In a single Day

A lot of the time, life doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Certain things happen on any given day, a plethora of events take place in a single week. Most of what happens to us appears disjointed and out of sort—detached in any recognizable way from the larger story at play. Each day appears as a single page in the epic script unfolding before us—each taking place without our express permission or direct involvement. But every once in a while, we may take notice of particular overlays, repeats and echoes in the story, pointing to—in a strange but fantastic way—an author behind it all. And on the rarest of occasions, several facets of the story may come together… in a single day.

Just such a day started for me with a simple goodbye to my 3 year old daughter. But unlike most of my days at school and work, it was not me that was leaving the home—it was her… Somehow Maia managed to squeeze past our best attempts to suppress her natural maturing process (at least, so far) and forthwith ran into her first day of preschool. When we arrived there, she immediately busied herself in the toy kitchen with another little girl. Perhaps a new little friend… As we said our goodbyes, I suddenly found my vision was clouded and blurry. Visions of a wedding aisle and a different sort of “goodbye” kiss threatened to pool my eyes over completely. But, as I’m sure my own parents know, this sort of sorrow is a mysterious one, mixed with strange twists of joy and troubled contentment.

Fast-forward a few hours. Late afternoon. I sit at my seat in Christian Ethics. Anthony Bradley makes a throw away comment about Boy Scouts. He blurts out the scout motto verbatim. I was only ever in Cub Scouts. I hadn’t heard the Boy Scout motto in years. The class goes on. We talk of ethics, of life and of the pursuit of holiness in the days and years that we presume to have ahead of us. Dr. Bradley mentions blasting his radio—driving with the windows down—one cool summer night several years ago. I flip through the memory banks to my first encounter with a certain iconic Irish band during my college years. My soul tingled as I remembered that hour-long trip from Lancaster to Baldwin listening to All that you can’t leave Behind in its entirety. I could almost feel the tips of my hair stretching to feel the cool summer wind again…

Now fast-forward a few more hours. This time in the home of a dear friend. It was there that we met up with a dear friend of his. Jim and Sandy—each individually—have been around the sun more times than my wife, my children and I combined. I sat in Jim’s little sitting room and simply soaked in the many stories that they shared. Then Sandy began to explain the program that—since retirement—he had started in the local schools. Because the program was born out of the themes found in the Boy Scout motto, Sandy found fit to recite it to me in its entirety. Now in nearly every school district in MO—and several in Illinois to boot—Sandy’s Character Plus program is ethics in practice. I sat and marveled at this extension of the day’s earlier conversations. The remainder of the evening I watched as two old friends shared their lives with one another, poked fun at each other and laughed together. And my mind raced back to the beginning of the day, marked with the new potential for such relationships in the life of my daughter.

Now I have left my friends house. I begin to chomp and chew over the events of the day. They come colluding and colliding together and I watch as they fit together like a perfect little puzzle. I reflect on the comments from ethics class about the grand story of redemption… how all will fit together one day in the final consummation. I set my iPod on random to see what soundtrack will close it all off. Now resonating over my speakers comes the familiar refrains of U2’s Gloria, belted out as the perfect doxology. And I drive through the cool summer night, my windows open and the tips of my hair reaching for the wind.