Guest Blog From My Father (the fifthgen)

_ The following is a guest post from my dad, Paul Cloeter, a fifth generation Lutheran pastor currently serving in central Minnesota. 

A Point of Reference

      Memory loss, when it comes with age, doesn’t often affect the distant past.  That’s why I paid particular attention to a story told to me by my wise and now-sainted grandfather (that would be ‘thirdgen’) not long before he died at 95 years of age.  It was a simple story of an incident in his life – in the year 1907 to be exact – and it was etched in his memory.

      He had been sent out in a winter storm to get some grocery items at a store 2½ miles away.  In the prairie, there are straight roads that intersect at 1 mile intervals.  In the prairie, there are also blinding snowstorms.  Being a typical 13 year old, he tried to “cut the corner” on a mile section, but instead found himself lost in the middle of the field.  He kept walking what he thought was a straight line, but in fact, had walked in a complete circle and came out right back at the road where he started.

      It was then that he learned the lesson I learned for the first time listening to him:  that one leg is stronger than the other and will, without a point of reference, out-stride the weaker leg, sending the traveler in a circle.  He also learned that shortcuts don’t always produce the desired effect!

      A “point of reference” is what I was thinking about while reading a recent USA TODAY article about a large and growing secular subset in our culture whose response to religion – in fact, any spirituality – is described as “So What?”  Call them “apatheists”, folks who have come out of the closet to publicly confess “no spiritual curiosity . . . they simply shrug off God, religion, heaven or the ever-trendy search for meaning and purpose.” 

      I know:  it’s nothing new.  I remember a conversation I had in my first parish with a father who was trying to encourage his daughter and son-in-law in their spiritual walk.  With grave concern in his voice he asked me:  “What do you say to someone who says, ‘I don’t see the need’?”

      There are many ways one can get lost in this life.  Attempting self-serving short cuts to contentment and thinking only in terms of the here and now come to mind.  So can short-sightedness about ‘who I am’ and ‘why am I here’; ‘where am I going’ and ‘who am I going to meet there’.  Without answers to those questions, life becomes a vicious circle, and those who say ‘so what’ ultimately find themselves with no leg to stand on.

      A new year is a good time to sight in a point of reference, get our bearings, and proceed –one step at a time.  Past Christmas and Good Friday to Easter we go; “in green pastures” and “beside quiet waters”; into fiery trials and finally, through “the valley of the shadow of death.” 

      No shortcuts . . . just a Father’s love!