My Life with TY

My Life with TY

(Son of Donum Dei)

Giving thanks to God the Father at all times and for everything

in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

(Ephesians 5:20)

A sermon by Siegfried S. Johnson on Christ the King Sunday, November 26, 2006

(Volume 1 Number 21)

At first, I admit it, I wasn’t too fond of TY. TY’s not the sort of person one warms up to early in life. Truth be known, as a child I was embarrassed to have TY around. It takes time, an accumulation of life experiences, before TY becomes a part of you. One has to work at it. When we first met I was a toddler. More than once, I’m afraid, mom had to introduce me to TY, amazed that we weren’t becoming close friends. My inability to call TY by name was a bit embarrassing for my parents. It was as if I’d forgotten we’d ever met. So they never tired, in those early years, of trying to arrange a friendship between TY and me, something for which now I’m thankful, though it irked me then.

In case you haven’t yet guessed from the overall theme of our worship today, TY is my abbreviation for the simple words, “Thank-You.” TY represents a spirit of gratitude, the recognition that we live our lives from gift to gift. Give us this day our daily bread, we pray, and with eyes open to these gifts, we are moved to gratitude. TY becomes a part of our life. But it takes a while for our eyes to be opened to TY’s importance.

So mom would urge me to say “Thank-you” for any little kindness that came my way, and we all know a ton of kindnesses come the way of a child. With each one mom would say, “Now, Sieg, don’t forgot TY.” And, reluctantly, sheepishly, I would note TY’s presence, mumbling almost inaudibly, “Thank-you.” “Say ‘Thank-you’ to Uncle Kenneth for giving you that dollar,” mom said. It was a bill on which he had written, “Siego, keep this and you’ll never be broke.” It was an Uncle Kenneth trademark. I suppose he was joking. Mom, I’m quite sure, wasn’t. It was her intention that I be well-acquainted with TY.

In fact, TY was everywhere at my house in those early years, pushing in all around me, uncomfortably nudging me. At dinnertime, nobody could eat until we acknowledged TY. After supper dad might say something like, “I don’t think I heard any of you three boys tell mom that you enjoyed supper tonight.”

“Oh, that’s right. How could we have forgotten TY? ‘Thank you, mom, great meal,’” we said, as we hustled off to play.

At nighttime, toys put away and blanket pulled snugly up around me, there was TY. “Thank you God for momma and daddy, for Ross and Johnny, and Mimi and Grandma Lula and Pop, for Creamy (Creamy the cat was the earliest pet I remember), and for all my friends.”

So it went in those early years. TY was always around. Perhaps, I thought, TY is a childhood companion only. One day I will graduate from the necessity of having TY around, in the same way one graduates from kindergarten to go to elementary school. As we grow older and more independent, I thought, perhaps we grow less needful of having TY around. In a way, I suppose, exactly that happened. During my adolescence, I didn’t see as much of TY. I guess I was too much concerned with MY rights, with my being treated like an adult, and the desire to stand on my own two feet. Who needs TY around when a young man is trying to prove he can stand alone? TY wasn’t seen quite so much during those years. Oh, he did drop by occasionally. I remember TY especially around high school graduation, spending hour after hour with TY writing “Thank you” notes for the wonderful gifts showered on me. It was a chore I was forced to do, though, honestly it was.

TY popped in and out of my life, though I’m afraid I didn’t really invite him often enough or try to cultivate his friendship. Friendship with TY, as I said, doesn’t come naturally. One must be taught through life’s experiences to live with TY. “Say ‘Thank you’ to the nice lady,” mom taught me as a child. “Say thank you to the nice God,” they taught me at Sunday School. I was learning TY’s importance, but second hand, having to be reminded and encouraged by others. When would I learn TY’s importance on my own, without having to be reminded?

Summer of ‘72 coming to a close, TY helped me pack my bags for college in Jonesboro. “You know, many people have brought you to this place in your life,” TY reminded me as he folded another pair of socks.

“Yes, I know,” I said, “but TY, as long as you’ve been around, I’m still uncomfortable with exactly how to say ‘Thank You’. I’m not sure I know what to say.”

TY smiled and continued folding socks. “That’s alright,” he said. “Your parents who have sacrificed and saved for you, your teachers and coaches, your pastors and Sunday School teachers and youth leaders. They never expected anything in return. They just want to know that you’re headed in the right direction, that you’re going to do the best you can.”

“And if I fail?” I asked.

“Then you give thanks for the experience and you grow from it.”

“Give thanks for the experience?” I laughed. “That’s just what I might have expected someone with a name like TY would say.”

And so I set off to school. Four years of college. Three in seminary. Add another five or so in post-graduate work. Whenever I look back on those years, I can’t do so without TY. Oh, much was happening other than school. There was marriage which, by the way, precipitated another ton of ‘Thank-you’ notes for gifts, but this time I had help — a leader, if fact, who seemed to know TY much better than I.

Comes the day when no one has to remind you of TY’s presence. Comes the day when you realize that life is lived from gift to gift, from grace to grace. Comes the day when you need no encouragement to search your heart for gratitude. You just are. Comes the day when TY, son of Donum Dei (Latin for Gift of God), has gotten inside of you. I suppose if I had to pinpoint that moment for me, it would be 31 years ago today, November 26, 1975, around 3:30 in the morning. That’s when Page was born. And guess who greeted me outside Labor and Delivery? “Why TY, I didn’t expect to see you out here this time of night,” I said with a smile, knowing that TY knew better.

“Really?” said TY in mock amazement. “Typical of you to think that all it takes to have a baby are doctors and nurses. Why, I’m on duty down here at Labor and Delivery full-time.” And when I held that small baby in my arms for the first time, wondering how on earth I could be so lucky, I was glad that I knew TY. I discovered that I felt closer to TY than ever before. It was as if, overnight, TY had become a part of me, a feeling I would know again when Ashley was born on the Ides of March three years later, and when we entered grand-parenthood nine summers ago at Christian’s birth.

“Well, I’ll be going now,” TY said at the crack of dawn 31 years ago today. He smiled large. “Don’t forget me when you’re doing three o’clock feedings, or pacing the floor on Saturday nights when she’s 17 and thinks she’s all grown up and can stay out as long as she wants. Don’t forget, she’s Donum Dei, a gift from God. She’s family, and I don’t mean just YOUR family. She’s my family. Like me, she’s a child of Donum Dei.”

“I know, I know,” I said. “And if I do forget, I’m sure you’ll be around to remind me, right, TY?”

“I’ll be there. Just in case you forget and say to her in anger, ‘Look at all I’ve done for you,’ or ‘You owe it to me and your mother to . . .’. I’ll be there to remind you that her life came to you as Donum Dei, a gift from God.”

TY takes trips with us, now, by the way. When Sherry and I went to Jerusalem for the first time in 1997, and stepped out the doors of the Seven Arches Hotel on the crest of the Mount of Olives, overlooking the Kidron Valley and the Holy City, there was TY. The sun was setting behind the Dome of the Rock, nothing if not breathtaking. “TY, I didn’t expect to find you way out here,” I said. But TY knew that I knew better.

“What, are you kidding? Think I’d miss this? Not on your life. This is one of my favorite spots in all the world. I’ve stood here with millions of people about this time of day. And there’s more. I can’t wait to walk with you into the gates of the Old City tomorrow, then later to show you the Church of the Nativity, then to stay with you all around the Galilee. You know, a good friend of mine named Paul long ago wrote, ‘At all times and for everything give thanks.’ You’re getting there, my friend,” TY said, “slowly but surely, you’re getting there.”

I suppose it’s true. TY has become more and more a part of my life. It’s easy now to go through our family albums and spot TY, his smiling face superimposed on ours. TY is never one to miss a Thanksgiving meal or a family reunion or a Disney vacation. But shall TY be our companion, as his old friend, Paul said, “at all times and in everything?” Isn’t that a bit much to ask? Sure, I don’t mind having TY with us on vacation or Easter Sunday morning, or those moments of joy when time slows and attention sweetens and our awareness of life’s blessings is acute. Those are the proper times, the proper places for TY. But at all times?

Let’s face it. Every life knows dark days when TY is the last person you want to drop by to pay you a visit. Don’t get me wrong. It has nothing to do with not liking TY. It’s just that . . . well, doesn’t it seem logical that there’s a time and a place for everything? As good-hearted as TY is, and as beneficial as his presence can be, there are times when TY is simply out of place. Perhaps Paul over-spoke.

It’s been nearly 6 years since my cell phone rang on that cool February afternoon. It was Johnny, my younger brother in Dallas. I was in the car on the way home to Fordyce from a conference at Henderson United Methodist Church in Little Rock. The joy in Johnny’s voice was unmistakable. The triplets had arrived. I was elated, a bit amazed that TY had time to be with me. He had told me long ago that he worked Labor and Delivery full time and it seemed, with triplets, TY should be working overtime with Johnny and Karen in Dallas. TY must be everywhere, I thought, glad that Johnny had at last felt the embrace of TY the same way I did way back in 1975. Times three! Johnny had been wanting children for years. Today, three was the magic number for John Bates Avery Johnson the 3^rd. The 3^rd son of the 3^rd son of the 3^rd son now had three children. “All is well,” Johnny reported. “A girl, McKenzie Culver, and two boys, John Bates Avery IV, and the little one, only 3 pounds, Cameron Grant. The doctors say everything is fantastic.” It was a great phone call, a great day to share with TY.

My cell phone rang again the next morning. It was a busy week with Conference matters and I was on my way to Camp Tanako in Hot Springs to preside over a meeting of the Older Adult Council of the Little Rock Conference. “Let me answer it,” said TY, who was still with me, riding shotgun, helping me make weekend plans to see my little nephews and niece.

“No, no, I’ll get it. It may be for me,” I said. I’d just come into Princeton. Cell phone reception is not great there, but I heard enough to know something was terribly wrong. I pulled over to talk and couldn’t believe it. Johnny was crying, something I’d not heard since we were kids. “McKenzie and Avery are very sick. An infection. The doctors don’t understand, but say the situation is critical.”

“It’ll be okay,” I assured Johnny, not knowing. It sounded serious. And when I ended the call and looked around, TY was gone. That night, when I returned home, we reached Johnny. Things were worse. Johnny insisted there was no need for us to come to Dallas, but Sherry and I knew we had to go, and right away. We hastily packed and left, and it was when we reached Hope, around midnight, that my little brother, shattered by the death of his baby girl, reached us. “McKenzie died a few minutes ago. They took her off all the machines and just let me hold her. Avery’s holding on, but it doesn’t look good. Little Cameron seems unaffected and okay so far.”

When Sherry and I made it to Baylor Hospital sometime after two o’clock, we took Johnny down to an empty and quiet cafeteria. He wanted us to contact a funeral home, to make burial arrangements. How out of place. As out of place as TY would have been, whom I hadn’t seen since that phone call the day before.

I was glad for his absence, I think. His presence would have seemed somehow trite. We wept in that cafeteria, a place of tears, not of Thanksgiving. TY was no where around, nor did I care to look for him. Or, perhaps he was around, sitting at another table, close by, watching, waiting for the right moment. That’s grace, Donum Dei -- unsought, unforced, approaching in its own time.

And through the week, to Avery’s death on the eighth day and their funeral in a single casket, TY was pretty much absent, giving us our space. “Will you preach the funeral?” Johnny asked. “No, Johnny, I can’t. There are times when ministers need to be ministered to. This is such a time. A minister leading a funeral needs to have TY as a companion, an ability to see through and past the grief, to feel a sense of Donum Dei and to share that gift of hope with a grieving family. I’m sorry, Johnny, but I can’t find TY. I haven’t seen him all week. I can’t find the son of Donum Dei in all of this.”

So Johnny and I went to visit with the minister at Highland Park United Methodist Church. Oh, she was wonderful. Her office was the old office, she told us, of Natalie Sleeth, the very room where she had written the words to Hymn of Promise. Ah, and I knew that hymn well, as most Methodists do. Many times I had suggested it to grieving families in my own office and now, being so close the place of its creative inspiration I found oddly comforting. I reflected on the third stanza, “In our end is our beginning; in our time, infinity; in our doubt there is believing; in our life, eternity. In our death, a resurrection; at the last a victory, unrevealed until its season, something God alone can see.”

Now, the minister’s speaking became for me but background noise, as I recognized a familiar presence in the room. I looked around. It was TY, silent and unobtrusive, but nodding his awareness of my surprised joy at seeing him there. It was a moment of sudden understanding and communion. Gratitude was the appropriate response as I understood that Donum Dei, the gift of God, is our companion in more than the happy times of our lives. Our awareness of Donum Dei can be sparked at any moment, in the same sense in which Paul instructs us to Pray without ceasing. How exactly does one do that? Our experience of ordinary time won’t allow for that. We have other things to do than pray, if by prayer we mean consciously wording our prayer, constantly addressing God. It must be, I thought, something like a 4^th dimension of eternal time which transcends our three spatial dimensions, superimposing itself over our lives lived in ordinary time. This 4^th dimension must be always present, making, in a sense, each moment eternal. Perhaps that’s what the song means. “In our time, infinity. In our life, eternity.” At such a moment of sudden understanding, the quality of our attention sweetens. We listen. Time continues to flow past us, but we are now standing on the bank, in another world, out of time.

“Don’t leave us, TY. Please stay. You do belong here, with us, now, especially now. Stay with us through this funeral. We’ll need you to help pick out the music and the scriptures, to guide the pastor as she speaks words of hope and comfort. She needs to know us to do this funeral, and her knowledge of us won’t be complete unless she understands that you are family. I was wrong. You are not out of place. We need you now, more than ever, to be with us.”

So family and friends gathered, and the comforting support and love they expressed reminded us of TY’s importance as a member of our family. And today, seeing my little, wonderfully healthy, nephew Cameron Grant, Johnny’s third child who will turn six this February, is to remember TY’s transformative presence which turns the darkest of nights into the brightest day of promise, for we follow Christ, who went even to the darkest death for us.

Glory to the Father, and the Son, and to the Holy Spirit.

As it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever. Amen.

Sources:

For the unique style of this sermon, personifying a spirit of gratitude into a lifelong companion named TY, I am indebted to a sermon by William Willimon, “Gratitude,” in Pulpit Resource, Volume 31, Number 3, July - September 2003. This sermon, personifying thankfulness into a person Willimon called “Gratitude,” was my inspiration to create “TY, Son of Donum Dei.” While the form was suggested by Willimon, obviously I inserted my own story as narrative. This sermon is offered in the hope that every listener and reader will be inspired do the same. Willimon explains that his idea for the sermon was inspired by Rev. Fred Craddock in his influential book on preaching titled, As One Without Authority, in which Craddock included a sermon called “Doxology,” creatively turning the Doxology into a person who accompanied him throughout the day.