Bruce’s Umbrella, Donald Duck, & My On-Line Diary

This last day of 2008 causes me to reevaluate my life, to recall why I keep this diary, and to remember Bruce’s umbrella and Donald Duck.

To start with, I remember Bruce’s umbrella!

O do I remember Bruce’s umbrella!

It was horrible!

As soon as I turned 11 years old, I joined Boy Scout Troop 36. To initiate me established members stripped my pants off and hung them from a lamp pole on Hendricks Avenue. I ignored busy traffic and hooting car horns to climb the pole and retrieve my pants.

From then on, I belonged.

My initiation shows what a rowdy bunch of ruffians we were, calling each other vile names and teasing each other unmercifully—except this once.

We were Scouts. We chopped down trees, explored caves, dug in fossil beds, explored ruins, built forts, passed around illicit copies of Argosy: The Men’s Magazine, and exchanged highly improbable information about how babies are made.

We were Scouts.

We were tough.

One drizzly Saturday morning we loaded our gear in the back of a stake truck and 30 of us began to pile aboard to go off on a camping trip. Laughing, catcalling, shoving we pushed for the best places at the front of the truck bed.

This kid named Bruce entered the fray seeking his place under a tarpaulin out of the rain.

A car pulled up in front of the Scout Hut.

Bruce’s mother got out and ran toward the truck waving a woman’s umbrella.

The lady back then was dressed like the female’s in a Desperate Housewives .tv show today. Tight skirt, low-cut, bouncing bodice, high spiked-heeled sandals, Bouffant hairdo (Is that what you call that sort of 1050s hair style?)

She was a sight.

We all looked.

She was yelling, “Brucie! Brucie, you forgot an umbrella”.

An umbrella on a Scout camping trip?

Bruce balked—he argued that nobody else in the troop carried an umbrella camping.

She insisted—he might get wet, catch cold.

From the bed of the truck, the rest of us watched the exchange.

She threatened not to let him go camping unless he carried that umbrella.

It was yellow.

It had flowers on it.

Bruce relented.

He climbed back on board the truck with the umbrella.

Not one boy—Not one—teased him.

None of us had ever heard the word mortification, but we knew its meaning. In our minds we every one pictured his own mother, and we all knew that kind of humiliation could happen to any boy.

There but for the grace of God is me with a yellow, flowered umbrella on a truckload of boys going camping to rough it in the woods.

We realized our common humanity.

We knew that happened to one, could happen to anybody.

So not one boy teased Bruce.

But I doubt if any of us ever forgot him.

Mortification. Humiliation. Universal experience. Things we share, or could share, in common. Bonds with humanity that we’d just as soon hide. Vulnerability. Transparency.

A saint once said, “There has no temptation taken you but such as is common to man…”

But we try to maintain our dignity—at least I do. I cringe at the thought of anyone seeing how weak I am especially when life forces me to carry a yellow flowered umbrella.

Pride punctured wounds deep.

Rather slip with a chain saw.

At least that’s manly… I’m a lumberjack and I’m OK!

That brings me to Donald Duck, an eminently successful corporate attorney I met as an adult when I was driving a tractor trailer over the road cross country. We met “by chance” at a one-time meeting in a church where neither one of had ever been before.

I wrote about our meeting back on May 31, 2007, This Couple Wanted My Bed, in my blog archives.

Donald Duck, successful attorney, and John Cowart, blue-collar truck driver, had nothing in common except that on some level each of us wanted to follow Christ whole-heartedly. On that basis we hit it off as fast friends.

We often talked about commitment, about how Jesus is worthy of our devotion because of His love for us, because of His death for us on the cross, because He rose from death, and because He sends His Spirit to be active in this present world through everyday ordinary people like you and me.

Don told me his insight that I am a proud man. He told me that if I chose I could be a passable Christian, attending church, dropping a little tithe in the plate, refraining from overt noxious sin—but that for me such a path would be hypocrisy.

Don said that if I chose to really follow Jesus, I would need to become vulnerable and transparent and honest. He said that I would not be an example of a Christian, but more of a public display, like when you visit an archaeological site and walk through the ruins seeing how primitives coped and made things fit.

On some shallow level, without realizing what I’m getting into, I chose to follow.

At a safe distance.

That brings me to this on-line diary.

For years I’ve kept a diary recording my day to day acting out of my own Christian life. Of course I try to put my best foot forward and I try to avoid looking like too much of an ass.

But at the same time I try to avoid hypocrisy. I do not record every time I browse for naked ladies on the internet; I do not tell all my resentments or the grudges I’ve held for years and years—but I mention enough such squalor to give a taste of my sins, temptations and struggles. I try to reveal and acknowledge my sins but not to wallow.

By the same token, I try not to record all my virtues and good deeds, but I try to give a taste of those also. Like the old Puritan teacher told theology students, “Be thou not overly pious”. I try not to relish and exalt in how nice I am.

For instance, yesterday I helped my son pick up surplus bread from a bakery and delivery it to a shelter for the homeless (how virtuous of me); But, I opened a package, took out the best pastry, and ate it myself (stole food right out of the mouths of the poor, What a creep). Those are the two sides of me my diary reveals.

My writing lets readers stroll through the ruins.

My goal in all this is to present a transparent picture of what the Christian life is like for one guy.

In seeing what it’s like for me, maybe something will strike a cord, maybe someone will identify, maybe some reader will recognize their own heart-yearning…

Maybe someday some reader will see through my transparency and vulnerability and realize— Hey! This is real. This rings true. Jesus is indeed the Christ, Son of the Living God, the Savior.

I want readers to see through murky me to catch a vision of Him…

And to see Him as worthy.