A View from the Cheap Seats

Last evening with my long legs jammed into 1940 era wooden seats with this 400 pound man sitting in front of me jamming my knees into my elbows watching a graduate recognition program, my mind stepped back from the clamor of names being called and things being handed out to the cacophany of applause of parents and grandparents and looked at the event through a different lens. This assessment of projection continued long after the event was over and even to this morning. I know, before I describe, that the other components of my life created the coloration of the lens through which my mind was assessing today looking ahead to the tomorrows.

A gay administrator, dozens of children all excited to be moving to the new, next grade in school, seeing many different configurations of parents meaning multiple attempts at marriage that fell apart with new spouses entering the lives of the kids being celebrated. Add to that, for me, my ten years of university teaching some of which had sat in that same old gynasium listening the the same cackle of applause plus the other dimension of my life, tweleve years working in jail and prison ministry some of those souls having sat in those same seats listening to their vintage applause. My mind began to process with all those streams coming to confluence about what lay ahead for this year's occupants of the gym seats; thus why I call this a View from the Cheap Seats.

So much hope, so much joy, so much desire, so much excitment; that was the elixir of last night from the view of those cheap seat occupants which was right and normal and good. But in looking ahead from my vantage of so many thousands of prisoners and students in these last few years of my life knowing some of these kids last night were linked via blood or relationships to those in the orange or blue jumpsuits or sitting in my classes, my heart heavied at the world into which these young cheap seat occupants were about to cast their nets of hope into.

See, our world is so very much different than the world that existed when I sat in the cheap seats in the late 1950s. Much of the details I do not recall but I knew even with the craziness of my life then, life felt okay. But when factoring into today the algebra of divorce rates, crime rates, drug abuse rates, societal deteroriation stories and statistics, student loan debt, very poor political leadership, a world seemingly on fire and getting hotter; those factors along cause me great concern for these kids with nets in hand looking and wanting things just to be good and calm and peaceful. They are not!

As I watched the unfolding of the program, I found myself retreating to this quiet, disconnected place where my mind processes and projects. That can be a scary place but a place like that exists in my psyche. I yearn for these kids, including my amazing grandchildren, to find their path and the light to guide their journey early. I long for them to be strong enough to withstand the forces that would pull them down and away from their potential to break loose from the chains of constraint and seek the sunshine of enlightenment and success personally and professionaly. I want to be there to protect and example the right and wrong but that is not the place for a grandparent I realize. The root structure for that work resides inside their homes with parents and siblings with grandparents there to encourage, love and nurture the seeds planted by their parents, our children!

These kids will rise and fall in a world where LGBT is more the norm than the exception. These children will see aberrant family situations that will become a new norm. These young people will come to accept the shock of suicides and drug abuse as part of the process instead of the horrific reality it is. I have witnessed that first hand in so many of my university students so I know this new crop coming up will be even more desensitized. That is exactly what Satan yearns to have happen for the Wrong to be viewed as Right and what is Right to be cast into the sea of doubt and disbelief.

I realize at this stage of my life that I invested far too much of myself into my work and not nearly enough into my two amazing children. They needed more of their dad than they got and for that I am deeply apologetic. But if there is salve for that hurt it comes in the form of grandchildren and the five I have lift me each time I am near them. Seeing those young kids last night and now another large group at another graduation this morning, I find myself saying a quick prayer for each as they cross that stage for God will touch them, guide them, protect them and give them clarity of mind to make right choices in friends, actions, desires.

We as parents, grandparents, friends have a solemn responsilbity to this generation as it stretches its arms toward the sun but the sun is much, much different than the sun of my cheap seat years. There is great challenge but still there is astounding opportunity for right choices. Pray for this generation adn their parents to turn or return to the place God created them to be which is focused on His teachings, His Scriptures, His Example.