The Boulevard Series - In honor of the closing of Boulevard Coffee, my refuge of the last 20 years, I am posting some pieces that I wrote about things that occurred there over the years. So it is with both fondness and sorrow that I give you the first of the series.

This event ocurred around the year 2000 I think.  I've told the story many times....

Fred - Part One

There’s someone out there who looks like me.  Apparently he is a nice guy.  Until just recently I didn’t know his name, but I have been aware of his presence for over 20 years.  His name is Fred.  I have never met Fred, but I can see some potential for him to complicate my life.

When my wife and I were in our “pre-dating” phase of our dating relationship, (ya know when you’re not officially dating, but you “run into” each other all the time), my future mother-in-law, whom I love dearly, told my wife-to-be that she had seen me at the state fair with ANOTHER WOMAN. 

Now at any time in a relationship the words “another woman” are never said in a positive context.  At least I have yet to hear the phrase used in a good way.  Fortunately for me my wife-to-be had called me at work the night that I was supposedly with this other woman, and I had called her when I got back to my place after work, so she knew that I wasn’t at the fair.  I am very fortunate to be able to look back on this and laugh.  Ever since then I have wondered if I would ever meet whoever it was that looked enough like me to get me into trouble, and if I would ever have to deal with something like this again.

I mean, think about it.  All this guy has to do is walk around town with his arm around his wife, and anyone who thinks he’s me is gonna walk up and slap him.  Although I suppose the same is true for him as well.  Some if his friends might see me with my wife and come up and slap me.  I wonder if I have gotten him in trouble?  Never thought about that one before.

Anyway, jump ahead to just a few months ago.

I am sitting at a table in my favorite coffee house.  It’s called Boulevard Coffee on Fair Oaks Boulevard in Carmichael.  (No they didn’t pay me for that I just wanted to give them credit.)  They serve what, in my opinion, is some of the best coffee in town.  Every Tuesday morning around 8AM I go there to have some time to myself.  I read or write or just stare out the window.  It’s a good place for that.  It’s set up so you feel like you’re in somebody’s den or library.  Sometimes they have a fire going in the fireplace and it gets even more comfortable.  And if you stay there for a long time they don’t bother you.  They seem to like having you around.  I have been going there regularly for a while, and as is usually the case, you start to get to know the other regulars enough to say hi, or even have a regular conversation with them.

Now since I am a “weekly” regular as opposed to a “daily” regular I don’t know them all as well as I would like.  There is one group that usually starts to gather around the time that I am getting ready to leave.  There’re three men in the group, and they’re all really nice guys.  They are all in their late 60’s to early 70’s, and while I don’t know their names I’ve talked to them enough to know that they are the kind of guys I’d like to hang around with.  You can just sit and talk about whatever you want, and soak in the wisdom they have to give.

One day a few months ago, before I had started talking to these men, I found myself confused (which some will say is my usual condition).

I was sitting in my usual spot when the first of these three gentlemen came in to the shop.  He walked over to me and laid a friendly hand on my shoulder and said,

“Hey Fred, can I get you a refill?”

Now normally anyone offering to buy me a cup of coffee is a friend of mine, but normally by the time anyone offers to buy me a cup of coffee I have usually met them before.  I had never seen this guy before this moment.

In confusion (like I said) I looked up at him and said with my usual eloquence,

“Uhhhh, …my name’s not Fr-”

“Oh, you’re not Fred!” he interrupted.

“Uh-uh.” I am such a master of the spoken language.

“Sorry, you look just like Fred!”

I hope that’s a good thing.

“No problem.”  Bummer about missing the refill.  Oh well.

He went to sit at his usual table, and waited for his friends, and I went back to my book.

A few minutes went by and the next man in the group came into the shop.  As he walked by my table he paused and said,

“Hey Fred!  How are you?”

“Hi, I’m not Fre-”

“He’s not Fred!” called the first guy from their table.

“Wow, you really look like Fred.”

“Yeah, that’s what I gather.”  I said.  At least I was getting a little more verbal.

“Well it was nice to meet you either way.”

“Thanks, you too.” I replied.

He made his way to the counter to get his coffee, and I went back to my book.

After a few more minutes the third gentleman in the group walked in.  He went to the counter to get his coffee and on his way to their table he looked at me and paused.  He squinted his eyes as he looked at me and said,

“Fred?  Is that you?”

“That’s not Fred!” said the first two guys from their table.  I didn’t even have time to open my mouth that time.  I think everyone in the shop was pretty clear on the fact that my name wasn’t Fred by now.

“Oh!  Sorry.  You look just like Fred.  My eyes aren’t very good these days.”

“Nope, my name’s not Fred.  But my name is Dan, and I’m thinking Fred must be a nice guy to be on such good terms with all of you.” I said, and then I held out my hand and shook his, and went over to their table and shook hands with the other two gentlemen.  They invited me to sit with them, and I would have but it was already time for me to leave so I declined.

Now at last I had a name to put to the man who was not making any attempt to imitate me, but was doing so anyway.

One of these days I am going to actually meet Fred.  I am going to tell him all the cases of mistaken identity that I have experienced over the last 20 years.  And I’d be willing to bet that when I actually see him, I probably won’t recognize him.  I probably won’t be able to see any resemblance between us at all, but everyone else will.  That’s the way it usually is; when we look at ourselves we rarely see what is plain as day to everyone else. Now that I think of it, if someone tries to blame me for something I don’t want to take credit for, I could just say, “Fred did it!”  I’ll probably be safe too, ‘cuz I’m pretty sure he doesn’t know my name.

Well, I suppose I can live with Fred as my alter ego, at least as long as he doesn’t really screw anything up.  If he does something really bad then I’m gonna have to go hunt him down, but if he’s been good for the last 20 years we’re probably safe.  I should probably offer to buy him his next cup of coffee though. 

©Dan Bode 2003

Amateurs and Experts - It struck me the other day as I was reading report after report of things happening in the world that everyone had something to say about everything. Every single person needs to have the last word, and it doesn’t matter if they’re actually telling the truth or not. The only requirement anymore seems to be that what they say should be perceived as true. Everyone wants to be an expert. Silence is perceived as a lack of intelligence rather than having nothing substantive to offer, so no one is willing to just shut up. They want people to believe every word they say, and accept it as accurate, even if they have done no research or made any effort to verify the information they put out. It no longer seems to matter if a statement is factually true anymore. It is simply accepted as truth if it is repeated often enough. So here’s my take on it all.

We are all amateurs in life

Though experts we pretend to be

Yet every day dawns anew

With nothing yet to know.

Pretenders are we

Who recognize neither awe nor terror

For experts think that Kings they be

With no authority in contradiction

Where we see nothing greater than ourselves

We seemingly have no fear

But at the end of that road

There is neither love nor beauty seen

In our sole regard of our own image

We fail to see the visage in whose image we are made

We never leave the mirror

We never sense our form dissipating through the absence in our eyes

We will always fall

We always have

Yet some will rise

And some will lie

Some will kill

Some will die

Some will wallow

Some stand tall

But in the end

It’s always dust and ashes

And sometimes Heaven

And sometimes Hell

All your expertise is useless

In the end

The answer to the real question

Is never yours to know or give

Our lives are always

Ultimately in the hands

Of the One who knows us best

And loves us nonetheless

The first and final question

Is the one we seldom answer truthfully

The one we start our lives with

The one we answer daily to our own satisfaction

Are you Expert

Managing your own salvation

Holding your fate

In your own inadequate hands, or

Are you Amateur

Falling as you learn

Being lifted when you fail

Higher than when you started?

©Dan Bode 2017

Striving for Daylight and Living the Dream

Most of us have standard autopilot greetings for each other on a day to day basis.  Most of us ignore these greetings, and give a standard autopilot reply.  There’s one that I used to hear on a pretty regular basis that I never understood. 

I would greet someone with, “How are you doing?”

Now this sounds like a standard greeting, but those who know me know when I say that I actually want to know how someone is doing!  I’m overjoyed when I get a real answer!

But sometimes someone would answer in a way that I just didn’t understand.  Frankly, it irritated me.

“How are you doing?”

“I’m  Livin’ the Dream.” (They always say it with capital letters.  I still don’t understand how they do that ‘cuz they say it in monotone, and usually with droopy eyelids.)

Huh?  Ok….

One day I reached a point where I heard that phrase uttered one too many times by a guy behind the coffee shop counter so I asked him:

“What does that mean anyway?”

He looked poleaxed.  Like me in third grade when my teacher, Miss Ludwig, had just called on me to answer a question in class when I wasn’t paying attention (which was often).  I think he was kind of afraid he might give the wrong answer, and it would go on his PERMANENT RECORD (said with a loud voice and an echo).

“Um…  I never thought about it.  It’s just my standard greeting.”

 “Ok, just thought I’d ask.  I hear it so much I figure someone has to know.”

I kept asking people.  No one had an answer.  I filed it in the back room of my brain (it’s getting pretty cluttered back there – too many unanswered questions, like: Why is there an ‘S’ in the word ‘lisp’).

Then I discovered a few years ago that I started to dream differently than I used to.

It used to be that, like most people, I would have a dream and wake up in befuddlement thinking the dream was true for a few moments.  I would usually feel a sense of relief that the dream was in fact not happening.  Most of my dreams were, at the least, confusing.

Things changed a while back though.  I developed an awareness of my dreams.  I will be in the middle of a dream and realize that I am in fact having a dream, and I become more of an observer than a participant.  I find myself often telling someone in the dream, “This is just a dream.  I’m going to wake up now.”

Sometimes if it’s a particularly bad dream I’ll yell at myself.  “NO! NO! NO!  THIS IS JUST A DREAM!  WAKE UP YOU IDIOT!”

There was a time in my life when I was unaware of all this.  My dreams were an escape, and sometimes a refuge.  Someplace to drift along without a care regardless of whether they were good or bad dreams.  They offered variety if nothing else.

When I understood the difference in my dreams I discovered something else.

I no longer need the escape. 

Now, when I realize I’m in the dream, I have found that my most fervent desire is to wake up.  Not because I don’t like the dream.  The quality of the dream is irrelevant.

With all the good and the bad that happens in the world today I still find that my life is a wonderful gift.  It is no longer necessary for me to escape reality.  When I realize I’m in the dream I claw my way to wakefulness.   I strive to reach daylight so I can live my life another day!

Want to know why?  I want to wake up because my life now is better than my dreams!  I wake up next to a wonderful, beautiful woman.  I wake up knowing that my kids and grandkids and the rest of my family are still out there, and they love me!

 

I am living the dream!  

I now find that I am reluctant to sleep.

It wasn’t easy to get where I am – ohh no!  I know there’s a lot of you out there who struggle through daily existence.  I get it.  I’ve been there.  Sometimes you feel like you pay a price for living.  Sometimes you realize that you still have to deal with some nightmare people.  

I discovered that Forgiveness – both given and received – is the greatest harbinger of peace that has ever been, and I have discovered that I need to pursue it daily.

Some days hope is harder to come by than others, but I want you to know that Joy is still possible.  Every day is different, and somewhere down the road daylight is still there waiting to greet you.

“- Joy comes in the morning” Psalm 30:5

©Dan Bode 2017

Convergence

My friend Marc is easily one of the wisest men I know.  I was talking with him at dinner one night, and he brought up the concept of “convergence”.

Convergence is something we see when we look back.  It’s that sense of a pattern, a nudge, a sense that someone knows something about you that you don’t when they give you a gift.  You may have a sense of something big coming your way, and you tremble in anticipation of its arrival, but you don’t know the when, or what, or why of it until it happens.  Then you look back at all the things that led up to it, and you recognize all that had to happen just so, at just the right time, in just the right way, against all odds, some that were good, some that were bad, some that you thought were completely inconsequential, and every hair stands on end.
That’s convergence.

We talked about how we take so many things in life for granted and then look back on them later and see events that were seemingly inconsequential at the time become significant.  He told me about a lesson that he used to teach his students as a high school English teacher where he would put together a calendar containing all the days of about 80 years in one sheet.  He would invite all the kids to come look down on the document laid out on the floor, and he would tell them, in effect, “Look closely at this.  This represents all of your days.  Don’t waste them.”  I imagined seeing that calendar at the beginning of my life, and at the end.  At the beginning I imagined being full of hope for all the days I still had ahead of me.  At the end I might be filled with regret at what I had never done, now faced with nothing left. 

When he told me about this I had just finished reading an amazing book by Donald Miller (who is now one of my favorite authors) titled, “A Million Miles in a Thousand Years”.  In it he talks about how to look at your life as a story, and how to write a better one.  In the book Miller says this: “What I'm saying is I think life is staggering and we're just used to it. We all are like spoiled children no longer impressed with the gifts we're given - it's just another sunset, just another rainstorm moving in over the mountain, just another child being born, just another funeral.”
It made me realize how much I take for granted in every day life.

Marc said when he thought about how my wife and I came together it was like a convergence of events that had been put in motion long before.  We had each gone through so many things that caused us to be made for each other. 
After my first wife died, and I began to consider dating as an actual possibility, I remember wondering if it was really worth it to start another relationship.  I was 52 and wondered if I had enough time left to really build a life with someone again.  Was starting over really worth it?  I eventually came to understand that I was giving the concept of time control over my life.  Time is a tool, not a god, and I have all the time I need regardless of when I start something new.  My success in life is not necessarily measured by what I complete.  It’s more by what I allow love to motivate me to do.  A relationship is not a task to be accomplished, but rather a love to be nurtured to the point that it cannot die, and that is not a function of time but of devotion.
It took me a while to learn this.  I had some painful stumbles, and made my share of mistakes, but then Brenda was there, through no plan of my own.  All the things that had been set in motion throughout our lives brought us to the right place, the right time, the right person.
This reminded me of something I had thought of a few weeks earlier and hadn’t told anyone about.  I was thinking about how God had so long ago set in motion the events that brought us together and made us fit.  I imagined it as though when God made the universe He made a perfect baseball, and He pitched that baseball out into the ether, then turned back to creating the world.  But that ball travelled across space and time and eons and epochs and eras.  Through all the events of the world from the beginning that ball was travelling in the background where no one but Him knew of its presence.  Then one day, against all odds, I was in a stadium, completely unqualified to stand at the plate, holding the perfect bat, with no pitcher on the mound.  All of a sudden I knew it was this very moment I had been made for.  I knew something was coming my way, and I heard His voice echo across the heavens when He said,
“NOW!”
And I took that perfect bat, and I made a perfect swing with every ounce of my being, and that ball that had travelled all across time and distance from forever came down out of the sky in the most perfect of arcs to meet that swing, AND I HIT THAT BALL RIGHT OUT OF THE PARK BACK INTO THE UNIVERSE FOR ALL THE WORLD TO SEE!

And that is what it was like to fall in love with my wife, and I think of it that way every day.

Convergence.  It’s a God thing.
©Dan Bode 2016

What Do You Do With a Second-Hand Grave?

Jesus had a habit of using things for purposes other than what we intended them for.

When He arrived in Jerusalem on what we call Palm Sunday, everyone was getting ready for Passover.  He had sent a few of the disciples ahead of Him to secure the place where they would share the Passover meal.

Then when they finally get to the night where they sat together to celebrate the Passover as each of them has for their entire life up to this point Jesus does something different…..

“This is My blood, drink in remembrance of me….”

Their ears certainly pricked up at this I’m sure.  They definitely hadn’t heard that one before.

“Ummm, excuse me Jesus?  I’m pretty sure that’s not how my dad taught me to do that….”

“This is My body, take and eat in remembrance of me….”

He used the Passover as something different than what they had made of it then, but when the disciples all looked back on it later they realized that in reality it had been all about Him from the beginning anyway. 

And then, on the Third Day, He rose from the dead.

That really kind of threw a wrench in things.  

Even though He’d been telling everyone who would listen that He would, they still didn’t actually expect it to happen.  That’s not what graves are for.

And that begs the question:  Just exactly what do you do with a used grave?

A grave isn’t a grave until it has a dead body in it.  Once it has a body in it it’s not like you’re going to use it for something else.  It’s not a multi-purpose kind of thing, you know?

But a grave isn’t supposed to empty itself either is it?

What should have held Him securely for the rest of time simply didn’t.  He used for something else. 

What should have been the end, was instead used as a beginning.

 

He used it as the launching point for the means of our survival.

If I was the owner of that tomb, and stood in front of it a few days after sealing a dead body inside, knowing that the person I had buried actually did what He said He would do and rose again, I would wonder what to do with it. 

I could be practical, and keep trying to use it for what it was originally intended for.  I would know for a fact that there would be another dead body to put in there sooner or later.  I’ve seen death often enough in my own life to know the truth of this.

I tried putting myself in the shoes of Joseph of Arimathea, staring at that stone that should have been there, but was instead over there.  

Seeing the grave clothes folded there instead of being wrapped around the body where he had put them.

It’s difficult to fathom what could possibly be going through his head at that moment, but I think I know what I’d do.

I think I’d move in.

To be where He had been, but wasn’t.

To live where death was defeated.

Not present.

Had no authority.

Where the scent of mortal decay never lingered.

That would be a home like no other.

Then I realize that I’d just be falling into the trap that man has found himself in since the beginning.

We always want God to provide proof of Himself in what we can touch, see, taste, and hear.  Jesus showed up and gave us all that, and there were plenty then who still didn’t get it.

But here’s the thing:  I don’t have to own the empty grave, or live in it, to know the truth of what He’s done for me.  

All I need to know is that there really is a second hand grave out there, and it failed in its purpose the first time. 

It won’t ever get a second chance, but I always will.

Happy Easter.

© Dan Bode 2016

With This Ring

There is a ring on my finger that wasn't there before. 

It fits like my finger was made to wear it.  I was used to it the moment it slipped over my knuckle and rested there.  It encompasses more than my finger.  It’s in my bones and my heart.  It is me, and it belongs to her.  What God has brought together no man can separate. 

It is a match to another ring on another finger, and they are both worn for a purpose.  This ring brings me home.  It always points me to where I want to be, and reminds me of that day when my heartbeat quickened, and settled into a new rhythm upon sight of her.  I want this ring to be with the other ring.  I want to be where that love lives. 

This love is the greatest I’ve ever known.  It is love without walls where the flow between us is constant and replenishes what we have together. 

The words, “With this ring I thee wed…” were spoken with these specific rings in mind.  They signify the bond we have committed ourselves to.  They represent the shield that protects us from the elements of this world that seek to separate us. 

With this ring I know who satisfies me.  I have confidence that we will not be separated by time or distance.

With this ring I know where my heart belongs.

With this ring I give valor, honor, and commitment to a woman for whom I have so little to offer, yet who is worth so much, and accepts me as I am nonetheless.

With this ring the dust and ashes of the past are washed away.  My path is clear from this point forward, and my steps are sure.

With these rings the words of our vows are embodied in the touchstones of reality.

With this ring I see that all the joys, all the sorrows, and all the mistakes I’ve made have led me to this point.  I get to be the man who sees this ring on my finger, and the hand that wears the other one, and the eyes that see me in return.  The eyes that hold the greatest treasure I could hope to have.

It was all worth it.

©Dan Bode 2015