My guitar teacher

The man who taught me how to play the guitar was Dave Peters, a phenomenal mandolinist who lived and worked in Houston and, later, across the world. His fingers fairly flew over the strings of the tiny instrument, bringing to vibrancy everything from Doc Watson's bluegrass "Sheep in the Meadow," to the classical jazz of Django Reinhart.

He was the one who introduced me to bluegrass festivals -- Nacogdoches, Winfield, KS -- and he was the one who gave me a book of poetry by Sara Teasdale.

Dave had an impressive book collection and he had no reservations about sharing or even giving away his tomes. He lived in a big house with several other musicians in the hip part of town and one night he invited me to come and sit in on a jam session. I had absolutely no intention of trying to play in front of that bunch -- one of them was a string bass player for the symphony, another was a teenage phenom from the piney woods of East Texas who later went on to make a name for himself.

No, I just went to listen and to join in on the conversations. And to see my teacher's book collection. I'd heard tell it was varied and interesting, just the type I like to browse.

And so I left later that night with the collected works of Sara Teasdale, a gift from Dave who said he'd read it enough times he'd memorized all the poems worth knowing. Teasdale, who died in 1933, was an American poet famous in her day and whose work entitled Love Songs received the first Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1918.

There were many good pieces in the book and I held onto it for many years, long after I'd stopped taking guitar lessons, long after I'd lost touch with Dave, and long after I learned he'd died suddenly in his sleep.

I still remember one of the poems, because I loved the image of "a fire that once was singing gold."

Ironically, the poem I remember is titled, "Let It Be Forgotten."

Let it be forgotten, as a flower is forgotten,
Forgotten as a fire that once was singing gold.
Let it be forgotten forever and ever,
Time is a kind friend, he will make us old. 


If anyone asks, say it was forgotten
Long and long ago,
As a flower, as a fire, as a hushed footfall
In a long-forgotten snow.


Dave Peters has been gone nearly 12 years now.
They buried him in Kentucky, home of the blue grass and the music he loved so much.

The sins of the fathers

I've  never thought that children should pay for the sins of the fathers, but it happens more often than I care to admit.

Recently, I read an article about the children of Nazi soldiers and how these now-grown descendants are working hard to get to the truth about their infamous ancestors. With family trees obscured by years of lies, these adults, now in their late 40s and early 50s and 60s, not only have to confront the atrocities of their relatives but they have to reconcile that horrible knowledge with what they know about themselves.

Some of these children never married, never had children of their own, because they were so afraid they had inherited some sort of "monster gene" that could be passed along. Many children of Nazis have lived their lives in shame and fear of being found out.

I can't imagine paying daily for the sins of my father, but I'm about to get a front-row seat to how this works out for my own children.

In this case, they are going to pay a heavy price for the sins of their mother. Me.

I offended a friend whose children have been friends with my children since everyone was a toddler. Not only was I offensive in the first place, I remained so in the aftermath. In other words, even as I write this, I am still offensive.

I am having such a hard time understanding the deeper nature of the reasons why my actions were offensive that I've all but given up.

My children's friends will not be allowed to come over to play, even though none of them are at fault or have anything in any way to do with the disagreement between their mothers. I even went so far as to point out that it would be okay for the adults to be at odds as long as we let our kids be kids and at least have their friendship on an even keel.

That suggestion didn't go over too well. Naive on my part, I see that now.

My son asked me again today when the boy he calls his best friend would be coming over and I had to remind him that he'll  likely never see his buddy again -- at least not until they're both old enough to pick their own friends and drive themselves where they want to go.

He looked puzzled for a minute and said, "Why can't you just deal with your stuff and let us play? We have fun and that's what being a kid is all about."

I told him that sometimes no matter how you deal with things they don't work out and that I was sorry about him losing his friend. I told him that I guess it's my fault -- because apparently it is. "That's okay," he said solemnly. "It's your fault but I still love you."

More than anything else, I'm sorry for my children. I'm sorry for my friend's children.

They are all paying for the sins of the adults, and I think this is the most profound loss of all.

Where none was meant . . .

I've recently had the distinct misfortune of offending someone when no offense was meant. It's an interesting place to be, if not a little lonely, because it forces me to examine again why we do the things we do -- or not.

The details of the alleged offense are not important. What matters more to me is how a perceived slight is dealt with. What's the responsibility of the offended party? What's the responsibility of the one who has been deemed offensive?

I don't have those answers, but I did a little research into the subject today and found some thoughts by other people that shed a little light on a fairly murky topic.

If you've ever been offended -- or if you've ever offended -- this post is for you.

Slate.com published an article in 2008 titled "Why humans are so quick to take offense, and what that means for the presidential campaign," by Emily Yoffe.

Ms. Yoffe explores the fascinating biology and psychology behind our tendencies to get bent out of shape when something doesn't go our way. With all due respect to copyright laws, I quote from her piece:

A paradox of human life is that the evolutionary forces that have made us cooperative and empathetic are the same ones that have made us prickly and explosive. Jonathan Haidt, a psychology professor at the University of Virginia, is a leading theorist in the field of moral psychology. He says the paired emotions of gratitude and vengeance helped us become the ultrasocial, ultrasuccessful species that we are. Gratitude allows us to expand our social network and recruit new allies; vengeance makes sure our new friends don't take advantage of us.

Study the topic of "taking offense" and you realize people are like tuning forks, ready to vibrate with indignation. So why do humans seem equipped with a thrumming tabulator, incessantly calculating whether we are getting proper due and deference? 

According to researchers, calibrating our responses to social interactions usually occurs below our conscious awareness. Yale psychologist John Bargh says getting on with life would be unmanageable if we didn't have a constantly running, under-the-surface sense of how to respond to situations. In his experiments, Bargh has shown that many of our social judgments and actions are automatic, and after the fact our brains make up a justification.

Humans have superb abilities to evaluate the defects of everyone else. The glitch, Haidt says, is that we're blind to our own flaws. He points out that Jesus used this very metaphor when he said, "You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye." Haidt says we think that our perception of events is the objective truth, while everyone else's version is deluded by their self-interest.


"Once we're angry, irritated, we become prosecutors, and our reasoning gets hijacked by our need to build our own case," he says. So he suggests we can stop the prosecution by making even a small gesture of conciliation. We don't have to acknowledge we are wholly in the wrong, but changing our tone, conceding we shouldn't have said something, or said it in such a way, can trigger the reciprocity impulse in our opponent. 

Some researchers recommend that when it comes to feeling offended, we could benefit from becoming a little bit Buddhist. Stephanie Preston, head of the University of Michigan's Ecological Neuroscience Lab, says: "The more attached you are to your sense of self, the more you see forces trying to attack that self. If you have a more Buddhist view, and are less attached to self, you are less likely to see offense." 

Now we move from the evolutionary/psychological/Buddhist perspectives into the worldview of Christianity. The Bible has a lot to say on the subjects of offense, forgiveness, pomposity, and self vs. someone else.

The following comes from a 2007 devotional by Christian author Randy Robinson titled "Taking Offense."

It's instructive . . .

Often we take offense -- even when it’s not ours to take. Offense will come our way. We don’t have to go looking for it. When we do, we find offense in places where there is little or no cause for it. This is not simply foolishness, it is dangerous. It can lead to an overblown sense of victimization. Those who constantly take offense begin to feel as if life is not fair or that the world is out to get them. This mindset is diametrically opposed to Jesus declaration that Christians should “rejoice and be glad” when persecuted by the world (Matthew 5:11-12).

Dennis Prager, a brilliant author, lecturer and radio host, calls victimhood “the greatest single cause of evil.” He points out that Nazism arose from a sense of German victimhood, communism from a belief that the working man is the victim and Islamism from the idea that Muslims are victims of an oppressive Jewish-American conspiracy.

“The preoccupation of much of America with telling whole groups that they are victims -- of racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia and classism, among other American sins -- can only increase cruelty and evil in America,” Prager asserts.

Christians should not give in to the temptation to play the social martyr. We should stand up for our beliefs and defend the assaults on our faith, but never look for reasons to take offense. To the contrary, we must proactively forgive those who offend us, whether that offense is real or merely perceived. Otherwise, we play the part of the angry, bitter, reactionary victim. In that state of mind, we cannot respond with patience and love. Instead, we respond in a manner that genuinely gives offense.


For anyone reading this who wonders whether they have unwittingly committed an offense, or who has already been the recipient of a sudden, unmerited, and colossal freakout, I have only this advice:

Keep calm, and carry on. You can only do the next thing -- whatever that next thing is -- and pray for a satisfactory resolution.