The quote from Psalm 90 verse 12 I'm opening with is from the King James Version. In the more up-to-date New Living Translation, it's translated as, "Teach us to realize the brevity of life, so that we may grow in wisdom."
This is not a hint for presents or cards or anything like that. I do have a birthday coming up in a few days. Honestly, although I'm glad to be feeling better now, I was very depressed this year from about June 15 to about August 15. I came very close to telling my wife and my sister, "Look, I'll just remember my age changes to sixty-nine this September, but I don't want anything special done this year. I don't want to celebrate, so let's just leave it at that!"
My wife Mary Ann and my daughter Rachel also have September birthdays. And, my sister Dianne is probably the biggest "birthday person" I've ever known. So, I didn't make that ominous birthday announcement, and I guess at this point I'm glad I didn't.
However, I did decide to use the birthday thing as an excuse to pester family and friends to read a blog post, and this is the blog post. I almost gave it a title like, My Favorite Things, but I realized that sounds like some stupid, sappy title Oprah would use! I think Stuff I Want to Say works better!
I recently read the weirdest memorial service invitation/announcement I've ever encountered. A terminally ill woman is having a "Celebration of Life" event. Now, I think we've probably all attended "Celebration of Life" memorial services. But this one is unique! It's planned to happen while she is still alive! There will be balloons and lots of celebratory aspects to the event. I guess she wants to attend her own funeral, and to have fun, at that!
I gotta tell ya, I'm very conservative, but I love the idea! I like it so much, I wouldn't mind doing it myself some day - although I don't know if my wife or my sister would go along with that! Anyway some of the Stuff I Want to Say may not surprise you a bit - but some of it just might! Maybe someday when I do pass somebody will want to read this at the memorial service - and that might be a good idea!
I'm going to say a number of things that are very important to me, and I'm going to categorize them with using the famous questions: WHO? WHAT? WHEN? WHERE? WHY? and HOW?
Here we go:
1. WHO? It might surprise you but there are many people in my life that mean a lot to me and who have had a profound influence on my life. Of course this includes my wife and kids, but it also includes many others. But, for this piece I want to name the two people I've known in my life that I consider the greatest Christians: Opal Reddin and Norman Milley, Sr. Opal Reddin was a professor at Central Bible College. I believe she died in 2005. Many students considered her lightweight, super-spiritual, not academically deep, and very unrealistic. I never agreed with those students. She was not perfect. She did think Pentecostals were better than anybody else and she didn't particularly care for Billy Graham and his family. (I did not agree with her about the Graham family.) But Opal Reddin was just a really godly woman. She taught a course on "Acts of the Apostles" at C.B.C. Wow! What a class. From time to time she'd say something like, "Now class the Holy Spirit is wanting to move, let's start worshiping and be open to the Spirit." I know that may sound foolish or extreme. But in fact the Holy Spirit would move on those occasions. I remember some of the sweetest times in the presence of the Lord were in her classroom. Many years later I corresponded with her a few times. She was happy that my daughter Amy was a student at Evangel and was hoping to meet her. She passed away before that could happen. As far as Norman Milley, Sr., he worked construction most of his life. He was the Superintendent on the Mystic River Bridge job. Milley worked for Perini Construction. In his spare time he went out and started churches! No kidding. He became a Licensed Assemblies of God minister in 1936. I can still see him. He was tall with a head of white hair. He had a strong Newfoudland accent. When he just walked by you, you could feel the presence of God! He was very humble, but people were in awe of him.
2. WHAT? I want to tell you WHAT was my greatest desire in life? That was to serve and honor the Lord... to be a good pastor, to be a good husband, to be a good father, to be a good Christian, to be a godly man who regularly prayed and read the Bible and lived for God.
Next, WHAT was my greatest fear in life? That was to fall far short of the goals of my greatest desire... to live a compromised, worldly life, to be thought of as a bad husband, a bad father, a bad pastor, and a superficial and inadequate Christian. Specifically, if I would ever be dishonored as a pastor, disgraced, rebuked, and told what a poor pastor and family man I was, that would be my greatest fear. Then, WHAT is my greatest regret in life? It's that in 2010 my greatest fear HAPPENED! I wrote about that recently on Facebook. I am not exaggerating when I say I would easily have preferred a terminal cancer diagnosis or an early onset Alzheimer's Disease diagnosis. I don't say that lightly. My mother died of cancer. My father had advanced Alzheimer's Disease. As horrible as cancer and dementia are I'd have welcomed either of them instead of what happened in 2010.
3. WHEN? WHEN were the happiest years of my life so far? Easily those were 2002 and 1982. 2002 was one of the few years in my life in which I was financially comfortable and in which I visited a couple of cool places. And 1982 was the year Mary Ann and I got married.
4. WHERE? You're probably wondering WHERE those cool places are that I visited in 2002? They are Alaska, specifically Alaska's Inside Passage, and Prince Edward Island. In July of 2002 Mary Ann and I flew to Vancouver, and took a cruise from there throughout Alaska's Inside Passage. Both British Columbia and Alaska are breathtakingly beautiful. I wouldn't mind going there again! And in October of 2002 we drove to Prince Edward Island. My maternal grandmother was born near Souris, PEI in 1888. If you like greenery and you like the ocean, you'd like Prince Edward Island. The people seem as if they came right out of Little House on the Prairie. It's such a peaceful and beautiful and cool place, it was difficult to leave! Now I will give an honorable mention to two other place I love to visit: Vermont, particularly the Stowe area and the Burlington area, and Cape Cod. They're two of my favorite places in the States.
5. WHY? I want to tell you WHY there are two films I really love. My favorite film is Field of Dreams and a very close second is The Apostle. I know some of my Christian friends will argue that Field of Dreams is sort of a New Age film. It is. And I'm no fan of New Age. But it's a fantasy. No, a bunch of professional baseball players are not going to show up in your back yard playing catch. You have to use your imagination and also look for the symbolism when you watch this film. I've seen it many times and I never get tired of it. I relate so much to the character Ray Kinsella. He's idealistic to a fault. So am I. When I became a born-again Christian and later went to Bible College, these were not plans my sensible, practical middle-class parents had for me. I always wanted my parents to see me as successful. I don't think they ever did. My favorite scene in that movie is where it's December and Ray is looking out the back door window watching the baseball field he built filling up with snow. His wife is telling him they're in real financial trouble and they'd be fine if he hadn't built that baseball field. In 1992, I "pulled a Ray Kinsella" in my own life and ministry. I brought a totally bizarre, foolish, and unrealistic proposal to the church I was pastoring. Actually, most people were willing to go along with it, but a minority reported it to my ecclesiastical superiors. I was called in, and I had to agree to stop what I was planning to do. I did. I'm not mad at those guys. They had to be practical and realistic. I suppose if some guy brought a similar proposal to me today, I'd probably react the way those men did. I thought about that recently. And I wondered: Just what if we had been allowed to do what I was proposing? Would the church still have eventually declined and failed? Or would great things have happened, and we'd have been on the cover of national magazines? Only God knows. As far as The Apostle, if you can, watch it. I know Christians don't like this film, either. The Rev. E.F. Dewey (Robert Duvall's character) is a drinker, womanizer, and murderer. He's also a very idealistic and powerful man of God. I know that may sound crazy, but he was "all that"! And also that character is someone I relate to very much. There's a scene in the middle of night in which Rev. Dewey is up "yelling at God". He talks to God and prays to God like he's a little kid begging his Dad to increase his allowance. I've prayed a lot like that, too! Yes, I'm a lot like Ray Kinsella and I'm a lot like E.F. "Sonny" Dewey. If you really get a hold of who those guys are, you'll have a good understanding of who Bob Baril is.
6. HOW? HOW would I most like to be remembered when it really is time for my funeral? I'd like to be remembered as genuine and vulnerable. And that's what I think I have been as I've written this piece.
I'd love to know what you thought of this piece! Thanks for reading it!
10 comments:
you forgot one in #3-- 1986: your favorite kid is born. ;-)
How people measure success and how God measures success are not usually the same. don't sell yourself short. 69 might be your best year yet!
Wow, I love it. And I like the idea of a celebration of life while you are still alive. That makes more sense then a party in your honor when your are dead. Some of my favorite Bob Baril memories are sitting around the kitchen table in Sharon drinking coffee.
Wow. That's a long time ago! Chock Full 'o Nuts in a Chemex coffee maker!
Well, if you ever feel like a failure, consider you did more with 40 years than I ever did. At least by my age you had a position and a family and a home to live in and people who could call you friends.
Yes, Jon, and I DO understand what you're saying; although as Rachel has written, God doesn't measure success the way we do. And neither of us know what will happen in the future.
Wow! I want to express my deep appreciation to the 17 people who responded so far to this blogpost. It was very therapeutic for me to write that piece. It was also difficult and a bit embarrassing.
You 17, who either responded on Facebook, or sent me an email or an online message, or Commented here, OR spoke to me in person - YOU truly blessed me!
Bob,
Pastors tend to turn out to be more like Elmer Gantry than Euliss F. "Sonny" Dewey from "The Apostle". Also, pastors removed from their local church are more likely start their own church unlike the movie. Adulterous pastors like Jimmy Swaggart and John Hagee of former AoG fame are 2 primary exhibits (there are many more).
Bob,
I will say this: "OK Boomer."
Christians like you (and many others, including relatives of mine) are the reason I walked away from the fraud that is Evangelical Christianity. Why I am a NONE, a DONE, and an anti-theist. Evangelicals' worship, adoration, and making excuses for Trump was the nail in the coffin. But then like most Evangelicals you fell for the lie of the election being stolen from Trump (and still believe it), just like you all bought into the all hoaxes and conspiracies of John Todd, Mike Warnke, Jack Chick, back-masking of rock music, Satanic conspiracies of child abuse, etc. All the stuff the AoG (and other fundegelical denominations) pushed in the 1970s and 1980s. I should know, I was there. And even if you didn't agree or believe any of this BS or Trump's election lies, not actively challenging in the name of getting along, not rocking the board, etc enabled them. Something about a sin of omission there and something about rejecting falsehoods a Rabbi from Tarsis wrote to the church in Ephesus.
Never mind that much of the child abuse was occurring in the churches by church leaders (how many young men were abused by Chi Alpha in Texas?) or say a local Metrowest P.O.S. ex-con with the initials RD? But instead, the evangelicals buy into Pizzagate, or that democrats and their allies are grooming children, or the BS that is Tim Ballard and the Sound of Freedom (what better way to abuse women than pretend to be a wife ostensibly to stop trafficking).
That is my stuff I want to say.
To: CM
Your October 12 Comment makes me think of the famous line, "Other than THAT, Mrs. Lincoln, what did you think of the play?"!
Well, it's the stuff you wanted to say...
The one thing that surprised me is you called yourself "anti-theist". I thought I knew who you were. The CM I thought you were would never describe himself as "anti-theist". So THAT confused me. And I really don't know who the ex-con RD is.
Did your karma run over your dogma?
Well, in any event, I'm glad I wrote the original piece. It was and is definitely "Stuff I Want to Say"!
Bob,
RD had the same first name as you, played the keyboard in a church you are familiar with, and given this ex-con's particular predilections was arrested again. Assuming he did not get shanked during the 2nd time he was in prison for his particular crimes, I have to presume he either died there or after he was released.
The problem is that until the Christian Church in America cleans up its own dumpster fires, then all you evangelicals have no moral authority to speak to the secular world and either enable change or force change via laws or politics. A certain Rabbi from Tarshish said as much in 1 Corinthians 5. And the more you try to force the issue, the more Christianity in the US will slide into irrelevance and be held as the problem and NOT the solution.
You, like the vast majority of Evangelicals also owe Bill Clinton an apology for your support of Trump (both before and after he was elected). And I am sure you said character counts back in 1998 and that Clinton should resign. I guess principles don't apply when it is YOUR guy.
If people like JM that you admired on the Right to Life movement had instead gone after and challenged the abuse in her Catholic Church, people like her and others would not be held in so much contempt.
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