Thank you* for leading our family with strength and integrity. Your legacy is not just one of words, although your sermons are beautifully crafted with time and thought and study, but your legacy is also one of passion...of kindness in action...of accepting people where they are. We kids would sometimes get exasperated with you as you befriended hobos and loners and the poor and the mentally or physically disabled and sometimes just the Truly Weird, but now we see your gift for what it really is...Christ in action. Even though He came to love and serve and *save* us all--even the smug and lazy and self-satisfied--He has a special place in His heart for the ones who are searching.
(The funny thing is that those are the people we remember most fondly now. While the teenager in me wished that you could make friends with "normal people," the colorful cast of characters who passed through our home made it richer and more interesting...and nothing, NOTHING is worse than boring. And, on reflection, many of the people you embraced at the fringe of society are among the finest people I've ever met!)
*** And to any of Dad's friends who stumble upon this blog...I'm certainly not talking about you. (Unless you're the weird professor who wore the fake eye patch and told dirty jokes. Or the creepy guy who didn't like the way I made his cup of tea while we waited for Dad to come home. Because, yeah, I'm totally talking about you two.) ***
My very favorite picture of you...ever.(It's no wonder you make friends so easily...
just look at those DIMPLES!)
* "My dear papa, how shall I thank you?
It is easy to thank when
the gift of kindness is little.
It is difficult to thank
when it is great."
--John Ruskin
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