Moving Parts

+Lowell E. Thomas+

July 10, 1919 - October 14, 2011

“You must be someone special,” said my uncle. “He doesn’t let the rest of us touch this stuff.” So went the last time I saw my grandfather, “Papa.” I got to drive the electric train set he had so lovingly assembled on multiple tracks in the rear bedroom. 

The moving parts of anything motorized or electric were child’s play to him, both in the sense of being easy, and a source of joy. Ham radios were his specialty, and his knowledge of the inner guts of a car was encyclopedic. He could fix anything, thinking in a spatial-technical way that the rest of us could only marvel at.

Though they are many, they are one body. (I Corinthians 12:12) Our bodies have many moving parts; yet we don’t view them as so many items in an assembly line, but rather as a unity, as one whole. Late in his life, Papa connected more deeply to the Christian church. He became a moving part of the mystical body of Jesus. Whole in another sense.

Moved with compassion, Jesus touched their eyes. (Matthew 20:34) When Jesus moves, he moves us with him. He opens our eyes to see all the moving parts. Can I see myself as part of a larger, spiritual whole?

Move me, open my eyes to the living body that Papa joined. Amen. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

We are packing our bags for a place none of us has been.

A place that has to be believed to be seen.

-U2, "Walk On"

Christianity is not a theory or speculation, but a life; not a philosophy of life, but a life and a living process.

-Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The Resurrection Fern - to Papa.