[From Wisdom for the Ages: A Season with Ecclesiastes available as a kindle or soft cover book
32
WISE ELDER
Do you have
a WISE ELDER in your life? There’s no
better means to discover and cultivate your inner wisdom.
Ecclesiastes has long served as a surrogate WISE ELDER for me. But I had a flesh and
blood WISE ELDER who entered my life as I began a ministerial career in my
early thirties. He was a member of my
little congregation in Youngstown, Ohio.
He appeared when my psyche, in its journey of individuation, was ready
to progress toward its next stage.
Dick Shook
reminded me of the actor, Frank Morgan, who played the Wizard of Oz in the
classic movie. A seventyish man, with a
gray mustache and receding hairline, silver hair combed straight back, Dick
generally dressed in dress slacks, cardigan sweater, and tie. He always seemed at ease with self and
others. His wife Pat, slim and graceful,
was a good match. Their home, a snug
Northside cottage with a fireplace, had simple, good furnishings, a brick
fireplace that burned aromatic hard wood, and unique nick knacks. The mantle had an array of Dick’s childhood
iron toys and miniature steam engines. When
he fired them up, they putt-a-putted and emitted little bursts of steam. Dick was happy, his dark eyes shiny like
coal.
Dick had
worked as a salesman and designer for General Fireproofing, a once famous
Youngstown manufacturer of steel office desks and aluminum office chairs. Half a century later these pieces have become
collectible, desirable representatives of a golden age of industrial America.
By the time I came to Youngstown, however, General Fireproofing had gone out of
business.
For a few
of years my wife Ellie and I spent a couple of hours every week at the Shooks,
while our daughter took piano lessons from their next door neighbor. Dick knew how to mix cocktails. At the beginnings of our visits, he exited
into the kitchen and in a few minutes returned with a tray of four glistening
drinks. His servings were generous,
always a double shot for me. After two
glasses of bourbon on the rocks, everything settled into a warm golden
glow. Dick’s warm and friendly eyes took
on an extra twinkle. The Port Salut
cheese that Pat served on a plate with a mound of stone ground Canadian crackers
became extra tangy-rich.
On those
mellow afternoons, little twilight eternities, we had easy and wonderful
conversations about words and language, books, world events, Youngstown lore,
and the unexpected. Once, the subject of
dirigibles popped up. “Come with me,”
Dick said. “I’m going to show you
something in the garage.” Up in the rafters above his car was the frame
of a pewter-hued metal chair. He lifted
it down and said, “Here,” presenting it to me.
I nearly
dropped it, because I’d expected it to have a certain heft. However, it was as light as a feather. “It’s from a dirigible. It’s made of magnesium.” Dick then explained how he’d acquired it,
telling yet another of his signature stories of being at the right place at the
right time.
As a child,
he sat at the family dinner table while they entertained all three hundred
pounds of William Howard Taft. While
attending respective Cleveland colleges during Prohibition, Dick and Pat, when
they dated, had rubbed elbows with notorious mobsters in speakeasies. At the 1933 Century of Progress in Chicago,
Dick had watched Sally Rand’s beguiling fan dance. I ceased to be amazed, but was always
interested, when a topic of our conversation led to yet another of Dick’s
fascinating first hand tales.
The
domestic tranquility of their home, the comfortable affections of their
marriage, their unpretentious good taste and septuagarian handsomeness, their
treasure of memories of people and places, their continuing pleasures in
continuing pursuits struck me as how I would like my life to be when I was
seventy.
Dick taught
me about death, too. Cancer claimed him
toward the end of my Youngstown sojourn.
He dealt with dying with considerable dignity. He breathed his final breath in the home he’d
crafted and loved. I sat with Pat in the
familiar living room, as Dick’s body in a blue, zippered bag was carried out of
the house, into the ambulance. I gave
his eulogy and wrote a poem of remembrance for him.
Dick
provided a worthy example for me on how to truly live an ordinary life to its
fullest, in whatever time and place I might find myself. He offered an example which I appreciated
then and used as a guide thereafter.
Ecclesiastes’ wisdom, the WISE ELDER example
of the Narrator, isn’t as intimate and warm as a living mentor, such as Dick
Shook was for me. But on an intellectual
level it works. At least it has worked
and continues to work for me.
In our
youth and when we begin to grow our psyche, we need WISE ELDERS to stimulate
what we already have within us. In literary and intellectual ways , Ecclesiastes
serves this universal purpose.
Posts
