Peter Pan

“We have created a nation filled with too many perpetual children—
Peter and Patty Pans—who were brought up getting trophies for participating in sports,
instead of winning, protected from the supposed horrors of being ranked
by grades and scores and sold corrosive message by the likes of Barack Obama
and Hilary Clinton that everyone deserves every kind of support,
regardless of the level of education they have or the work they put forward.”
Dr Keith Ablow

“Dreams do come true, if only we wish hard enough.
You can have anything in life if you will sacrifice everything else for it.”
― J.M. Barrie

After yesterday’s post regarding the whole concept of disrespect effecting a
large swarth of our younger generations,
a story I had read last year came flooding back to mind.
It was a story written by a psychiatrist about the troubling phenomenon that we are
currently witnessing within our more youthful generations.

It is known as the Peter Pan effect…
as in, a generation preferring never having to grow up.

As in why should they….
life is pretty darn cozy remaining irresponsible,
being taken care of,
forever youthful,
beautiful,
always being reminded you are special…
ad infinitum….

But we mustn’t blame merely these young people who we’ve recently watched on
various college campuses protesting, marching, demonstrating,
refusing to attend class, walking out of class,
throwing benches through plate glass windows of campus buildings
as an all out temper tantrum has taken hold across this nation….

No, it is not really their fault.

The truth be told, those of us of the older generations shouldn’t be staring at our
television sets…those sets carrying the news stories of the troubling images
of the young gone amuck…
all with our eyes popping out of our heads as we are alarmingly heard to shout
“What in the heck is wrong with these kids??????….

For the truth be told it seems to be the fault of none other but us older generations—
Those parents and grandparents out there who bought into the notion,
hook, line and sinker
that molly coddling was kinder than tough love.
That “yes” was better for the self esteem than “no”
That television,
gaming stations,
video games,
video which became DVDs,
to iPods,
to iPhones,
to computers,
to tablets…
were all better than our personal undivided, undistracted and undistorted attention…

Just throw another trophy or award at them and let everyone win,
and it’s all good we thought.

While we were busy being “us” and finding ourselves,
spreading our own wings and doing our own things…
our kids, who were being raised at arms length by a group of people who decided
to become hovering helicopters in order to make up for our absences during
the more crucial moments…
well we just may have had a hand in these current shenanigans…

Maybe when we decided God wasn’t real, traditional families were passé,
patriotism was old fashioned and morality no longer current…
maybe, just maybe that was the beginning of our troubles…..

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2016/05/26/nation-peter-pans-have-created-country-filled-with-perpetual-children.html?intcmp=hpff

But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of,
because you know those from whom you learned it,
and how from infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures,
which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.
All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking,
correcting and training in righteousness,
so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.
2 Timothy 3:14-17

faith in the impossible

“The reason birds can fly and we can’t is simply because they have perfect faith,
for to have faith is to have wings.”
J.M. Barrie

“He who thinks half-heartedly will not believe in God;
but he who really thinks has to believe in God.”
Isaac Newton

(brown pelicans / Santa Rosa Beach, Julie Cook / 2016)

cumbersome
awkward
ill proportioned
too heavy…

yet…

they fly
in unison
in sync
as one

He will cover you with his feathers,
and under his wings you will find refuge;
his faithfulness will be your shield and rampart.
Psalm 91:4

tuppence

“Pan, who and what art thou?” he cried huskily.
“I’m youth, I’m joy,” Peter answered at a venture, “I’m a little bird that has broken out of the egg.”
― J.M. Barrie

(Black capped chickadee / Julie Cook / 2014)

Each day, joy and merriment meet at the feeders.
Skiddering and teetering
Hopping and flittering
Precariously maneuvering from atop a tiny high wire act without worry or care.

Oh that life could be so seemingly carefree. . .
Flying, darting and dashing about, entertaining one and all.
Yet it is to the readily available food they come.
Hurrying to gather succulent morsels one by one.

Fragile yet intricate they fascinate and marvel
Envious of their flight, humankind has been drawn to them since the beginning of time.
Yet it is to the cry of the human heart. . .
Oh but to be a bird, to take wing and fly away. . .

Heavenward I world soar, past stars and moon
Upward past sun and clouds, I would race.
For there, waiting with hand outstretched I would find you.
You, the Creator of all of life, waiting.
Waiting to cup me gently in your warm hands,
Longing to find joy in my final return flight home. . .

Early each day to the steps of Saint Paul’s
The little old bird woman comes
In her own special way to the people she calls,
“Come, buy my bags full of crumbs;
Come feed the little birds,
Show them you care
And you’ll be glad if you do
The young ones are hungry
The nests are so bare
All it takes is tuppence from you
Feed the birds, tuppence a bag
Tuppence, tuppence, tuppence a bag
Feed the birds,” that’s what she cries
While overhead, her birds fill the skies

All around the cathedral the saints and apostles
Look down as she sells her wares
Although you can’t see it,
You know they are smiling
Each time someone shows that he cares

Though her words are simple and few
Listen, listen, she’s calling to you
“Feed the birds, tuppence a bag
Tuppence, tuppence, tuppence a bag”
Mary Poppins

If a door could talk

“The door’, replied Maimie, ‘will always, always be open, and mother will always be waiting at it for me.”
― J.M. Barrie

This photo is of the backdoor at my dad’s house in Atlanta. The backdoor to the home in which I grew up. The house was built in 1959 and we moved-in in 1962. The door you see today is not, however, the original door. The original door was a typical early 60’s glass louvered number. I was so glad when they replaced that door with the current door. I was probably 10 when they made the big switch.

I always hated the louvered door. Even as a young child, it was as if I was somewhat ashamed of that original door–the nicer houses had what I thought to be “real” doors. Not only was it rather unsightly, it was never very secure as you could easily pry open and lift up the louvres. Which was good if you locked yourself out, but we must remember that this was the early 60’s, no one locked their doors!

Of course there was a screen over the louvers as this was the pre air-condition era—allowing a supposed breeze to waft through the kitchen…but who were they kidding—this was Georgia—there are no breezes in August and very few in June and July! The door was just ugly and a pain to clean. I really felt as if mom and dad had finally entered into the 20th century with the change in doors. Perhaps even at the age of 10 I understood about taste.

That door has been slammed more times than I care to recall. And there was the time one of the panes broke. I can’t exactly recall how that happened but I remember mother having to get a glass-man to come out to the house in order to chip out the broken bits and add a replacement pane. I was so afraid they were going to have to buy an entire new door…I had no idea how someone would be able to replace one of the panes. Ode to the logic of a child.

Mother always knew when my friends had walked over to the house wanting me to come out to play because she would see the top of a small head just standing, obviously outside in front of the door, simply waiting to be let in the house. Somehow Mother always knew when they were there waiting. Once we all got a little older, my freinds would just open the door, letting themselves in. Suddenly, unbeknownst to anyone, there would be 3 more kids in the house wandering around looking for me.

How many times had a date walked me to the back door to either say good night, or hope for an invitation inside? I vividly remember one particularly cool December evening. The night sky bright and magical as the stars twinkled overhead with a few slowly moving clouds. It was a wonderful late Christmas Eve, or more accurately, the wee hours of Christmas morning. My boyfriend and I were coming home from Midnight Mass. It was indeed a magical night. He walked me to the back door as I looked up at the night sky wondering where that wonderfully bright star was that had once guided those three wise men to that tiny stable. And then there was a brief kiss……

I had long since graduated from having dates walk me to the front door. As I started college, the back door seemed a more mature choice of doors. I would always peer through the door with the angle being such, peering through the kitchen, directly into the den where I could just see mother who was usually perched on the far right side of the couch. If I didn’t see her, the coast was clear.

If I did see Mom, that most likely meant she was asleep—I’d have to go in, wake her up, tell her to go to bed and then ask my date in. So embarrassing! And God forbid my date would wander in aimlessly behind me as I attempted rousing Mother, who was like the walking dead, saying the dumbest things as she basically was sleep walking and not remembering any of it the following morning…so embarrassing!

How many times did I walk out that door wishing I never had to walk back in? Those years of my brother and his growing troubles–the mental illness consuming our family. My cousins, who were truly more like brothers to me, coming to my rescue taking me out for the night—just getting away. Returning hours later, slowly, quietly opening the door, praying everyone was in bed–often Mother, on the couch, having fallen asleep, crying.

Twenty-seven years ago Mother had walked out of that door, sickly, for a trip to the doctor, who in turn sent her to the hospital. She never walked back trough the door. The night Mother died, my husband and I walked in the door. It was very late that night–it was hours after the sadness, of our having left the hospital for the last time since her illness–in order to sit vigil with Dad. The day following Mother’s death, I can’t even begin to remember how many friends poured through that door–too many to recall.

How many little hands have opened that door? First there was me and then my brother and all of our little friends. Then it was my young son coming to visit his “Pops.” And how many old hands have turned that knob? My grandmother Mimi who always opened the door with her oh so familiar “Yoo-hoo.” Or my other grandmother, Nany, trying to push the door when she needed to be pulling the door.

Today the door is locked tighter then the proverbial dick’s hat band. I have to knock and tap on the panes to get Dad or Gloria to the door. You may have noticed the doorbell having been painted over–that was years ago. I don’t even know if that thing still works. Today it was Dad who came to the door. Wow! Dad never comes to the door! I can’t tell you the last time Dad came to the door to let me in.

Today was truly a good day! “Do you think you can take Nany’s desk home today? What about the chairs to the dinning room table?” This is what greets me. They are having the hallway painted and a closet outfitted to accommodate a stackable washer / dryer so no one has to traipse up and down the perilous stairs to the basement.

And so went the afternoon. I brought up chair after chair from the depths of the basement, traversing through the back door, out to my poor unsuspecting car. Then with Dad and Gloria on one end and me on the other end, we gently maneuvered Nany’s desk out the back door, all keeping a watchful eye out for Sheba, Dad’s cat, so she wouldn’t try a quick escape.

I had an antique secretary desk, two of its drawers, four dinning room chairs and a banjo clock in my poor car. Each week I go visit Dad, I move more and more of my young world, or the worlds of both my grandmothers, out the back door– precariously transporting it all on the nerve-racking interstate drive back home, only to enter my current world through my current back door.

And so it goes—out the back of one door, into the back of another door.

Faith of the birds

“The reason birds can fly and we can’t is simply that they have perfect faith, for to have faith is to have wings.”
J.M. BARRIE

I love my “flicker” which comes to visit the feeder–constantly. He, and no doubt offspring, are always 3 season residents to my yard. He’s big and a bit loud. Officially he’s known as a Yellow bellied sap sucker–a woodpecker of sorts. He also tends to be a bit shy so it’s a little difficult getting him to pose. My other birds don’t seem to mind or pay me any attention when I’m in the yard. The flicker however will either fly off or up into the tree until I become very still. Camera shy.

The quote today is by J. M. Barrie, the Scottish born author of Peter Pan. You know the story of Peter, Wendy, Capt. Hook, Tinker Bell, the Lost boys….my favorite adaptation being the movie Hook, starting two of my all time favorite actors, Robin William as Peter and Dustin Hoffman as Hook. The quintessential story of the jaded grown up man trying to recapture that innocence of youth.

Birds fly because they can. I suppose they believe that they can, so they do. It’s a pure acceptance of fact. As humans we don’t always possess that pure acceptance–our logic, reasoning and rational all seem to get in the way.

Children always seem to have such vivid imaginations because they haven’t lived long enough yet to have developed our adult jaded sense of reason and logic. I can remember thinking I could don a towel around my neck, my cape, and use it as a parachute as I jumped off of the top of the sliding board. I believed it would gently float me to the ground. Jump after jump, thud after thud, hard landing each and every time–my rational was that my towel was too heavy and perhaps a pillow case would do a better job as I just knew I could glide……

The whole story of Peter Pan, the boy who refused to grow up….because once he grew up, he’d lose his imagination, he’d forget how to play, he’d be unable to imagine, he’d forget how to fly….

Remember Jesus’s admonition to his disciples when he tells the men to allow the children to enter his presence–this after the men were trying to shoo the children away thinking they were just going to get in the way and bother Jesus…we tend to think children just get in the way of adult life….
Jesus goes on to say “I tell you the truth unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 18: 2-4)

“humbles himself”—Humble: Adjective –Having or showing a modest or low estimate of one’s own importance.
Verb—Lower (someone) in dignity or importance

in essence—lacking ego, the know it all persona—it’s hard to have faith when one has more ego–

Children believe. Children tend to be humble. Children tend to have less ego than adults. Theirs is a simple uncomplicated belief system. Our’s, not so much.
Our faith, which is so often tried and tested from the trials and fires of life, takes a tremendous beating. We grow weak and weary. Then our ego steps in…..

We are reminded that “…faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” (Hebrews 11:1) and that “nothing will be impossible with God” (Luke 1:37)
and one of my favorite reminders….”You believe that God is one; you do well. Even demons believe–and shudder!” ( James 2:19) Yes, even that which is truly bad and awful knows the truth—and yet we proceed to doubt and deny anyway…..

I’m not telling you to believe that you can fly….the law of physics steps in that one….but what I am saying is that to believe in God is to have the ability of believing in the impossible. And for us to believe in the impossible is not an easy feat.

Today, I want to examine my faith–my ability to trust in and believe in that which I do not see. I believe in an omnipotent God that I do not see—but yet I do see—I see Him all around me—my flicker, my garden, my family, the sun that rises each morning and sets each evening….
Do bad things happen to me to rock that belief system? YES. Over the course of my life I have been known to get quite angry at my unseen God, scream and yell, walk away for a while—things here are wrong, not fair, tragic and sad–WHY???!!!

I don’t have the answers for all of that, and yet I know I can’t go on living without my Faith. I know that there is more to this life than just me and what happens in my world—things are all bigger than I am–things tend to be intertwined and woven together…beyond my comprehension….because I must surrender the ego of self and arrogance and remember simply as a child, that I am less and He is more—that I am created and He is Creator—I have to have Faith in that and in Him—or all of this is for naught and that is just terribly sad…I prefer to focus on the Faith of it all….

Here is to a faith filled Friday