In a message dated 11/1/00 10:19:27 PM Eastern Standard Time,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
<< Pat called Clapton a saint...you missed it by a letter Pat...he's an
"ain't".
>>
oh boy. i just caught this part. you know, i try to compartment my life
into little boxes to keep it organized. and no matter how hard i try, they
get spilled open and all mixed up. ok..so...well... yesterday was all saints
day. and i had to preach. so here is what i said about the saints in some
church that didn't have any redwood trees in it...
...Here's another saint I like, Eric Clapton. He's a middle-aged guitar
player and very much alive. He was born in the late 40's to an unwed mother
of 15. At that time, in Surrey England, that wasn't so respectable. So his
mother brought him home to her house and they raised him thinking that his
mother was his sister and that his grandparents were his parents.
That worked well until he was a teenager and they decided to tell him the
truth. Now, in hindsight, it wouldn't surprise any of us to know that for
the next forty years, he'd never sustain a healthy relationship. I guess it
would affect your sense of trust…. if your parents and sister turned out to
be somebody else.
He had a son who died tragically in 1991. He fell 52 stories from an open
window in Manhattan. Another natural relationship lost. In this article, he
talks about that while he is in NYC. He says while looking out the
window…we're less than about 50 yards and almost the same height from where
my son Conor fell…I can't take the grief on all at one time.
Yet at the same time, he sings about the loss of never having seen his own
father. And there's no bitterness in his words about that. He sings about
how ultimately he saw his father's eyes in the only son he lost. That's
truly the redemptive power of God that enables a man to gain insight into the
father he never knew through the eyes of the only son he lost. And isn't
that the great paradox of Christ? Knowing the father through the son? This
man is a saint to me because he helps me understand Jesus better.
...But I learn from these saints God has given me. I have learned that the
invisible God is made known in our human sufferings. Like Eric Clapton who
saw his father whom he never met through his only son whom he had lost. In
the unseen world of God's kingdom, love never ends. So my love for my father
has grown. As it has for my siblings who have died too.
..So this day of saints is important for us. We need to be able to see the
saints God puts in our lives. And it doesn't matter if anyone else agrees
with or understands them. They are our private gifts from God to help us
endure the tensions of our life.
patrick
np. clapton - pilgrim
