My Literary Autobiography

“Ever Since,” A Literary Autobiography in 7 Vignettes, Mark Eckel

How we get from here to there, from hither to yon, is a story often untold. Outlined here for the first time is a celebration of the events which and people who have brought me this far.

Three

“Something’s wrong with him.” My paternal grandmother pestered my mom constantly with such statements.

Virginia, my mom was a nurse. Her concerns were different than the German-born, lock-step mother-in-law who didn’t like her anyway.

And I was the problem.

Most babies begin to coo, jabber, and babble within their first year. Outside of crying for necessities, my mom tells me I did not utter a word for three years.

Magically upon my third birthday I began to talk. According to my mom, words, phrases, and sentences began to volcanically erupt from my little person.

I have been talking ever since.

Encyclopedias

“The first time I couldn’t find you I was frantic,” she began the recounting. “I ran through the house beside myself that you had been hurt.”

She paused, then smiled.

“But then I found you sitting beside the book case. You were reading an encyclopedia volume. You looked up, wondering why I was so upset.”

Whimsically she added, “From then on, whenever I wondered why you were so quiet, I knew you were reading a book.”

I have been reading ever since.

Rope

Chaffing one’s inner thigh is no laughing matter. Especially when you’re eleven. Especially when people laugh at you. Especially when fifth grade classmates call you Eckel the Elephant.

I was short and fat – or “stocky” if you bought boys clothes in 1968. My growth spurt, with thanks to my uncles on my mom’s side who were 6’4”, did not begin until middle school. But in fifth grade I was the largest zoo animal anyone in my class had seen.

In fifth grade, the physical education gods had proclaimed all boys should be able to climb a rope, floor to ceiling, some 20 feet in the air. I could literally not get off the ground. My chunky hands had trouble holding the rope. My inept jumps to toggle the snake with my feet always, always ended with braided cat-gut braided stands ripping the flesh off my legs.

The gym teacher would have scared the Marine D.I. in Full Metal Jacket. His abusive Gatling gun tirades left little bodies bleeding from verbal wounds. Directions not followed were restated at 120 decibels. If you were slow, he would thunder “Move it! Chop, chop!” a phrase I had heard repeatedly from my own Marine Corps father who had fought in Korea.

Little boys ahead of me in line darted up the flexible line. It danced as they ascended to the rafters. One after another they breezed through the exercise. I knew my fate even before my turn came. Like my father’s yelling at home, I could already feel the hot gym teacher’s breathe on my face. “Why can’t you climb that rope?! Are you a baby?! Why don’t you lose that fat?!”

The boy in front of me jumped the last few feet off the rope after his Tarzan descent. Time crawled. My ears magnified by twenty every sound in the gym. Sweat dotted my forehead. My stomach rolled. Breathing shallowed. My salivary glands stopped working.

What I heard next was a death sentence, “O.K. Your turn.” I wondered if he had forgotten my name. But there was no doubt a nanosecond after three failed attempts to climb Mount Everest. “Eckel! What’s your problem? Are you a momma’s boy? Maybe you need a ladder! Go sit by the wall til class is done!” There is no word for the verbal shredding of that moment.

My classroom teacher came to get the class. She saw her charges active around the gym, all save me. When she located me, she saw pain sitting on the floor. I watched as she sidled up to the gym teacher, whispered a few words, received a few in response, then walked my way. I began to cry.

Tears soon turned to smiles. Right then and there it had been decided. I would be the M.C. for our elementary school gym night. My classmates came dressed in shorts and tee shirts. I wore a suit fitted for “stocky, size 14.” My classmates prepared around their apparatus. I sat with the teachers. My classmates performed their routine for the evening.

But my classmates didn’t do anything until I announced who they were and what they were to do.

I had been given the microphone.

I have been speaking ever since.

Last

I scored 126th out of 126 students.  When I was a junior in high school our class took a test for possible college level English curriculum in our senior year. Having been told the results, I sat sobbing on my bedroom floor. For some reason, grammatical prowess in my mother tongue eluded me.  Syntax seemed like “sin tax” to me.

And grammar was the first of three levels in the senior curriculum. I had to pass out of one level to get to the next two: essay writing then free writing. I had been behind the door when grammar was taught in middle school. Somewhere, somehow I missed lessons on prepositional phrases, split infinitives, and hanging gerunds. I tried and tried to pass through to the next level. No amount of tutelage helped. I languished in the wasteland of grammatical incoherence.

But the thing was, I could write. I knew instinctively what sounded right. I heard the words even if I didn’t understand how they fit together. And Roy Honeywell knew it.

Roy Honeywell had been my junior English teacher. He knew what I could do. “I would like to read a paper from someone in the class whose writing could be an example to others. He shall remain nameless,” Mr. Honeywell intoned as he read my papers during eleventh grade not once, not twice, but three times.

Now Roy Honeywell was the dual-credit, college-prep teacher in my senior year. He agonized with me as he tried to fill my grammatical knowledge gaps. I took and failed test after test. We were a month into the senior year. Everyone else had matriculated to levels two and three. I was the only one who could not pass the grammar section of the program.

The overwhelming feelings of failure touch me even today. Even as I write this piece I can feel what I felt. The emotional slough I wallowed in then is the swamp I see before me every day.

But the feeling of clandestine secrecy from what happened next lies just beyond the swamp. Roy Honeywell knew what I could do. He knew I could write. So one day he came to my desk and told me that I did not have to pass the grammar exam. I could proceed to level two.

“This is just between me and you,” he stated in firm, hushed tones. “You show me that you can write like I know you can and the grammatical understanding will follow. I have faith in you.” And he walked away.

I did not know what would happen next, but he did. After scoring 126 out of 126, it was not long before my writing scores ranked at the top of the class. I knew I was doing well when Mr. Honeywell began to anonymously read my papers before the class again. I will never forget when he cast a quick, smiling glance in my direction before he began to read my writing.

“I have faith in you.” The words still inspire me today. Mr. Honeywell and I kept in contact. Before I left for college he gave me a box of books he knew I would need. I took my fiancée to meet him prior to our wedding. We wrote a few times before he died during my first stint as a high school teacher.

Roy Honeywell gave me a chance.

I have been giving students a chance ever since.

Greek

My undergraduate degree mandated that I learn koine Greek, the ancient language of the common person in which the New Testament had been written. I fell in love with small words that told other words what to do and where to go.  I was introduced to “from,” “in,” “through,” “beside,” “upon,” and a score of other prepositions in college Greek classes.  The importance of directional connectors cannot be overestimated.  To this day I am impressed by the versatility of the Greek language, the multi-colored interaction of words with each other.

And it was not until I learned another language that I began to understand my own. The halogen headlight of grammatical understanding illumined the darkened corners of my syntactical mind. “Once I was blind, but now I see” had a new context. Scales fell from my eyes. The blindfold was lifted. For the first time in my life, I understood my own language, English.

I have been helping students with English grammar ever since.

 

Fowler

“We have to plant a tree.”

These were the first words out of his mouth.

I had just gotten out of the car.

We had not seen each other in some time. I had written ahead to see if I could visit. “Of course!” was the enthusiastic reply.

But first, we had to plant a tree.

Dr. Don Fowler had been one of my professors in graduate school.

Don road a motorcycle . . . in 1980 . . . way before riding bikes was cool . . . and he taught at a conservative, evangelical seminary. At times, you could trace a sly smile across his face as he rode out of the parking lot; a look of pure joy.

Don’s coffee pot was never off. Most of us believed java—not blood—ran through Don’s veins. Whenever I visited Don in his office he would immediately go to an antechamber through a door in the back of his office, returning with a fresh pot of brew to share.

When you entered Don’s office you were immediately reminded of your grandmother’s attic, nostalgia replaced by rows and stacks and reams of books. I was always in awe of that office. In many ways my office today is an exact replica of his.

When he taught, Don would mash his open palm into his face, momentarily rubbing his head while teaching. I have lost count of how many times I have done exactly that, catching myself in the act, then having to recount why I do so to my wide-eyed students.

Don’s consummate understanding of First Testament language, history, culture, and biblical studies in general was my inspiration. He would hand out notes the size of a small city phone book. Inside were paragraphs of thought, outlines to be completed during class, maps, charts, graphs, and an occasional side-splitting comment about some Assyrian general.

I have had many graduate professors but Don, without exception, was and still is my favorite.

Don’s lively, passionate, caring, relevant lectures enthralled me. His excitement about his material stirred me. Don turned what many might suppose to be dry, dusty historical minutia into soul-stirring replays of events and personas. He would often reflect on current political-cultural issues through the lens of his First Testament teaching. Comprehensive understanding of history 3500 years removed, I would sit on the edge of my seat soaking in his content and delivery.

I have often reflected on Don’s impact on my teaching life asking myself why it was so powerful.

My conclusion is, Don wanted to plant a tree.

So we got in the car, went to the nursery, paid for the tree, returned to his house, dug a hole, and planted the tree. All the while we talked as if nothing had changed from the last time we saw each other. We chatted about life, our families, our teaching, our collective memories. Don cooked dinner for his wife and me. Don and Peg even gave up their bed so that I could sleep comfortably during my overnight visit, each of them taking a couch.

Now, whenever we have guests in our home, our bed becomes theirs. I cook for all our visitors. If there is something to be done around town or around the house invitations to participate are always offered. I have yet to dig a hole, planting a tree with a student of mine, but I have visited a construction site, pored over architectural plans, been given tours through office buildings, witnessed student teachers teach, listened to innumerable vocational dreams, and watched with delight as young lives begin their first steps in ministerial roles.

Yes, Don wanted to plant a tree but by doing so he planted his teaching life into mine.

I have been teaching ever since.

Disturbed

My favorite definition of preaching is “Comfort the disturbed, disturb the comfortable.”

Robert Coles’ The Call of Stories disturbed me. He changed how I taught and now how I write.  His first chapter “Stories and Theories” functioned as a primer for why my writing must incorporate narrative.

Anton Chekhov’s short story “Gooseberries” captures my writer’s conviction that the comfortable should be disturbed:

Behind the door of every contented, happy man there ought to be someone standing with a little hammer and continually reminding him with a knock that there are unhappy people, that however happy he may be, life will sooner or later show him its claws, and trouble will come to him—illness, poverty, losses, and then no one will see or hear him, just as now he neither sees nor hears others.  But there is no man with a hammer.  The happy man lives at his ease, faintly fluttered by small daily cares, like an aspen in the wind—and all is well.[1]

Flannery O’Connor understands how to knock on the door:

The novelist doesn’t write to express himself, he doesn’t write simply to render a vision he believes true, rather he renders his vision so that it can be transferred, as nearly whole as possible, to his reader. . . . Your problem is going to be difficult in direct proportion as your beliefs depart from his. . . . I have to make the reader feel, in his bones if nowhere else, that something is going on here that counts.[2]

Stories are how I began to view my responsibility to comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.

I have been writing stories ever since.

 

[1] Anton Chekhov. 1947, 1966. The Portable Chekhov. (Viking): 381.

[2] Flannery O’Connor. 1957, 1969. Mystery & Manners. (Reprint: Farrar, Straus, Giroux): 162.

Make No Mistake

This is nothing new.

It is a renewal.

The ten beliefs that have not changed, even after the death of our son (full text below).

Support MarkEckel.com (here). Find the MarkEckel.com YouTube Channel (here). Mark is President of The Comenius Institute (website). Dr. Eckel spends time with Christian young people in public university (1 minute video), teaching at Indiana University Purdue University at Indianapolis, and interprets culture from a Christian vantage point (1 minute video). Consider becoming a Comenius patron (here).

 

Picture Credit: Josh Collingwood, Snappy Goat

FULL TEXT

At Tyler’s memorial I read these opening words: “That’s great, Dad.” These are the words Tyler said to me every time I told him of an article being published, a student’s life impacted, a new approach to teaching used, a video series launched, or an accomplishment of any kind achieved. “That’s great, Dad.”

Make no mistake. The awfulness of my son’s death has not hobbled my beliefs. No. It has made my thinking more vital, visceral, and vigorous. Prophets, those who speak God’s Words, are conditioned not with comfort or ease but with pain and hardship. Suffering I have endured in life, now intensified by Tyler’s homegoing, continues to shape my being. Chiseled by circumstances, Divinely ordained, my words will persist on behalf of biblical Truth. And so, in the spirit of Tyler’s encouragement and Jonathan Edwards’ resolutions, I renew these confessions.

  1. Standing under the Authority of Heaven, I will continue to speak God’s Truth to my time and place.
  2. My interpretive lens will be guided by Hebraic-Christian thinking, prompted by The Spirit.
  3. Care for all people, no matter who, without condition, will be driven by the love of Jesus.
  4. Loving people includes speaking the Truth in love without compromise or condition.
  5. Words from pen or keyboard will be considerate of context and culture without compromising Truth.
  6. Cultural communication will be spoken within the wisdom and warnings of Scripture.
  7. Doing good for all people, as much as is possible, will be my daily undertaking.
  8. Practicing benevolence and excellence will be my conduct through all my vocational endeavors.
  9. As I have strength, I will endeavor to offer the gifts given to me to the benefit of The Church and culture.
  10. And I will give myself more and more to Christian discipleship of any who desire to walk this road with me.

“That’s great dad.” My son’s words will always ring in my ears. My Truth in Two series during Fall 2022 is a tribute to our son Tyler Micah. We lament his death while desiring to give voice to all who suffer in any way.

Fragmented

How does it feel

to live with paranoid schizophrenia?

Our son Tyler explains in this Truth in Two (full text below).

Support MarkEckel.com (here). Find the MarkEckel.com YouTube Channel (here). Mark is President of The Comenius Institute (website). Dr. Eckel spends time with Christian young people in public university (1 minute video), teaching at Indiana University Purdue University at Indianapolis, and interprets culture from a Christian vantage point (1 minute video). Consider becoming a Comenius patron (here).

 

Picture Credit: Josh Collingwood, Snappy Goat, Toledo Museum of Art, https://www.toledomuseum.org/about/news/july-1-art-minute-chuck-close-alex

FULL TEXT

Tyler once sent me a picture from the Toledo Museum of Art. The portrait was of “Alex,” from a Chuck Close art exhibit. Tyler told me, “Dad, this is how I feel inside myself. Fragmented.” The picture of a man’s face is created by Chuck Close out of dots, dashes, and abstract shapes. The painting is not of a human face as much as it may be, of a person’s view of themselves.

The fragmentation Tyler felt was represented in his house. If you had the good fortune of visiting Tyler in his home, you would see horizontal spaces everywhere – whether on tables or door frames – filled with broken things. His daily walks with his dogs would cause him to pick up shattered pieces of metal, plastic, or wood. What some creatives call “found art” was Tyler’s pursuit. He cared for broken things.

It has struck me since Tyler’s passing that his jars and spaces filled with broken things may have been statements about how he did not want anything left out, keeping them, perhaps, wishing, they could be put back together. A picture from above one of Tyler’s doors in his home is but one example.

One of the many poems I have written since Tyler’s death this summer honors both his fragmented mind and his care for Broken Things.

Collections / Round his house. / Exhibits from the / Streets of life.

Walking / He gathered / Fragments / Artifacts of life.

Remnants / Metal, plastic, wood / Remembered / Careful of life.

Horizontal / Spaces full / Museums / Bits of life.

Nothing whole / Parts missing / Puzzle pieces / Reflections of life

Picture complete / Now, not then, / Shard collections were / Albums of his life.

I kept a picture of “Alex” by Chuck Close along with other pictures of Tyler. I never want to forget how he saw himself and how different his mind is now resting in peace. My Truth in Two series during Fall 2022 is a tribute to our son Tyler Micah. We lament his death while desiring to give voice to all who suffer in any way.

[This material is drawn from a poem posted on social media. Similar words and ideas can be found by a search at MarkEckel.com where you can also find a tribute to my son. My video series on “suffering” may also be of benefit.]

 

5 Things TO DO: Calamity II

How do you respond

when others suffer?

Watch our Truth in Two to find out (full text below).

Support MarkEckel.com (here). Find the MarkEckel.com YouTube Channel (here). Mark is President of The Comenius Institute (website). Dr. Eckel spends time with Christian young people in public university (1 minute video), teaching at Indiana University Purdue University at Indianapolis, and interprets culture from a Christian vantage point (1 minute video). Consider becoming a Comenius patron (here).

 

Picture Credit: Josh Collingwood, Snappy Goat

FULL TEXT

How does pain create any kind of benefit for people? Pitirim Sorokin, founder of Harvard’s sociology department, looked for an answer. He sought to explain how catastrophes of various kinds—wars, famines, pestilence—began other social forces. After exhaustive research, Sorokin’s conclusion was that religious revivals often begin in crisis. His 1942 book Man and Society in Calamity made this claim: The principal steps in the progress of mankind toward a spiritual religion and a noble code of ethics have arisen primarily under the impact of great catastrophes.

Great catastrophes can sometimes bring positive change. The principle may not make us feel better, but it should cause us to wonder how we should respond to catastrophe. Here I suggest five proper responses to the calamity of others:

  1. Shut up: Keep your pious platitudes to yourself
  2. Show up: Be with people who are hurting today, next week, next month, next year.
  3. Pay up: Take out your wallet and pay the tab, don’t think about it, just do it
  4. Stay up: Friend in pain can’t sleep, neither should you, darkness in the dark is double hard
  5. Keep up: Lose your schedule, routine, and expectations; your friends in crisis just lost theirs

Calamity brings unwanted change. Isaiah’s description of Jesus in Isaiah 53 makes plain that the greatest change agent in history “was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.” The writer of Hebrews in chapter 2 explains Jesus took on flesh and blood, partaking of the same things as me. The greatest “catastrophe” in human history Jesus’ death on the cross for humanity’s sin gives us a way to bear up when catastrophe strikes. In the meantime, we stand silently next to those who have suffered calamity.

My Truth in Two series during Fall 2022 is a tribute to our son Tyler Micah. We lament his death while desiring to give voice to all who suffer in any way.

[This material is drawn from an article I wrote in 2013 titled, “Calamity.” A number of other articles have used the same words and ideas since and can be found by searching for “lament” at MarkEckel.com where you can also find a tribute to my son.]

 

5 Things NOT To Do: Calamity I

You comfort no one

when you do these five things.

Watch our Truth in Two (full text below) to understand.

Support MarkEckel.com (here). Find the MarkEckel.com YouTube Channel (here). Mark is President of The Comenius Institute (website). Dr. Eckel spends time with Christian young people in public university (1 minute video), teaching at Indiana University Purdue University at Indianapolis, and interprets culture from a Christian vantage point (1 minute video). Consider becoming a Comenius patron (here).

 

Picture Credit: Josh Collingwood, Snappy Goat

FULL TEXT

Her jaw radiated pain; her body shuddered. There was no relief. It had been an awful wisdom tooth extraction. Our daughter now had a dry socket. A week later another oral surgeon had to cut her gum line, looking for bone fragments. During the surgery he “tapped on her jawbone” to assess whether or not it contained an infection. The pain Chelsea felt was left over from the doctor’s bone “tapping.” She took Vicodin: two at a time. The pain was unrelenting. The hygienist told my daughter that pain after surgery can flash back three, four, or five days after the event.

But what about three, four, or five years? What of three, four, or five decades? People suffer the memory of calamity in multiple ways, over multiple years. Consider for instance,

* The Moore, Oklahoma landscape was chiseled clean by an F5 tornado in 2013.

* Or, pictures on the mantle of parents, spouses, children, or siblings that record loss.

* Or, economic downturns and duplicitous bosses that make job loss a disheartening reality.

* Or, some that suffer the constant pain of depression, schizophrenia, or head-trauma

Folks suffer when something or someone is taken away, whether possessions, stability, sanity, or in some cases, lives. So, how should we respond? Here are five things NOT to do in times of calamity:

  1. Don’t compare: when someone tells you of their pain, do not bring up yours
  2. Don’t complain: do not suggest to someone who has just lost everything that you lost anything
  3. Don’t answer: folks want to vent and rage; your reply should be silence
  4. Don’t leave: nothing replaces physical presence
  5. Don’t critique: people cry, scream, swear, drink, smoke; be sensitive, ditch your sensitivities

Chelsea, the citizens of Moore, OK, the jobless, everyone who hurts, remembers the pain. We should remember the folks who have suffered calamity. We should never forget their pain. My Truth in Two series during Fall 2022 is a tribute to our son Tyler Micah. We lament his death while desiring to give voice to all who suffer in any way.

[This material is drawn from an article I wrote in 2013 titled, “Calamity.” A number of other articles have used the same words and ideas since and can be found by searching for “lament” at MarkEckel.com where you can also find a tribute to my son.]

 

Violent Suffering: Lament III

The will to continue

is delivered a blow.

Find out why by watching our Truth in Two (full text below).

Support MarkEckel.com (here). Find the MarkEckel.com YouTube Channel (here). Mark is President of The Comenius Institute (website). Dr. Eckel spends time with Christian young people in public university (1 minute video), teaching at Indiana University Purdue University at Indianapolis, and interprets culture from a Christian vantage point (1 minute video). Consider becoming a Comenius patron (here).

 

Picture Credit: Josh Collingwood, Snappy Goat

FULL TEXT

Pistons explode from shoulder to fist to face.  In a boxing bout the word “jabs” describes one opponent snapping his adversary’s head back with each blow.  This is Job 3.11-26.  Job then picks up an automatic pistol, firing controlled bursts of bullets expressing the subject of his agony.  Every single line and each nuance of meaning in the Hebrew throughout this chapter depicts the ferocity of blows and bullets.  The power of this gut-wrenching groan that reaches a roar at the end of the poem constantly repeating in verses 11-26, “Why? Why? Why?” I would encourage every listener to stop the video here to read Job 3:11-26. And I should warn you, these verses are not for the faint of heart.

Job “piles on” the words for death: death will be a repose, an anticipated rest, lying down, be at peace, tranquility, what we call “the big sleep” or “the long dirt nap.”  Death is better than life to Job because life is full of trouble. Job makes a long list that says life is nothing but trouble, in every way, for everyone.  Pick a social group, they are all represented here: the powerful, rich, leaders, wicked, the weary, slaves, forced laborers, prisoners, the small (underprivileged) and the great (the privileged).  Right in the middle of this grouping is what Job would have wished for originally—to be stillborn, dead at birth. Why does Job suggest death is best?  Because it releases us from life’s miseries.

Psychologists and physicians alike tell us that suffering produces questions of purpose and the will to continue in life.  Our best to response to anyone who is in pain is simply to listen and then do as Paul says, “Weep with those who weep.”

My Truth in Two series during Fall 2022 is a tribute to our son Tyler Micah. We lament his death while desiring to give voice to all who suffer in any way.

[This material is drawn from a sermon I preached on Job 3 at Zionsville Fellowship (Indiana) the spring of 2008. A number of articles have used the same words and ideas since and can be found by searching for “lament” at MarkEckel.com where you can also find a tribute to my son.]

 

On the Edge: Three Poems, Three Emotions

Don’t

Don’t mean to ignore

I’m not sore

All is a chore

Can’t give more.

 

Don’t even consider

That I’ll be a bidder

For whatever is latest

Not feeling the greatest.

 

Don’t expect you to know

It’s been quite a blow

Nothing to show

Except my woe.

 

Don’t guess, however

That I can sever

What went before

It impacts rapport.

 

Don’t think, I’ll stop my ink

On my keyboard, I’m not bored

Memories pop, can’t stop

Saying what I feel, with zeal.

 

Don’t letup

If I don’t pick up

Mind elsewhere

Thousand-yard stare.

 

Don’t suppose

I’ll be quick to disclose

Sit in repose

‘Til I’m ready to compose.

 

Clenched

Teeth, jaw

Into the maw

Of anger

No stranger.

 

Body, fists

Make my lists

Bullseye

No lie.

 

Muscles, smiles

Seen for miles

Nothing to assuage

The river, Rage.

 

Vice grip

Made to strip

My ocean

Of emotion

 

No worries, you

Don’t call your crew.

Clenching is in me

I will not let you see.

 

No therapist

Rivals this typist

Nor can he resist

To be honest.

 

Cusp

On the verge

I merge

With sadness

Driving me to madness

 

Of tears that flow

Wherever I go,

When a voice, a place

Leaves its trace

 

Of him.

The grim,

Months ago, three

I am not free

 

Of sorrow.

Still, tomorrow,

I seek again to borrow

Strength, for Kilimanjaro.

 

Got a call yesterday

To say

It’s OK

To be away

 

To sit

To take a bit

Not try to grit

When emotions split.

 

“Decisions, I could not make

All my energy it did take.”

His words a relief

Amid my grief.

 

His death did stymie

Made my energy tiny

The heights I fight

To see The Light, as I write.

Hurt by Suffering: Lament II

Hurting with others means to sit with them

In their deepest, darkest depths of despair.

Find out why the “hurt” of Job 3 is necessary to understand human suffering by watching our Truth in Two (full text below).

Support MarkEckel.com (here). Find the MarkEckel.com YouTube Channel (here). Mark is President of The Comenius Institute (website). Dr. Eckel spends time with Christian young people in public university (1 minute video), teaching at Indiana University Purdue University at Indianapolis, and interprets culture from a Christian vantage point (1 minute video). Consider becoming a Comenius patron (here).

 

Picture Credit: Josh Collingwood, Snappy Goat

FULL TEXT

Johnny Cash famously sang a song titled, “Hurt,” where he said, Everyone I know, Goes away in the end. And you could have it all, My empire of dirt . . . Cash has it right. Sometimes suffering makes what we have seem meaningless. In the Bible, Job chapter 3 reflects the honesty of our hurt, pulsating with profound passion and pain. We may not comprehend another person’s specific grief. But what we can say is we have all experienced some of what Job 3:1-10 is saying. I would encourage every listener to stop the video here to read Job 3:1-10. And I should warn you, these verses are not for the faint of heart. 

Job’s lament begins as a curse from the womb, an anti-birthday-birthday. Job’s “birthday” was his “death-day,” an awful day, an awful event, one he wished had never happened. Job wishes he had never been born.  “Curse the day!”  The only way to do this is to wipe his birthday off the calendar. Job is in the deep throes of outrageous pain, wailing and moaning.  If we saw someone like this we would probably say, “They’re beside themselves!  I’ve never seen them like this before!”  This is Job’s state as he curses or removes the celebration of his birth.  It does not mean that Job has lost control.  Job is expressing the deepest, rawest of emotions a person can express.  There is no shame or sin here, only humanness.

In the Coen brother’s film O Brother, Where Art Thou? one song provides the underlying refrain: “I’m a Man of Constant Sorrow.”  This is Job’s song, the lament of Job 3:1-10.  Johnny Cash knew it. And if we’re honest, we know it too.  Caring for others means we must sometimes sit with them through the deepest, darkest depths of despair.

My Truth in Two series during Fall 2022 is a tribute to our son Tyler Micah. We lament his death while desiring to give voice to all who suffer in any way.

[This material is drawn from a sermon I preached on Job 3 at Zionsville Fellowship (Indiana) the spring of 2008. A number of articles have used the same words and ideas since and can be found by searching for “lament” at MarkEckel.com where you can also find a tribute to my son.]

 

Blindsided by Suffering: Lament I

When suffering strikes

Lament is our response.

Watch our Truth in Two to find out why (full text below)

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Picture Credit: Josh Collingwood, Photo by Luis Santoyo on Unsplash

FULL TEXT

Blindsided.  In American football, the word means the quarterback who is about to throw the ball to one side of the field is hit from his blind side. He never sees it coming. Being blindsided accurately describes unexpected grief in life. The awfulness of having one’s job taken without notice or reason, suffering the death of a loved one, or being given the diagnosis of cancer are only a few of the many ways humans are blindsided.  Moments like these are times when we question unjust suffering and God Himself.

Undeserved suffering may be the first reason to reject belief in God.  But if, as many First Testament scholars think, Job is the oldest book in The Bible, it would seem God addresses the problem early.  Of course, the fact that God deals with the issue up front is no solace to our bereavement.  Here is the onset of our grief.  We can know our theology.  But we still hurt, suffer, wail, howl, and scream our sorrow.

In the First Testament, lament is a poetic devise, a structure for expressing humanity’s crisis, travail, anguish, or despair. Ancient and modern people groups have their own laments—grief and outrage at humanly unjust circumstances. Job’s first verbal response to his situation in Job 3 is common to everyone, everywhere.

Lament is honest to who we are as humans.  Lament acknowledges our weakness, our deficiency, our common experience.  To be a Christian does not mean we stop being human.  Being a Christian accentuates our humanity.  We are committed to a righteous response to undeserved injustice.  And we are committed to the raw, rasping recoiled reaction to pain when it happens to us.

Job was blindsided.  There are times when each of us stands in line next to him.  We share the suffering Job utters. Job’s cry in Job 3 is our own. Scripture gives our pain a voice in lament. My Truth in Two series during Fall 2022 is a tribute to our son Tyler Micah. We lament his death while desiring to give voice to all who suffer in any way.

[This material is drawn from a sermon I preached on Job 3 at Zionsville Fellowship (Indiana) the spring of 2008. A number of articles have used the same words and ideas since and can be found by searching for “lament” at MarkEckel.com where you can also find a tribute to my son.]

 

A Father’s Tribute to His Son: In Memory of Tyler Micah Eckel

“That’s great, Dad.” These words Tyler said to me every time I told him of an article being published, a student’s life impacted, a new approach to teaching used, a new video series launched, or an accomplishment of any kind achieved. “That’s great, Dad.”

Tyler and I had a wonderful relationship from his childhood through adulthood. I was a coach on his baseball team for three years. Later, for fun, we would spend Sunday afternoons in the summer going to a local park where I would pitch, and he would hit. We listened to his music, by so doing he augmented my cultural awareness. We watched movies and visited historic sites, sledded in the winter, and hunted in the fall. I took him on speaking trips. We discussed theology and philosophy, literature and poetry from his earliest years. I marveled at his brilliance, watching him teach a college class about Frankenstein when he was 17. We talked about him becoming a college professor like me.

He and I cherished our friendship, a son and father who loved and cared for each other. Tyler lived with Robin and I for ten years, then we purchased a small house for him here in Defiance where he was close to his sister and brother, Chelsea and Sam. Over two decades our conversations were consistent and long. We would talk for hours. We shared our writing with each other. We shared poetry, stories, experiences, and recipes. Our shared love of food – specifically ribs – made us both smile. He would say, “Who needs Applebee’s when I have Eckelbee’s.” He also taught me how to smoke a pipe. And I was always amazed that he could keep one bowl going for half an hour, mine petering out after 10 minutes.

But it was our shared reverence for words that united our spirits. We both believed that words were sacrosanct, that words had power and could bring life. We were encouragers, not only of each other but on behalf of others. We shared the value of loving people while we may have disagreed with their ideas. We made a point of separating the two. “Dad, you should read (fill in the blank) and we’ll discuss it” was a normal undertaking. He suggested, I read, we discussed. Agreement was not essential, respect was. Our respect for words was born of our respect of others. The premise for our others-centered approach was our oft repeated, “Show your love for God by loving your neighbor.” We believed our neighbor was anyone we met or anyone we read.

Tyler deeply appreciated that he had a father who would read Charles Bukowski. It is not necessary that you know who Bukowski is, it is important for you to know that Bukowski had something of his own annex in Tyler’s library. I would often receive the author’s books as gifts, always with a note about where I should start reading. Both Tyler and Chelsea introduced me to poetry, dragging me kicking and screaming into the pantheon of poets. I would buy the poetry, Tyler and Chelsea would tell me what to read. To this day, their shared love of poetry has become my own. Tyler even had two journal articles published with me, his name next to mine. But his verbal fingerprints were all over everything I wrote. And they will continue to be.

Even this tribute to my son is marked by his influence. Czeslaw Milosz became one of my favorite poets following in the footsteps of my children. There is a line from his 1980 acceptance speech of the Nobel Prize for literature that I have often quoted, “Those who are alive receive a mandate from those who are gone.” And so, I will rededicate my days to fulfilling that promise on behalf of Tyler. The impact of his life – the hard and the easy, the ill and the good – will continue to mark my speaking, teaching, writing, and creating. With Tyler in the background of my thoughts I will continue to write, believing every word written is a strike against the devil. I will continue to teach, bringing light, battling the darkness of the principalities and powers in any venue. I will continue to speak, building justice upon the righteousness of Heaven, the only way to bring peace on earth. And I will continue to create, believing that all people are made in God’s image and therefore creativity is an expression of God’s work in the world.

And Tyler would smile and say, “That’s great, Dad.” And I smile now and say, “Look, son, how many people’s lives you have impacted for the good, people who have driven and flown from around the country to honor your life.” To which I say, “That’s great, Son.”

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[From my social media post after Tyler’s passing.] It is with the deepest, inexpressible pain that Robin and I mourn the death of our son Tyler who ended his life yesterday. For over two decades Tyler battled the voices of paranoid schizophrenia. His whole family participated fully in his life with every available resource for body, mind and soul. Tyler’s legacy is a love for family, farming, poetry, and letter writing. His gentle kindness was felt by any and all who had the benefit of his presence. His encouragement was a ballast, giving of himself to others. His dogs and cats experienced a love they could never have found elsewhere.
Tyler and I had constant conversations about all of life, he and I were resources for each other in our reading and writing. We spent hours and hours talking about great authors and the impact of their works on us. I was constantly learning from him. His editorial skills were second to none. He was an auditory editor, asking me to read aloud. And he would stop me when he heard a word out of place or he would offer a new approach to a sentence. He pushed me to be better in my teaching and writing in the best of ways. His poetry plumbed the depths of spirit I will never know. He saw and felt in ways that opened new vistas of expression for me.
I would always end my conversations with my son by saying, “You’re my hero.” He was a monument of perseverance and relentless courage in the face of a darkness I will never know. He fought and fought until he could fight no more.
We would often revel in our friendship. We both knew that being friends as son and father was a treasure to be cherished. And we enjoyed each other’s company with an ease and a presence I will miss terribly.
There is a need now to grieve, wail, moan, and cry; to silently scream and loudly lament. It is a time of woe. And there is no sense trying to say something that will mask the agony of losing a son. I will miss him the rest of my days and look forward with great anticipation to being reunited with him on the Other Side.
Hold each other close. Give as much as you can to others in need. Care for everyone in your spheres of influence. Be bold in your love.