I’m sitting on the deck this gorgeous Houston morning. Fall is apparently upon us, though not so much by way of temperatures as by way of leaves pattering down like a gentle rain. It’s Monday, and I am “recuperating”, not that there has been much I need recuperating from: I preached a service yesterday, had some lunch with the folks at the potluck, spent the afternoon with reading and tv, until the kids all came by with their mates (and dogs). We shared dinner here on the deck, talking and laughing about things: the upcoming wedding; the baby a-brewin’; houses planning to be bought; tomorrow’s Big Audition; all these things that are in the offing–the future of their lives. They hustled off to their own homes in time for me to catch much of Ken Burns’ “The War” on PBS.
 
So there really isn’t anything to recuperate from. But it’s Monday, and habits of the mind formed over 25+ years refuse to die: from the time I left seminary, Monday was my day off. My only day off. In seminary they never talked about a five-day work week (40 hours–are you kidding me?), and you were considered to have brass balls if you took–and enforced with the congregation (ala, “Leave me alone”)–one regular day a week. Pretty insane, eh? Especially if you happen to be an introvert, which would be yours truly: I like people; but it takes me a long time to recover from being with them. I’d hit Sunday night so utterly exhausted from the day and the previous week that all systems would just shut down. A day free of being on stage! I treasured it like a jewel; my whole being was geared toward it. One crummy day to try to recover from the hours, the activities, the people, the emotions of a week spent flying around in the barely containable chaos that is church life. And I thought Monday was adequate. Of course, I had more energy then, not to mention the reward of proving to myself how important I am. A mentor once told me that the only thing a pastor has to show for his/her work is an appointment calendar. On the other side of that coin, though, there is always somebody in the congregation bitching about your lack of work or praising you for how hard you work, neither one with an inclination to consider what “the well-lived pastoral life” might be; and none of us considering that one day off a week was simply inadequate time for recovery and renewal. In any case, my being, as I said, is saturated with this Monday sense. So here I sit.
 
Waiting.
 
Waiting this time for my children (again).
 
Dr. Boner will be auditioning for the bass bone spot at the Houston Symphony later today. It’s a great gig, and he’s been practicing his ass off on the twenty orchestral excerpts they want him to have prepared. He’s held a couple of mock auditions seeking feedback. It takes about an hour to go through all the excerpts, with a (timed) one minute between each. About halfway through, my ex-trombonist’s chops were just aching and quivering with awe for the sheer muscularity of what he was doing, the strength of his embouchure, as they call it, the essentially constant playing for an hour. Real music never happens that way, especially for bass trombonists: wait a hundred and five measures, then pop in for seven. It takes monstrous physical endurance to play non-stop for an hour; like my other boy, Soccer Saul, who used to dazzle me running four miles in a game, every bit as blindingly fast at the end as he was at the beginning. A one-minute pause between pieces is as inadequate for recovery as one day off a week. He dazzled me with Rossini’s “William Tell Overture” (of course, it’s a classic; it is also, I think, one of the most difficult trombone parts in music) by hitting every freaking note at the speed of The Bumblebee. Toss in the killer long notes of “Pictures at an Exhibition” demanding every ounce of breath and tonal focus. Awesome stuff. It takes a substantial degree of courage—indeed, and even some cockiness—to do the audition, at least to my mind. I did not continue as a music major in college because I was unable psychologically to handle solos. (Strange irony, huh? Because I’m perfectly fine with soloing in the pulpit and such.) We were talking about nerves last night, so I said (thinking of that scene in the movie “Amistad”), “Remember, you are the outcome of all these generations before you.” Somebody said, “Well, nothing like putting a little pressure on a guy,” but he knew what I meant: he’s the third-generation trombonist out of my side—I had an uncle who was a leading boner and composer in his day. You got our genes, man; we are with you, alive in your music.
 
So I wait.
 
And I wait, too, for Wednesday, when I will be accompanying Princess Deborah to learn the gender of my first grandchild. From my own experience, it seems odd that this should be a normal part of the pregnancy. We didn’t get to know until the day they were born, though we did get a five-month heads up about the twins. But imagine trying to pick names for all possibilities, there. Why should my kids have it any easier—by knowing the gender of their child—than we did? But that question, of course, just highlights what a grandpa I really am, ala, “Back in my days. . . .”
 
This kind of waiting is odd to me. Back in the BVIG days, regardless of what was happening in the family, there was always another script running with the business of the church. Family things were just one more item in a long list of stuff to be tended to, so it was rather like popping in on them every now and then; it was not waiting with them so much as checking in. That’s not a complaint, that’s just the way life goes–you get busy living a life. But this is a different thing, this waiting with them for their lives: living in my own anticipation and trembling; waiting to exhale, as it were.
 
There are no prayers to be spoken in words; only a heart, hoping; a father’s heart, pleading.