Snips, Smells & Dead Shrimp Tails

A few adults and some wee volunteers were busy stuffing plastic Easter Eggs with candy and goodies. Most of them were. One creatively naughty little boy was stuffing them with something else. That would be shrimp tails. And that would be, ahem … my boy.

It was the Wednesday before Lazarus Saturday – the day on which the annual Egg Hunt is held at St George. Following the Presanctified Liturgy, some folks helped to stuff the eggs for the following Saturday; it was after the Lenten Potluck (hence, the shrimp). Dead shrimp … dead shrimp tails … stuffed in plastic eggs … to sit for 3 days … hidden and undiscovered … until found by some unsuspecting happy children.

Heh heh. Priceless.

Oh don’t get me wrong. He was wrong! But I was so proud of him.

I remember when my oldest was about, oh, 3-ish. It was after church one day, the kids were running around the yard, climbing trees, and creating mayhem. I was talking with some parishioners when I happened to look off in the distance to see a boy, about the same age, holding my daughter down and … gasp … kissing her!

I walked out and called his name, yelling: “Hey! Get off of her!”

Almost at the same time could be heard the voice of the other’s Dad, yelling: “That’s my boy! Heh heh, Yep! That’s my boy!”

For him, priceless. For me, not so much.

It’s all in perception. And when perception is viewed through the favoring eyes of love, it looks a whole shade different.

Love of my daughter led me to yell one thing; his hopes and love for his son caused an entirely different reaction.

Love.

It definitely complicates things … and you just can’t simplify without it.

St Paul writes:

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.

… For our knowledge is imperfect and our prophecy is imperfect; but when the perfect comes, the imperfect will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became a man, I gave up childish ways.

Now, back to my boy; boy, being the operative word here … You gotta admit, that was a great trick! Stinky ol’ shrimp tails inside of hidden plastic eggs.

When I found out, he was scared. He thought I’d be mad at him. When I brought it up, he started to cry. He was shocked, I’m not sure he yet understands, when I held out my hand and said, “Give me five!” Laughter through young tears is, well … Priceless.

(The tails were discovered and discarded long before the cherished children’s event.)

And so it goes. When we don’t love someone, we find no joy in anything they say or do. Yet love … Love covers a multitude of sin.

For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall understand fully, even as I have been fully understood. So faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

Love, thanks God, never ends.

Yesterday, the kids returned from Camp St Raphael; a 10 hour bus trip. My son had fallen asleep and — welcome to kid camp travel — some kids had drawn on his face with markers. (Aren’t you glad you’re grown?) Anyway, when he awoke to find out, he was mad. He stayed mad, even telling me about it, until he discovered that the markings were not the work of a suspected little boy, but of his own sister and her girl friends.

Again, it’s all in perception. And when perception is viewed through the favoring eyes of love, it looks a whole shade different.

Truth be known, though … there’s times when I wonder if those two even love each other.

Boys …

“Watch over your child, O Lord, as his days increase; bless and guide him wherever he may be, keeping him unspotted from the world. Strengthen him when he stands, comfort him when discouraged or sorrowful, raise him up if he fall; and in his heart may your peace which passes understanding abide all the days of his life …”

Love never ends.

Amen.

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