Thank You Sir

Taking a plane trip is wonderful because I always meet someone new.

On the day this was written, I was in an airport I shall not name where I met an older couple who had been married sixty-two years. They were still fussing about who got which coffee and whether his placing it on the seat made it more likely to be spilled. When I tried to sit down next to her, she quickly told me that this seat belonged to “my husband” and no court will ever change the meaning of that word for her.

They were deeply civilized.

He had served for decades in a government intelligence agency and then taught. They had so many grandchildren and great-grandchildren that I could not even guess the number. He told me tales of his time in the service, of guarding Presidents when hippy journalists kept trying to sneak into the White House. He was civil, polite, and charming

And of course he went to church.

In a lifetime of talking to interesting people, there is nothing like finding a couple that has actually lived the Faith for sixty years. Who knows their ups and downs forty years ago? The troubles, if there were any, were long gone and he gave me good advice for my own marriage. “You need to say ‘I love you’ every day” he said, “because love is easily forgotten, but if you call her a bad name, the name for a female dog, then it will never be forgotten. It is horrible. Never do it. Never.”

And I believed him and vowed with him never to do it.

Never.

I wonder about the world. This is a man who lived in times where corners were cut and values were too often honored, but not obeyed. I am not stupid enough to believe that in decades of secret service this man was always a Galahad. Yet he knew, always knew, what he aspired to be. He never mocked virtue, even when he failed it and so when the older years came and it was easier to obey, as his will submitted, obey he did.

He has become a saint, but I doubt his home church knows it.

I doubt my generation fails more than his did. We fail in different ways and I assume as often, but no more often. The difference is that we pretend there is no overarching moral law judging us. We may say there is a God, but we are fools because in knowing there is a God, we think He does not see our cheating and our compromise. We sin, but we spend time wondering if our sin is really sin.

Some Uncle Tony always shuffles to the front to help us wonder if our sin is so sinful and help us worry about dead people’s sins much more than our own. I can feel guilty about not recycling the trash, a secondary sort of fault, while continuing to submit to the world, the flesh, and the devil. Worse than Uncle Tony, though, is the mean Uncle who comes to give us very rigorous rules for everything. We will not just be holy, we will be really holy, so straight we lean a little. We fail, of course, at the rules and the regulations and then Uncle Tony returns to liberate us.

We can keep this up for a lifetime if we are not careful.

The Christian way is simpler, but harsh in its simplicity. I am not a good person. I do things I should not do. I want to do things I do not do, but mostly out of cowardice. I wish I could. Christ gives no quarter to this evil: be holy. And then Jesus says: “I love you. I forgive you if you are sorry. I will give you grace and help you change. Let’s start.”

This is good news, but it is stark. I will have to let go of my sin. Uncle Tony placates me and the harsh Uncle punishes me. Jesus forgives, but says “go and sin no more.”

The man I met at the airport had changed. I bet his kids would not recognize him from the picture I paint because they saw him earlier, in process. I saw the nearly finished project. Not so long from now, he will slip the surly bonds of Earth and touch the face of God and will be so perfect, so glorious, so himself that I would worship him if I saw him this side of Paradise.

As for the relationship with his wife. . . it will transcend marriage and become greater than marriage. They will be one with each other and every other soul in Paradise in ways that would be impossible in our broken world.

I saw it in his eyes: heaven is real.