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Between us


Half a lung, half a lung, half a lung onward!


By Walter Wangerin Jr. S


o these are some of the bless- ings of living with an incurable disease: I can’t run. (Not the blessing, of course, but one of its conditions.) I can scarcely walk unless I drag behind me a canister of oxygen, plug my nostrils with its plastic nozzles, and puff like the engine that could. An old man’s advantage: I can use the canister’s frame as a leaning cane. (Prop me up, O Lord, in all my leaning places.) I must give other, younger citizens the impression of a debilitated old man thinking old, debilitated thoughts. But one accommodates, you


know. It’s no great trick to exchange a past pleasure for a present one. When I go step-stepping across Val- paraiso University’s campus, under- graduates breeze by me and grant me the genuine pleasure of observation. What I am not, they are. What I can- not, they can. They have flashing heels. They have legs and long bod- ies carelessly athletic. The degree of my pleasure is precisely the degree of the difference between my slow- ness and their easy speed. Poor lungs and slow time have lifted me to a high spiritual vantage. Behold the


Wangerin, an author of many novels and books of essays, is an ELCA pastor and senior research professor at Valparaiso [Ind.] University (walterwangerinjr.org). His “Between us” col- umn appears quarterly in The Lutheran.


able—for neces- sary dollars—to travel and lec- ture (though not by plane; I’m restricted to rail- roads and cars). But my real focus is homeward. My soul is


PHOTODISC


beauty of human joints and muscles and the framework of human bones. The students breathe and walk and talk (cell phones!) and laugh and wave their arms all unconsciously. I am the conscious one. I delight in their proportion, their easy motion, the marvel of their unapologetic, long, elastic skin.


Perhaps dirty old men are nothing more than observant old men, smil- ing in the smiles of the youth who are mostly oblivious to their own smilings.


My brother is a triathlete. He stands 6 foot 3 inches, weighs 202 pounds, and is my junior by a mere 18 months. You should see the man’s calves and the bulge of them. Mine are chancel candlesticks. O worship the God who oils a racer’s knees and blows breath across the flowering fields of his lungs. I have become a connoisseur.


And then there is this blessing: Thanne and I have never, never before experienced such trust and affection for one another. I am home. Well, yes: I continue to write some six to eight hours a day. I garden. I’m


30 The Lutheran • www.thelutheran.org


at home. And before my wife my countenance


shines with the peace of it all. In my case, the nearness of death has relieved me of the need to strive toward goals and triumphs. No need to prove myself. I walk a level plain. Today is today. Tomorrow will come. And though I continue to plan activities well in advance, living doesn’t depend on their accomplish- ment, nor would any of them define me. I am already defined. Today is today. Tomorrow is enough. Why, then, wouldn’t I spend the fullness of myself upon our present relation- ship, Thanne’s and mine? We aren’t waiting for some breakthrough, some higher level of love, a grand vacation, travel, another grandkid (as if). Nor are we desperate to do now before death all that we haven’t done before. We are. It is enough. And a lesser blessing, regarding my writing:


Previously I always felt driven to write and publish. I’d rush a manu- script to the publisher. Hurry. hurry, fool! Finish this project!—in order to rush to the next. Writing was always my second profession while the others (ministry, teaching) were


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