Glacier

The Dad-Roll and Other Defensive Maneuvers

/ J. Thorp / Leave a comment

I am not naturally graceful. As a boy, I cast a shadow like a keyhole—a melon head atop a stick-figure body, careening through the world in whatever direction my topmost orb led me. As a teen, I lived in a narrow trailer house with my folks and spent two miserable weeks after my dad’s foot surgery finding every possible way to pinball into his elevated leg and throbbing big toe.

Today I am much the same: I move effortlessly, like an October acorn pinging from roof to car to driveway. I still drift the way I’m leaning and collide with stationary objects, softly as a poolside preschooler wearing swim-fins.

And yet, somewhere on the outer ends of my Y-chromosome is coded an instinct for self-preservation, which (to date) has kept me physically intact and free of broken bones or stitches.

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Learning to Live with Myself

/ J. Thorp / Leave a comment

In July of 2019, our family caravanned with friends from Michigan out to Glacier National Park to camp and hike and see the sites. It was a wonderful trip, and for the first time, Brendan’s fiancée (now wife) Becky joined us as well.

One of the characteristics of our family that Becky had to adjust to is the constant crackle of wordplay, sarcasm, and verbal violence dealt out among our members. I remember distinctly the first shot I fired across her bow at the dinner table during one of our first few visits with her. She took it well, with a wry smile and a very deliberate “Wow.”—as in, “Okay, so it’s like that now.”

This is not about that, however. This is about the first real shot she fired back.

We were standing around the firepit at the campground at Glacier, and Brendan was complimenting something he had eaten with Becky’s family: venison meat sticks, I think. I was standing just behind Becky, and as Brendan gushed, I stooped to rest my chin on Becky’s shoulder and gave her my best sideways puppy-dog eyes to indicate how much her future father-in-law would appreciate such delicacies.

She took evasive action, as one might in such a circumstance, and with the same wry smile, said, “You know, you’re basically Bruno in human form.”

I opened my mouth to reply, then closed it again.

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The Better Part

/ J. Thorp / 2 Comments

Nearly everyone I talk with these days agrees with me: The summer is flying by, in part because our families are so busy.

A friend has an acronym for BUSY: Burdened Under Satan’s Yoke. We may object that the numerous things we are doing are not evil, but are good and perhaps even important. But we would do well to ask ourselves, are they necessary?

Necessity is a high bar, when you think about it. As animals, we have very few absolute needs: food, water, shelter, and the like. As humans, made in God’s image, we have a few more: freedom, community, love. Meeting these needs for ourselves and our families requires effort on our part—but for the person of faith, there is a hierarchy: God, spouse, children, everyone else, everything else.

Which of these things are we spending time on these days, and in what order? Continue reading →