smile on his face. An hour later, we got to see Dad. Five days after that, Dad came home. The doctors were optimistic.

No more red meat or cigarettes, they told him. He agreed and pledged his promise on the Gideon Bible. I took his burial instructions and put them in my desk under glass. Every time I open my top right-hand drawer, I'm faced with my father's mortality. I'm no longer a little boy thinking my daddy will live forever. I'm a man with sons of my own coming to understand how frayed are the cords which bind us to this earth.

The Day the Tree Went Crashing

Tue, 19 Jul 2005 00:00:00 -0500

A friend of mine has a bunch of college degrees. I was really impressed until he told me he was going to another city to deliver a paper. Heck, I was delivering papers in the fourth grade. One of my customers was a Quaker widow named Mrs. Harvey. When weather permitted, she'd sit on her front porch swing, waiting for the paper and a conversation. I'd pull up a rocking chair, and we'd sit and visit underneath the shade of the maple tree which stood guard over the porch.

One day she asked me if I would work as her yard boy. She had a big yard, almost two acres, which she wanted mowed with a push mower since riding mowers didn't do a very good job. She was emphatic about that and, since I didn't have a riding mower, I agreed with her.

I'd stop by every afternoon when I was done delivering papers and mow a section. Every afternoon but Sunday since Mrs. Harvey said that was the Sabbath, and if the Lord needed to rest on the seventh day, who was I to work?

It was in the fourth year of my mowing that I noticed the front porch maple tree was dying. It had some years on it. Mr. and Mrs. Harvey had moved there the first year of their marriage, forty years before. Mr. Harvey had planted it then. "Twenty years from now, we'll appreciate this," he'd said at the time. And twenty years later they did appreciate it, on a summer evening when the heat would loosen its grip.

"Twenty years from now, we'll appreciate this." ... But after forty years, Mr. Harvey was dead, and so was the tree. And when I told Mrs. Harvey she stared at the tree the longest time and told how she still remembered what her husband was wearing when he planted that tree. Then she went in her house and called Kenny. He was the man in our town who cut trees.

He rolled up the next day in his truck and got right down to business -- another day, another tree. Mrs. Harvey was watching from her front porch swing, along with her neighbor, who had made her way over to offer comfort. So when the chain saw bit into the tree and Mrs. Harvey flinched, her neighbor took her hand and listened while Mrs. Harvey talked about summer evenings that were supposed to be but never were.

Once spent a whole semester studying the book of Job. Never did understand it until I read it in light of Mrs. Harvey.

Job had it all; then Job lost it all. Servants: murdered. Wealth: stolen. Health: gone. Sons and daughters and bounce-on-your-knee grandchildren: dead. Job sat on a pile of ashes, lamenting over a life that was supposed to be, but never was. God made his way over to Job and sat with him amidst the charred remains of his life. A tender thing, given the immensity of the universe and the smallness of Job. But then God knows our secret pain.

When I was in college, my philosophy professor spent an entire week talking about love. But for me it was never clearer than the day the tree went crashing.

When others are happy, be happy with them. If they are sad, share their sorrow. (Romans 12:15)

Inheritance Day

Wed, 15 Jun 2005 00:00:00 -0500

In the autumn of my grandfather's ninety-second year, he moved to a retirement home. The decision to move had been a long time in the making. Grandma had died two years earlier. He was afraid that closing the door to their home one last time would make their goodbye permanent. Complicating the decision was their dog, Babe, who was going with him no matter what. Dispensing the family heirlooms was the final hurdle ... the kitchen table he'd built from a wind-shook cherry tree in 1941, Grandma's mahogany bed, and the woodworking tools.

Since childhood, I had shown a penchant for tools of all types. I spent a fair portion of my youth perched on Grandpa's workshop stool, eyeing his implements and learning about their upkeep.

"Delta-Milwaukee drill press, built in 1939," he instructed. "Oil it once a month. Craftsman table saw. Don't ever buy a new one; just buy another motor when the old one goes bad. These are carving knives. Keep them sharp. A dull knife is a dangerous knife."

Then the most beautiful words of all to my young ears: “Someday these tools will be yours.”

I could scarcely wait for them to be mine, not thinking how receiving them would signal Grandpa's final days. Whenever I visited him, I would finger the tools, imagining them in my workshop. But as I grew older and my affection for Grandpa increased, my yearning for his tools diminished. I began to realize they would be bought at a heavy price.

A week before he entered the retirement home, he invited me to his house. "Bring a truck," he said. I arrived the next morning with my friend Jim. Grandpa hobbled out to his workshop, and I followed. Jim had the good sense to linger in the background. Grandpa unlatched the door and we made our way inside.

"Someday these tools will be yours." He rested his hand on the drill press. "This is a 1939 Delta-Milwaukee drill press," he told me. "You'll need to oil it once a month." He worked his way through to the carving knives. "Remember to keep these sharp. A dull knife is a dangerous knife." It was a sober morning.

My wife and I unloaded the tools that evening and carried them to my basement workshop. I arranged them just so while my little boy Spencer looked on from his perch on the workshop stool.

"This was Grandpa's drill press," I told him. "Now it belongs to me. And these are carving knives. When you're bigger I'll show you how to use them."

He looked up at me from the stool. "Can I have them?"

"Yes, Spencer, someday a long time from now, when Daddy doesn't need them anymore, these tools will be yours."

He grinned a shy grin. Those were beautiful words to his young ears.

Forty-five years from now, I'll totter out to my workshop with son in tow. It will be his Inheritance Day. I will have oiled the drill press once a month, just as Grandpa taught me to do. It will be one hundred years old and will work just fine. My son's friend will linger in the background, while Spencer and I go over the tools' upkeep one last time. "Don't forget, son, a dull knife is a dangerous knife."

I wonder if on that day my son will feel the melancholy I felt on my Inheritance Day. I wonder if he'll lie awake on that distant night, wishing his daddy was still long for this world, as I wish that now of Grandpa.

Late at night, when my sons are asleep and my wife is reading in her chair, I go down to my workshop and think of grandpas and daddies and sons and the faithful rhythm of it all.

Ever since I first heard of your strong faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for Christians everywhere, I have never stopped thanking God for you. I pray for you constantly, asking God, the glorious Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, to give you spiritual wisdom and understanding, so that you might grow in your knowledge of God. I pray that your hearts will be flooded with light so that you can understand the wonderful future he has promised to those he called. I want you to realize what a rich and glorious inheritance he has given to his people. (Ephesians 1:15-18 NLT)

From the book Hometown Tales by Philip Gulley.

Nativity Set

Fri, 24 Dec 2004 00:00:00 -0600

My mother-in-law, Ruby, lives in southern Indiana in the town of Paoli. We spend family Christmas with her. Those good people in Paoli remember what Christmas is all about. Each year, just before Thanksgiving, Herb from the street department hauls the baby Jesus, his mommy and daddy, and an assortment of livestock and shepherds and wise men out of storage and sets them up on the courthouse lawn. The holy family takes up residence on the southwest corner of the square, and no one dares to complain. There are no civil libertarians in Paoli at Christmastime.

But Christmas isn’t official until Wilson Roberts decorates his variety store, which he does the day after Thanksgiving. Each year the same adornments—a cardboard cutout of Rudolph taped to the front window, a strand of tinsel hung over the checkout counter, and a bucket of candy canes left over from the year before sitting next to the cash register. On that day, at precisely 8:50 A.M., people from all over town head to the variety store to start their gift buying. It is a migration every bit as predictable as the Capistrano swallows.

I stopped in a few years ago, looking for a nativity set. The week before, my wife had said, “What this house needs is a nativity set.” So on the day after Thanksgiving, while everyone else was lying around in a turkey-filled stupor, I drove into town to the variety store. It’s a small store in sore need of a liquidation sale. Wilson’s motto is “We have it, if we can find it.” Forty years of merchandise is stacked to the ceiling. It makes for some incongruent discoveries. I once found a poster of Michael Jackson next to a 1959 edition of The Old Farmer’s Almanac.

I went inside and sought out Wilson Roberts. He was sitting in the back of the store, smoking a cigar, his ashes dribbling on the wood floor. “I’d like to buy a nativity set,” I told him.

He said, “Well, I know we have one, if I can just find it.”

He began to look. He looked over by the hair nets and bobby pins. Not there. He looked by the garden hoses. Not there. Then over by the yard goods and notions. No holy family there, either. He looked over near the lawn chairs, then underneath the candy display, which is where he found it.

He dusted off the box, opened it, and took a roll call. One manger, one kneeling mother, one proud father, some shepherds, three wise men, one sheep, one cow, one donkey, and one baby Jesus. Everyone present and accounted for. “That’ll be twelve dollars,” he told me. “How about ten?” I countered. The box was torn, and the cow was missing an ear.

Wilson Roberts squinted at me, shifted his cigar from one side of his mouth to the other, then said, “You got a deal.” So now we have a nativity set. French-made. Genuine plaster from Paris, the box says.

The day I bought the nativity set was the last time I saw Wilson Roberts alive. He died the next year. We drive past his old store on our way to Thanksgiving dinner at Ruby’s. The variety store is closed now. When he died, it died. Then Wal-Mart moved in, and people talk as if it’s a blessing. I guarantee you WalMart won’t have a 1959 edition of The Old Farmer’s Almanac. Don’t even bother to ask.

I think back on Wilson Roberts searching amid bobby pins and yard goods for the baby Jesus. Sometimes our search for the Divine has us poking around in all kinds of corners.

Every year at Christmas, I haul our nativity set out of storage and place it on the piano next to our front door. That way, when we’re scurrying about in a frenzy, honoring the birth of the One who told us not to be anxious about anything, we can pause and remember what Christmas is all about. How that quiet baby came into this tumultuous world, greeted by wide-eyed shepherds and one-eared cows. I swing open my heart and welcome him home.

This comes from a chapter in Philip Gulley's book, Home Town Tales: Recollections of Peace, Love, and Joy. © 1999 by Multnomah Pub., Used by permission. This article cannot be reprinted without the publisher's permisison. Check out more books by Philip Gulley.