Lost amidst the fanfare of Wookies, Ewoks, Yoda, lightsabers, and three totally unfortunate prequels – the original Star Wars trilogy ranks as one of the most important works of fiction ever written. I’m serious. I’ve read Euripides, Sir Thomas Malory, and Shakespeare, and am totally convinced that the epic tale of the Skywalkers will be as timeless far, far into the future as any of the classical myths. In 1980, when Vader leans over the railing and declares that he is Luke’s father, Star Wars immediately vaulted itself into the stratosphere of major literary drama.
“What’s this got to do with God talking?” you may be thinking.
I’ll get there. I promise.
We all dream of redeeming our fallen father – because all our fathers are fallen. Luke’s struggle to save Darth Vader resonates eternally. And like our favorite Jedi, my story is really my father’s story, and vice versa. Our destinies became fated together the moment my dad walked out on my mom and me when I was still a teenager. Therein began a long, arduous journey towards salvation for both of us. So here goes.
Born in St. Louis in 1953, my father, David Michael, was a frustrated acoustic musician. Frustrated because he labored in obscurity to be the best in the world while mainstream mediocrity was getting paid millions. Frustrated because his wife, friends, and only child didn’t understand why he was so frustrated. Frustrated because he grew up with a father who grew up frustrated.
Dad is still quite an amazing flat-picker, by the way. His brand of left-handed magic on guitar and mandolin has played alongside the likes of David Grier. But dad has never broken through. He’s never been in that proverbial “right place at the right time” that most believe follows years of obdurate dedication. My grandpa can boast similarly.
Born in St. Louis in 1928, my grandfather, Gene, was a frustrated athlete. Frustrated because the Korean Conflict robbed him of a promising chance in the St. Louis Cardinal’s farm system. Frustrated because he had to bury his dreams and work two jobs just to support his wife and two young sons. Frustrated because his father was the town drunk, and his older brothers used to beat on him, because my great grandfather used to beat on them.
Following the Korean Conflict, grandpa returned home and tried his luck at a new sport. Bowling. He bowled for a few years with the best pros in the Midwest, Ray Bluth, Dick Webber, and Don Carter. Grandpa is still quite an amazing bowler, by the way. He has two perfect games to his name, and one 299. Yet grandpa has never gotten a break. He’s never gotten his proverbial “foot in the door” that most believe follows years of obstinate commitment.
“The Rengers are cursed,” I’ve heard it uttered – even from my own lips. Though, for a short season, it appeared grandpa and my dad might just overcome – together. Unable to connect over the music of the day, namely the Beatles, grandpa taught dad what he knew. Baseball. And by the time he was thirteen, my dad was six feet tall, shaving, and throwing a priceless knuckle curve ball. Grandma has even shown me the newspaper clippings of a lanky, left-handed teenager being scouted by the New York Yankees.
In my mind’s eye I see grandpa sitting in the stands, rivaling the sun as he beams proudly at my dad on the mound. Regrettably, this daydream is quickly clouded by the reality of what came next. The late sixties. Dad’s high school coach and my grandfather were both cut from an identical, conservative cloth. It was no surprise, then, when the coach ordered all his ball players to maintain the same regulation crew cut as he had. My dad responded by defiantly growing John Lennon-style muttonchops. In fact, he even abandoned his uniform’s belt and began tying off his game trousers with a strip of old rug.
This incensed both the coach and my grandpa. Dad was benched for his next start – a game that was to send one team to the state playoffs. Naturally, that game came down to the bottom of ninth, a tie score, and dad’s team having runners on base. The coach pondered his options while peering at the unkempt teenager lazing at the end of his bench. It surely must have been a bitter pill for that old man. Not only was dad the team’s best pitcher, but he was also its best hitter.
“Rengers!” was all the coach’s neatly shaven maw could muster.
One game winning triple later, and dad was kicked off the team for – who knows? Violating uniform, I guess. In a way, my dad won the game and lost his own father all with one swing of the bat. At the time, I doubt dad even cared. He had already fallen in love with the guitar, and there was little room left in his heart for anyone or anything else – especially baseball.
When I came along in 1974, years of intergenerational Rengers’ frustration had become a right of passage. Little wonder, then, that my father’s reaction was sullen when I started showing early signs of interest in music, writing, and drawing. In his own way, dad was trying to protect me from a lifetime of Rengers’ disappointment. Despite living under the same roof, dad was always very careful about avoiding interaction with me, as though he feared passing down some sort of failure contagion. I interpreted this as wholesale rejection.
Take learning to ride a bike, for example. Most kids pick up the knack in a few weeks, maybe months. My learning curve was just over two years. I had many gallant mentors try and teach me the art of a “two-wheeler.” Friends. Neighbors. Mom. Total strangers. Not my dad, though. He decidedly steered clear of the whole process, and as the calendars peeled away, I became more and more, well, frustrated.
Then one day, I was at the school down the street from the duplex where we lived. My father was sitting in the grass having a jam session with some guy he’d just met, and I was on the blacktop falling off that golden Schwinn with a banana-boat seat. I looked at my bike toppled over on the ground, and fell back, feeling the breeze of another day’s defeat blow across my face.
This is the first time I can ever remember hearing God. Was it loud? No. Did it have a deep James Earl Jones sounding timbre? It was very nondescript, actually. Did any lightning accompany it? Lots! No, of course not. It was only a single word. “Momentum.” Once more the gentle Northern California wind blew, and a picture of momentum emerged into my consciousness. Straight away I could picture what I was doing wrong. I was trying to stand the bike upright, balance my body on two wheels, and then start riding.
Springing upwards, I straddled that old Schwinn and kicked off the ground with my feet. Miracle. The tires started rolling. For a momentary second, the bike was balancing, and in essence, riding itself. I quickly got my feet set onto the pedals. From there (as you probably figured out much faster than I did) all I had to do was keep that fleeting momentum going by pedaling.
It was literally instantaneous. Following this revelation, there was absolutely no learning curve whatsoever. I went from flat out on my back – to whizzing around that school’s campus in one second flat. Like Evil Knievel himself, I went skidding and swerving around every classroom corner at breakneck speeds – that once gentle wind now a mighty hurricane through my hair. One hand on the handlebars, the other hoisted in victory, I began screaming at my father back on the grass.
“Hey, I think that kid’s yelling at you,” the man my dad had just met said to him.
“Nah, my son can’t ride a bike,” came dad’s unforgettable reply.
That very night, dad had a dream. In it he dreamt that he and his young son lived in a world where everyone only rode bikes. So him and me went riding together to a really popular hamburger stand. When we got there, we parked our bikes out front next to all the others, went inside, and ate a great big meal. But when we came back out our bikes were gone. Stolen. According to dad, he awoke bolt upright in bed, haunted by the lasting image of us standing there lost and frustrated while everyone else went pedaling off into the sunset.
At the age of thirty-five, dad fell for another woman and left mom and me. A free man, he devoted himself to the pursuit of music. Meanwhile, without his income, mom and me went from poor – to government-cheese-level poverty. As a result, at fifteen years old, I dropped out of school and dedicated myself to “making it big” as a writer, cartoonist, and composer.
True to dad’s vision about the stolen bicycles, though, neither of us got anywhere. Not in our relationships. Not in our ambitions. Not in our nothing. In a world of bikers – dad and me were pedestrians. We’d both lost our transportation and didn’t know what to do, where to go, or whom to ask?
At twenty-two, I forced my parent’s divorce into a deep dark locker in my soul, put on a brave facade, and got married to Anchella. Around this time, I also converted so I could be closer to the God of Catholicism with whom my wife was so intimately devoted. But by the time I was thirty-five (the same age dad was when he left mom) I was an atheist. So was dad.
No, I’m not talking about some bleak, nihilistic, bespectacled, black turtleneck wearing, non-fat soy latte, college freshman brand of atheism that tosses around disbelief in God as though it were some pledge pin on a trendy handbag. I’m talking about the kind of people that have honestly wrestled with the reality of God, and given up seeking amidst the deafening silence. You’ve seen them. You may even know them. They’re lifeless lumps sitting in the pews, afraid to leave, but also not listening to a word because it’s all made up anyway.
During this dry, desert season, dad and I talked telephonically about as often as he used to visit me after the divorce – two or three times a year. Then one day out of the blue, (June the 5th, 2009, to be precise) a voice spoke to me while I was in the shower, getting ready for work. Naturally, my male brain began rationalizing what I had just heard. But it didn’t make any sense. It was only two sentences long.
“Happy 35th Birthday. What would you like for you birthday?”
My God. It really was my birthday. I’d forgotten. But why was I wishing myself happy birthday? As I continued to question my own sanity, a new voice spoke. This voice answered the first with a single word, and was coming from what I can only describe as my stomach. That place down deep that the ancients taught is the dwelling place of our souls. It even tingled a bit.
“Opportunity,” came the one-word reply from my guts. I had said, “opportunity.” And yet, I hadn’t. It was as though the conscious me, including all that rationalizing going on in my head, was bypassed to the third person, allowing me to witness this very important conversation.
My birthday trudged by unspectacularly, and yet my thoughts, and even something else, stayed fixated on the events of that morning. That evening, it struck home. I recalled that voice from the day I had learned to ride a bike. “Momentum,” it had said all those years ago. It was God. It was real. He was real.
Overwhelmed and overcome, I spent the next few weeks in a state of ceaseless thanksgiving. I just couldn’t stop. I couldn’t help myself. Everywhere I turned, every thought turned to God. I was unsure of whether or not to tell anyone lest they think me crazy (even Anchella).
“Happy 35th Birthday!” It finally blossomed in my mind. God’s telling me, “I Am,” and, “I know that you are, too.”
Yup. Atheism dissolved rather quickly after that, and I finally did tell Anchella. But that wasn’t all.
“What would you like for your birthday?”
My wife helped me realize, that God wanted to do more than merely exist. He wanted to be Father to me. Dad. Daddy. That guy. But what about that other part when my abdomen had cried out, “opportunity!”
Momentum. Bicycles. Opportunity. These words kept swirling around inside me for more days on end. Momentum. Bicycles. Opportunity. At last, I decided to call dad and see what he thought about it all.
My dad’s voice on the other end of the phone was bemused. Befuddled. Distant. However, he then retold the bicycle dream he had had all those years ago, and how it seemed to be haunting him once again. In that instant – the words – the dreams – everything fit together.
“Dad,” I offered uncertainly. “I know what the dream means.”
“You do?” dad replied skeptically.
“Yes,” I said. “Our stolen bicycles are a metaphor. The answer is opportunity.”
This time the phone went speechless for a good long while. I could tell from dad’s breathing that something had just unlocked – like a key into his chest. “God has decided that this is the season for us, dad,” I finally added again. “He’s going to give the Rengers an opportunity that’s been missing for quite a while.”
Well, my friends, that’s about all I have for you. Oh, yes. Star Wars. I almost forgot. Vader needed his son to drag him out of darkness and back into the light – his salvation depended on it. He couldn’t do it on his own. Conversely, Luke’s salvation depended on his belief that his father could be saved. Both were totally stuck without the other. It’s a bit like God, isn’t it? He’s not just content to redeem one son, and by linking two destinies, at the appointed season, he saves them both.
Oh, one last thing. A few months back I was in Salinas visiting my dad, when my cell phone started ringing. It was a friend named, Larry. He just called to let me know that he had shown my debut novel, Ring Dragonz, to his New York publisher. “Opportunity.”
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