The Peak of Inspiration

Teach me thy way, O Lord, and lead me in a plain path…  Psalm 27:11a

I don’t know how others that write find inspiration.  If they look for it or if it finds them.  I can only speak from my own experience, and I don’t have a lot.  I’ve never fancied myself to be a writer.  But I have some things that are boiling around in the area where my heart is.  Sometimes I’m at the keyboard when they spill over.   I guess nothing has affected me like watching my dad’s life fade away.  If inspiration favors me, and I continue to put my feelings into words, it’s likely that a lot of what I write will include, at least marginally, some lesson or concept that he lived out. 

Simplicity is a dying character trait.  Oh, it’s talked about a lot.  Wall plaques, quotes, and cliches abound about how to whittle our lives down to the essentials so we can really enjoy them.  Many brands love the word simple.  Goodness, uncontaminated.  Straight out of the earth.  No additives.  No substitutes. 

Whatever the essence of it is, and wherever it comes from, dad had it.  The real thing.  The kind that is impossible to fake.   Most often the evidence was shown in very ordinary, daily life.  Some in deeper, spiritual truths.  In a quiet, steady approach to family nurture and discipline.  No justifying or pretending.  Just sure steps on a plain path. 

All my childhood years I was surrounded by a particular smell.  Brut by Faberge.  Google search it.  It’s a fragrance that was launched in 1968.  My memory will retain that aroma long after my other senses desert me.  It hung in the hallway and followed dad to church.  That smell anchors me to a good share of my childhood memories.  I did not know other colognes existed.  Cologne was Brut.  Brut was cologne.  Simple as that.

I moved out and moved on.  Got my own colognes.  Never the same one twice.  I have at least 4 kinds on the dresser as I write.   I came back home, spent some time at the old home place.   I got curious.  Walked back to dad’s bedroom.  On the dresser, all by itself, in the same spot that I found it as a child wanting to be a grown up, I found a bottle of Brut.  68 years, 1 fragrance.  Simple.  No need to make impressions.  Nothing to prove.  Call it boring if you want.  Unadventurous.  I think it’s something else.  Something completely the opposite of shallow.  Something that witnesses to contentment.  

Dad bought a ‘95 Chevy in about ‘98.  It never had a chance of competing with the diesels that I like to imagine myself driving one day.  Two wheel drive, single cab, long bed.  Basic and simple.  It didn’t do anything for his image.  Didn’t need to.  He loved it.  Took care of it.  It’s still parked at the farm.  I drove it a few times recently and it reminds me of who he was.  At peace with the simple things.

Simple joys.  Reading books to children on the back bench after church.  Soaking in the sound of his family singing.  Handing out donuts to the school children as they dismissed.  Sitting at the head of the table when the family was home for Christmas and loving every beautiful face.  Realizing, truly understanding, that simple moments are the richest.   That they contain a quality that cannot be found any place else. 

I think we spend too much energy looking for the next thing.  The next entertainment and good time.  We want variety and options.  New models and features are introduced and expounded upon.  Peer pressure pushes and pulls us.  We soon tire and get bored with what is and wish for what could be.  We let our egos tell us we deserve something different and better.  That it’s time for some expression.  

Maybe instead we should pray for a plain path.  For a love of the simple things.  For grace to see the world for what it is.  A distraction and a snare.  We won’t miss out on anything.  Dad died a contented man.  We cried to see him go.  There’s a void.  We feel it.  What I’m saying is, he was loved.  It’s easy to love a simple man.    

And so I pray, “O Lord, lead me in a plain path.  Right behind my dad.”