Billy Coffey

storyteller

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A song and a prayer

May 26, 2017 by Billy Coffey 13 Comments

bird feeder
image courtesy of photobucket.com

It’s a little late for me to be getting out in the backyard.

A busy day, too much to do. My wife said not to bother but I’m here anyway. I have the hose and two bags of seed plus what’s in an old popcorn tin which came from a place I can’t remember. It doesn’t matter that it’s near dark and the birds are all but asleep. They’ll need to eat tomorrow.

As a child I spent most of the summers weeding my grandmother’s garden and watching her call the birds.

Her beckons were wordless but sung instead, each chorus unique, drawing to the telephone wire which ran parallel to her yard the robins and cardinals first, then the jays and the mockingbirds, the Bobwhites. She called the sparrows and purple martins last. The chirps and whistles from her wrinkled lips came to me as the language of angels. Perhaps it was. My grandmother loved this land and every creature upon it, but the birds presided over a loftier place in her heart. A bird’s wings carry it closer to God than any of us could ever reach. She once told me that when we are wearied and spent and our voices grow small, the birds will carry our prayers to God’s ear.

Though I’ve never quite developed my grandmother’s talent for song, I take great care of the birds in and around our wood.

They are fed and watered without prejudice. I welcome the crows and starlings as much as the mockingbirds and finches. They sing to me and help keep the bugs away. My yard is a happy place. A safe one as well, in spite of the neighbor’s cat.

My habit has always been to check the feeders and and our birdbath every few days and replenish as necessary. That has changed these last months. I’m out here most every day now to top off the thistle seed or sow a little extra food in the grass for the doves and cardinals. I will not let the suet disappear since the woodpeckers prefer it. The same holds for the jays and their sunflower seeds, or the mealworms I set out in a barren spot among the grass for the robins and bluebirds.

Even in the rain, I go. Even on those chilly May mornings when the sun is not yet over the mountains. Even now, when all that is left in the sky are the stars above me. It is no responsibility or needful thing. My birds would get along fine without me. They would have the creek to drink from and the forest across the road from which to seek their shelter and food. They do not depend upon me, though I have come to depend upon them.

My wife watches from the kitchen window. She smiles as I scrub the bath or add a few extra sunflower seeds to the small wooden church attached to an iron shepherd’s crook which serves as one of our feeders. Sometimes she’ll bring out a bowl of the previous night’s popcorn for me to spread, or the heels of a bread loaf. She’ll tap the glass and point at the sparrow near my feet, so accustomed now to my presence that it no longer deems me a threat.

I don’t believe I’ve ever told my wife what Grandma once said about the birds.

She knows the tale of the telephone wire and the way Grandma sang but not about the prayers. It seems a silly thing on the surface. The sort of story any grandparent would tell a child in order that the world be made a more magical place. Of course birds do not carry the wearied prayers of weakened souls to the Lord’s ear. They are creatures, no more. Their songs are merely speech. Their wings may take them skyward, yet they are still earthbound.

I know this.

But I know as well that the woman smiling at me through the window was told not long ago that she is battling a form of leukemia. In ways I’m sure you will understand, that means I am battling it as well. We go through this dark world hand in hand with those we love. Many times, that is the only way we can get from one end of it to the other. We trust and fight and smile and believe. We pray, even in our brokenness and fear. Especially then.

That is why I am out here tonight with my buckets of seed. Why I will be here tomorrow.

Because I must feed my birds well and hope they fly higher.

Filed Under: endurance, nature, prayer, small town life, song, trials

Danny

August 12, 2016 by Billy Coffey 6 Comments

Danny was the one who told me about sex. He swore it was true but refused to confess the source of his information, instead repeating all the necessary steps in order, none of which involved kissing. That’s the reason I called it a lie. Everybody but an idiot knew you got babies by kissing.

But then Danny said, “Swear to God.”

That gave me pause. You didn’t go around saying something like that willy-nilly. Swearing to God was more than a promise, a lot more and maybe the most more there was. I took a step away in case the playground broke open beneath us at that moment, spewing hellfire.

He turned, looking to make sure Mrs. Harrison wasn’t around, and raised both hands. One became a circle, thumb resting across the nails. Danny made the other look to be pointing at something—a chubby forefinger caked in eraser shavings and dirt and what may well have been a booger. He shoved that finger through the circle made by his other hand and sort of wiggled it around in there.

“Like that,” he said.

“That’s just about the grossest thing I ever heard” is what I told him, which it indeed was, and I followed that with a lengthy dissertation concerning human anatomy and body function, namely that the two parts in question were meant for a variety of things but never THAT.

“Swear to God,” Danny said.

Maybe you could say right there was when a bit of my childhood ended—that tiny corner of the third grade playground where the slide emptied out and where two discarded tractor tires had been sunk into the earth to make a crude playhouse. Because Danny swore to God, and that’s something you didn’t do unless you were absolutely certain. And because if babies came from an act that disgusting, then the entire world was upside down.

It turned out, of course, that Danny was right. And like a lot of things in life, what I started out thinking was gross actually turned out to be anything but. For me that was proof learning can come from just about anywhere. Even an elementary school playground. Especially there.

Danny proved himself a fount of further information in the years following. Most all our classmates were good for learning something from, whether it was what I should do or what I shouldn’t. When you come up in a small town you come up with all the kids there are; I walked across a high school stage near a dozen years later to be handed a diploma and looked down to the same people I’d known for as much of forever as I could reckon. You can’t help but form bonds.

And then life happens. We all scattered. Some to college and others to work, and some who all but disappeared. I still see a few of my classmates around town. Others I haven’t seen for close to thirty years now. That’s how it goes. There are some in life who come along and stay in some manner or another, and ones who make only a brief appearance across the stage of your days and then exit, never to be seen again.

I received news of Danny’s death early this week. “Work related” was all the information I could gather. I found a picture of him online. He hadn’t changed much except for the beard, trimmed tight in high school but now long, a hybrid of an Amish man and Willie Robertson.

It’s funny how you can go years without thinking of a person and still feel a little hole left in you when he passes. Like a link in the chain that holds your yesterdays to your today has been broken, leaving a part of you to twist in the wind.

The rough and tumble boy I knew Danny to be back then became a man of deep kindness in the years after our graduation. He married and settled into living. Got washed in the blood of Jesus. Life can harden some as it moves over them. For others, it softens. I am glad to know it softened him.

I’m glad, too, of all the lessons he taught me. Even that gross one.

If you’ve a mind at some point in your busy day, do me a favor? Say a little prayer for Danny’s family. I’m sure they’d appreciate it. I wouldn’t bother saying one for Danny, though. Because he’s good now.

He’s good.

Filed Under: change, death, prayer, small town life

Knowing how to pray

July 24, 2015 by Billy Coffey 2 Comments

image courtesy of photobucket.com
image courtesy of photobucket.com

A friend recently confessed that not only had he never prayed, he had never found an adequate opportunity to do so. Why bother, he asked, to resort to empty words to a God who is at best noncommittal and at worst uncaring?

I gave him an appreciative nod. There had been times in my life when I suspected God to be both, but in the end the opposite had always held to be true. But his words struck me. Prayer was much a part of my life even in my darkest days. Not praying, no matter how far the distance between myself and God, was never an option.

I’d always assumed there were many in the world who never lifted their voice to heaven. I’d just never known one.

I figured I prayed about seven times a day. Not bad, really, until I started thinking about some of the things I prayed both for and about. Asking for God to watch over my loved ones is a lot different than asking Him to let the Yanks win and the Sox lose. I asked for both over the weekend.

And while asking Him to make my headache go away is maybe an okay thing, asking Him to give the person who caused my headache sudden and uncontrollable diarrhea probably wasn’t.

It all got me thinking not only about how and when I pray, but how and when others do the same. Prayer is something many of us take for granted. I doubt we pause enough to consider the gravity of actually speaking to the Creator of the universe.

Prayer is serious stuff. Fascinating, too. Nothing says more about us than how we talk to God. So I decided to take last Sunday and observe both family and friends in a sort of super secret prayer survey. I wanted to know who got it just right, who didn’t quite, and why.

Church seemed like a logical starting point. Lots of people pray in church. I listened to the Sunday School teacher, the pastor, and an usher pray with both an eloquence and spirit that I could aspire to but never quite accomplish. Eloquence has never been my strong suit. Me often don’t talk like that pretty.

Lunch with my wife’s family, however, seemed more promising. There are a lot of things country folk can do better than others, and talking to God is among them. Country prayers are not as flowery as church prayers. There are plenty of ain’ts and gonnas. It’s not praying, it’s prayin’. Big difference.

So we prayed for the hands that cooked the food and the ground that grew it. For the rain that would make the corn grow and the closeness of family. That prayer was nice. Homey. But it still wasn’t quite…right. Something was missing.

Bedtime found my family gathered around my daughter’s bed, knees to floor. And though I normally assume the traditional pose of head bowed and hands folded, I cheated that night. I kept my eyes and ears open as my children prayed. Together.

“Thanks, Jesus,” my son said, “for all the cool stuff You showed me today.”

“And,” said my daughter, “for the green grass. It’s my favorite color.”

“Thanks for the macaroni, because I love macaroni,” added my son.

“I didn’t like the broccoli,” my daughter said. “Can you please do something about that?”

“You made pretty clouds tonight.”

“I love you, God.”

“I love you too, God.”

“We both love you.”

Then, together: “Amen.”

I walked outside a while later to make sure the stars were still there and say goodnight to God. I’ve always liked praying outside. For some strange reason, I’ve always thought my words could go through a ceiling of clouds much easier than a ceiling of plaster.

I’ll be honest. Prayer has always been a little confusing to me. Like the people at church, I’ve tried to be eloquent and flowery. Like the people I shared lunch with, I’ve tried to be folksy and homey. And like my children, I’ve tried to keep things simple.

It isn’t always easy to put thoughts and feelings to words, no matter to whom we’re talking.

I guess in the end it isn’t so much what we say to God as it is the heart with which it’s said. What we can’t explain, He knows. What we can’t say quite right He knows exactly.

And sometimes, many times, a prayer needs no words at all.

Which is why that night, there beneath the stars, I simply looked to heaven and smiled.

Filed Under: praise, prayer

A question of prayer

April 27, 2015 by Billy Coffey 2 Comments

image courtesy of photobucket.com
image courtesy of photobucket.com

Working at a college has its advantages. Having access to such a big group of smart people comes in handy for me in my daily life, especially when it comes to some of the larger problems I run across. In the years I’ve been there, I have spoken with English professors about writing, political science professors about the goings-on in the world, and religion and philosophy professors about, well, religion and philosophy.

I would call none of our conversations a sharing of ideas. Their words and the diplomas that hang on their office walls are proof enough they are much more intelligent than little ol’ me. I’m good with that. There are advantages to being the dumb person in the room.

So the other day when my mind asked a question my heart had trouble answering, I went knocking on some office doors.

The first chair I sat in was in front of four bookcases that stretched floor to ceiling and were stuffed with titles I could barely pronounce. The professor—smart fella, with a Ph.D. in philosophy courtesy of an Ivy League school—looked at me with kind eyes and asked what was on my mind.

“What’s the point of praying for anything?” I asked him. “I mean, if God knows everything and has a perfect plan, then won’t His plan work out regardless of what I tell Him?”

The professor took off his glasses, rubbed the lenses with a handkerchief. Then he put the glasses back on and looked at the bookshelves behind me, looking for an answer.

“Let’s see,” he told me. He rose from the chair by the desk and brought down one book—this one old, with a worn leather cover and yellowed pages—and then another, this one so new the spine cracked as he opened it.

He talked for ten minutes about free will and time being an unfinished sentence. Or something. My nods at first were of the understanding kind. The ones toward the end were because I was fighting sleep.

I still don’t know what he said.

The door down the hall belonged to a religion professor (Ph.D. again, Ivy League again). I sat in a different chair in front of different books and asked the same question with the same results. More free will, plus something about alternate histories and God “delighting in Himself.”

It wasn’t the first time I’d walked into a professor’s office with one question and walked out with a dozen.

To make matters worse, my mind was still asking that question and my heart was still having trouble answering it.

What’s the point of praying for anything? Because it seems a little presumptuous to ask for anything from a God who already knows what I need (and what I don’t).

I was at a standstill over all of this until I talked to Ralph at the Dairy Queen last night. Ralph doesn’t have a Ph.D., and the only Ivy he knows is the kind that grows on the side of his house. And though far from an expert on matters of the spirit, he does preach part-time at one of the local churches when the regular preacher is sick or on vacation. And since he waved at me and was eating his cheeseburger all alone, I figured what the heck. I’d ask him:

“What’s the point of praying for anything?”

Ralph paused mid-chew. Cocked his head a little to the side. Said, “What kinda stupid question is that?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Just popped into my head the other day. But seriously, why ask Him for anything. And really, why pray at all? If God already knows what’s in my heart, why do I have to speak it?”

Ralph finished his bite, swallowed, then said, “B’cause it ain’t about you, son.”

“It’s not?”

He drawled out a slow “No” that sounded more like Nooo. “Boy, prayin’ ain’t about askin’. Ain’t even about praisin’, really. Nope, prayin’s about you gettin’ in line with God. It’s not about Him gettin’ in your head and heart, it’s about you gettin’ in His.”

Ah.

I left Ralph to his cheeseburger, answers in hand. And honestly, that answer made sense. Because life—better life, anyway—is always about Him more than about us.

And I left with other wisdom, too. The next time I have a question, I think I’ll spend less time in a professor’s office and more time down at the Dairy Queen.

Filed Under: burdens, doubt, faith, perspective, prayer

Showing us what we can’t see

September 15, 2014 by Billy Coffey Leave a Comment

image courtesy of photobucket.com
image courtesy of photobucket.com

I had no idea how far we’d walked—when you’re tromping through the woods with two kids, time drags on until it becomes irrelevant—but it was far enough that we were ready to turn around and go home. After all, it wasn’t as if we had a map to go by. All we had were stories.

“Maybe we should just pray,” my son said. My son, who announced last week that he wanted to be a preacher when he grew up. To him, praying is the answer to everything.

“I think God would rather we walk than pray,” I told him.

“Why, did you ask him?”

I didn’t answer. We pushed on through the brambles and found the river—at least that part of the story had been proven right—then decided to sit and watch the water. My daughter tried to spot fish, my wife tried to spot spiders, and I tried to figure out where we should look next.

My son, the future Preacher Man, looked into the blue sky peeking through green trees and said, “Our Father, whose art ain’t in heaven, Halloween be your name.”

“This way,” I told them. “I think it’s over here.”

Which wasn’t true at all. I had no idea where it was or even if it was, but you know about men and directions. Besides, it wasn’t like we could pull over at the next gas station.

My daughter said, “Maybe we should just go home before we get eaten,” which brought more prayers from the little boy in the back.

I reminded them of the value of a story, of how the whole world was made of them and sometimes they’re true and sometimes they’re not, and how sometimes the ones that are not have more truth. And when you come across a story about an old home forgotten somewhere in the mountains, you have to go look. You just have to.

So we trudged on—me, my wife, my daughter, and the Preacher, who was now calling down the Spirit to keep Bigfoot away.

Truth be known, I didn’t think we’d find a thing. Though the mountains here are littered with the remnants of pioneer homesteads, their locations are masked by either wilderness or the foggy memories of the old folk. But the directions I’d received turned out to be pretty darn close. It wasn’t long until the woods opened up a bit into an ancient bit of clearing, and wouldn’t you know it, there was something up ahead.

Of course that something was hidden by a couple hundred years of changing seasons. Trees and bushes and plants had reclaimed the area that was once taken from them. All that remained to be seen was a bit of foundation. The rest was enclosed by an impenetrable wall of overgrowth.

“Let’s try to break through,” my daughter said, to which she received a chorus of no ways.

“I don’t want to go in there,” my wife said.

“I’m too tired to try to go in there,” I said.

“We should really pray first before we go in there,” my son said.

Simply going back was no longer an option. We’d found it now, and to leave without at least a look around simply wouldn’t do. So we looked. All of us. We poked and prodded for weak spots, we tried to peek into what had likely gone unseen for centuries. We stood on tiptoes and jumped and, once, even tried to make a human pyramid. But it was no use. The mountains would not give up their secrets that day.

“Hey,” my son said, “I see something.”

He was knee-bent, face almost in the dirt, peering through the undersides of thorns and thickets.

“Hey, wow.”

The rest of us followed. Knees bent, faces in the dirt, peering through the thorns, we found holes just big enough to peer through. What lay on the other side was nothing more than the remnants of a stone foundation, but to us it was Machu Picchu and Stonehenge and Easter Island rolled into one.

It was then that I realized what my son had done. The little Preacher Man, too little to jump too high or tiptoe too up, had decided to use his smallness to his advantage.

He’d gone to his knees.

“You can see more if you get on your knees, Daddy,” he’d often said. “If you stand up, you just see what you can. But if you bow down, God will show you what you can’t.”

Those words, profound as they were, had always gotten him a rub on the head or a squeeze on the shoulder. Nothing more. But then I knew just how right he was, and I wondered just how much I’d missed in my life because I’d been standing instead of kneeling.

Filed Under: Adventure, faith, family, nature, prayer, story

Praying in all circumstances

June 9, 2014 by Billy Coffey 6 Comments

imageI still don’t know what happened or how, or even what everyone did in the few seconds it took for the screaming to start. All I know is that one minute I was playing with the dog, and the next minute the dog was howling.

Lucy is her name. Half beagle, half dachshund, wholly sweet. Three months old. Rescue dog. Everybody loves Lucy, and I mean everybody. If you’d see her, you’d love her too.

Playful little thing, always fetching and running and wagging, and that’s what the two of us were doing the other day when it happened. And again, I still don’t know what “it” was. Or “happened,” for that matter. There was a tennis ball and then I turned my back. Then the howling.

Piercing, blood-curdling howling. A howling like you’ve never heard in your life.

Everyone came running from all corners of the house. They freaked. I freaked. My daughter was screaming, my wife, my son, and they didn’t know why. Lucy was screaming, too, and the look on her face was one that told me she didn’t know why she was screaming either but it HURT, something on her HURT, and then all of a sudden Lucy could no longer walk.

Friday evening, this was. Six o’clock or so. Vet closed for the weekend. There was an emergency vet clinic in a town about thirty minutes away.

What to do? That was the question. A million things run through your mind in times like this (not the least of which, to me anyway, was that having a puppy in the house isn’t really all that different from having a baby in the house, and that’s something I’d never considered), but it was hard for me to think—hard for anyone—because everyone was still freaking out.

My daughter was crying now. Lucy was still crying. My wife the teacher was trying to keep everyone calm but everyone wouldn’t be calm, my daughter and me especially, and my son, my boy, just stood there and started praying.

PRAYING.

Now, I’m all for praying. Every morning, I pray. Every meal, I pray. I pray coming home from work and I pray before going to sleep at night. God and I, we talk. A lot.

And yet I am religiously-minded enough to understand there are times when praying should be set aside. There’s a time to talk and a time to DO, and this is a time to DO. No talking. And so my wife is finding the phone number to the clinic and my daughter is trying to calm Lucy and Lucy is still screaming because she can’t walk and I’m slowly having a breakdown, but my son now has both of his hands on Lucy’s back and he’s calling down the Spirit.

Crazy, right? I mean, I can’t be the only one who thinks this is crazy.

The phone number is found. The call is made. I think my daughter is about to swallow her own tongue. Lucy’s right hind leg is drawn all the way up to her stomach, turning her into a furry stool. Whatever black hair is left in my beard is slowly turning white, and I think my son is starting to speak in tongues.

To the best of my recollection, that’s what happened.

Long story short, we made it to the vet. It was nearly ten o’clock that night when we brought Lucy out of the exam room. We paid and spoke briefly with a heart-stricken man whose Pit Bull had been brought in with “woman problems.”

Lucy’s fine. Not even the vet could really figure out what had happened, but by the next morning our little pup was running around chasing tennis balls again.

My son’s convinced it was all the praying. That’s what made Lucy better. And thought none of us can really know for sure, I have it in my head now that he’s right. It was the praying.

“Ain’t supposed to just talk to God when things are quiet,” he told me. “You gotta talk to God when things are loud, too.”

Filed Under: children, choice, faith, prayer

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