An Overdue Goodbye

 There was no reason why Pat and I should have been friends. He was well into is sixties when I met him. I was only nineteen. He had “retired” from three careers. I had only ever had part-time jobs. I fancied myself pretty special. His life story could have been a best-seller, but you’d never know it from the way he treated others. As a child, Pat lived through Hitler’s blitz on England. Coming of age just after the war, he joined the Royal Navy, eventually becoming an electronics expert in the Special Boat Service (Britain’s version of the Navy SEALs). He served his country for twenty years, and then retired for the first time, becoming an engineer for a variety of electronics and communications companies around the world. After a few years, he “retired” again, opening his own SCUBA school in the Florida Keys. This was the retirement he had always dreamed of. Yet, when tragedy struck his son’s family, up in the frigid north of Hershey, Pennsylvania, Pat and his wife sold the business and moved closer to family.

                I first met Pat when I was told I would be training a new employee on the “Rover” shift. Things have changed significantly in the last twenty years, but in those days one security officer patrolled the vastness of Hersheypark, often on foot, all night. As the winter months approached, the days got shorter, and the park closed earlier, a second foot patrol was added from five to eleven in the evenings. This was the “Rover,” my sweet spot in the department over the dark, cold months. So, even though I could barely pay my bills, or get my college assignments done on time, I found myself “training” a much older man with twenty years of special operations experience. He handled that rather well.

                Pat was tiny, maybe just over five feet. He refused to wear his uniform in any sort of dignified, professional way. He never wore his badge on the outside of his winter jacket (a habit I picked up). He wore a brown fur trapper-style hat on his head, and a black and white checkered scarf, wrapped around his neck a few times and then stuffed down the front of his jacket. When he became too warm, he’d unzip the front of his jacket, letting the scarf spill out like a banner. He carried an old, green thermos, the kind your grandfather carried coffee in. Pat’s was always full of hot soup. After a cold round through the park, he’d find a quiet place to sit down, hook his hat on some corner, open his jacket, sip his soup, and tell tales from the old days.

                I “trained” Pat; Pat trained me. I remember one frigid evening, we were moving slowly and quietly through the park, when Pat suddenly grabbed my arm, whispering, “There’s a man there, in the trees.” I stopped and watched. I didn’t see anything. “Don’t look at the trees,” Pat’s whisper was almost silent. “Look beside them. Your eyes can’t see movement straight on in the dark.” I looked just to the side of the clump of trees he indicated, and sure enough, after a few seconds, I began to see small movements between two of the trunks. Someone was hiding there. It turned out to be an employee, who thought some night-time hijinks in the park sounded like fun, and had attempted to hide until after hours. He hadn’t planned on meeting the super retiree, who scolded the young man is if he were his own grand-child, and then chatted with him quietly as he walked him off of the property. It could have been a stroll along a scenic creek in the English country-side. By the end of the walk, the two were chums, even if one had probably just lost his job.

                Pat’s training period ended, and he was moved to the night-shift. I would meet him at shift change, and then not go home. I would walk in the dark with Pat for hours, talking, listening to him tell stories over his steaming soup. As different as we were, we also somehow just fit. I came to cherish our friendship. I suppose though, part-time night-shift at an amusement park was never going to work out for a man of Pat’s age and experience. The eleven-to-seven shift took its toll on a body approaching seventy. Our boss was a former Marine. He approached conflict with the delicacy of a sledge hammer. Pat was a scalpel. His words and actions were deliberately planned, and so efficient you seldom realized their impact until well after they had passed by. Pat’s skill and nuance were recognized, but not understood. Pat moved on.

                Employees at the park rotated pretty frequently. I was used to people moving along, but I don’t think I missed anyone quite like I missed Pat. I tried to make contact with him outside of work. This was before Google, and he wasn’t in the phone book. Short of subverting the lock on the supervisor’s office (thanks to Pat for that skill) and rummaging through the former employee files, I had no means of getting in touch with him. And, it occurred to me, maybe he wanted to be left alone.

                Almost a decade later, I was at a restaurant, now married with two children and a third on the way. My dinner was interrupted by a stuttered, “H-hallo, m-mate.” There by my table was a withered, aged, Pat. He had a stroke earlier in the year, and leaned on his wife’s arm for support. We chatted for a while, but it was a broken, disjointed affair: me trying to wrangle kids, him trying to stay erect. He told me the neighborhood he lived in. It was a short walk from my home. I knew that visits to Pat’s house would do both of us some good. I didn’t go. I had a wife and increasing number of kids. Life was too busy to spend sitting on a porch and chatting over hot soup. So, Pat was once again relegated to the world of once was.

                Last week I cracked open a light thriller for a quick vacation read. There, on page one, was a member of the British Special Boat Service. I immediately grabbed my phone and started Googling. Pat passed away just a short time after I last saw him. That wasn’t a surprise. There was a time when I would have grieved my failure to engage with Pat again, but at some point in life you begin to realize that there will always be things left undone. I stand eternally grateful for having known this odd, fascinating, magical, soup-bearing creature named Patrick Bishop. This is my belated farewell.

It's Not Hype: You Need To See Hamilton

Years ago, I saw Les Miserables for the first time. I’d never been a Broadway/musical fan before, but Les Mis was such a triumph of artistry and meaning that I thought maybe I was missing something. I wasn’t. I gave Broadway a try. What I found was a series of over-hyped, vapid productions. I’m still a Les Miserables fan, but not a Broadway guy. When the hype began to build around Hamilton a few years ago, it didn’t get me very excited. It didn’t even get me very interested. As the hype grew, my interest decreased. I figured it was a lot of people spending money to wait around for a year to watch some easy diversity points and cheap progressive wins against straw men, all wrapped up in a couple of catchy songs.

I WAS WRONG.

Trust me on this. You need to see Hamilton. Here’s why.

The characters are authentically human.

One of the biggest problems with our media culture is that heroes are always heroes, and villains are always villains. I know, of late there’s been a “demythologizing” of heroes, but that just turns heroes into villains. Entertainment on the popular level seldom offers us human beings as they truly are. The correct response to this failure is to reject popular entertainment (why I don’t really watch TV anymore). Sadly, most people accept these fictional characters as “real,” and then attempt to fit real humans into the fictional mold. Sidenote: that’s how you divide a culture.

Hamilton doesn’t succumb to this failure. Alexander Hamilton, the protagonist (huge spoiler there), is a hero. He’s a good guy. You root for him, love him, and want him to win; but he’s also broken, misguided, and too often gives way to ruthless ambition in a way that's a little too much like you. He’s a human. Don’t get me wrong, at the end you still like him. You just wish he’d have figured some things out a little earlier.

Aaron Burr, the antagonist (if you know your history this shouldn’t be spoiler), is not a great guy. He’s slippery, greasy, untrustworthy. He’ll say whatever he needs to say to get what he wants. You don’t like him, but sometimes you really want to. As the story progresses, you begin to understand why he feels the way he does. You feel his frustration, grieve for his failures. While at the end you still dislike him, you are left feeling that a deep friendship between Hamilton and Burr was just one step too far for both, and you mourn that loss.

King George

If for no other reason, watch Hamilton for King George. He is the most entertaining, disturbing, laughable, and unsettling character I have seen in many years. He is perfectly psychopathic. It is a masterclass of acting, mostly accomplished through facial expressions alone, aided by the judicious use of spittle. King George. You won’t be disappointed.

It is respectful

We’ve got a real problem with our founding fathers. We don’t know what to do with them. They are “problematic.” If we really get down to it though, the “problem” is us. We don’t know how to accept humans as humans (see the discussion on popular culture above). We as a people do not know how to simultaneously celebrate a person’s accomplishments and mourn their sins. We are always forgetting one to highlight the other. Hamilton does not destroy the legacy of our founding fathers. If you love the flag and lay flowers at the graveyard on Memorial Day, you will not be offended by Hamilton. However, the founding fathers do not get a pass. Jefferson, and others, but mostly Jefferson, are called out for their complex and confusing attitudes towards freedom and slavery, equality and gender, in ways that do not undermine the truly amazing accomplishment of this nation. You can walk away from Hamilton proud of what these men did, and troubled by what they failed to do. It is as it should be.

It is a mastery of its form

I’m not a big painting person. I’ve tried, but there’s too much history, and technicality, and, honestly, pretense. However, whenever I get the chance I will sit and stare at a Van Gogh, Caravaggio, or any one of the Dutch landscape masters, simply because, even too my philistine’s eyes, they are masterpieces. There are levels of meaning in Hamilton, selections in the style of hip-hop used by each character which make connections to masters of that artform which inform the attitudes and outlooks of each individual character on stage, connections which I will never fully understand, and which I do not have the time or inclination to investigate. Still, even to my philistine’s ears, this is a triumph.

A Teaser

There is one more reason to see Hamilton. It is a moment of truth and heartbreak that made me hold each one of my sons more tightly for a week, and made me yearn to father them better. But, to share would be to give too much away. You will have to see it for yourself.

I’m not afraid to admit that I was wrong. I was wrong about Hamilton. I owe a huge shout-out to my sister-in-law, who was on the bandwagon long before me. She has seldom led me astray with recommendations. I should have listened. My life is richer for having seen Hamilton. I pray yours will be as well.

Play Ball

His stance was aggressive, maybe too aggressive. His knees were bent, feet planted wide, shoulders hunched, bat lifted back and high over his shoulder, giving his entire body the appearance of a rubber-band wound tight, ready to snap back in a moment. The kids sitting beside me noticed it as well, and began cheering loudly, “Woo, yeah! Look at that stance!” The cheering wasn’t sincere, but rather a mockery of a younger player who had committed the sin of loving the game too much. He was short for his age, and while his peers had long ago adopted the bean-pole look of late-childhood, he still carried some extra cushion around the waist and cheeks. He was Pakistani, or Indian, or Bengali – the mockers beside me didn’t care. They just knew that the time he spent displaying that stance in the batter’s box came nowhere near the time he spent practicing it in front of the mirror. This crime of caring too much made him a loser.

                I was tempted to inform them that this kid, who’s favorite athletes probably contained more cricket players than baseball stars, had become the surprise of his last-place team, going three for three at the plate the last time I saw him play, that in this game, especially at this level, heart often made the difference. In the end, I didn’t have to. He spoke for himself. His teamed trailed my son’s by nine runs in the bottom of the last inning. He strutted to the plate, forcefully smashed his bat into it a few times, endured the heckling, hit a single, stole second, then third, then scored his team’s first, and only, run.

                Weeks later, I sat in my folding chair again, watching the same two teams warm-up. . . for the championship game. Somewhere toward the end of the season the last-place misfits had found something, and strung together a series of surprise playoffs wins, advancing all the way to face my son’s team in the final. They finished their warm-ups, and my son took the field to do the same. I watched my Jacob scoop up a grounder at third, and launch a rocket. . . straight into the atmosphere four feet above the first baseman’s head. Listening to the ball whistle off into the parking lot, I realized that sometime in the last few months, the last-place team had developed some of the best fundamental skills in the league. It wasn’t just one or two kids driving the success. The skill had been written all over their warm-ups. Sure, there was some fumbling in right field, but our right fielders tended to pay more attention to the games next door and cars out on the highway. Someone had coached this team very well.

                There are two ways to coach a youth sports team. A team can be built around a few key players. That’s how my son’s team worked. The team existed to support three all-stars, who locked out three key positions in a rotating order. The rest of the team was a supporting cast. There’s nothing egregious about that. They won a lot of games and had a great time doing it, but I’d be hard pressed to say my son left the season a better ball player, or more in love with the game.

                The other approach is to coach the whole team. Finding a coach who does this is like winning the lottery. It means investing time in a kid who’s probably never going to hit a home run or strike out the side, and putting them into game situations which don’t seem likely to bring a win, but allow the child to develop in skill, character, and love of sport. It’s not coaching for the scorebook, or the parents, or one or two talented players, or for yourself. It is coaching for the kids, every single kid on the team. This formerly last-place team had been coached that way, and it showed not just in their skill, but in their attitude. They knew each one of them mattered.

                The field cleared, and the coaches met with the umpire as both teams began their pre-game cheers. Our side began with the borrowed World Cup, “I Believe.” I expected the other dugout to respond with something along the lines of the annoyingly catchy, “Scootch Ya Booty Back,” when the field was overcome with a haunting chant, no words, just the intro to a dated pop song repeated over and over as each opposing played wrapped his fingers around the chain link, and like an army refusing to yield, declared that they had come to play. Indeed, this last-placed team had found something.

                But, this was not going to be the game that rewrote Little League coaching philosophy for generations to come. Jacob’s team came out swinging, and the opposition couldn’t contain the onslaught. Our team won by. . . a lot of runs. I’ve seen my son’s team get blown out enough times to know how hard that can be for a nine-year-old to swallow. I’ve seen star players throw their gloves, blame their teammates, even scream at their coaches. While I don’t condone that behavior, I understand it. There’s a lot of pressure put on some of these kids. I expected to see a healthy representation of frowns across the way.

As Jacob and his teammates lined up for victory photos with their trophies, the eerie rhythmic chant of that same tired old pop song grew from right field and dominated the diamond. Out in the cold evening grass, arms around shoulders, second-place was a team for a few moments more. The huddle broke up, some of the boys headed for the parking lot, more stayed to give hugs to their coach. Eventually, the impressive little Pakistani player trotted past. I patted him on the shoulder and offered condolences on a tough loss. He looked up at me with a giant smile on his face, hands tightly wrapped around his small trophy, “Thanks Mr. Hackman. That was awesome! We’re totally gonna get you next year!” I believe he just might.

The Tyranny of Easter

I’ve been thinking about tyranny a lot lately. It’s a word that comes up now again during this age of The Great Pause. According to Merriam-Webster Dictionary, tyranny can mean “a rigorous condition imposed by some outside agency or force.” It’s the fourth possible definition of the word, but I suppose if the shoe fits. The second definition has more of a historical context, “a government in which absolute power is vested in a single ruler.” We’ve danced with that condition as well in the last few years. What’s interesting to me, as we celebrate Easter, is that Jesus was familiar with both these aspects of tyranny.

Rome probably wasn’t the most tyrannical regime in human history, but if we’re measuring political attitude on a sliding scale, Rome does not flirt with “benevolent.” Jesus was a subject of Rome. Israel was possessed by Rome, and the empire imposed many tyrannies, large and small, on its subjects.

One of Jesus more memorable sayings, “If someone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles (Mt. 5:41),” was the direct result of Roman military policy. For a time, Roman soldiers would conduct their marches wearing no armor and carrying only a light sword. The heavier equipment trailed behind in a wagon train. The army would pause before battle to “suit up.” Over time, opposing forces learned that if they could attack the Romans before, or during, their locker room moment, the chances of defeating them were much greater. About 100 years before Jesus was born, the Roman military went through a series of massive reforms. One of the many changes was that soldiers now expected to carry all of their own equipment and supplies with them on the march. In order to lessen the physical burden, soldiers were permitted to stop subjects found walking along the road and force them to carry the equipment for up to one mile. This is one of the little tyrannies Rome imposed on its subjects. While the occupying force of the empire was marching into your hometown, every one of its members had the legal authority to stop you and force you to help them. As Rome occupied your home, all your friends and family could watch you marching along, a Roman helper. If social media had existed in those times, this policy would have inspired a hearty “Rise Up!” from more than a few participants, but Jesus response was the opposite. “If someone forces you to go one mile, go with him two.” If someone imposes a tyranny upon you, use that tyranny to bless him.

When it comes to Easter, we almost never hear about tyranny in our churches, but its ugly stamp lies across the full breadth of Jesus’ death. Jesus was a Roman subject, not a Roman citizen. Citizens had rights. A regional Roman governor, like Pontius Pilate, could not sentence a Roman citizen to death without due process of law. That citizen retained the right to appeal to the Emperor, to demand that he be taken to Rome for the supreme ruler himself to hear the case. The Apostle Paul does this in the book of Acts, but Jesus was not a citizen. Pilate had the right to execute any subject for any reason. He had the power to command their crucifixion, a punishment typically off the table for citizens. Jesus’ execution was the greatest of tyrannies. His charges were fabricated, brought by a bumbling group of corrupt and jealous hypocrites, and the stamp of approval given by a governor who was too weak or lazy to have an argument with them. The greatest injustice of Rome was that they executed the innocent Son of God and didn’t even notice. The tyrannical boot of the empire ground its heel hard into ancient Israel, but in his life, Jesus barely uttered more than a few sentences about it. Jesus was not overly concerned with political tyranny.

At Easter, we don’t often use the word tyranny. We use words like victory, love, and sacrifice. We don’t celebrate Jesus’ uprising against a tyrannical empire, far more brutal than anything we’ve seen in our lives. That’s what many of his followers expected, but its not what they got. Hebrews 12 tells us that Jesus, “for the joy set before him, endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.” It seems that, when faced with tyranny and injustice, Jesus saw a different path than uprising and rebellion, and that choosing this alternate path was his glory.

Personally, I’m tempted to say that sometimes tyranny is tyranny. Sometimes actions are so brutal, the bad guy just needs to be taken out. Then I look at what Jesus endured. I’ve seen nothing close to that in my lifetime, not even a sniff of it. When I consider that, I start to think that political tyranny may be a myth, a phantom set before us to chase rather than doing more meaningful things. We celebrate Christ’s death because it is the most beautiful sacrifice, a gift none of us deserved, but one that altered the reality of the world. Jesus obliterated Roman tyranny and turned it into the most beautiful moment in history, by simply placing our well-being above his own. The difference between tyranny and love, brutality and sacrifice, is the choice to act in love.

These days, we’ve been asked to do something “hard.” I don’t mean to make light of it. It is hard. It is especially for those facing financial uncertainty, or the loss of a business. There’s hardship there, but on the scale of difficulty stretching across the human experience, this is almost nothing. Measured against the last hundred years of American history, this might bump into the top three “hardships.” We can chafe and groan against the tyranny. We can rant about the perceived conspiracies and dishonesties of nations, leaders, or media outlets. We can mock the scale of the medical threat, and believe the narrative that we can accept a certain number of dead countrymen in order to avoid poverty. We can do this, but I see very little of the way of Christ in it.

On the other hand, we can deny the voices shouting in our faces, mocking our commitment, and insisting that our concerns must come before those of others. We can choose to endured the hardship of this moment because of our love for others. We can trust the example set before us. In doing so, we make tyranny irrelevant, for tyranny thrives on our desire for self. It vanishes when we act in love for others.

I owe the phrase "The Geat Pause" to this article.

Friction in Parenting

I have often wondered what it is that makes parenting so hard. Why it is that something as simple as taking a family photo is so difficult. Perhaps, even those of you with no experience in this area, or distanced from it by several decades, might see the haggard mother at the grocery store, and wonder what it is she does that is so overwhelming to create such a miserable impression upon others.

            On of the best pieces of writing in helping me understand why parenting appears so simple, yet becomes so hard, comes from a man named Carl von Clausewitz, a military writer from the 1830s. In his masterpiece, On War, he includes a short chapter on what he calls “friction.” It is the best explanation of the experience of dressing four children in the morning that I have discovered. So, here, for fun, I have taken Clausewitz’s chapter and substituted parenting terminology for military terminology. I’ve also updated some of the illustrations to make the parental situation a little more clear. Enjoy.

CHAPTER VII.

Friction in Parenting

As long as we have no personal knowledge of Parenting, we cannot conceive where those difficulties lie of which so much is said, and what that genius and those extraordinary mental powers required in a Parent have really to do. All appears so simple, all the requisite branches of knowledge appear so plain, all the combinations so unimportant, that in comparison with them the easiest problem in higher mathematics impresses us with a certain scientific dignity. But if we have seen Parenting, all becomes intelligible; and still, after all, it is extremely difficult to describe what it is which brings about this change, to specify this invisible and completely efficient factor.

Everything is very simple in Parenting, but the simplest thing is difficult. These difficulties accumulate and produce a friction which no man can imagine exactly who has not seen Parenting, Suppose now a traveller, who towards evening expects to accomplish the two stages at the end of his day’s journey, four or five leagues, with post-horses, on the high road—it is nothing. He arrives now at the last station but one, finds no horses, or very bad ones; then a hilly country, bad roads; it is a dark night, and he is glad when, after a great deal of trouble, he reaches the next station, and finds there some miserable accommodation. So in Parenting, through the influence of an infinity of petty circumstances, which cannot properly be described on paper, things disappoint us, and we fall short of the mark. A powerful iron will overcomes this friction; it crushes the obstacles, but perhaps the child along with them. We shall often meet with this result. Like an obelisk towards which the principal streets of a town converge, the strong will of a proud spirit stands prominent and commanding in the middle of the Art of Parenting.

Friction is the only conception which in a general way corresponds to that which distinguishes real Parenting from Parenting on paper. The Parental machine, the Family and all belonging to it, is in fact simple, and appears on this account easy to manage. But let us reflect that no part of it is in one piece, that it is composed entirely of individuals, each of which keeps up its own friction in all directions. Theoretically all sounds very well: the father/mother of a family is responsible for the execution of the given task; the family is glued together into one piece by its discipline, and as the parent must be a person of acknowledged zeal, the machine spins with little friction. But it is not so in reality, and all that is exaggerated and false in such a conception manifests itself at once in Parenting. The family always remains composed of a number of persons, of whom, if chance so wills, the most insignificant is able to create delay and even obstruction. The difficulties which Parenting brings with it, the bodily exertions which it requires, augment this potential for chaos so much that it may be regarded as the greatest causes of stress in Parenting.

This enormous friction, which is not concentrated, as in mechanics, at a few points, is therefore everywhere brought into contact with chance, and thus incidents take place upon which it was impossible to calculate, their chief origin being chance. As an instance of one such chance: clothing. Here a clutter prevents shoes from being discovered in time, and those shoes prevent the family form leaving at the right moment; there the rain prevents a family from arriving at the right time, because instead of for three it had to search for jackets perhaps eight minutes; the family charges ineffectively because it is stuck fast in heavy chaos.

These are only a few incidents of detail by way of elucidation, that the reader may be able to follow the author, for whole volumes might be written on these difficulties. To avoid this, and still to give a clear conception of the host of small difficulties to be contended with in Parenting, we might go on heaping up illustrations, if we were not afraid of being tiresome. But those who have already comprehended us will permit us to add a few more.

Activity in Parenting is movement in a resistant medium. Just as a man immersed in water is unable to perform with ease and regularity the most natural and simplest movement, that of walking, so in Parenting, with ordinary powers, one cannot keep even the line of mediocrity. This is the reason that the correct theorist is like a swimming master, who teaches on dry land movements which are required in the water, which must appear grotesque and ludicrous to those who forget about the water. This is also why theorists, who have never plunged in themselves, or who cannot deduce any generalities from their experience, are unpractical and even absurd, because they only teach what every one knows—how to walk.

Further, every Parenting is rich in particular facts, while at the same time each is an unexplored sea, full of rocks which the Parent may have a suspicion of, but which he has never seen with his eye, and round which, moreover, he must steer in the night. If a contrary wind also springs up, that is, if any great accidental event declares itself adverse to him, then the most consummate skill, presence of mind, and energy are required, whilst to those who only look on from a distance all seems to proceed with the utmost ease. The knowledge of this friction is a chief part of that so often talked of, experience in Parenting, which is required in a good Parent. Certainly he is not the best Parent in whose mind it assumes the greatest dimensions, who is the most over-awed by it (this includes that class of over-anxious Parents, of whom there are so many amongst the experienced); but a Parent must be aware of it that he may overcome it, where that is possible, and that he may not expect a degree of precision in results which is impossible on account of this very friction. Besides, it can never be learnt theoretically; and if it could, there would still be wanting that experience of judgment which is called tact, and which is always more necessary in a field full of innumerable small and diversified objects than in great and decisive cases, when one’s own judgment may be aided by consultation with others. Just as the man of the world, through tact of judgment which has become habit, speaks, acts, and moves only as suits the occasion, so the person experienced in Parenting will always, in great and small matters, at every pulsation of Parenting as we may say, decide and determine suitably to the occasion. Through this experience and practice the idea comes to his mind of itself that so and so will not suit. And thus he will not easily place himself in a position by which he is compromised, which, if it often occurs in Parenting, shakes all the foundations of confidence and becomes extremely dangerous.

It is therefore this friction, or what is so termed here, which makes that which appears easy in Parenting difficult in reality. As we proceed, we shall often meet with this subject again, and it will hereafter become plain that besides experience and a strong will, there are still many other rare qualities of the mind required to make a man a consummate Parent.