The first two summers after high school, I got to work with Brad Pritchard.  Two of my grandparents have since passed.  Their voices have largely escaped me, but Brad’s I still remember.

“No hill for a climber,” he’d say at whatever obstacle the day presented us with.

In some ways, I suppose, I’m a fool for the unbridled optimism of that quote.  A fool because at some point you realize they aren’t hills.  They are mountains.  Some of the ones we have to climb in life aren’t going to be surmountable.  But is there any other way but up?

A favorite passage of mine from C.S. Lewis is about two men.  The first Lewis described as handsome, affable, and well liked.  People judge this man good and can’t help but enjoy being around the “golden boy.”  The second Lewis described as down-trodden, short tempered, miserable to be around.  People judge this man bad and do their best to avoid him.

Would it be any surprise, Lewis asks, if God saw things differently?  The first man God gave gifts to, but the man lives his life believing he, himself is responsible for them, never understanding the obligation he has to make use of them.  The second man God gave a cross to bear, and he lived his life stumbling along the best he could with it.

Would it be any surprise, Lewis asks, if when the two men died, and God took back what he had given them, it was the second man, doing something none of the rest of us even noticed, that impressed God the most?

Would it be any surprise, I’ll ask, if sometimes our burden and our gift is the same thing?  I think often what those we care about are most up against, is the very thing we take the most pride in.

In my case what seems to make for good writing, being sensitive enough to life around me that I can string together a couple of sentences people enjoy, has a byproduct in the intensity I engage life with.  Others, in response to the same sensitivity, take a stance of distance.

If either makes for good writing, it’s doesn’t seem to bode as well in the relationships with the people we care about.

What do you do with it, though, except try to climb a little higher, garner just a little more perspective, and live at a little cooler of an altitude?  Somewhere on top, at a peak I’ll never see in this life, is whatever heaven is.  Perhaps it looks the same for me as it does for those climbing the other side of this mountain.  There our departed loved ones, whose voices we can’t remember, look down on us with the curious interest I can’t maintain.

Making the difficult climb ourselves, removes all judgement for those climbing impossible peaks of their own.  It’s more than a hill, but what else is going to make a climber out of you and me?

Margaret was 5.  She and her sister Willa, 8, were in the backseat of my car and we were headed to get lunch at Winterset.  They had just got done looking at cows.

I hadn’t seen them since last August.

“What do you like to do Willa?”

“I like archery.”

“Really?  I don’t think I’ve ever met a gal that likes archery before.”

“My cousin does it, so I tried it, and I’m really good.”

I believed her, but I wasn’t about to go placing an apple on my head just yet.

“What about you, Margaret?”

“I like gymnastics.”

Somehow she had managed to place an “f” in gymnastics.  I would have never thought that was possible, so I asked again.

“What was it that you enjoy?”

“Gymnastics.”

Yep.  There it was.  I can’t say exactly where, but you couldn’t miss it.  I found it admirable.  I had always thought I could work an “f” into anything.  I’ve got nothing on a 5 year old.

The last few days have left me traveling through Patterson, Iowa.  It’s a small town with a zip code but no post office and sits just off Highway 92, east of Winterset, Iowa.  On main street, near the boxes where residents now get their mail, is a dilapidated old memorial to two young men.

They were Jesse Russell Salsbury, a one time resident, and his buddy from Illinois, Joseph Downs.  The pair met in the Iowa National Guard in 1917.  Later that year, preparing to leave for France, they erected a flag pole in the Salsbury yard in Patterson.  In the wet concrete they both inscribed their names, below which they each wrote “Shot in France.”  On May 27^th, 1918 the pair was killed there in a gas attack on their trench.

In 1923, the town stood the slab on end and made a monument of it.  You could crisscross this country a thousand times and never see it once.  The story is only a local one, and there are no signs directing you to it from the highway.

Perhaps someday, in an effort to raise funds for the memorial, they will set another flag pole in the Salsbury front yard and raffle chances to leave an inscription on it.  Were I to buy that winning ticket, I’d write, “Dan Hanrahan–Died in his sleep.”  When the crowd had left, I’d might add another name or two before the concrete dried.

Children inherently know real places aren’t found on maps.  Somewhere along the line we convince ourselves they are.  We grow old, and believe the lies in our old age our young minds no better than to entertain.  Somewhere in between all of it were Salsbury and Downs.  Its youth that is unable to resist the temptation of wet concrete, and old age that knows how hard it gets.

At the actual site today is the remains of a wreath, having lost its round and unrecognizable.  Above it is an enclosed case, detailing the story. Alongside the story are pinned a few photos, all bleached and faded beyond description. All but one. The lone picture that survives is of J. Russell Salsbury and his friend Downs. Wherever they are standing, it isn’t found on any map.  Someplace just as real now as it was then.

When I got to my inbox this morning, there was an email informing me that Fr. Jim Kiernan had died.  One could write several books about Fr. Kiernan.  He had a folksy way of delivering a homily, no doubt a product of the Irish appreciation for telling a story.  Before I head out my door this morning, I’ll share one I remember.

“When I taught at St. Albert’s, sometimes the kids would ask me, ‘Father, how come there are no miracles anymore?’

I would tell them I don’t know.  Maybe God at one time thought we needed miracles, and He simply doesn’t now.  Maybe it was how He communicated with us once, but now He communicates in a different way.  Maybe it has nothing to do with God at all.

Imagine, if you would, a world where everything was brown.  Now, I don’t know the science behind that, I don’t know how such a world would work, but imagine it, in your mind, a world where everything was brown.

One day, here in Stuart, Iowa, right in your own backyard, something green begins to grow.  Can you even imagine that?  A color no one had ever seen before begins to emerge right there, behind your house, in the midst of all that brown.  Why think of how excited your kids would be.

And Stuart, well it’s a small town, and you know how the news would travel.  Your neighbors would come over first, and then those from across town, and behind them those from the countryside, all coming to your place to see what was growing in your yard.

Could there be any doubt that the Des Moines Register would be interested in a story like that?  Or the local news channels?  Why before long the national press would descend right here in Stuart, Iowa, with an assortment of microphones in your face, their news trucks in your driveway, and helicopters hovering over your home.

Yes, sir.  That would be big news for Stuart, Iowa.  How long, do you suppose, it would take for someone to utter, ‘It’s a miracle.’?

But you know what?  It happens everyday, the whole world over, and no one even notices.”

Jo Snyder died yesterday morning.  I can’t claim to have known her well, but I don’t need to in order to claim her as a favorite of mine.  I got to know her over a couple of years in teaching a confirmation class, along with Larry Lantz and Fr. Dan Kirby.

She was the type of person you’d go out of your way to say “hello” to.  She had large, bright eyes and an infectious laugh.  Jo, her eyes, or her laugh were more than enough on their own to make you smile.  I can’t recall a time when I didn’t get all three.

Given her spark plug nature, I wasn’t surprised a year ago to catch sight of her and her husband, Randy, in their new Polaris Slingshot.  It seemed to fit her personality as much as her eyes did.  It fit Randy, an avid motorcycle enthusiast, just as well.

I was surprised a few short days later, after seeing Randy at a confirmation rehearsal.  He looked weak and was on oxygen.  When I got a chance, I asked Jo, “I don’t mean to pry, but what kind of health trouble is Randy having?”

“Randy has cancer of the kidneys,” she said in a matter of fact way.

“What’s the prognosis?”

“It’s terminal.  He’s fought it for some time.  They say he’s got just a little way to go.”

The gal that kept everything organized, always brought the extra things the kids might need, and who hadn’t missed a class I could remember, had all of this going on in her life.  I never knew.  Yet what took me back even more, was her manner.

That night Randy mentioned he was feeling a little better.  They laughed like they always did.  When it was over, the two of them got in the Slingshot, got their helmets on, and headed out to enjoy life.  Behind they left me with a view of what faith must look like.

A few days later the kids got confirmed, Randy went into hospice, and on the 14th of May, 2015, he left it.  It seemed to me Jo largely chose to go on in the same manner she always had: the same bright eyes, the same warm laugh, the same faith.

When life ends abruptly, there is always the sentiment that someone else needs to do something about it.  We legislate and litigate as though the combination of the two will someday outlaw death.  Perhaps the more pertinent message, though, is that we need to do something about it:  stop taking if for granted.  Jo Snyder understood that.

Along the way we find causes worth fighting for.  Jo had one in her faith, one in her care for others, and another in the National Kidney Foundation.  The latter went beyond Randy’s ailments.  Jo had donated a kidney, and life itself, to a neighbor.  I think Jo simply strove to be the change she wanted to see in the world.

I’m sure in her life she struggled like the rest of us.  I hope she understood part of the impact how she chose to handle it had on the lives of others.  I do know that a few hours with her were enough to make better my own.  This happened because Jo Snyder lived.

It was mentioned once that I should refrain from going on crusades.  I can’t seem to help it, though.  I’m Catholic.  It’s in my blood.

Recently the Des Moines Diocese took up a campaign that has made its way throughout the country, known as “Catholics Come Home.”  It is an attempt by the Church to bring back into the fold the many Catholics that no longer active in their faith.  Chances are by now you’ve seen a commercial or two on TV.

The little rural parish of St Patrick’s discussed how they would like to take part in the effort.  Letters were sent out, and advertisements were ran in the local paper.  Not long after our decision to do so, Catholicism was making headlines.

An archbishop in another state had sent a letter to those under his care cautioning them about buying cookies from the Girl Scouts.  His objection was to a part of the policy behind the organization and where a small part of the proceeds may be devoted.  Not longer after the letter, other religious leaders of other faiths were quick to announce their support of him.

I thought it a shame that in our discussion of where to run our ads, we had never thought of running them in the St Louis Post Dispatch.

Under the Archbishop’s care are fathers more caught up in distant political events than they are their own families.  There are mothers more dedicated to living longer than they are anything else.  There are children who don’t understand the freedom found in freely choosing to submit.  There are those that are pro-life only as far as birth, those wanting someone else to change how they live so they themselves don’t have to, those who think charity is something that happens on election day, and those moved with mercy and compassion for their fellow men, but have none for any in particular.

All of these things lie somewhere in my own heart, and to all of these, the topic the Archbishop felt most needed a letter urging an examination of conscience was the Girl Scouts.  Some will be critical of my being critical of the Archbishop.  Most of them are freely critical of the current Pope.

Early Christians, I suppose, interacted with the Roman children whose parents killed them for sport.  They followed a radical Christ.  In His life He seemed to keep reminding the religious of the day that faith should be about how we live our own lives, not how someone else lives theirs.  There was a minority receptive to the idea.  The rest crucified Him for it.

The hypocrisy that sometimes surfaces is why some have left their faiths.  Christ remained, though, and who am I to argue with that?  To ultimately find that hypocrisy I need to look no farther than myself.  My journey is an imperfect one to say the least, but in spite of that and the hoopla around the Samoas, it is the one that will take me home.

That old ocean out before us,
just trying to climb ashore.
Did you ever stop to wonder,
what all its climbing is for?

It’s been forty years now.
That old ocean looks the same.
But my in all that time,
how you and I have changed.

I see you looking out there,
scared to make a sound.
If I could I’d walk there,
just to turn right back around.

I’d have what I always wanted,
that old ocean view,
it couldn’t be more beautiful,
the one it has of you.

It laps against the shoreline,
while your toes are in the sand,
That ocean has still got no one,
and we’re back where we began.

That old ocean out before us,
just trying to climb ashore.
Did you ever stop to wonder
what all its climbing is for?

This year’s offering at High Point Genetics in Osceola, Iowa.

Bull sale season is wrapping up now, and it hardly arrives or passes without my mind still going back to the late Fred Johnson.  As I got to know him in my early 20’s, he was getting into his 80’s.  Once a year we would visit for an hour or so, and in the process he would always relate the little stories that carried with them a lifetime of observation.

“You know I was once at a big Angus sale in Upstate New York.  I had wound up sitting beside a guy who owned a fine New York City steakhouse.  He had decided he was going to get into the Angus business, and he did so by giving $20,000 for a $500 heifer calf.

We had talked a little prior, and right after his purchase he turned and asked me, ‘So, is there any money in this business?’

I replied, ‘You’re damn right there is.  I’ve sunk a fortune into it.  The trick isn’t putting it in, though, the trick is getting it back out.'”

You’ve probably never heard of Fred Johnson, nor his now gone ranch of Summitcrest, but if you’ve ever heard of Certified Angus Beef, then you are probably familiar with his accomplishments.  And if your childhood memory is like mine, and you remember the lime green and yellow tile floor at the local McDonald’s, then you remember the culmination of the Johnson family’s Summitville Tile business.

The purebred business is a funny thing, made up of all types of folks, just like life is.  For some it’s the image of rugged independence, steadfast loyalty, and high regard for a reputation.  Fred never seemed overly concerned about these at all.

What is rugged independence, after all, but dependence so great it drives one to isolate themselves?  What is loyalty, but the willingness to do what someone wants you to do for them rather than doing what you should do for them?  And who, at our age, would be unable to come up with a whole list of the disreputable things we’ve done in order to keep our reputations?

The first time I spoke to him, he asked me if I knew what the most important part of a registration paper was.  After some hesitation, I simply admitted I didn’t.

“It’s the breeder’s name at the top.  If you can’t believe that, then nothing else really matters.”

Perhaps in order to believe it, you need someone who recognizes the dependence the next owner will have on it.  Someone who’s willing to tell you what you don’t want to hear.  Who has the humility to tell you what they don’t want to say.  I believed Fred Johnson.

In one of his obituaries, I found that Fred had been injured in World War II, and left on the battlefield for dead.  A couple of days later, they found he wasn’t, and he began a several month process of making it back to the living.  I suppose he had plenty of time for reflection.

It seemed Fred put his whole self into his life, with a tenacity and determination still evident in his early 80’s.  Maybe that is the trick, then, that allows someone like me to still get a piece of it back out.  We are all worth the same, some just have a knack for adding value.

My father and Tom Judy, who managed Fred’s Iowa ranch, and cut from the same cloth.

A folded newspaper, with scissors in hand,
a child goes to work,
cutting paper hearts from the jumbled words of Man.

Producing a string, one for me and one for you
and I suppose all our neighbors,
Yes, I am sure they once had one too.

Decades of jumble, for hearts paper thin,
folded them back to the paper lines,
Children will cut them from again.

But why don’t we pull that edge there,
and let’s release our grip,
and smooth out all the creases, and never mind the rips.

And we will let the neighbors, keep the kids employed.
Up above the jumble, and the hell with paper lines.