GUEST BLOGGER: “Two Stories” by Ryan Kraeger

Ryan Kraeger was born in upstate New York, second of seven children, raised on a farm and homeschooled from first grade to highschool. He graduated at seventeen and joined the military the same week, choosing the MOS (Military Occupational Specialty) of Combat Engineer because he thought the video looked cool (it was primarily composed of explosions). Since then he has done many and varied things in the Army, including loading baggage on planes in Fort Hood Texas, spending a year in the Republic of Korea, patrolling and raiding in Iraq, and building bridges and uncovering IED’s in Afghanistan. Currently he is in training to be a Green Beret, learning his target language, Korean, before going on to the world’s finest and most intensive medic course.  Ryan is also an avid reader and amateur writer, you can read more of his writing at his website.

Two Stories:  Stories bump, stories merge, stories permeate each other. Stories can even unite. Only God can keep track of all the stories and how they interact. It is a vast, complex, multi-dimensional web, a tapestry of infinite complexity and beauty. The work of God in each life is not separate from His work in every life. What He does for me, He is doing for everyone else in the world, through me. Whatever He does for anyone else, He does for me, through them, whether we ever meet or not. It is God’s nature to be a union, and it is His nature to bring about union among His creatures, little by little and partially in this world, and then finally and totally in the next world, where all who are in union with Him will be in union with each other.  We get hints of it, even now.

Imagine a young girl, maybe fifteen or sixteen, who is in a bad dating relationship in high school. Her boyfriend is controlling, orverbally abusive, or is pressuring her to have sex or join in with his drug or alcohol habit, or whatever the case may be. She has compromised too much with too many, and isn’t sure how much she has left to give up, or why she’s bothering anymore. She’s not an innocent little girl anymore. She feels tarnished. Her whole life is a scramble to find acceptance, which for her means popularity with the right bunch of teenage girls, and being noticed by the right teenage boys. Her relationship with her parents and siblings has completely unraveled. She is lost, drifting, miserable, empty, and too busy to notice it. All her thought and energy is bent on the one thing that she thinks will keep her head above water, keep her life meaningful and worthwhile, and he isn’t worth the time of day. The preoccupation consumes her, and she doesn’t know what’s wrong, or where she should turn, or what she should do. Now, imagine that one day she is sitting somewhere, perhaps looking out the window of the school bus, or sitting on a park bench, or standing in a group of teenagers on the corner. Purple streaked hair, too much makeup, tight jeans, halter top, book bag and IPod, she looks just like any one of millions of girls her age, but she is not. She is God’s beloved daughter, His Princess, His Darling. I think God sometimes sends parents only one child, as a symbol of how much He loves each one of us, as if I were the only one.

Let’s put our girl on the bus. She’s sitting on her seat, looking out the window, with one hand jealously clutched by the boy who is sitting next to her. She lets him hold her hand, not because she really enjoys it, but just because that is what you do. If you’re in a relationship, you hold hands, you sit on his lap, you argue about how far you are willing to go. That’s just what you do.

Suddenly, through the window, she sees another couple. They are very old, in their sixties or seventies or eighties or something. To her teenage mind they hardly even register as people anymore. They are like museum pieces, totally irrelevant to her world of hard music, slamming lockers, filthy jokes and innuendo, and constant noise, noise, noise, noise. She has passed by this same couple sitting on their porch a hundred times and never seen them, but her King has a gift for her today. He opens her eyes, for a second, an instant, a heartbeat, just long enough. The old man takes the old woman’s hand and smiles at her. The old woman smiles back. All hell screams in fury, as years of lies, deceit, hate, sneering and malice are threatened all in an instant. They rush around, frantically trying to crush the new thoughts and wonderings and vague, painful longings, and they are mostly successful. They are very good at what they do. Before the bus reaches the corner, their rotten construction is standing in all its ugliness once again. God lets it go, because He knows more than they do. Something has been planted deep in her heart, and though she forgets in a minute, anxious not to threaten the card castle she has so carefully built for herself, she can never be the same again. One old man, on an ordinary day, for no particular reason other than that he just felt like it, did what he’d been doing for fifty years. He loved his wife. He never met that teenage girl, but for ever after her heart will be just a little harder to satisfy. She will want just a little more from the man in her life, her standards will be just a little bit higher. It will cause her no end of grief, because the higher your standards, the easier they are to disappoint, but her heart will have moved one fraction closer to realizing the dangerous truth, that she is more precious than this entire planet, and all the galaxies of the universe. Her Prince came to earth and died for her, and so she deserves more. All hell will stand between her and that truth, but because one old man loved his wife, her heart moved a fraction closer to it, and it can never be moved back.

Two Stories

I came across this story a while back, and actually used it at a retreat I ran to intro a talk on virtue.  I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

THE FIRST STORY: Many years ago, Al Capone virtually owned Chicago. Capone wasn’t famous for anything heroic. He was notorious for enmeshing the windy city in everything from bootlegged booze and prostitution to murder.  Capone had a lawyer nicknamed “Easy Eddie.” He was his lawyer for a good reason. Eddie was very good! In fact, Eddie’s skill at legal maneuvering kept Big Al out of jail for a long time.

To show his appreciation, Capone paid Eddie very well.  Not only was the money big, but Eddie also got special dividends.  For instance, he and his family occupied a fenced-in mansion with live-in help and all of the conveniences of the day. The estate was so large that it filled an entire Chicago City block.

Eddie lived the high life of the Chicago mob and gave little consideration to the atrocities that went on around him.  Eddie had a soft spot, however. He had a son that he loved dearly. Eddie saw to it that his young son had clothes, cars, and a good education. Nothing was withheld. Price was no object. And, despite his involvement with organized crime, Eddie even tried to teach him right from wrong. Eddie wanted his son to be a better man than he was. Yet, with all his wealth and influence, there were two things he couldn’t give his son; he couldn’t pass on a good name or a good example.

One day, Easy Eddie reached a difficult decision. Eddie wanted to rectify wrongs he had done.  He decided he would go to the authorities and tell the truth about Al “Scarface” Capone, clean up his tarnished name, and offer his son some semblance of integrity. To do this, he would have to testify against The Mob, and he knew that the cost would be great.

So, he testified. Within the year, Easy Eddie’s life ended in a blaze of gunfire on a lonely Chicago Street. But in his eyes, he had given his son the greatest gift he had to offer, at the greatest price he could ever pay.  Police removed from his pockets a rosary, a crucifix, a religious medallion, and a poem clipped from a magazine. The poem read: The clock of life is wound but once, And no man has the power to tell just when the hands will stop at late or early hour. Now is the only time you own. Live, love, toil with a will. Place no faith in time. For the clock may soon be still.

THE SECOND STORY: World War II produced many heroes. One such man was Lieutenant Commander Butch O’Hare. He was a fighter pilot assigned to the aircraft carrier Lexington in the South Pacific. One day his entire squadron was sent on a mission. After he was airborne, he looked at his fuel gauge and realized that someone had forgotten to top off his fuel tank. He would not have enough fuel to complete his mission and get back to his ship. His flight leader told him to return to the carrier. Reluctantly, he dropped out of formation and headed back to the fleet.

As he was returning to the ship he saw something that turned his blood cold: a squadron of Japanese aircraft were speeding their way toward the American fleet. The American fighters were gone on a sortie, and the fleet was all but defenseless. He couldn’t reach his squadron and bring them back in time to save the fleet. Nor could he warn the fleet of the approaching danger.

There was only one thing to do. He must somehow divert them from the fleet. Laying aside all thoughts of personal safety, he dove into the formation of Japanese planes. Wing-mounted 50 caliber’s blazed as he charged in, attacking one surprised enemy plane and then another. Butch wove in and out of the now broken formation and fired at as many planes as possible until all his ammunition was finally spent. Undaunted, he continued the assault. He dove at the planes, trying to clip a wing or tail in hopes of damaging as many enemy planes as possible and rendering them unfit to fly.

Finally, the exasperated Japanese squadron took off in another direction.  Deeply relieved, Butch O’Hare and his tattered fighter limped back to the carrier. Upon arrival, he reported in and related the event surrounding his return. The film from the gun-camera mounted on his plane told the tale.  It showed the extent of Butch’s daring attempt to protect his fleet. He had, in fact, destroyed five enemy aircraft.

This took place on February 20, 1942, and for that action Butch became the Navy’s first Ace of W.W.II, and the first Naval Aviator to win the Congressional Medal of Honor.  A year later Butch was killed in aerial combat at the age of 29.

His home town would not allow the memory of this WW II hero to fade, and today, O’Hare Airport in Chicago is named in tribute to the courage of this great man. So, the next time you find yourself at O’Hare International, give some thought to visiting Butch’s memorial displaying his statue and his Medal of Honor. It’s located between Terminals 1 and 2.

SO WHAT DO THESE TWO STORIES HAVE TO DO WITH EACH OTHER?

Butch O’Hare was “Easy Eddie’s” son!

Man up!