Radio Memories: Easter Renewal

We talked of many things, of the changes that living with cancer brings, of the changes seen by eyes living through eight decades of love and loss, growth and decay, grief and joy.

Many of her oldest friends have passed on, and she bears their loss on shoulders frail with age, in a body failing her in ever increasing measure. Yet just as the cane supports her fragile frame, her faith supports her spirit, allowing her to persevere through the decline with grace, gratitude, and a smile beaming with hope.

As our lunch went on, our talk moved from insights about the present to memories of the far past, eventually to her previous life as a high school teacher. "Are the teenagers of today any different than the teenagers of your time?", I asked her. "Despite all the changes in the world around us, have young people themselves really changed all that much, since you used to teach them?"

Her eyes looked into space, as if turning the pages of a large book, and after a pause she related an anecdote that instantly hit home with me. About how when they think nobody is looking they will come to you after class and ask to talk, and the young person sitting there, crushed by their insurmountable problems, hoping there is someone to go to for answers, that this young person is the same person in every age, looking for confirmation of the same eternal truths.

Our time was almost up, and I ventured a last question on a subject untouched so far: the future. "Are you hopeful?", I asked.

"Yes and no", the former teacher answered, hesitating, clearly favoring the "no" but not willing to go against her hard-won positive attitude. She did permit herself a quick glance in my direction, as she gathered her things to leave our table, adding a final caveat through a whimsical smile:

"Well, maybe a little more hopeful than I used to be..."

That humbling Good Friday experience was the perfect prelude to Easter Sunday, and the spirit of renewal in general.

It's Sunday, and when time allows it I take advantage of Sundays to slip in another in our series of Radio Memories, a weekly pause spent listening to, and learning from, echoes from the past.

There's much to enjoy from television's predecessor, the dead-but-not-forgotten medium of dramatic radio, the theater of the mind.

One of the most entertaining programs from that bygone time was the comedy series "The Great Gildersleeve", following the adventures of Uncle Gildy's challenges in raising his orphaned niece and nephew. Sponsored throughout the majority of its run by Kraft Foods, to help sell the (relatively) new wonders of Kraft Processed Cheese and fast-cooking Kraft Macaroni, the show matured in style year after year, abandoning its initial cartoon-like trappings (although not losing the voice talent of supporting actor Arthur Q Bryan, more recognizable to modern audiences from his lifetime job as cartoon star Elmer Fudd, than from his busy radio work of the time), evolving closer to soap opera, with plotlines stretching through the length of entire seasons.

One of those later serialized stories proved to be profoundly bittersweet, centered as it was on Gildersleeve's stumbling attempts to kindle a romance with his nephew's piano teacher. The listening audience cringes in sympathy as week after week Gildy never seems to catch the break he needs, never seems to find the right word for the right occasion, and we begin to sense that this is a romance that is not meant to be. We tune in, episode after episode, not so much to learn how he will win, but instead to discover how he'll handle the eventual, inevitable heartbreak.

This particular story overlapped with the series' Easter tradition, where the last few minutes of the show would be turned over to the Seventy Two year-old patriarch of the Kraft Foods company, Mr James L Kraft himself. Last Easter we introduced you his poignant, 1943 wartime Easter broadcast; this Easter we bring to you the message he delivered Wednesday, April 2nd, 1947.

At the 26-minute mark of the show, star Harold Peary assumes an uncharacteristically solemn tone to introduce what, by that year, a cherished moment for the audience listening at home, the annual visit from the elderly gentleman considered as much a part of the Gildersleeve family as Gildy himself.

Mr Kraft's 1947 Easter message:

Again this year it gives me the greatest pleasure to send Easter Greetings to Kraft men around the globe, and to friends both known and unknown everywhere.

The Easter season is a time for rejoicing all over the Earth. A time for renewing faith, and re-examining the true values of life. Even nature, at this time of the year, seems to join in this affirmation of eternal hope and everlasting life.

A long time ago it was said, “know the Truth, and the Truth shall make you free.” To find eternal and unchanging values amidst so much that passes away, had always been a goal of men. And much of modern science, invention and education, holds this knowledge of the Truth as their objective.

Yet, in the field of the human spirit and moral conduct, it is of even greater importance that we seek out the unchanging Truth, that it may make us free.

Our Truth may be regarded as an abstract quality, a far-away goal to be desired by the seeking mind. But it is also, and more vitally, a living quality, revealed in a way of dwelling in harmony with one’s fellow men.

This Living Truth was expressed perfectly in the life of Him who’s death and resurrection from the dead the whole Christian world observes this week.

I’ve been reading once again the story of the trial and crucifixion of Jesus. It is a profoundly moving story. You will remember that after Pilate’s interrogation of Christ, Jesus said, in substance, “I came into the world, that I should bear witness of the Truth.”

Then Pilate asked a question, which many before him and many since have asked: “What is Truth?”

By His death and resurrection as by His life among men, Christ gave the answer to that question. For only as men are able to live humbly and unselfishly together, expressing by all that we do the Truth that is in us, will we be able to solve the great problems of the world today. Only by casting aside all pettiness and selfishness, and by following a straight and simple path of doing unto others as we would have others do unto us, can nations and people learn to live in peace and harmony together.

At this Easter season, let us all witness by our daily living, the Faith and Hope and Truth that in us lie, let us walk daily in our great faith, and hold the flame high for all to see.

Only thus can the eternal promise of this sacred day come to flower on the Earth.

Previous 2010 Radio Memories posts:

Lux Radio Theater: Hitler's Children
Biography In Sound: The Story Of Science Fiction
Mr President: Romance In The White House
Frontier Fighters: George Pickett
Destination Freedom: Citizen Toussaint [Toussaint L'Ouverture]
Ports Of Call: Haiti

For a list of our 2009 Radio Memories listings, go here.

The Third Family

“I think of you as if you were my own brother”, we say as the highest compliment we can offer a friend. There’s no greater accolade than to compare a close friendship to that of the stronger bonds of family: “You’re like a son to me…”

We get to choose our friends, and not our family, yet… I wonder if we tolerate the offensive faults and sins of friends with the same forbearance we often extend towards our family. Sibling accepts the bad with the good when they embrace sibling, to a degree that probably escapes them when it comes to the same sinful fallibility we may find in our friends. A parent’s forgiveness of their children’s faults is often only outmatched by a child’s acceptance of the imperfection of their parents, and the consequences of that fallibility on their lives… again, a mutual respect often eluding the mutual attraction of friendship.

Friendships are wonderful, but ultimately it’s a different, separate kind of strengthening bond than the one offered by family. A second, chosen, family, to raise us in ways that birth families do not.

This weekend I had occasion to experience the blessings, yet again, of a third family, the one that takes the best of each and adds something new of its own: one’s church family.

A “church family” consists of those who worship alongside us, at church. Different than the friendships developed at work, or at school, where colleagues become “chums”, attracted as they may be by mutual interest. The collegiality of the support at church touches a part of us far deeper than that, because the shared sense of mission surely goes much, much deeper than at any job.

It touched me deeply this weekend, that’s for sure, as I tried in vain to find the right words to say to someone I know through church, an older gentleman whose ailing wife passed away recently, after a lengthy and painful illness. We got to know each other in the casual way one meets people through church: the same faces in the same places at the same times every week, familiarity leading to a feeling of family. A church family.

Each week’s quick greetings after church might have been short in duration but they nevertheless cast long shadows from their repetition, especially towards the end as the news would grow worse each time.

This week there was only one to greet, the worst having finally happened. Not for the first time, the worst being the best that could happen, given the grim circumstances.

I didn’t know quite what to say as we each approached for our usual greetings. I had often prayed for them both, keeping the example of his quiet strength in memory throughout the tough times I myself repeatedly went through during this past summer from hell. I owed him a lot, and I held these thoughts in mind as I took his hand in mine, placed my other hand on his shoulder, and smiled.

It was as if he heard what I was thinking, and from behind his eyes I saw a sign of someone being genuinely helped from hand after gentle hand touching him that day, as each caring gesture gave him that much more renewed courage to smile in his turn. In his voice I heard someone seemingly able to hear prayer after silent prayer said on his behalf every week for a year. “Thank you”, he said to me through the kindest of smiles, the only words that ended up being needed in our brief time together this week.

Even though a lifelong love had come to an end, his loss was less than it could have been, thanks to the shared presence of his children, his family of friends, and his third family:

his church family.

Beautiful But Deadly... Again

Since my plans were to spend the first half of yesterday's Victoria Day holiday hiking through the mountain trails around Lynn Valley, I had to skip my daily morning habit of browsing through online newspapers over breakfast and coffee. If I had followed my usual routine, I would have learned of the park's tragic news from the day before:

A six-year-old boy has died after falling into North Vancouver's Lynn Creek, near the popular Lynn Valley Suspension Bridge. Corporal Marlene Morton of the North Vancouver RCMP said the boy fell in around 2 p.m. yesterday.
Cpl. Morton said it's not yet known exactly how the boy ended up in the water. By the time rescuers pulled him out, the boy had been in the creek for about an hour.
Cpl. Morton said the child was airlifted to BC Children's Hospital with his stepmother by his side. He was in cardiac arrest when taken to hospital.
He was only wearing beige pants when he was swept downstream toward the suspension bridge. North Shore Search and Rescue scoured the area by helicopter.

And so that rugged park claims another life; it seems like only yesterday, but it was last year that we blogged about another death at that river, further north from where this weekend's fatal accident occured. Every such death is a tragedy, but given the young age of this latest victim, and his being just a few weeks short of his next birthday... this news is grim indeed. I can't imagine the mother's pain right now, seeing her young son off for an awe-inspiring holiday adventure that morning, only to get a phone call later in the afternoon, explaining why the son would not be coming home.

There are a few memorials already at the park, tucked here and there, small tributes to many other young lives taken throughout the years by the unforgiving waters of Lynn Creek. They all break your heart to read, with their eloquent mixture of grief, regret and gratitude; gratitude for having had the blessing of their dearly missed loved ones in their family's lives, even if for so shortened a time. Their messages leave you in awe of the power of the terrain around you, and even more respectful of the power of the human heart; its capacity to grow strong enough in time to dare to continue its loving connection with those around it... despite the risk.

Godspeed to this young man's family, may they one day again come to know peace.

Beautiful But Deadly

What a shock I got from our local Vancouver papers this morning: a man was killed on the river that I visited (and blogged about) over the weekend!

In North Vancouver, the search for Andrew Koch, 26, of North Vancouver, washed away in Lynn Creek on Sunday, was called off yesterday.
"It's a matter of recovery at this point," said RCMP Cpl. Randall Wong. "Hope has diminished because search and rescue have walked pretty much every portion of the bank where he went in and there's no sign of him anywhere."
Rescuers believe Koch's body is trapped underwater by strong currents caused by rapid snowmelt and hot temperatures. They believe he will surface when the water recedes.
Wong said Koch was with friends in Lynn Canyon Park "enjoying the waters" when they decided to cross the river. Koch lost his footing and was swept away by the undertow.
"Initially they caught him hanging on to some . . . branches," said Wong. "His friends tried to pull him out of the water but they couldn't. The current pushed him under the trees that were overhanging and that's the last they saw of him."
Searchers concentrated on an area called 30 Foot Pool, north of the suspension bridge and downstream of where Koch slipped.
Tom Jansen and his two kids were among a small crowd at 30 Foot Pool yesterday, watching people cool off by jumping from the cliffs into the cool emerald waters below.
"[The water's] beautiful but it can be deadly," said Jansen, who has been coming to the park for over a decade. "You hear of hikers or people drowning or having to be rescued here all the time."

Sunday... My goodness, I was there on Sunday, it was happening downriver from me, right while I was there, a few kilometers higher up the main trail.

What a living nightmare this must be now for his friends, who tried but failed to save him. Can you imagine the guilt they must be carrying right now? It's probably not in the least bit their fault, probably no one could have saved him given these circumstances, but it will probably take years of haunted nights before they're able to convince themselves of that.

What an especially hard blow this must be to his family, who undoubtedly had made plans to celebrate Canada Day with him, and in the most unexpected manner possible were denied their celebration. I can't imagine what kind of pain they must be feeling right now... it must be pure hell to grieve at a time of the year when everyone else is partying.

My heart goes out to the family and friends of this fellow hiker who loved Lynn Creek too much.

On behalf of Covenant Zone, our condolences.