After living in Columbus for 17 years we have finally gone to the
Olentangy Indian Caverns. Originally, my brother had been keen on the idea of taking the kids camping, but we decided to scale back. How about a day trip to
Hocking Hills, we suggested--we haven't been there in ages. (In fact, the last time we were there, we had only
one kid and had to carry him the whole way.)
Unfortunately, today's forecast called for "thunderstorms and wind", so we faced the challenge of coming up with an activity that was not weather dependent, but was more memorable and special for the kids than spending the day inside playing video games with their uncle. And then I thought about those signs we have passed, dozens of times, for Olentangy Indian Caverns. Caves, after all, have the same weather conditions all year round, and, if you squint, it's still kind of an outdoorsy sort of activity.
Of course, I use the word squint here in a metaphorical sense. It's already pretty dark in a cave (that's why our
pictures didn't turn out very well), so
literally squinting probably wouldn't have been such a great idear. What surprised us is how very small the caverns were. But it still made for a more memorable visit, and it kind of whet our appetites for going to a Cave of Impressive Size some time soon--we just realized that our last trip to
Mammoth Cave was before either of our kids was born.
Now for a neckbreaker of a segue...all of the above is basically a very long "aside" before posting excerpts from some articles I found about Fred Rogers on Beliefnet. There is a new book coming out entitled The Simple Faith of Mister Rogers by Amy Hollingsworth. What follows is an excerpt from a Beliefnet interview with Ms. Hollingsworth:
Mister Rogers' Theology of 'Neighbor'
The book is called "The Simple Faith of Mister Rogers." How was Mister Rogers' faith simple?
Sometimes the word "simple" is confused with the word "simplistic," and it wasn't. His philosophy of life is not simplistic, but it's simple in that there are some basic tenets to it that seem simple but are so profound and so hard to live out on a daily basis. Probably the central tenet of his faith and the theme of the Neighborhood is just the idea of loving your neighbor. When I asked him who is your neighbor, he said, whoever you happen to be with at the moment. So right there, there's no loophole--that means we have to love everybody.
He said, once you realize that everybody's your neighbor, you have a choice. You can either be an advocate or an accuser. An accuser is somebody who only sees what's awful about themselves so they look through those eyes and look for what's awful about their neighbor. An advocate is somebody who looks through the eyes of God at their neighbor and sees what's good about that person because they're created in God's likeness. That's a very simple, basic truth, but to live that out in our daily lives is tremendously difficult.
Another article is 'What Mister Rogers Shared With Me'
For Fred, perhaps the earliest prototype of a true "neighbor" took the form of an elderly woman who lived in his hometown of Latrobe, Pennsylvania. She was his grandmother's age, and everyone called her Mama Bell. Many times five-year-old Freddy (as he was called) would amble up her back-porch steps looking for a snack. He would arrive strategically on her back doorstep because it led straight to her kitchen, where she often made him his favorite treat--toast sticks.
"Come for toast sticks, Freddy?" she would ask. One day Mama Bell asked Freddy if he would like to make the toast sticks on his own. Imagine his delight at being able to master what seemed like a grown-up task, as well as his pride at being entrusted with Mama Bell's specialty. He was prompted to put the bread in the toaster, allowed to slowly butter the toasted slice, and then top it off with a dollop of jam. Mama Bell even let him carefully cut the toast into four long sticks.
Very soon after that encounter, Mama Bell got sick and died. Many decades later, Fred wondered if somehow Mama Bell had known she was reaching toward heaven and wanted Freddy to have this experience as a comfort to him, as a reminder of their unique friendship. Even though she was gone, he could now make toast sticks on his own, and he would always think of Mama Bell as he made them. Toast sticks may seem like a simple legacy, but they had a profound effect upon a young boy.
This story was meaningful to me when I first heard it, but it took on special significance in the months following Fred's death. (I wasn't even aware that he had been sick; his cancer came on suddenly and took his life in a matter of weeks. But I had wondered if something was wrong. His last letter to me, the one that arrived three weeks before he died, was typed. He had never typed his letters to me before; they were always handwritten. I suspected that for some reason his staff had to be involved in completing that last letter. But at the close of it, in his own hand, he had written, "Grace and Peace and Love to you all. Fred.")
I thought about Fred and Mama Bell again when I returned home from his memorial service in Pittsburgh. Reflecting on our relationship, I realized that Fred had entrusted me with something very similar to the gift Mama Bell had entrusted to him; he had left me something while he was reaching toward heaven that I wasn't even aware of (although I had a sense that he was). For years--through our letters, our conversations, and our prayers for one another--Fred had left me with spiritual "toast sticks," a legacy that would comfort me long after he was gone, providing sustenance of a different kind. Now that I had them, I could enjoy them on my own, even when he was no longer here.
But Fred knew better than that. Sustenance is to be shared.
Spiritual toast sticks. Funny thing is, in the car on the way to the caverns today, somehow the subject turned to Mister Rogers. My brother commented that, while he had already thought pretty highly of the man, the fact that Fred Rogers actually sent a personal response to the letter I sent him had really impressed him.
I recalled to him that after Douglas Adams died in 2001, I started poking around the internet discovering how active the author had been online. Had I known this before, I certainly would have written to him at least once, just to tell him how much Demetrius and I had enjoyed the Hitchhiker's Guide series. Anyway, when the thought later occurred to me to write to Fred Rogers, I acted upon it immediately, determined not to miss another such opporunity.
His response to me was part of the inspiration for my Village Gate blog, Sacred Space. Today I am smiling at the thought that I, too, received some spiritual toast sticks from Fred Rogers before he started "reaching toward heaven."
