ODD THING, THIS "BUCKET LIST"

Yikes!  Oct 26 my last post? Odd. This one of the three I participate in is my favorite.  Few visit; sorta private.  This would leave you to believe I'm delinquent or dead.  Not yet; "dead" that is.  Guilty on "delinquent."  May I explain?

Been caught up in my passion...legacy building.  It's my swan song, my "finishing well" focus.  It's living with the grandwonderkind, daughter and soninlaw for weeks at a time and writing; living it and writing it.  Writing these days is compressed stuff.  Blogging on http://www.gendads.com/ and http://www.legacydad.com/ and doing queries to editors of major mags in vairous readership cultures. (Harder than writing the actual article). The book, Generational Fathering, not so much.  Soon will pour four isolated days each week. I hope. We'll see.  You can watch the progress on http://www.generationalfatheirng.com/

THREE GENERATIONS OF COWPOKES

This brings up the "bucket list". Yes, I'm still working on the five-year statistical framework of my fourth stage prostate cancer. If it were you, would it be a good thing? It is for me. Forces focus and value to each minute, each activity. Multiplied by 365, that just ain't that many days. Does 1852 sound like a lot. It didn't yesterday. Today it's 1851. "Yikes!" again. Which is why I go to my bucket list. Revision 6 or 8 or something. But, I do like this one I shared in a blog comment.

Before I share may list, let me share this. My son's life was transformed JIT by reading "Sacred Romance" by Curtis and Eldredge. He died six months later of cancer. He both announced and demonstrated the "romance" notion. Chapters 11 and 12 are a gateway to "getting it," to understanding what the journey is all about. "Coming Home" is a clue. Life of my 75 (or so) years is preparation for the rest, the un-countable years into eons into eternity. I'm ready. Soooo, dear friend, my "Five Year Window" frames my look out on to the Coming Home scene with Jesus and the Heavenly Hosts smiling and singing, probably dancing, too.

Well here 'tis:
A REAL Bucket List...as in "kicking the bucket." A narrowed and definitive window to Walk With God, love my wife more and better, family and friends, too. Rest of the bucket list gets less important, less urgent. Funny how the urgent "geterdone...NOW!" list is so much shorter. Yes, The Book(and speaking on Generational Fathering.com), and the Elk hunting trip as a passage rite for the oldest two grandsons, finishing the personal testimony tract--AND using it. Rest of the list is in 8 point type. Long term legacy stuff tops that list. Like maybe a trip to India with four grandkids so they know the world is bigger and poorer than they thought. A visit to the Cameron Clan homeland in south-central Scotland. Short term semi-legacy stuff like, magazine articles and blogs galore, return to Alaska with whole family( and revisit a Ketchikan high-lead logging site of my youth) and take the family by train to Denali, one sky dive (not toooo short a legacy, I hope), my Wheaton College 50-year class reunion, maybe one more beach honeymoon with my still-beautiful, still-alluring and fun bride. That's a pretty full five years. Bonus time will be spent hardening the foundation of our grandchildren's future as lighthouses for the dark generations of the future, maybe pitching in with daughter and son-in-law's dream ranch for intensive full-family therapy.

CONTEMPLATING DEATH/LIFE...FOUR GENERATIONS APART

She almost died.  But for immediate, savvy action by her dad, a survivalist and therapist, wee little Charis, faced the end of her life at one year and one week.  Way out on the Aquarius primitive campground in Utah's Boulder Mountain, three family groups had a moment of horror.  Gathered for breakfast someone noticed Charis was struggling, not breathing.  Before panic spread to chaos, dad upended his precious new life by her feet, whacked a couple of times.  Nothing came out, but breathing and serious crying followed.

Breathing and crying are pretty typical human activities.  The former is always a good thing.  The latter?  Well, crying, spelled "whining," is typical, seldom good.  There is pain, crying, gain.  Good thing.  There is sad, hurt, overwhelming-life-stuff crying.  Let's face it, since the Fall, there are mosquitos at Aquarious, vipers in the desert, and "snakes in the grass" of our lives.  But WAIT...crying is a sign of life.

The phone call prompted fears and tears at even the thought of our extraordinarily precious granddaughter, Charis, not being there to greet us at Christmas.  It also prompted deeper thougthts about my own life.  Three days apart, Charis was one and I was 70.  HMMmmm.  She's alive and quite well with the Aquarious incident to remind us how fragil life is.  I go TODAY for a consultation on my prostate cancer.  Second procedure didn't work.  PSA rising slowly.  Matt's not there to upend me and whack me to recovery.

The Last Three of Five Are in the Un-named Generation

Cultural characteristics change about every 20 years.  Academics label them with a tell-tale name.  So, academically, my Traditional Generation (then Boommers, Generation x, then Millennials) is four official cultures sets away from Charis (hers still unnamed until they see what characterizes it, but a return to traditional values and built-in digital savvy is a mixed blessing). 

So what?!

So, prayer is something God likes more than almost anything.  It's talking, relating, enjoying, thanking.  It's worship.  Here's the SO-WHAT:  Pray--worship--with a sense of life's uncertainty, its brevity.  Boy, oh boy is it brevitacious seen from this end.  Thank Him for your life and, yes, the tears you survived.  Pray for a friend.  Include me, if you will (and Carolyn who's most affected...I don't "feel" a thing).  Pray for at least one friend with illness, sadness, or who is missing out on personal salvation and its glory of eternal rescue from both fears and tears.   

[ To enjoy the delights of the Oldest's, Taylor's, Rite of Passage--AND MINE--go to our DIAblog, http://www.gendads.com/ ]

LOVING THE HIGH LEVEL JOURNEY

One of the great metaphors for the journey of a life along the path of faith is...is...er..ah, a "JOURNEY". I've used it often. I also like to tell of the Walk, the Walk with God. This one turns me even closer to the "Jesus bumps" my mother used to talk about; dare any of us say we are "Walking with God? Yet we can, many do. Can you grasp the ungraspable imagery, can you sense the conundrum that He, the Lord God Almighty, Creator and Sustainer of Heaven and Earth, has arranged for such a walk, hand-in-hand, as it were?

So, as I reported in broad strokes in my latest post on www.gendads.com, Matt and Taylor and I had an extraordinary journey on the four-day trek, backpacking in the wilderness for Taylor's "rite of passage." At 10,000 feet overlooking eons of His handiwork, the Journey becomes real. There we were, father, son, father's father (inlaw) walking together on The Journey mapped for us somewhere in Heaven before time began.

Walk turns to Journey, Journey become part of The Story. The Story, like the Walk and the Journey, is never alone. It's about us with Him, us with each other. How special that it is with fathers and sons.

Gathered by the River

Recent ponderous pondering to frame the book vanished this morning. The Father massaged my heart in family worship. In simple conclusion it was rediscovering that life in Christ wasn’t as much about how we march out the Christian conventions drawn from scripture but about how we walk in the heart of The Story; His heart, His story.

Where’d that come from? The kids, i.e., grandkids . We took a family Sunday at the wild water world of Lake Powell, the dammed up Colorado River in Utah. Five little ones, four big ones huddled in the air conditioned cool of the RV before boating. Sang some of those kids’ praise songs on the CD. “Open the eyes of my heart, Lord…I want to see You.” Then, “Here I am to worship, here I am to bow down…to say you are my God.”

My wife then un-TIVOed a Joyce Myers message she thought would fit. It did. Even the kids (5 to 12) “got” it, especially in family discussion. Life is a warfare against the enemy of our hearts. Setting aside our hearts for God and not spending it on ourselves, now that was something the kids understood.

Then came the reading. “Obscure” OT stuff, of all things. The kids took turns reading The Message rendering of Deuteronomy 30. And it’s very worth the read for Legacy Dads. It’s about the consequences of following the Lord…for generations. Verses 6 to 8 talk about freeing our heart to love God and live a full life. We all liked the part where verse nine assures us with “God will start enjoying you again.”

Popi, that’s me, offered another set verses God-breathed but not often read. Micah (yes, Micah) 6: 8 and 9, “He has showed you, O man, what is good, what He requires of you: to act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God.” Across the page in my dual version Peterson puts it nicely, “…And don’t take yourself too seriously—take God seriously.”

The kids, our legacy, got it…for the moment. But like all children they do what they see. Will they SEE us take God more seriously than we do ourselves and follow our model with their lives in to the next generationS?

GO WITH US ON THIS GRAND JOURNEY

The journey started today.  It's the one whereby grandfather Taylor, "Popi," joins Taylor, age 12, and his dad on the rough and wonderful trail to the manhood ceremony of age 13.  It's called various things around the world, "rite of passage" is a popular one and it is a ceremony embraced by cultures with ancient roots and possesed grand hopes of leaving a good legacy.

The event today was Taylor's first Journey Letter from Popi.  These are short life sermons delivered sometime on Thursday for a Friday read and think.  Taylor has the weekend to chat with Dad and Mom and, maybe, younger brother about the content and the application. 

I'll post the first one in the next couple of days.  Let's see how he responds.  I'll guide him to this blog for his response which is about to take on a new, wild, full, exciting generational whoopila.  Father, Father, son, three generations to bring to focus the lessons God had provided us through His World and thourgh the lives we can grateflully say He's guided.  The first title?  The Story.  All the lessons to follow come under The Story, His Story, the one He/They wrote in the Counsel of the Godhead just for Taylor before time began...for such a time as this. 

Blue Moon snow ride...at midnight.

So, we are here again. So soon? Yep, with the first venture of soninlaw (and Best Friend Forever), Matt. We're saddle mates in several dimensions.

Last night, toward the end of 2010's first day, we did one of our Saddlemate cigar rides, full (“Blue”) moon, on a snow cover at 9000 feet. Organized the book a bit, but mostly we awed at the incredible beauty the Creator sets aside for those who take the time to take it in. Until both horses got stuck in a drift and, lurching to survive, threw me, cigar sparks flying as I rolled along the crusty snow, it was a lovely sortie. Another story to add to the dozen similar rides. Somehow, they’ll fit in the book. The Traditional Gen co-nurturing with the Next Gen over the Millennial Gen. There’s something to bringing heritage down from the family tree and applying all those “old” generations have to offer in order to leave a legacy that will cycle in each future generation. If I were rich, I could leave a hospital wing. Better, even if so, I leave living monument of goodness and godliness

This is the tone of the blog; personal stories relating to the Cowboy Way of walking with God. They'll spill from and in to Matt's and my book, Generational Fathering, now in the research and composition phase.

Saddling your best horse

This one's like a short ride after catching and saddling your best horse; not satisfying, but at least you saddled up.

Back up and ready to ride midst my busiest time in years (new job plus writing book and keeping family and Chapel ministry fulfilled). Am going to stay alert and active to the blog because soninlaw, Matt, and I are reading, outlining, interviewing and just now starting to write THE book. No, not the Bible, but the other one, Generational Fathering.

So, here's your chance. Short or long, let me have it. Your story, that is. It may be, and I'm hoping so, that it will be a story of the family tree from which you, the apple, didn't fall far. How you became who you are, especially how God THE Father, used the words and the model of your father and his to shape who you are.

Tell us the journey of your grand and great grand fathers, your own dads. The glory, the wounds, the recovery, the intervention of a gracious God to make of you what the best efforts of your elders could not. Tell us where you intend to go from here to assure a legacy of three more renewing generations of godliness that will glorify God and His Kingdom through the ages ahead.

www.ransomedheart.net/generationalfathering will take you in to an active group discussion.