From the beginning, Life Hike Letters (LHL) was designed to share letters, letters of my story that hopefully could help you better hear your own stories. I’ve also hoped that I’d have the opportunity to share some stories of others that have inspired me to better hear my own stories over the years. Although I intended to write a Sky Pilot letter today (that will now happen in Season Two of LHL), my inner voice suggested that I close out Season One by heading down a slightly different path. Today I have the opportunity to begin to share a story of a critical guide and mentor in my Life Hike journey. I also have the opportunity to make good on a commitment I made over a decade ago to that guide and mentor...
I wrote the letter below as a church devotion back in January of 2022. I’ve also used edited versions of the letter on several occasions over the years and received a significant amount of positive feedback. So I invite you to read it today as I conclude with… here’s to you Dad!
January 2022
Dear Readers,
Since I’m writing about letters today, I thought I’d share this message in an actual letter! Before my Dad died a few years ago, and before his dementia set in and took much of his memory, he gave me a box containing a couple hundred letters. They were letters that he wrote home to his family from January 1943 through January 1946. Three years to the month, while he served with the United States Marine Corp. His mom saved the letters and passed them on to Dad when he returned home from the war. When he gave them to me he said, “I want you to have these, maybe you can figure out something to do with them.” When I first got the letters, I randomly opened a few to see what I was working with. It was then that I realized what I had… literally… I had something sacred to share.
I’m not sure why, but although I’ve had these letters for many years now, I’ve never felt the time was right to “do something” with them. On the occasions when I’d pull out a letter and read it, I’d always feel I wasn’t doing the letter, or Dad’s words, justice by sharing them at that point in time.
Although the letters were from a USMC Sergeant, fighting on the front lines of some very significant WWII battles in the South Pacific… he was still just a skinny, 21 year old kid from South Minneapolis, writing home to his family. He was a kid that I didn’t know, and still don’t know. But through those letters I’m getting a better understanding of who that kid was. He was a kid that experienced something totally incomprehensible for most of us. He was a kid who turned out to be my Dad, who always lived a life full of gratitude and faith, a Dad who never quit appreciating all the gifts he’d been blessed with, and who passed those values on to us kids, and his grandkids, the best he knew how.
As a chaplain and pastor, I’ve spent a lot of time in conversation with individuals and small groups talking about their real life experiences, experiences that have greatly impacted their faith lives. It was in those conversations that a person’s history, their experiences in life, and the things they’ve learned, are revealed to others… where the history and wisdom they’ve acquired, is shared so others can learn and grow in their own lives. And now I sit, looking at this pile of hand written letters, sacred letters, from another time and from the other side of the world, trying to figure out how to share the stories, and do them justice.
So now, I wonder where else we might have some sacred stories, letters, conversations… tucked away in unexplored places… just waiting to reveal some valuable history and wisdom that is so needed in our world today. Why don’t you join me in doing the hard work of exploring and digging up some of that “good stuff”. We sure could use it!
With Care, Pastor Dan
As always, I really do appreciate you taking the time to read our letters. I’m especially excited to finally start fulfilling my commitment to Dad by …doing something with these letters… (occasionally and indefinitely is the plan!) I can’t think of a better audience for his stories than My Fellow Hikers!
With Care and Gratitude, Dan
Postscript…
Next Up: A Letter From James, USMC… (Publish Date: Day 02/28/5, S1/L13)
“Why don’t we talk about the guys… that’s the good stuff…”
(My Dad in his 80s telling WWII stories to his grandkids)
