My Dad

"That they may rest from their labors; and their works do follow them.” ---Revelation 14:13

Sunday was All Saints Day. For every Saint that has a feast day in the Church Calendar, there is a literal army of unnamed Saints who left deep footprints in this world, but now God alone knows their names. All Saints Day is a wonderful catch-all to remember all those departed people who helped us live, move and have our being in God.

At the Holy Eucharist on Sunday morning, I was overcome by a profound sense of just how many lives have touched my own for good. They have departed, but they carved deep gorges in my hard heart as they passed through this world. The small portions of compassion that trickle through my life are traveling in channels that they made. I also am aware of the fact that I have not done nearly enough with such a gift as the one I received in the sum of their influence.

One particular person who was on my mind was my dear Dad. He is not on any official register of saints, but he will always be one to me. My story is more his than my own. I suspect it always will be.

When my father was six, he was diagnosed with a disease that came with a death sentence. His parents were told that he probably would not live to be an adult. He told me that when he was 14 he prayed and asked God to let him live long enough to have one child. It never struck me until years later just how strange a prayer that was. Despite all the odds, he grew up, married and began to work. However, in 1972, when I was three, both of his kidneys failed and he was sent to Duke Medical Center. It was there at the Duke University Chapel that he had a deep experience of transforming faith. Somehow, he knew that despite having “one foot in the grave and one foot on a banana peel” (his words) he would live to raise me. Over the years, while my father was at his monthly medical appointments at the hospital, that Chapel became my second home. It was a different world back then. No one seemed to notice a little boy playfully exploring the vastness of its sacred spaces, especially during the quiet of summer. I was always treated with a dignified kindness there that I never experienced anywhere else. God lived in that big place and it would forever be my spiritual home.

Dad became one of Duke’s first experimental kidney transplants. It was a barbaric process that only lasted a year and actually crippled him even more. He would go on to receive two more kidney transplants at Duke during the course of his life. He would also encounter many more challenges along the way. The catastrophic health crisis that year struck our family like a meteor. It obliterated any sense of material security that existed prior to his kidneys failing. In 1976, my mother left us. She walked out of my life for good without ever even saying goodbye. I came home from school one day and found out that she was gone. Even as a child, I had a sense of just how fragile and illusory our security is in this world. It has been a vital part of understanding the lives of people who come to my shelter everyday.

Back then single parents were viewed with suspicion. Single male parents were even more of an oddity. A single male parent in a wheelchair was thought to be especially incapable of rearing a child. Dad defied everyone’s expectations. He had a vibrant faith, a truly incredible sense of humor and a contagious zest for life. Nothing could stop him. As a small child, I watched him mow the yard with a push mower (with a very bizarre technique of pulling it backwards with one arm while rolling the wheelchair in reverse with the other one), wash clothes, fix meals, etc. He did it without complaining because he was just grateful to be alive. He would eventually have both of his hips replaced and walk again. However, he always stood tall in my mind whetehr eh was walking or rolling around in a wheelchair.

Dad’s theology was very simple: God is real and God is love. When we prayed for daily bread, it was often more than simply something nice to say during the Lord’s Prayer. Somehow, God always provided daily bread. Over the years he shared as much of that daily bread as he received. He had not been able to work, but he volunteered his free time driving elderly people to grocery stores, drug stores, and doctor’s appointments. He would relish just sitting with them and listening and he would pray. I have never met anyone else who prayed for people like my Dad did. Even though we were poor, my Dad always managed to find someone who was poorer than us. He would then give that person any excess we had. I used to joke that Dad could make me feel rich if I had two peanut butter crackers and someone else had none. I am positive that my vocation would have been very different if my Dad had not given me the eyes to see others who have less as worth much in the sight of God.

As was fitting, my Dad passed away at Duke in 1996. He passed just the way he lived: quietly, peacefully and with dignity. I visited him as he was dying. One of the last things he told me was, “always remember that God is real and God love.” I went over to the Chapel to pray and I took the tiny elevator to the top of the tower. There, as I looked out over Durham, I prayed and thanked God for what was initiated so long ago at that Chapel. I knew my many visits to Duke were ending with his passing. It was like I was saying goodbye to two friends that day: one a person and one a place. Both retain a special living presence in my heart.

Sunday was All Saints Day. During the Holy Eucharist my mind kept drifting to the top of that Chapel tower and the man who found in its shadows the quiet faith to rear his little boy from a wheelchair. Saints are holy, not because of some false cardboard piety that springs from their “perfect” lives. Saints are holy because they help make God real to us through imperfect lives. I thank God for one saint, in particular, who could laugh at a bawdy joke and pull a lawnmower backwards with one arm while rolling in a wheelchair and in doing so, he taught me that God is real is God is love.