My Father, Plain and Simple

          I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.  (Philippians 4:12)

          My father is a man of simple taste. 

          Once, we were visiting our family cemetery.  He tells me, “I want to be buried over there,” pointing to a spot along the hillside, visible from the highway.  “I don’t want any expensive head stone or anything.  Just put up one of those smiley faces on my tombstone, with a hand that waves and the message written across the bottom, `I’m dead, but HAVE A GREAT DAY.’”

          Dad enjoys the simple pleasures of life, no doubt cultivated in lean years growing up where green onions from the garden (when they were in season) were considered an after-school delicacy. 

           Dad worked hard and wound up with a decent job at a local factory, able to pay the bills and have a few creaturely comforts.  One of my favorite images growing up is of Dad peering through the kitchen window, gazing out over our small town like it was his kingdom, eating garlic bologna & saltine crackers, saying,

          “You know, I wonder what the poor people are doing right now.”

          My father is content not so much because he grew up poor.  There are plenty of poor people who can never have enough to satisfy them.  My father’s contentment, I believe, comes from a deeper source.  It comes from the sense that life and everything in it is a precious gift, never to be taken for granted.

 

{artist’s rendering of my father as a young man}

           My father is also content, I believe, because he’s never lost sight of the poor hillbilly boy inside him.  He can look at someone struggling to make ends meet and know what it’s like to be there.  He may not put it this way, but he knows - “There, but for the grace of God, go I.”  My father can be content because he doesn’t view himself as better than anyone else or deserving of anything more than what he receives.  He’s still what my grandmother would call, “as common as an old shoe.”

           I think what recording artist Tim Finn said about being content applies well to my father - 

 

 

“True contentment comes with empathy.”