On the Journey
By Rick Hamlin

June 2010

Master Chef
June 30, 2010
In the past week my son Timothy has cooked dinner for me twice. Both nights Carol had meetings and it was just going to be the two of us boys and I figured, coming home at 8:30, that we’d send out for Chinese or maybe try the new Thai place that has opened up on the corner.
On the contrary, I came home to find Tim chopping scallions on the cutting board—good knife skills, Tim—heating up oil in the big skillet and consulting an opened cookbook. “We’re going to have fried rice tonight, Dad,” he said to me.
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Interruption
June 28, 2010
Interruptions in my prayer time. It’s so hard to see them as part of my prayer life, until I get bonked over the head or shaken by the shoulders.
Today I dashed down the stairs to the subway train, gym bag in hand, ready to settle down for my usual contemplation time.
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Bad Memory Day
June 21, 2010
The other day at the gym, first thing in the morning, I tried to remember the name of the vice president of the United States.
My mind went blank. I thumbed through mental Manila files, drawers of them filled up with useless knowledge, like the names of my grammar school teachers, but no, I couldn’t find the name of the vice president.
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Listening
June 14, 2010
Last week, before the Tony Awards, I was at a performance of August Wilson’s play Fences starring Denzel Washington and Viola Davis.
Denzel plays one of those larger-than-life characters, Troy Maxson, a garbage collector and cracker-barrel philosopher with long monologues meant to rivet an audience. Sometimes when you see screen actors on stage, stars like Washington, they can disappoint because they’re used to making an impression for a camera, not a big house with hundreds of rapt theatergoers.
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Prayers for Cancer
June 7, 2010
I came home to find the old green towel hanging in the bathroom. “What’s this out for?” I asked. Carol used to use it for cutting the boys’ hair.
“I cut Eve’s hair.”
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Set the Pace
June 1, 2010
The boys were home this weekend and they asked if I wanted to go on a run with them. “I don’t go as fast you,” I warned, “and I don’t go as far.”
I was giving them the opportunity to go off on their own. “You can set the pace,” they kindly said.
We headed out and I was all set to turn left, up to the park, my usual route, but Tim said, “Let’s go some place different. How ‘bout down by the river?”
“Okay,” I said, “but it’s a long hill coming back up.”
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Rick Hamlin is the executive editor of Guideposts magazine. His regular prayer habit is a psalm a day and some meditation on his commute to work, which happens to be a New York subway train.