This past Saturday was the usual trip to LaCrosse and St. Elias, with a twist.

Coming in to LaCrosse and traveling over the Mississippi river I attempted to downshift and discovered that 4th gear was missing, gone, not there, vanished. Turns out 2nd and reverse were also missing which made for quite a scene when I later backed my car out of a hotel parking lot using my foot for a motor (sort of like Fred Flinstone).

Now my car, which usually has been remarkably reliable, had some transmission problems which the dealer fixed and were, thank God, covered by the warranty. But this was new and visions of my being stuck somewhere out in the country with an immovable hunk of metal under me caused a certain amount of concern.

What to do?

There was no way to drive it back to the dealer before closing and it was too much of a trip to have someone pick me up. So the die was cast and all interested parties back home were informed of the situation and preapred to pick me up when I returned on Sunday. As to the car, who knows?

Sprinkled with holy water and blessed by the prayers of the faithful of St. Elias the adventure home began after Liturgy. First challenge, climbing the bluffs to the prairies above, then getting to Rochester, and then making it to the dealer where my wife would be waiting so I could leave the car and get home.

Needless to say it was a prayerful trip with XM radio football scores to fill in the gaps. It turned out to be a minor part that could be fixed in less than an hour.

A day of two later it occurred to me, broken as the car was I had been given all the gears I needed to make it safely home.

I’m still working out the lesson for me in all of that.

In the furnace of these times lesser things are being burned away and a pure focus is emerging.

It’s not about a desire for, or a glee at, the shape of things. I look at the world and feel mostly sadness and a certain sense of having the normalcy of the world taken from me by the winds of culture. Rather something is happening, a change is coming, and glimpses of it are already present.

The times are rousing me from my sleepy state, that sense of just flowing with things in the space between awake and dreams. I am more alert, more aware, more alive, then I have been in a long time. To use a biblical image the scales are falling off my eyes and vision is beginning to return.

I’m seeing the world more clearly in this time when all seems to be shadows, but more importantly I am starting to see Jesus with greater clarity as well. He stands out more as the darkness seems to grow and glows with a fiery intensity as night falls. It something I missed when my delusions led me to believe that all was well or at least tolerable.

Now I’m certainly no saint. My life is cancerous with sin in ways I don’t even know. But I’m beginning, just beginning to see, and what it is I’m coming to know is deep and real and beautiful and right. If I can have just a taste of it I will leave this world a happy man and there is a radiance in it all that cuts through this gray rainy day with the light of a million suns.

As a child I remember the bible camp that filled our summers and the chapel on the grounds with the words on the wall that said “We would see Jesus…” Can it be that after all those decades I finally am? And what I’m starting to see, even in fragments, is so amazing that I can only begin to wonder at it all and barely stand in the face of it.

The Light shines in the darkness and the darkness has never overpowered it…

And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure – reason and experience both forbid us to expect that National morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.

– George Washington, Farewell Address, Sept. 19, 1796

On the one month anniversary of my brother Paul’s falling asleep in the Lord a copy of the eulogy…

I find myself, with all of us gathered here, in a sad, strange, disconcerting, yet holy and profound place.
I am speaking at my brother’s funeral with the task of trying to capture in small and inadequate words the whole of a life. Thoughts have become elusive in mourning and there are pictures and images and flashes of him circling just outside my grasp. Words fail. How to speak? What to say? What could do justice to this moment? To him?

Yet for the sake of love I will read on.

Paul came in to life too early and left the same way but how remarkably different and better we are because of it all. While for most of us it is the nature of things to live out our lives in a kind of anonymity his was pregnant with good things. Family, friends, faith, love, laughter, some crazy times, and a natural kind of attractiveness that drew people to him and made him the captain of the team on and off the court.

Those of you who only knew Paul as an adult, as an athlete, a project manager, your friend at the campfire, or the tall guy in front of you at church may find it strange to believe he was a preemie when he arrived in the fall of 1961. He was our tiny little brother and we called him “Pauly Mouse” because of his size and quiet demeanor. Our Pauly was a well liked kid, and even as his grade school classmates chose him for a School Safety Patrol trip to Washington DC he was not the first one you’d pick when choosing up sides for neighborhood football games. But something happened about the time we moved to Minnesota in 1975 and while the boyish good looks stayed on he stopped being the size of a kicker and started being the size of a tight end. Our Pauly Mouse became Pauly Moose.

Yet whatever size package he was, he remained a favorite. There was a natural charm and grace that allowed him to easily make friends and keep them as the years moved on. Neighbors from his earliest years as a child in Wausau have called this past week with fond memories and high school buddies who turned into golf partners and compatriots are gathered here. The loss that family, friends, co-workers, and brothers and sisters in Christ feel in this time is real because the attachment was as well.

As a child Paul won a plaque in Sunday School that quoted the scripture “Be ye kind one to another…” It was his favorite, not, as we found out because of the quality of the plaque itself but because he thought, even as a child, that being kind was a good idea. He was a kid in a popular crowd in high school, but it never changed him. He was strong but never a bully. He experienced success in the rough and tumble of corporate life but never succumbed to the predatorial desire to win and take all. What tales could we tell of kindness, of decency, of considerations given in his unsung way. How the child’s thought shaped the man. Some day we’ll sit by a fire, like he used to, and tell the stories and laugh, and cry, and realize that the recollections of these things bless us still.

Yes there were times of sadness and anger and loss and frustration and hurt. No one lives beyond the sad domains of life. But more and above there was an abiding presence of good will, of quiet steadiness, of good humor, of simple yet profound faith, and easy companionship that mark our experience of Paul. Paul was our calm center, our quiet champion, a natural born dad, and all around good guy. In a world of untruths we who knew him could easily and without contradiction say he was a decent man. A high compliment in these times.

Two things yet need to be said.

First on behalf of all the Chagnon family we wish to express our deep gratitude to Jeanine. From that little apartment in Minneapolis and everything that has been to this moment and beyond you gave our brother the greatest human gift of all, a life of love and happiness beyond measure. It is the nature of things that a man and woman should leave their families, the gift of each to the other, and be joined together by God and become something new and more. In the crucible of this time we have seen a depth, grace, and beauty in you in the face of crushing events and we are reminded again why he loved you so and how much we are in your debt for the love you returned.

In the same manner we see that love and faith you shared continue on in Lindsay, Alyssa, and Danny. A man as good as Paul deserves to have his life continue for generations and although you are very much your own personalities we are deeply comforted to know that some of him will live on, and live on well, in each of you. A part of the sadness of this time is the thought of those lost days yet to come, the events that mark the celebrations of life and from which it appears Paul will be absent. But you carry him literally inside you, in how you look, how you feel, how you believe, how you think, how you care, and in your very soul. The years will take you away from this moment and him from your sight but in truth he will never be far away from you. He will always be as close as a thought, as near as a prayer, and you will see his face in your children as we see his in you. And there will be comfort.

And finally we need to be reminded that these few, short, and inadequate words are by no means the end of the story. In the summer of 1967, in a cramped cabin where we spent parts of our summer as bible camp workers, an incredible transformation began when a young boy named Paul placed his life in the hands of his Savior. That moment has permeated everything from that time on, touched his life with joy at the faith and baptisms of his children, gave him grace to face the hard times, nourished the life within, and allowed him to live strong to the end. Even now it fills this room with an incredible sweetness and peace that defies the pain of this day.

It also means Paul’s story is not finished, and in fact will never be finished. Greater and more beautiful chapters are being written even as we speak and the tale of his life continues just out of our sight but as real, even more real, than anything we can imagine. This small chapter is closed and tucked away in our hearts but by eternity’s reckoning in just a short while we will come to know the rest.

So to all of you in your remaining days love God, live well, embrace faith, choose joy, take care of those you love, strive for Christ’s “well done” and cherish each fleeting moment. It all matters. And as you do the memories stirred in these moments, and all of Paul that has touched your life, will transcend time and space and perhaps, even for a moment, touch the very doors of heaven.

Rest now Pauly, and we’ll see you in the morning.

Take one person, marinade for years in a culture of entitlement, consumption, and violence.

Remove transcendent moral values.

Add emotional instability.

Let simmer until ready…

Occasionally on my travels I’ll listen to the news, but not much anymore because it grows more and more like an excercise in futility with truth as the first casualty.

But the news seems to be teaching one thing. The generation leading us now is a generation of style over substance, emotion over intellect, and selfishness over the common good. They are locked in a permanent childhood and have yet to, and probably never will, transcend themselves. And we’re stuck with them.

Until the time the generation that came of age in the 60’s passes this Earth and sanity returns we cannot depend on them to morally or spiritually lead us and should not trust thier opinions on anything of substance, and a lot of other stuff as well. The best, perhaps, we can do is pray they will not do so much damage that the years of repair will seem overwhelming.

For now we have to begin to build a new order of life rooted in the very things the hippies turned senators reject, the idea of transcendent truth and unchanging goodness. It will be hard at first because the amoral but powerful have no problem with using force to achieve thier ends when people refuse to bow to thier gods. We’ll have to be second class citizens for a while, absorb thier fury, and quietly build behind the scenes and wait.

The demographics are on our side. And so is truth. Already we see the absurdity of a philosophy (if it can be called that) rooted only in the satisfaction of urges. As time goes on the disastrous results we already see will become more acute and the emptiness of people’s lives will bear stark witness to the failure of an idea.

When that time comes, and it appears to be soon, there will be something there, deeply defined and already in practice to breathe new life into the corpse of our culture. And it will be beyond mere politics or economics or any of the ways power is manipulated, even thought it will transform them all, because it will be a revolution of the spirit, a reconnection with the wisdom of faith over time, a change in the very heart of people and not just thier environment.

Already every painful headline shouts out the death of an old way of being and a call to something, to Someone who will make all things new.

Take a minute to turn off your TV and you’ll understand.

Occasionally I will get a person or two coming in to my office to talk about the recent loss of my brother. Invariably it’s a very awkward conversation.

First there’s the initial expression of condolences and a pause followed by whatever seems to be on the top of the comforter’s head about death. They had an uncle who died just like my brother, they may say, or they want a detailed report on all of the events. I stare blankly ahead, thank them for thier thoughts and just wait for the spool to unwind.

They mean well but what can they really say? It’s the tragic part of dying suddenly and young, the loss of the usual comforting words. They want to help, to make it all go away, but how? It’s done, there is no going back and nothing of what brought us to this point can be changed.

Yet the awkward words, the tales of how death touched them, or the need to know all the small details has within its rough shell a seed of good will, of kinship in the face of the mystery of death, and a desire for connection. Even the most eloquent among us are left stammering at the reality of it all so why expect more from the regular folks?

So please don’t be disappointed if I don’t react to your words in any way you think I should, or in any way at all. Truthfully I’ve heard it all before so the words themselves are meaningless, the voice of Charlie Brown’s teacher. But I will remember that you thought enough to drop in, and that is what matters most. It’s so precious to me that I’ll even try to pay attention to the story of how your cousin died so you’ll know that beyond the words I’m trying to share something with you as well.

Whenever you manage to get the carrot there will always be another, on a longer stick.

Count on it.

An article from Terry Mattingly about a campus rebellion still mostly under the radar; young women, Christian and others, speaking out against the party til you puke then hook up realities of college life.

It’s well worth the reading.