these city walls

I'm going to some lakehouse in South Carolina for tonight and part of tomorrow. We're taking the leaders from our youth group on a retreat to bond, and share what's happening in the youth group for the coming semester. Part of me hopes the few hours we spend there will last for years. Part of me wishes it were already Monday.

I'm taking my guitar. I always feel more inspired around water for whatever reason, especially large bodies of it far from home. So, hopefully, a song or two will be born, or perhaps one I have been working on will grow from infancy into adulthood. I think I'd even settle for an adolescent song. I think I'm losing the metaphor...

What is it about water anyway?

posted by Cameron Lawrence at 17:37   

A Tension is Passing

Written by Matt Slocum

Do I murder when I forget you from afar?
Too drunk on the poison of endless roads
And the countless smoky bars

But tension is to be loved
When it is like a passing note
To a beautiful, beautiful chord

Do I murder us, putting pavement in my veins
Shooting it in, special heroin
For the seeking and displaced?

posted by Cameron Lawrence at 01:26   

Man Much Missed

I sit on the sofa across from my great-grandmother. She sits on a white covered ottoman, hands folded in her lap. Nearby, in the kitchen, metal pans are being washed, someone is asking for plastic wrap, and my grandma is talking above it all about the latest happenings of her church.

“Your papa owned an electronics store, you know.”

“I think I remember hearing about that before, Munner.”* I remember. I have heard this story from various members of the family.

“He was a broadcaster, too, at Moody. Have you ever heard of Moody, honey?”

I have heard of Moody. The publishing company, the college, their reputation for sending out missionaries. “Yeah, the Bible college, didn't you and Papa go there?.”

“Yep. Billy Graham was just getting on the radio at Moody, and Papa helped him.”

As she speaks, images I have seen of Chicago in the late forties and fifties form a collage of photographs and advertisements reconstructing Papa’s shop in the living room.


The store is full of radios, both new and repaired. Munner behind the counter, she is watching the store today. A small wooden box crackles from the corner. Faintly the sound of a man’s voice comes through the single speaker’s mesh fabric and into the space. His voice rafts up and down the peaks and valleys of the AM frequency. My papa is responsible for the broadcast. He doesn’t only sell radios, he calls them from the grave into life, twisting knobs and flicking switches.

“A wonderful man.” I am surprised that Munner is still making eye contact with me while she says this. I wonder, does the pain of losing a spouse every fully subside? Would anyone ever want it to? She has had enough time to deal with this, I decide. Still, her eyes are vibrant, warm, ecstatic as she remembers and passes on their story. This is their legacy, it will live on in me now. Her stature straightens each time she says his name. She is still in love with him. He has been gone for so long.

Their first date was in a cemetery. She was young and he much older. I am told that he was tall and lanky, just as I am. A good looking fellow, sharp, and a trumpet player. That was the basis of the date--Papa had to go play for a military funeral and asked her to come along. She laughs as she tells me. I think of asking a girl to a funeral for a date and can’t imagine her calling, or wanting to be called ever again. But yet, it worked for Papa. He must have been charming, too, on top of everything else. I wonder what his faults were, and suddenly I’m aware that I can’t remember his exact cause of death. Heart attack? Yeah, heart attack, that’s what it was. As Munner continues, I am overwhelmed. This is my history, my lineage. Somehow, I feel closer to God.

He died before I was born, when my dad was young. Everyone tells me how amazing of a person he was. A picture of Jesus. He was an entrepreneur, a handyman, a faithful servant of Christ, he touched people. His life shaped the life of my grandmother, Marianne, and I know she passed more than just his name on to my dad. I wonder, now, which parts of me are distant ripples from his life, the ripples that have extended into the lives of my sisters and I, and our cousins. John Rogers, husband, father, grandfather-never-known, lives on today in hearts of those who knew him, and now in me.

posted by Cameron Lawrence at 21:25