The Legacy of a Lost Boy

I'm a proud dad this morning. My middle son has a role in our local community theatre's production of Peter Pan. He isn't in a major role - but I couldn't be any more proud if he were the Pan himself. He plays a supporting "Lost Boy" role that isn't even named in the script. Those who know and love him know the character as "Dirty Dan" - the dirtiest Lost Boy of them all.

I enjoyed watching him crawl in and out of the tunnels into the cave, playing amongst fairies, trying to catch mermaids and defying Captain James Hook on the deck of the Jolly Roger. In the closing scenes of the show, he flew to London with the other Lost Boys to be adopted by the Darling family. My last glimpse of him was as he was led out of the night nursery door towards the drawing room which was to be his new abode.

What followed his exit was what gave me the idea for this entry. Our Narrator, "James M. Barrie" himself, went on to explain that while Peter remained in Neverland as a boy forever, all the other boys eventually quit believing and grew up to be men with families of their own. Wendy would become too old to make the flights to Neverland and her daughter, Jane would serve as Peter's mother. And then Jane's daughter Margaret would succeed her. And the tradition would continue.

And then the question came to my mind - "I wonder what became of my beloved Dirty Dan?"

We often hear what happens to the famous, the well known, the high profile people in our society. We learn of their triumphs and tragedies alike. But we often lose track of the regular folks - those whose names aren't listed in the script, unless there is some special connection to them.

Since there is a special connection between me and Dirty Dan, I wanted to know what became of him. There is the sad thought that he could have lived in Neverland and then become so jaded or cynical as to forget the glories of a part of his life lived in such a magical place and lived in such a way as to be the envy of real boys everywhere. There was also my curiosity about what career he chose, who he married, what his children were like and if they would ever know what an amazing childhood their father had.

And then it hit me. "That's all up to Dan".

Dan, like the rest of us, had the opportunity to lay out his legacy. He would live the story that would be told about him. His legacy would depend on the life he lived.

While Dirty Dan was a fictional boy who was adopted by a fictional man, the actor playing the role is a very real boy with an equally real dad. I see the moral of Dan's story, at least for me, is that I have the opportunity to give the real boy the tools to build the legacy that he will leave to real children and grandchildren - and to give him the tales of my own legacy to pass along. If I give him nothing to share, my own role will be one that is not even mentioned in the "script" of his life and he will probably cease to believe. And I will fade into obscurity.

That's some pretty heavy stuff to get from a simple kids' show in a small town theatre in Georgia. Just the ramblings of a proud dad that wants to make his son proud as well.

A Writer?

So I'm a writer. Yeah.

That is a funny term to call myself since I really don't write anything much at all. In fact I hate writing. I have my reasons for hating writing and I guess if it were not for the computer and word processing programs, the world would be a little less cluttered without my rambling on about this and that. But since we have such modern contrivances, I'll ramble on about why I hate writing.

First of all, I present "cursive". I think that is an excellent term for that art. Trying to write in cursive puts me in a cursive mood - meaning "it makes me want to curse". Poor Janet Morris took the entire 1983-84 school year trying to teach me to make the swirly letters and I have spent every year since trying to forget. Honestly, since I go by my middle name, I can't even write my first name in cursive. I can only muster the first initial for my signature.

Then you have to consider that I get writer's cramp easily. I can sit and try to shake it out but it only makes me want to continue to stall. And what would you do to increase your writing endurance? Yeah, more writing. Not going to happen.

Another issue comes from lack of technical assistance. I had one of the greatest teachers of vocabulary ever - Sandra Jackson and her little green devil books with "Word Wealth" written across the cover in black ink. As much as they terrorized me, I'd love to have my own copy. My wife is very talented in teaching vocabulary and grammar. I have an excellent vocabulary but let's just say that the correct order of words does not always roll off the end of my pen. And I have yet to find writing paper that forms the little red squiggly line under a misspelling or a green squiggly line under my inadvertent attempts to brutalize Her Royal Majesty's official language. Yeah, I need a little help at times.

I remember seeing the "Freedom Shrine" at my local YMCA when I was a kid. They had a copy of "Jefferson's Rough Draft" of the Declaration of Independence. Seeing all those strikes, blots, mistakes, and all gave me some hope that one day I'd be able to complete a book report or maybe even a research paper without using an erasable pen. And maybe one day I will. But until then, I'll keep my keyboard and my slow typing.

And I'll hope that my wife counts this statement and the opening one as being enough to keep this entry from being a five-paragraph essay.

An Insight Into My Journey

Well, it has been a while since I have written anything here. The truth is that I have had several topics fluctuating through my attention span. Many things have happened and the ideas kept passing each other. Time to focus.

So, I turn on some Arcangelo Corelli and start typing.

This entry is a little more personal than most. It was bound to happen. I realize that there was a major event in my life and that it left a lot of people confused. I'd like to take the time to explain my exit from the Southern Baptist Convention and one of its member churches.

This is not just some tirade where I shout about transgressions and dole out accusations. This is where I share my heart about me - because the more I look at things from a distance, the more I realize that I am the one that has changed. It all began with a mysterious book I found over ten years ago and was pushed over the edge by some tumultuous events that will not be played out on AtBiG like they were elsewhere. Those who attended church with me do not need further explanation and those that didn't can read along just as well.

What happened to me is that I had to stop and look at the world around me and discern what was really going on. I had to address truth - within myself and in my surroundings. I changed many of my stances on issues. Maybe that makes me crazy. Maybe it makes me a heretic. But for right now, it makes me sane.

Having seen the Book of Eli recently I can say that there is a line from the movie that hit me like a ton of bricks. Eli is trying to defend the last known copy of the King James Bible (remember, good enough for Jesus and His disciples, good enough for me) from certain destruction. In the process he picks up a companion and explains to her "In all these years I've been carrying it and reading it every day, I got so caught up in keeping it safe that I forgot to live by what I learned from it." That was like a retroactive epiphany that threw me back to the early phases of my transition where I realized that the entirety of the Gospel is "Love God with all you have and love your neighbor as yourself"

I realized that many of my beliefs contradicted that. My neighbors might be homosexual. They may have had a pregnancy terminated. They may be atheists. They may be Muslims. They may be Democrats. They may be geologists that know how old rocks are.

What I was doing was not loving these neighbors. I was defending a book - not following it.

I realized that a church is not a building, not a location and the main goal of a church is not to struggle to keep a roof over the heads of the real church - the people that gather there. Church can happen in a bar (I've seen this myself). It can happen in a mall, around a campfire in the woods, in an Internet forum, even in catacombs - where it spent its infancy. The real church is the community of people and how they follow the book , not how they defend it. (Lower case "c" was intentional in this paragraph. I mean local church).

I learned that church can be manly and that men don't have to settle for singing 15 sappy love songs to a man in the name of worship. In fact, I learned you can have church with no music at all - witnessed it with my own eyes.

I can't see for the life of me how two men in California getting married in the eyes of a secular government can have any bearing on the sanctity of the vows my wife and I took before God. What has a bearing on the sanctity of our vows is how we treat each other and how we honor God by keeping those vows.

I met some Catholics that really love Jesus.

I don't mind if the Earth is billions or even trillions of years old. I can handle that.

I attended a church made up almost exclusively by people whose appearance, wardrobe, tattoos and body piercings made them pariahs in most churches in this area - and I saw how they lived the book instead of defending it.

And seriously, Jesus transformed Galilean water into fine wine so that drunk people could get drunker while celebrating life and the oldest of God's sacraments. I know it is hard to stomach for many but it is in our book. We have to deal with that.

All of this to say that I personally reached a point where something had to change. I could not sit quietly in the same chair I had occupied for so long. I cannot blame a bunch of people in this right now. I am owning the experience and accepting the fact that it is where the journey has taken me.

And I close with the hopes that this may have cleared some of the confusion for those that know me and that those who don't will now know me better.