Today’s guest post comes from Steve.

I’m not sure why my parents sent me to confirmation classes. Ours was not a very religious family. While my parents rarely felt moved to attend church services themselves, they had a fuzzy notion that it would be good for my sister and me to go, and so they sent us.

I have vivid memories of all the ways I conspired to avoid going to church. I learned to fake a fever (if you spin a thermometer fast enough in your mouth, the temperature goes up). I would always lie in bed deep into Sunday morning, hoping my mother would forget me, emerging when it was too late for her to order me to church.

My best ploy involved my “Sunday go to meeting pants,” the formal trousers that I only wore to church. One day my grandmother gave me a discarded library dictionary, a musty, leather-bound monster so heavy I barely could pick it up with two arms. I arranged my Sunday pants in a pile on top of the radiator in my room and put the dictionary on them. If Mom ever caught me on a Sunday morning and insisted that I go to church, I’d disappear into my room and come out with pants so horribly wrinkled that no homeless guy would wear them. “Look, Mom!” I’d cry, my voice ringing with disappointment, “I can’t go to church in THESE!” My mother purely hated ironing. This gimmick always worked.

But I didn’t need to dress up for Confirmation Class, so the pants couldn’t save me. I think I was 14 the year they taught that class. That was a bad time, a time when I was convinced I was one of life’s big losers. Since I didn’t think much of myself I could hardly expect anyone else to respect me. Worse, I was beginning to resent what seemed like arbitrary edicts from my parents. I’d always been a sweet and compliant child—you could call me a disgusting little apple polisher around all authority—but now I was beginning to see the world with my own eyes.

Confirmation class was not intellectually demanding, and I didn’t mind it much. We mostly chased each other around the big old brick church in noisy games of tag. When the teachers caught us and sat us down for bible lessons, I found those lessons curious but innocuous.

To celebrate our impending graduation from Confirmation class, our minister—who shall remain nameless here, although I am tempted—joined our class one evening as a sort of visiting celebrity. The minister was in a genial mood, entertaining us with funny stories. He was a dry old Scotsman who was mostly famous for interminable Sunday sermons so boring that the statue of Jesus sometimes went to sleep.

The first started with a question. “Catholic nuns wear those big cloaks that have their heads hidden under a cowl,” he said. “But did you ever wonder what a Catholic nun looks like underneath that cowl?” I never had given a moment’s thought to what nuns wore, and I was beginning to find this story creepy. “One night I visited a nun who wasn’t expecting company, and I caught her without her cowl. And guess what? She was bald as a billiard ball underneath! Bald as a billiard ball!”

I felt like the wind had been knocked out of me. This was the first time in my life I had encountered naked bigotry. I was shocked that this nasty, gossiping old man was the minister of my church.

The minister next plunged into the evolution controversy. “You probably have heard of this man Darwin and his screwball ideas,” said the minister. “Well, I don’t know about you, but I am not related to any monkey!”

That was totally confusing. Related to a monkey? Once again I felt disgust for the minister, but this time it felt better. Apparently there were people who thought differently from him. Somewhere in the world there was a guy named Darwin who said things that outraged my minister. Cool! I had an ally. I looked forward to learning more about this Darwin.

Here is a picture of the Confirmation Class of 1956. I’m the chubby dweeb just behind and to the left of the minister. What a smile! You’d never guess that I was at this moment struggling to hide my contempt for the first authority figure to spark rebellion in my heart. That ember of independent thinking would glow quietly for several years before it burst into flame, but it all started here.

Was there ever a time when you suddenly realized that you needed to rebel from authority?

Today’s guest post comes from Steve.

In the interest of candor, I must admit that Liam’s four-day trip to visit his grandfather has not been all pleasant. Liam, just two years old, was terrified by the airplane that flew him from Portland to Minnesota. For complicated reasons, my daughter Molly stayed at a nearby motel rather than camping out in my home. Liam hated the motel. He sobbed at night, unable to sleep in strange surroundings, partly because he had an ear infection that flowed openly. All of Molly’s love and patience could not console him. We learned a difficult lesson. Liam, at this age anyway, is not a confident traveler.

Molly would show up at my home each morning with hollow eyes. Liam’s eyes were red and puffy from another bad night. “Hello Grampa,” he’d say softly, running to give me a big hug.

That’s when the Baboon angels—those Trail Baboon women who loaned us toys—would appear on hushed wings to work their magic.

I’d say, “Liam, you know this is a funny house, a real funny house. The Toy Fairy flies here to leave surprises for you. I happen to know that the Toy Fairy came again last night. If you walk around, you might find some new toys!”

Liam would disappear, walking gingerly as if he were concerned about spooking the toys and causing them to flee. He would reappear toting or pushing some new toy, perhaps a rolling musical popper, a dump truck or a kid-sized plastic shopping cart.

All the toys loaned to us were chosen with the wisdom of an experienced mother. All got played with and enjoyed. I can’t name them all and wouldn’t try, but every single toy was a hit. Liam is enthusiastic about transportation at the moment, so cars, planes and trains all triggered a strong response.

If things ever got a little slow and Liam became restless, I would call him to me. “Liam, I can’t be sure, but I think I just saw that goofy Toy Fairy again! Do you suppose she left you more toys?”

The toys saved the trip. Molly had expected that we would need to drive from museum to zoo to library to aquarium in order to entertain Liam. Instead, he spent all his hours gleefully pushing little cars on my coffee table, putting the baby doll down “nighty-night” and herding plastic animals in and out of a red plastic barn. We didn’t waste precious time driving around, and this arrangement maximized the contact between Liam and his doting grampa (who got to develop a great many distinctive sound effects for internal combustion engines, to say nothing of all the different animal sounds).

The highlight of the four-day trip was a birthday party at my nephew’s home in Saint Louis Park. The party included 16 people. Liam is a party animal. He adores people, the more the better. He went about interacting with everyone, offering toys to them and occasionally running back to Molly or me to give us monster hugs, his head laid affectionately on our laps.

When my nephew brought out a bag of foam blocks, Liam delighted in making stacks of them so he could knock them down. Soon the bag was empty and 100 foam blocks were strewn all over the living room floor.

At Liam’s daycare in Portland, they teach kids to take care of their own messes. They sing a little song (“Clean up! Clean up!”) while teachers and kids put each toy back where it belongs. One of the teachers occasionally shouts “Hel-LOOOOO?” at the kids to get their attention so they will get stay on-task. Liam has embraced the clean-up ethic. He cheerfully put toys away at my home.

At the party, adults were laughing at the chaos Liam had made of the blocks when we were startled to hear someone singing in a pure, sweet, high voice. Liam was picking up foam blocks to chuck them into the big plastic bag they came in. He carried on singing and chucking until all 100 blocks were back home.

Clean up! Clean up!
Everybody! Everywhere!
Clean up! Clean up!
Everybody do your share!

And occasionally, in a voice that was clearly not his own, Liam would bark out: Hel-LOOOO?” To him, it was part of the song!

Life isn’t perfect, and there were difficult moments in this trip that Molly and I had dreamed about for over a year. But life gives us flashes of unanticipated joy to balance out the challenges. On this visit, any time little negatives cropped up we would hear the gentle flutter of angel wings and another collection of toys would magically appear.

Have you been involved in an enterprise that was unexpectedly saved by an angel?