The art of armaggedeon

Dear Friend,

Between the years of 1973 and 1978, our family made the regular sojourn south to the distant country of Traer to visit "The Girls". "The Girls" also referred to as "The Twins" were my sixty five year old great aunts. Traer was, in my mind, a step into a different time and place and space. It seemed hours and decades distant from our home and our family, taking me to a farm with unfamiliar sights and sounds and smells .

On that farm, in a simple metal trailer removed from the house, was the Hennigsen family patriarch, Julius August Hennigsen, J.A., or Pop. I don't know if I ever addressed him. By the time I entered his shadow, he didn't say much. He'd laugh. And smile. And open a tin box of soft peppermint candies that seemed like some magical delight I'd never before experienced. And grape soda. Check and double check. And we'd play checkers.

It all started with,"Do you know how to play?" which five year old me proudly answered in the affirmative. Silly five year old me. Every single game. It didn't matter how many checkers I had left. It didn't matter how many kings I had on the board. He'd be down to one or two. Then he'd look up at me, and smile, and with a twinkle in his eye, he'd go to his work. And in the matter of one, or at best two soft peppermint candies, I would have lost. "So close! He'd laugh. You really had me scared that time. I just lucky, I think. Next time, I think, I'm going to have to be more careful." And guess what. Same exact result. A perfect beautifully woven tapestry of total annihilation that made me know I had been seen, understood, known, and loved, and would be welcomed again, and would be better for the knowing, because the momentary undoing was wrapped up in so many more beautiful beginnings, and I couldn't wait to come back for communion complete with peppermint wafers and grape soda.

That's why i laughed, friend, when you said your communication was checkers compared to my chess. Perhaps you're far more right than you know. Because when it comes to communication-- actual communication WITH people and not communication AT people or communication TO people, I'll take checkers over chess any day. Why? Because Checkers is ART and Chess is science. I can consider and plan and constrain and control and confect. But you? When you are at your best? You simply are. You're an ever aging old man playing checkers. You're not concerned about outreaching your environment. You're concerned about creating community. You've recognized that living and listening both require more room for silence than they do for noise. Your communion may look slightly different than the peppermint and grape soda crowd, Authentic. Beautiful. Real. Powerful. Memorable. And most of all, Life changing.

We live in a world where chess is dominant. I googled "Picture of old man playing checkers, and ninety five percent of the images were of an old man playing chess." But as for me, I'll take art over science any day, because art awakens my soul in a way that science cannot.

thus spake,

me