Eric’s Sunday Sermon; Yip Yip Yahoo!!

Yahoo we are alive! “Yip Yip” is really just like “Yahoo”. A cowboy once, I would use this term on the back of a horse. Yip Yip Yahoo has no equivalent in any language. A definition escapes the mind of man. The air is so clean you can shower in it. You have cleaned and loved your horse. She, Maggie, looks at you and before a full dawn, you can see the happy in her eyes to “go for a ride”. You warm her up with a few rounds around the corral. The smell of hay, dirt and her hair are like the finest perfume in Paris. Foot in the stirrup and she side moves to help you up. Gate is open and no nudging or judging is needed. She is off across the dry lake bed. The pink morning clouds are becoming alive. Or maybe the clouds are orange. A breeze of morning is perfect bringing the mountain dew into her nostrils and yours as one.

You lean forward in your saddle and fully release the reigns and hug her neck. She moves from a fine walk into a trot and instead of reigns you grab her mane and let her know she is your own freedom. A light sweat melds with horse and rider as though there is no difference between and perhaps there is not. Then pull back a bit and stand still. Just soaking up air at 8 thousand feet and still snow on the close mountains. Grab the reigns back and give a “click click and a short whistle and she backs up, a good gal. We do that just to shut her down and we both close our eyes and soak up the new sun just coming up over the ridge with the promise of a great day of honest work for us both.

We have our sights on three stray heifers that need to be brought in, they are a rapscallion brew. And then just whip your hat in the sky and start a trot, shout yip yip yahoo so loud it startles the waking quail. Breathe in that fresh mountain air and thank the field you are alive. Perhaps ultimate joy and reveling in it could be Yip Yip Yahoo. As for me, I figure it is not something I fully understand.

I reckon that was just another day at work at 16. At least I got paid 2 big bucks an hour. Maybe that ruined me for office work. I will blame my mom for setting me up for such work and why I am so poor today. Or am I rich? Just like Yip Yip Yahoo that answer is above my pay grade.

In about 2001 I made a serious career mistake. I fell in love. I was smitten. For some time prior I was an international dude. At the drop of a hat I would fly off to Montevideo for a meeting with French and Chinese to promote a deal involving Australia. It was the heady days around the time of the internet bubble. The burst served me well as I had “positioned” for it. Always showing the big wigs a good time on someone else’s dime. Stuff movies are made out of. And then time back home with my elder children and ex-wife. Good times with my children, not just normal BS but time together in appreciation of how little time we may have. Hiking, surfing, walking and just some late nights getting over the latest break up with a flame. That danged holding hands always got me.

So the mistake was to create a marriage. One I could not just leave at the drop of a hat and it ruined those late nights entertaining the big wigs. I, all of the sudden would rather be home with my lady. Stupid. Flash forward a few years and she looked me in the eyes and said “you need to stay home with me.” The eyes were glowing with concern and an extra light. I knew that look and my days of cruising around were over. My second huge business mistake. I held her hand and sat back into a chair. Clearly we were to have a child. But just wait a second.

Goodbye life. Good bye to the life I had carved out. Just 7 or so years in love and marriage and in will come new life. What huge mistakes I had made. Somebody just slap me back to reality. Over thirty years since I road Maggie the horse and here I was about to be a dad again. Boy let the horse run and hold on to the mane. No finer ride than having a child I reckon. And here we are with over 60 of The Boy Teacher Father Student series. These “sermons” may have started back in September of 2013. Maybe the college of children teachers is the best education and lessons and university there is.

I just will go ahead and admit it. I love money. I love hopping on a jet and kicking some business ass. I love scaling a cliff. I love driving over 100 mph. I love waxing eloquent when others who cannot handle the whiskey I plied them with. I like a million dollar deal scribbled on a bar coaster. I like fancy clothes and holding my pinky out as I swirl brandy in a crystal snifter. No not a meaningful love but a life lust.

But real love is family. A 4 year old holding your big finger. A wife holding you to console after a loss are moments beyond compare. Playing horsey on the rug and giggling your butt off is beyond compare. Exploring a daisy with bees around is not ever to be replaced by a contract to sell oil out of Mexico. Mildew and dirt and the smell of baby powder are not replaceable. The sight of an older brother hugging his younger one is enough to bring tears to a hard ridden old cowboy Nothing and nowhere and no one can replace the love of family. I reckon old Maggie was family.

Do not mistake me for a definition of family. What the heck, I am adopted. My brother always told me that “blood is thicker than water”, meaning we were family and nothing was more important. My family stretches so many years and so many tears. And yet my family is within and has no time and no blood lines. We just are family. My eldest brother wrote to me after a letter of mine in apology. “There are no good or bad brothers, just brothers”.

We do not get to decide right and wrong or family or not family. That is above us. We get to decide what we do with that love. You who read this are a part of my family. I like to call it a congregation. What a wonderful term. We congregate and become one, in some kind of wicked love fest. Do not look to me or even at me. I give far, far less than I receive. Hey where would my son be if I had not made those mistakes?

“Are you a giver or a taker” my elder son once asked me. I was being a taker. I was not giving back. They say “ask and ye shall receive” How funny. It is Give and ye shall receive. Love loves giving. I have taken so much perhaps, just perhaps I need to start each day ready to give love. Let reception come and go as it pleases. At any rate; Yip Yip and Yahoo