A Christmas Parable: "The Puzzled Father"

The Puzzled Father

Their father was puzzled by me. He was talking with his friend Jack and kept looking over to where his boy and girl were actively engaged in a conversation with me under the shade of our maple tree beside the bird bath with the stone eagle. The boy was ten and his sister twelve, and we were so involved that their father, whose family was staying for the weekend with his friend Jack and his family at Jack’s wife’s family cottage, had to walk over to meet me when his children were called in for the second time by their mother for dinner.

“I had to come over and talk to you. Anyone who can hold my kids’ attention as long you can must have something special,” said the puzzled father. “That’s a man I have to meet, I said to myself,” he added, and I couldn’t help but break into a mirthful chuckle.

“It happens all the time,” I said, which didn’t seem to surprise him.

“I know. Jack told me his kids can’t get enough of you.” Jack was our cottage neighbor whose three children, Christian, Luca, and Alexander were the joy of our life when they came up every summer. Penny and I watched those boys grow up, until one of Jack’s wife’s siblings (her brother) who had inherited one third of the family cottage insisted on selling it; and now our new neighbor is a Ukrainian lady from Toronto who comes to the cottage infrequently. She bought it with her mother’s help for retirement. She’s single and has a twenty-six-year-old son who is trying to make a living as a musician who comes to the cottage and hibernates for three or four days at a time and then leaves. We never see much of him.

Penny and I miss Jack’s children and we all cried when they left. I have pictures of us on my Facebook page, but what did I have that these children couldn’t get enough of? This mystery has puzzled a lot of people, and continues to do so; but it’s not a mystery to those that have been initiated into the secret way of Christ’s teaching.

When the disciples came to Jesus and asked him why he spoke to the public in parables, Jesus replied to them in his cryptic manner: “Because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given. For whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance; but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken even that he hath” (Math. 13: 11-12). Which begs the question: what did his disciples have that they would be given more of with Christ’s teaching? “But whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never thirst again,” said Jesus. “The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life” (John 4: 14).

Was it the water of eternal life? Is that what I had that those children couldn’t get enough of? But water of eternal life is so deeply esoteric that it’s metaphysically abstract and impossible to grasp. I prefer the word “virtue,” that special energy that one realizes by practicing the noble virtues of life, especially the sacred virtue of Goodness.

But this isn’t something one should talk about, because it invites the wrong kind of energy from the wrong kind of people. Fortunately, the puzzled father of those two children who were drawn to me like bees to honey wasn’t one of those people.

Still, I couldn’t tell him my secret. That would have been foolish, and not “the way of the sly man.” Instead I gave him one of my books to read, Stupidity Is Not a Gift of God, and maybe, just maybe he would figure it out on his own, as everyone must who wish to enter the gates of the sacred kingdom of heavenly bliss; but what did the children and I talk about that puzzled their father so much? Why were they so engaged with me?

As I often do, I asked the children what they wanted to be. I do this just to see if they have been called by life, and both of the puzzled father’s children knew what they wanted to be when they grew up; and so, I pursued my line of inquiry. And they talked and talked, telling me how much they loved what they wanted to become, and I encouraged them to talk about themselves and by telling them that the happiest people in the world  were people who loved what they did in life; and I went into the house and got the girl a jar of peach jam and the boy a jar of plum jam that Penny and I had just made the week before, just to give them what Gurdjieff called a “reminding factor” every time they ate peach and plum jam.

But I never told their father that. I said to their puzzled father. “I just listened to them, that’s all. I asked them what they wanted to be, and they told me.”

But that wasn’t good enough for him. He knew something else was going on, and he pressed me. He said I had something they wanted, and he compared that to his fascination with Ayn Rand’s philosophy that he got pulled into in his middle twenties.

“Ayn Rand?” I said. “That’s a dangerous path. Her philosophy will take you to a dead end. It’s not a good path to become the person you’re meant to be. It’s all about rational self-interest, not love for your family and fellow man—”

“I know!” he burst out, surprising me. “That’s why I stopped reading her when my daughter was born. She changed my whole life. I couldn’t live Rand’s philosophy any longer. It wasn’t all about me. I had to live for my wife and family. That’s what my daughter’s birth did for me. And my son’s birth confirmed it. I love my wife and kids. They’re my life now. I agree with you completely. So, you know Ayn Rand?”

“Yes, I’ve read Rand. But what else can you expect from an self-centred atheist?”

“Who do you read now?” the puzzled father asked, more intrigued than ever.

“You want to know what makes me tick, don’t you?”

“Yes, I do. I’ve never met anyone like you before.”

“I’ll tell you what,” I said, and stood up. “I’ll give you one of my books to read. It’ll give you everything you need to know about me,” and I went into the house and got a copy of my third volume of spiritual musings, Stupidity Is Not a Gift of God, and gave it to him. “But fair warning. This is my philosophy of life, and not an easy book to read.”

He looked at the cover, intrigued by a cartoon figure being frazzled by an electric current, a metaphor for what the holy current of life can do to the uninitiated. “Thanks,” he said. “So, if I read this it’ll tell me what makes you tick?”

“It’ll tell you more than that. It’ll tell you what makes you tick,” I said, and broke into a hearty laugh. That was another reason why he kept looking over when his children and I were talking, he couldn’t get over all the laughter; but, “except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven” said Jesus, and I smiled at the puzzled father who had caught a glimpse of the sacred mystery as his children and I talked under the shade of the maple tree beside the bird bath with the stone eagle.

——

THE GNOSTIC WAY OF LIFE: Chapter 29: "A Slice of Heaven"

A Slice of Heaven

It doesn’t matter how old they are, he calls everyone “kid.” He’s eighty-five, but I met him fourteen years ago when Penny and I relocated to Georgian Bay and I dropped into Johnson’s Market on the outskirts of Midland where I met the owner, “Chicken Coop Johnson.” That’s what they called him when he played hockey for the North Shore Hockey League (which comprised of four towns on the north shore of Lake Superior, my hometown of Nipigon, Red Rock, Terrace Bay, and Marathon); and Jimmy, as I preferred to call him, played for the Marathon Mercuries. It was a curious coincidence meeting him.

One day when I was in Johnson’s Market, I noticed a picture of a hockey team on one of his back shelves and saw that it was the Marathon Mercuries, and I asked why he had that picture on his shelf. “I used to play for the Mercuries,” he replied.

“No kidding? Which one are you?” I asked, and he pointed himself out in the picture, and then it hit me—

“I remember you!” I said, excitedly. “You were a feisty little bastard! You were always getting into fights,” and a big smile came over his impish face; and that’s how we became—not friends, but good acquaintances; and I dropped into his vegetable and fruit market just to say hello because I loved the man for being the person that he was; besides, I loved his freshly picked yellow beans and sweet corn, and I always got my field tomatoes from him.

Jimmy was not a big man, which made me wonder how he could be so feisty on the ice; but he never backed down from anybody. That was his character. And every time I dropped in, we talked a little more; and he told me about himself, how his grandfather had started the market garden business which his father took over and passed on to him, and every summer he’d drive his truck full of produce to Marathon for one or two long days of selling and also to the Sault where he sold his produce, and he had been doing that for years and couldn’t see himself retiring. “What else am I going to do?” he said.

“Why not?” I said. “As long as you enjoy what you’re doing.”

“I’ve been doing this all my life, and I like it. I like meeting people.”

“So do I. I’ll bet you met some real characters here, haven’t you?”

“Sure have,” Jimmy said, with an impish smile. I loved that smile. It told me he was still the mischief maker that I saw years ago on the ice when he played for the Marathon Mercuries. “You never know what kind of people you’re going to meet, and that’s the fun of it,” he said. “I can’t see myself doing anything else.”

“Die with your boots on, Jimmy; that’s the only way to go,” I said, and we talked about his family and other things and got to know each other as well as could be expected in such short visits; and the more we talked, the more I loved him for his spunk.

Then Penny and I dropped in one day and I asked her to take a photo with her cell phone of Jimmy and me with him holding his hockey team picture, and we had it blown up and framed at Walmart and I gave it to Jimmy the next time I dropped in, and he gave me a sweet smile and proudly placed it beside his hockey team picture.

That’s how it went for a number of years, and then I dropped in one Saturday morning and I asked the lady how Jimmy was doing and was surprised to learn that he had been in the hospital for heart surgery. “No kidding?” I said. “What happened?”

“He was having trouble breathing.,” the lady replied. She was an elderly woman who worked for Jimmy for years and always filled in when he was away. Jimmy also had several Mexicans who came up every summer to do his picking, and he must have been good to them because one had been coming up from Mexico for over twenty-five years.

“Did he have by-pass surgery?” I asked.

“Yeah,” the lady said. “But he’s out now and doing okay. He wanted to come to work today, but I told him to forget it.”

          But the following weekend he was back and we had a lot to talk about because now we had something in common. I had open-heart surgery also, and we shared our experience like old veterans sitting in the Legion hall. It would have been nice to share our experience over a cold beer or a cup of Tim Hortons coffee, which I would gladly have picked up just up the road in Midland, but Jimmy told me he did not drink coffee or tea, never did his whole life.

“No kidding?” I said. “Your whole life you never drank coffee or tea?”’

“Nope. Never did, kid.”

“What do you drink then. A beer now and then?”

“I like beer, but I don’t drink it much. I drink vegetable cocktail. I like that. And milk. I grew up on milk. I always have milk here and two or three jugs of vegetable cocktail. That’s good for you. You ever drink it?”

“Yes. I always pick four or five Mott’s Garden Cocktail when it goes on sale.”

“Me too,” Jimmy said, and this led into food and Jimmy gave me a list of the kinds of foods he liked to eat, and his cuisine was simple but hearty just like Jimmy. And as we talked he would greet people coming in with, “How you doing kid?”

What I loved about Jimmy was his authenticity. He was what he was and didn’t pretend to be anything else, like my cottage neighbor Tony, and I absorbed his gnostic wisdom like I absorbed Tony’s; like the time he was telling me about a new supermarket going in at Marathon which he felt was going to cut into his produce sales.

“I don’t think it will, Jimmy. You’ve been going up there for years. You must have your loyal customers.”

“Don’t mean a damn thing. They’ll leave you for a quarter,” Jimmy said.

“You’re right. I should have known better. If there’s one thing you can be certain about life, it’s that people will always disappoint you,” I said, with a wry snicker.

“You got that right, kid,” Jimmy said, dead serious; and the next time I saw Jimmy he had already made two trips up to Marathon, but on his last trip he fell ill and had to be taken to the hospital, which really got his dander up. “I almost lost my driver’s licence,” he said, still angry over the whole incident. “I had to get a medical report to prove there was nothing wrong with me, and I had to go for a driver’s test.”

What happened was simple enough, but it got complicated. He hadn’t eaten all day, he was so busy selling his produce, and when he went to the restaurant that evening he fainted and someone called for an ambulance and the paramedics took him to the hospital. The doctor wanted to keep him overnight and didn’t want to him drive his truck, but he did.

“There’s was nothing wrong with me,” Jimmy said. “I think it was something I ate. I think I got food poisoning. I got a bit sick in my stomach and fainted, and some guy called 911. I wish he would’ve minded his own business. I almost lost my licence because of that.”

But he’s back on his feet now, and he made another one or two trips up to Marathon and the Sault; but the last time I dropped in I experienced another one of those miraculous moments of grace that lingered for days, if not weeks.

It was innocent enough, and totally unexpected. In fact, I only vaguely remember what we were talking about; but for some reason, Jimmy opened up to me like never before, and I leaned on his counter and just listened to him tell me his story.

Jimmy had an old chair that he sat on near a propane heater, which was turned on because it was fall and a bit cool, and he’d get up and serve his customers, greeting them as they came in the door with his customary “How you doing, kid,” but continued with his story (he was telling me about his daughter and son and grandchildren), sounding almost like a summation of his long life, like his own eulogy, and as he spoke I could feel the goodness of the man flowing out of him, and I couldn’t hold back my emotions and welled up with tears.

Jimmy talked for another few minutes, and when he brought his story to resolution I said to him, “You’re quite the man, Jimmy. I love talking with you.” And I picked up my two bags of produce and extended my hand for Jimmy to shake.

“It’s been a slice of heaven, son,” he said, with a warm smile and a look in his watery little blue eyes that brought more tears to mine; and on my drive home I couldn’t get over the effect my visit with Jimmy had upon me.

“It’s been a slice of heaven,” I repeated to myself. “Now, that’s grace!” I exclaimed, and broke into a burst of joyful laughter.