Cousin Wilson

Last Sunday Vickie and I drove to Fredericksburg and had lunch with my cousin Wilson and his wife Sharon – it had been around forty years since I’d seen Wilson. As I thought about our meeting I confess to wondering what we’d talk about, after all forty years is a long time. I needn’t have worried, the time flew by and I could have stayed at the restaurant well into the evening.

Wilson and I connected because his sister-in-law, his brother Doug’s wife, was doing some genealogical research and got a “hit” on her father-in-law (Wilson’s dad) in an article I had posted on a website. She contacted me via email.

Uncle Caskie’s family was my favorite Withers family. They lived in Northern Virginia and we lived in Maryland, and when our parents told us that we were going to visit them it was always great news. My visits to them are some of my best childhood memories. Looking back after writing the preceding sentence I realize that after the fifth grade those day trips stopped and that I seldom saw them from that point on; it was shortly after I started the fifth grade that my parents split up and my Dad disappeared for a period of time. After he returned to the area I saw Caskie’s family from time-to-time, but not often.

The fact that Caskie’s family was my favorite family is not necessarily a knock on my Dad’s other brothers and sisters (he had four sisters and three brothers who lived to adulthood), Caskie’s children were closer to my two brothers and me in age than the other families. Caskie lived in Loudon County, Virginia when it was still country and not gentrified countryside, there were hogs and chickens and cows and outhouses in Loudon County then, I imagine you’d be hard-pressed to find an outhouse in Loudon County today.

My memories include playing in hay stacked in a barn; a barn-raising with friends and family pitching in; butchering hogs; exploring nearby woods and climbing trees; inspecting Wilson’s tree house; and my favorite memory of all – the great hog pen shootout.

To be continued…

The Squirrel Feeder

The squirrels at our new home aren’t using the squirrel feeder; unlike the squirrels during our time on the Zuck Homestead these squirrels aren’t the least bit interested in the corn. They actually by-pass the corn on their way up and down the tree that holds the feeder.

The reason is that our home is surrounded by oak and hickory trees and for the past few months there has been a carpet of nuts on the ground, so the squirrels are eating and storing the food that is natural to them – supplemental corn is not only not required, it is not wanted.

This is like Christians and the Gospel, when the Gospel is taught, and I mean the whole Gospel not just initial salvation, the Gospel feeds and satisfies us and meets our every need; we should not be surprised at this for Jesus Christ is the Gospel: He is our wisdom and sanctification and redemption; He is that water and bread that does more that satisfy us – He fills us.

It would be unnatural for the squirrels at our home to suddenly abandon the acorns and hickory nuts for the corn we’ve placed in the feeder; it would be unnatural for them to abandon their natural food for something that does not naturally grow on this land. And yet Christians abandon their natural source of sustenance, Jesus Christ and His Word, for unnatural substitutes – we prefer to frequent feeders than to eat from the Tree of Life.  

I confess that my sensitivity to this has developed over the years; on the one hand I’m dismayed at this sensitivity and on the other hand I’m thankful for it. I’m dismayed because I regret the years that I did not fully appreciate the issue, the years that I had left my first love for texts out of contexts, for the pragmatic, for the expedient, for the therapeutic, for the popular, for the political, for the need-centered rather than the Christ-centered. Of course I’m thankful that a passion for Jesus has been reawakened in me as never before. I find that being in the 4^th Quarter of life makes it easier to cut to the chase and discard the extraneous. It also forces me to not be so nuanced and to get to the point – though I do enjoy nuance.

For the squirrels to prefer the feeder to the abundance surrounding them would be like the Woman at the Well continuing to carry her bucket about seeking water after the Fountain of Life came to live within her. 

Do we hear the voice of the Father, “This is My beloved Son, hear Him”?

A Warm Fire, Conversation, and a Book

Our recent move from the Zuck homestead to our new home has me reflecting back on our time with David and Sally. That first winter was especially special because of its evenings.

After dinner David and Sally often walked over to our home and the four of us sat in the family room with a lively wood fire in the fireplace, coffee and dessert, and enjoyed an evening of conversation, laughter and reading aloud to each other. Our reading material might be Flannery O’Connor one night, a Dorothy L. Sayers short story the next, or an excerpt from C.S. Lewis on another night. We gave each other permission to doze, though we discouraged falling off the furniture in one’s sleep – it tended to frighten the dogs.

We reminisced about years gone by, about friends now buried and those still with us, about growing up in the environs of Drew University (David’s parents were professors there), or in Luther, IA, a farming community of 150 people (Vickie), or in Kensington, MD (both Sally and me, though we didn’t know each other).

On most nights we laughed, on some nights we laughed so hard we cried. As an evening came to a close David would crank up his manually-powered flashlight and David, Sally, and Wallace (a rat terrier) would negotiate the two-minute walk home. I went to bed those nights in the warmth of friendship, joyfulness, and intellectual stimulation.

What a shame our lives don’t have more of those evenings. I envy past generations who created their own entertainment, who valued conversation, who delighted in friends and company. We may know more “data” today and our economic standard of living may be greater but I don’t think we are any wiser or more human than those gone before us – in many respects we are less on both counts.

That was a sweet winter indeed, that first winter on the Zuck homestead.