Winter Blast

A Haiku

Boy it's snowing hard
Outside in my neighborhood...
Still Winter I guess!

I Just Saw Lips Move

A Renga-Style Haiku by my sister Lauren

I watch people talk
The people I see are dumb
They should shut up now

But they wont be still
Quietness is unheard of
They keep talking dumb

I look at you now
You talk and I hear nothing.
I just see lips move

Blah blah blah blah blah
Just be quiet you fool you
And I will be glad

At this point I am annoyed
At your words so meaningless

Until I opened my ears
I thought you spoke of nothing

I was very wrong
About the words being said
These words held great thoughts

I should have listened
To what you said to me
I just saw lips move

The Gray Moon

A Renga Style Haiku

when the sun fell down
pieces of deep hot yellow
made me a cartoon

then i crept away
to decide what i should do
really quite confused

i asked the gray moon
who went on and on for hours
explaining daydreams

which made for nice company
but missed the point entirely

i dodged my eyes toward
the sound of the wind whistling
which made me happy

then i looked away
and saw a nimbus cloud wave
to a star that burst

he shyly giggled
when he noticed me watching
so of course i winked

if only the moon could see
what he misses from talking

DaddyTroy's Funeral

At DaddyTroy's funeral in December, I spoke the following words. Then, Jason followed me with these.

Troy Griffin was always “DaddyTroy” to me. I’m his youngest grandson. Let me tell you some of what I know about who he was, this great figure of a man:

DaddyTroy was born October 19th, 1923, in Queen City, Texas, to Rufus and Eunice Griffin. They lived just down the road in Antioch, or, as he called it, “Anti.” He was retired owner of Griffin Candy and Tobacco. The shell of the last truckbed from the truck he drove is right out behind his house still. I think the older one’s out in the pasture. We grandchildren know those truckbeds really well because sometimes he’d let us join him while he was counting inventory, and we’d get to pick one piece of candy. I’d always choose Three Musketeers or Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. He’d choose a Butterfinger. Later he’s use one old truckbed to store potatoes under near his garden.

DaddyTroy was preceded in death by his extraordinarily wonderful wife of 52 years, Billie Sue Beck Griffin, “Grandmommy.” He was also preceded by his brothers Richard Griffin, “Uncle Dick” to me, and Ennis Griffin (I never met Uncle Ennis, but DaddyTroy always told me what a great fellow he was). You know, DaddyTroy had a third brother, James Floyd, who died in childbirth whom I suppose he’s getting to know right about now.

DaddyTroy is survived by three daughters and son-in-laws, Judy and Charles Flint, Jan and Larry Clayton, and Jo and Glen Edwards, all of Atlanta. DaddyTroy loved his grandchildren very much. We are Charles Jr. and Cindy Flint, Jana and Todd Hancock, Jennifer and Kearby Herrington, Karen and Joe Farner, Jason and Christy Edwards, Blake and Karla Edwards, and Lauren Edwards. And, in the last decade or so, his great-grandchildren have also brought him great joy: Davis and Owen Flint, Mallory, Carson, and Olivia Hancock, and Flint and Maddie Herrington (Maddie actually called him “Dewey,” which he did not care for at all). DaddyTroy is also survived by his sister-in-law, Sissie Griffin, and his brother-in-law and sister-in-law, Dr. James and Donna Stanley, all of Atlanta, and numerous nieces and nephews. DaddyTroy also has a couple of first-cousins here today, James McCasland and Billy Griffin…and maybe others I have not yet met.

Well, DaddyTroy loved family. He loved his family. He loved being around his family. He loved living near his family.

He told me a story this one story numerous times about how, while he was stationed down at Brooks Air Force Base in San Antonio during WWII, he would hitchhike back home whenever he got a pass for a “three day leave.” Now, you have to understand that in the 40’s, there was no Interstate 35. He was going through town after town catching rides. He never had any trouble at all getting rides as no one turned down a man in uniform back then, but it would still take him near 15 to 18 hours to get here, as best as I can remember him telling it. He would get here, and before heading back, have one full-day to spend with family and with his girl, Billie Sue, and to eat some good home cookin’. Well, one time, he had gotten as far as this side of Austin heading back to base when he was picked up by two military police. He told me he was very scared of what kind of trouble he was going to get in because, you see, his military “pass” would only allow him to go 150 miles from base (and Cass County is further than that). He told them he had just come from some small town he named off the top of his head that was nearby, and they gave him a knowing glance after seeing from his papers that he was from Northeast Texas, but told him to hop on in, and they’d give him a ride just through Austin.

He made it okay through that scare, and he continued to take every leave he had to come see his family and the woman he loved, and it was right there at the Justice of the Peace in San Antonio that he had Grandmommy drive down and marry him.

When I think of DaddyTroy, I think of his love of gardening squash and peas and tomatoes and onions and, when I pressed him hard for it, watermelons. I think of him rocking on the front porch with Grandmommy after their afternoon nap in the living room recliners. I think of Piney Grove Baptist Church, loading bales of hay, fishing with cataba worms for catfish, black coffee, picking pecans, riding a tractor, him hiding money for us in the Christmas tree every year, and orchestrating the most intense annual Easter Egg hunt in Cass County. I think of how he looked in the back of birthday cards to see how much someone had paid for it. I think of him out feeding the cows in his coveralls, and of how when he came from work or gardening or fishing or the pasture, he’d be whistling to himself, and then you’d hear that back screen door slam shut as he came inside.

I think of him and Grandmommy up early in the morning reading the Bible together out loud, taking turns, and how sometimes I got to have a turn. I think of big family fish fries out behind the house and big family reunions at the State Park and how I’d get on his “bad list” if I didn’t come (so I came). I think of Grandmommy and DaddyTroy sitting on the swing out by the burning barrel and helping him dig up potatoes from the garden. I think of their dog “Tuffy” and the big buck he killed, “Big Boy,” and how he would take out his dentures to scare us, and rock us on his knee while he sang “Johnson Had an Old Gray Mule” or “Hey Hee a Door Yer.”

I think of how he always liked if I would make his baked potato look “perty” like mine, how he always liked to mow our yard for us and that he was on the rotation for mowing here at the church. I think of how he usually wouldn’t come to the Atlanta Rabbits football games but how they’d always sit and listen to it on the radio (especially when Charles Jr. was the kicker). And I think of him sitting to play solitaire before dinner, and how he’d actually talk to “Ol’ Sol,” his invisible opponent. I think of quick teasing glances followed by a wink, pats on the back, and even the nasal spray, Afrin, makes me think of him.

I think of love and joy and simplicity and family and faith, and I think of Jesus saying, “Come to me all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest.” And I think DaddyTroy did all of that.

Transience and Fragmentation

It has been said that family is a "house of life and memory." We have our being in relation to what we have or do not have in the form of a family, and that is the life part of it. And we tend, either consciously or unconsciously, to base our hopes and skepticisms and other sorts of judgments of life and aspects of life out of the socializing power of that family life, and that is the memory part of it.

Often, I don't have much to say. I'm not always a big talker. And this regularly puts me in awkward situations. My Mom, without fail, would always ask me, first thing, after I put my backpack in the backseat and then hopped into the front there in the pick-up zone at Atlanta Elementary School, "So how was your day?" I would inevitably and compulsively utter back, "Fine." She was usually gracious enough to allow me that answer without much prodding, and I appreciated that in her, the willingness to allow me some measure of space to sit in my insecurities without continual efforts to rip off the veil.

Little did I know that I'd live out much of my existence answering that same basic question with virtually the same answer to my wife and work colleagues on into eternity. It's like a twitch. It really is interesting to me, this tension between personality as a psychosocially conditioned phenomenon and, simultaneously, as a biologically predisposed entity. Because no matter which side of that particular pendulum personality psychology swings, it still leaves us all with that burning curiosity, "Am I okay?"

You know, I was thinking yesterday of how much I have always feared those first experiences of meeting new acquaintances, the burning anxiety that causes me to question whether or not they will like how I talk, what I'll say, or how I look to them. As I stepped up to the microphone last night in front of well over a thousand college students I felt this, and it's so funny to me, because at the same time I also have this strange sensation of joy and confidence in front of people. I love it, and I dread it. I dodge my eyes around and hope that my voice doesn't crack at my first word.

And then I hear someone right near stage left, perhaps a couple of rows back, yell out something like, "Go Blake, WAHOO!" It's difficult to communicate in words that feeling that accompanies an encouraging "yee haw" like this. Even just one. It's like a string tied to that upper fatty portion of your cheeks that yanks your face a bit into a smirk and brings some color back into it at the same time. And I got to thinking about how much even I, someone who by most assessments has a good deal of self-confidence, am brought into being by approval. And so you get to wondering if it's a character flaw, the product of a genetic inferiority or social insecurity. Well, I say "you," but I really mean "I," I suppose, although probably most of the time I don't wonder, I just become a little bit more alive.

It's like stepping into the light. I mean to say that when we know someone approves of some part of who we are, it is as if that part of us becomes, for that moment or series of moments, illumined. The veil is lifted. There is no need for defense; a friend has come. Maybe a new friend. Maybe a very old friend. And if neither, then there is ne'er a better way to enter in than through approval. It's like throwing open the shutters to a dusty, drab, and drafty old shack. If breath is a natural indicator of life, then giving approval is like CPR.

The truth is that no matter how any of us conceptualizes who we are and what that means in this world, we are all little more than transience and fragmentation. We are without that full sense of home that brings abundant joy enough to cleanse us through. And we are, none of us, a monolith. We are a bunch of assorted pieces of life and memory, all from broken homes and broken families, and, piece by piece, there is not a single one of us who doesn't know that tinge of illumination that comes with approval. The need for approval can be compulsive, but just about anything can be. The truth is that we all need that sort of love in our lives if we are to become who we are meant to be.

I once read that we all have "character types" that generally define how we live life, and I suppose that is true to a point. What I am learning is that no matter what character type may define us, we all have the capacity to embody those qualities which St. Paul referred to as "fruits." Our character type influences the flavor of the fruit but the fruit can be good, no matter what type of person we are, if the tree is healthy, if it is connected to life. And if love breathes life into all things, then the best way we can become who we are meant to be must begin with approval.

It's almost intuitive. When you encourage another person, if it is something you really mean, and if it relates to that person's reality and isn't some out-of-context patronization, then it really can serve to illumine a piece of that person. Truly, it can even enliven that person's spirit toward the capacity for encouraging someone themselves, for approval breeds joy which breeds love. And love will not fail. Christ will use it, from its many beginnings, to breathe us into being and to usher in His Kingdom.