Prose & Comments: Slow down and find home

BY REVEREND BILL GRIMBOL

You know so much of our lives, well, they take place in what I would call a fog. So much of our life is so fast and furious that it’s hard to have clarity at times or to really see it and feel it and know it, to hear it. So much of our life, well, it takes place in the shadows or in echoes, But there are moments, there are days that, for whatever reason, well, they just take on a brightness, a clarity and suddenly you feel as though you know, you understand, you get it. And always one of the thoughts I think that we have is you know this is really simple. How did I forget this? How did I not know this? Or how did I not live this?

One of those mornings for me, a morning that literally took on meaning in terms of fog and light, fog and shadows, clarity, was a morning where I got up, and I had taken my shower, gotten myself dressed, and I was now scooting around the bedroom, and being a husband, what I was doing was that I was trying to huff and puff loud enough so that I would wake up my then-wife Chris so that I could blame her for why I could not find my keys.

And I remember kind of slamming drawers and going through things to make sure that she could hear me. And I was getting more and more frustrated and finally she sat up in bed and said, “If you’re looking for your keys, you’ve got them in your mouth.”

I said thank you and just hoped that I would get out of there soon enough that she would not add any commentary. I remember getting in the car and I made sure that I had all of my papers; I was on my way to Commack to a presbytery meeting of the education committee and I was to present a plan for a fall youth retreat and a spring adult retreat.

Now I will readily admit I have never been light on ego. And so I approached this meeting and my presentations with the belief that this would be not only the highlight of the meeting but there was really no purpose for the meeting unless I showed up. And I had my notes, I was all ready to go, I was reviewing what I was going to say, and I knew that I could be impressive in both the fall retreat and the spring retreat.

I remember getting out to Montauk Highway and all of a sudden there was a fog off the ocean that was like one of those English fogs, you know those pea soup fogs, really milky white, and you cannot see anything. I am now going about 15 mph and I am realizing that the likelihood of my making the meeting was slim to none. Of course I did what most men do at that time, which is to completely panic. And get angry. And I remember hitting the steering wheel, I was so frustrated.

As I was hitting the steering wheel, a guy drove by me at about 30. So now I’m going down Montauk Highway at about 30. I go about another 100 yards and somebody goes by me on the right at about 45. I’m now going 45. This is so true, I can remember this so clearly. A woman driving a Cadillac with blue hair who could barely see over the top of the steering wheel gunned by me at about 65 and alone. Geez Grimbol, you can do this. I’m now going down Montauk Highway in fog thicker than pea soup at 65 mph.

I can’t see anything. I mean this. I swear to you. I cannot see anything. At all. I’m just kind of doing this on instinct and the occasional ability to see yellow lines along the side. When I got to Westhampton Beach, the fog lifted. And I remember this moment because what was most startling if you can understand this and I believe you can is that I finally could see what I could not see. All of a sudden what I was aware of was, wow, I was totally blind. I couldn’t see anything …

And it was so stunning; I can’t even imagine what it would be like. I know I’ve seen it in movies where they have somebody who’s been blind can suddenly see. That’s certainly a recurring theme, by the way, in scripture, the idea of opening people’s eyes so they can see. Well, that’s what happened. My eyes got opened so that I could see.

The whole rest of the way to Commack, the entire meeting and the entire ride back, was totally free of Bill Grimbol’s ego. It was totally filled with an incredible humility about life itself, about a lesson that I knew I was learning, that I could not see without seeing it through my heart and it was my heart that was just so aware of what I was learning. It was a curtain going up, it was light bulb going on, this was sort of a burning bush moment, if you will.

What I’d realized on the trip there was that so much of life’s fog is something we can’t do anything about. We can’t do anything about it. It is just simply that at times our lives get hit by fog so thick that we can’t see, we can’t understand, we can (only) feel deeply. I know that in my own life there have been times of grief so huge that I just couldn’t see anything. The grief was just so consuming. There was just nothing else but that grief.

For the first year after Christine died, I was so stunned because I was, you know, I had a master’s degree from Princeton, and I was a minister, so I should do this grieving thing with great insight and poignancy and be very deep. Every day I remember sitting with a cup of coffee at the end of the day in the kitchen waiting for her to come in the back door. Every single day, like she was going to come in. And I remember lying in bed at night doing something that I had told myself I would never ever do. You know, okay, just move something. Okay? Knock a book off. Okay? A wind, how about a wind? Do something to let me know that wherever you are you’re okay.

It was amazing, it’s amazing. There are times in our life that are filled with worry and incredible fear. And for good reason. We may be worrying about our children, our grandchildren, our marriages, our friendships, our relationships. We may be going through incredible sadness, disappointment, betrayal. There are times when life can hit us with a fog and you miss it, It’s so amazing how good we’ve gotten at the lying, you know?

And you’ll even get up on a morning, and we can be late, we can be late because the alarm didn’t go off, we go in and the coffee is burnt, and the toast burns, and we get into the car, and we have a hard time starting the car, and then we drive, and we realize that all of the papers that we needed to go to the meeting that we were going to, we’d forgotten home and we arrive at the meeting and somebody says, “Hi, how are you?”

“Fine, how are you.”

You know? We just become good at it. Good at the performance, good at the image, but the truth of the matter is that sometimes we need to learn that lesson about driving in the fog, you know. Not only should I have slowed down, should have stopped. Should have turned around, should have went home. Really, sincerely. I was driving 60 mph down Montauk Highway in pea soup fog, I could have been killed easily if anything had come in front of me. But I had to get there because I was the most important thing to the meeting and I was the most important thing to present …

How many times life confronts us with a fog. It says: would you please stop. I have people who have come in for counseling over the years that will be angry with themselves because they’re not as busy as they used to be, they’re not doing as much as they used to, and I listen to what they’re carrying on their shoulders and say, “You want to do a 100-yard sprint but you’re carrying about 400 pounds here. Are you kidding?”

Do realize how much more gracious and generous God would be with us than we are with us? On the way back from that meeting, I remember thinking to myself about the fog that doesn’t roll in off the ocean, naturally, and comes at us like life, but the fog we create. Many of us have become unbelievably good at creating fog because we like living in the fog. Then we don’t have to think, we don’t have to feel, we don’t have to believe, we don’t have to struggle, we don’t have to feel anxious.

You know, I have to say this to the men here. We’re really good at this. We are really, really good at this. And you know why? Because what we’ve told ourselves, that if we’re really busy and we’re doing a lot and we’re getting a lot done and especially if we’re earning a lot, then we must be really important doing very important things.

But there are two things that are oftentimes missing from what we are doing. God and us. It’s an amazing thing. It’s an amazing thing. The fog we create of busyness. The fog that we create of importance. The fog we create of perfectionism and performance. The fog that we create of really believing that we have to do it all and be it all and earn it all and have it all, you know. So many of us, male and female, have lived by the idea that somehow the hallmark of life is speed.

Yeah. The truth of the matter, folks, is that even if you win the rat race you’re still a rat. And we need to understand the fact that life was never meant to be an endurance test that nobody passes. That’s not what God had in mind. And so it is that today my message to you is really quite simple. It’s really saying to you stop, slow down, go home, go home to your soul, go home to your spirit, go home to the reality of who you really are. Go home.

It’s quite simple. We need time with God. Honestly, We need time with God.

You know, most of you know, I just recently went through open heart surgery. It was weird, okay? I’m not a good patient, okay? The doctor came in and told me that, okay, Reverend Grimbol … What we do here is, number one, we tip you upside down then we drain all the blood to your brain and we drop your temperature to 16 degrees. Then we turn your heart off.

This is the spiritual equivalent of being in an airplane during horrible turbulence and having the pilot come over and talk to you about the turbulence. I don’t want you to talk to me about the turbulence. Fly the plane, just fly the plane.

Doctor, I really don’t need to know this, the thought of me upside down is a real fat show, I mean that is like, wow, and then three and a half hours to melt me? I don’t need this. But the thing that was so amazing, you know, it just … Thank God it went by so fast.  Because if it didn’t go fast, I would have thought of a million reasons not to do it, you know.

But I remember so clearly coming out of the anaesthetic. And they tell me that I was wild for several hours, which I must have been because I actually had marks on my wrists and my neck from struggling to get loose.

But I remember seeing my son’s face when I came to. Now you have to understand, all right? I had my surgery on April 18. His mother died on April 18, 11 years earlier, right after surgery. So when I came to, I looked up at him, and I could see his eyes … And I said, “Well, we’re one out of two.” And he went, “What?”  And I said, “Well this time we got good news.” And the floodgates opened, you know?

It is so simple, you know? The thought of all the crazy crap that I worried about the week before that surgery, all the stuff that I had to get done, all the stuff that I had to accomplish, I had to do … And then I’m looking at my kid. That’s all. Just looking at my kid. And I thought to myself. This is all it is. This is all it is. It’s about those moments when you are so in love with life and so in love with the people in it and so aware of their goodness and so aware of your gratitude for life and so aware of the gift that is breathing. And all of a sudden you step out of that fog and, just like outside of Westhampton Beach, I could see what I could not see. It was amazing.

And then I had a final thought that I’ll share with you. I love fairy tales, absolutely love fairy tales. And the reason I love fairy tales is I’ve always been sort of enchanted by why does somebody write one. How do you get up one day and say I’m writing a fairy tale? You know, who did that? Or who still does it?

It’s like writing a gospel. You know, I’ve always felt like we should write a fifth gospel with our lives, you know. I can’t believe that it’s done with four. But the thing I love about fairy tales is that they’re make believe. Make believe to make you believe. And my favorite fairy tale without question is “The Wizard of Oz.” Do you remember the wonderful scene where Dorothy confronts the wizard and says. “You are a very, very, very, bad man.” He goes, “Oh no no no no no no no. I’m a very good man; I’m just a very bad wizard.” Okay? Because the wizard can only give to us what we already have. Just like Jesus. Jesus is just constantly tapping us on the shoulder and just saying, “What are you looking for? It’s here.”

It’s like Bill Grimbol, running around his room looking for his keys. It’s right under your nose. Driving the car, looking to be important, looking to dazzle the troops in Commack. And then I get to see the day and I am amazed. The fog. It’s a choice. But the biggest choice of all is whether we’re wise enough to know when to slow down, to stop, to turn around, go home. Home, where the heart is. Home, where you belong. Home, where you get to be ordinary. Home, where you are accepted with grace. Just like the prodigal son comes home and is adored and cherished because that’s what God wants us to feel.

So today, come home. Come home to a God that absolutely sees you as God’s beloved child. I cherish you, I adore you. I believe that’s all God wants to say to you all the time. I grew up on the wagging finger God. You know it’s going to be really something to go back to Holy Communion at my home church [in Racine, Wisconsin]. And all I learned at Holy Communion when I was young was, “Sinner in the hands of an angry God.” I don’t know if they don’t know what they’re getting from me but it ain’t going to be that …

It’s really quite simple. God loves you, absolutely adores you, cherishes you, wants you to have a beautiful life, a life to the fullest. So have one. Amen.

This text was transcribed from a recording. — Ed.