Big Love

I have so many posts inside of me… some will never get out.. others percolate and keep reminding me that maybe I should find the time to put the words to ‘paper’. Big Love is one of those. When I flip through my iPhoto library and see the above picture it reminds me of my as yet un published Big Love post. And I think the time is apropos. This is kinda complicated… please forgive the length.

So Big Love means at least two things to me in relation to my Father. First, he had a Big Love, for this world, for its people, and especially for his family, near and extended. It was a quality that I admired and still cherish as a legacy that I hope to keep manifesting and passing on to others. Most notably - my children. I can tell you he was so pleased and proud when several years ago I explained that his grandchildren had given all their saved allowance (that was on the brink of buying a most cherished game they had been saving for – for months… ) to a Katrina victim, without a moments hesitation. I can see this quality in my brother Adem and my sister Reachle too. And I saw it in the quiet, steady, humble, and determined service of Clarence and Marie Boeckmann.

Once when I was a young man. My heart began to hurt me and I saw a doctor about it who took X-rays and examined me. He put the X-Ray on the wall and stood back beside me and said “Robert, you have a big heart.” I had two immediate thoughts: Gosh, what kinda condition am I suffering from? And once he assured me that my heart was healthy… just unusually large, I thought… 'I bet I get that from my Dad.' Turned out I only had a chest wall strain.. but I learned that my heart is large.. as my father’s no doubt was too.

So when I see this picture of him (here with a little girl in Guatemala) spreading his love around the world… and the joy (click on the photo to read that joy) that so obviously filled his heart in doing so, I am impressed, inspired, and proud. And I long to feel the warmth of his big love. I must content myself with the memories of it and the promise of it growing in the hearts of others who will share it in big ways when it comes to fruition in their souls.

But the picture also adds complexity to the Big Love idea… the second meaning of Big Love here for me goes something like this. My Father was great at making you feel special and appreciated when you were in his presence. Trouble is, for all the lionizing of him Adem and Reachle and I have done… well we didn’t feel his presence enough.

He (and his ex-wife / our mother) made some decisions when he was a young man that left us out of his presence for much of the year. We missed him, we longed for him. We hoped that we would see him more. Feel his Big Love in the immediate moment of his presence. It was not so apparent when we were apart. We could be assured of it in some abstract sense. But it did not feel the same.. this carried on – past our childhoods into young adulthood. And yet we were waiting. We were thinking that at some point we would get our due. Rightly or wrongly we thought this time might be in his retirement. But he found a new love in the Church at about this time, and well frankly we were a bit jealous and bitter. When he had the freedom to visit us and the grandchildren, he chose to have fellowship with his church family. When he could have spread his Big Love in Central America, or other service activities. I can still tell you I am still a bit Angry that when I invited my Dad to visit at spring break and go skiing with me and his grandchildren… he chose to go skiing with his church group instead. And yet.

There is another sense of Big Love that comes to mind here. It is the Big Love that parents must exercise with their children. That love that comes when a child pursues something that truly quickens them – that brings them joy and inspires them. And you feel that love, you exercise that love - by accepting and supporting that, in spite of how it may be unsatisfying – even contrary to your own wishes.

And so turning that around – as children sometimes do in the twilight years of their parent’s lives. I have tried to feel a Big Love toward how my father prioritized his church life and other aspects of his life ahead of my needs. That somehow takes the resentment, anger, and bitterness I can sometimes recall or even feel now.. and transforms it. It becomes a support for someone and something bigger than myself and that feels better – grander than being jealous and resentful for something that cannot be changed now anyway. I’m glad he had those priorities and that it helped him face his mortality with grace, dignity, and with a quiet rapture I read on his face and felt in my heart.