FRONT-PORCH GOSPEL: Rob the beehive without fear

Welcome, friends, to the “front porch.”

On Oct. 21, I asked my class (yes, I have started back teaching a couple of English classes) to write a thank you note to someone.

My daughter Rachel told me about a writing guru she had heard at a seminar that gave the idea. I wanted to do the same. I felt it was something I needed to do, something I had never done before.

So, I wrote a letter to my daddy, who died in LaGrange, Georgia in 1967. Perhaps this letter will give you an idea of your own:

Dear Daddy,

I have so many things to thank you for, but one in particular is a gift that you gave me long, long ago.

Oh, it was not a gift you can touch, not something wrapped up in fancy wrapping paper with a bow on it and placed under a tree. No, it was much more than that. It was something you would never have thought you had given me. Sometimes these are the best gifts. These are the gifts we live, I guess, and I tried to live yours. The gift is a lesson I learned from you. It is this –

Always rob the beehive without fear.

Someone finding this note and reading it one day would never understand what that means – but you do, I’m sure.

The story is one I would never have known, I guess, had it not been that Emily – your first cousin and my second – wrote this story for me a long time ago.

She told how her dad, Uncle Luther, raised bees out on their farm on the Hutchinson Mill Road.

When it came time to rob the honey from the beehives, he’d go out to the hives dressed to the tilt almost like a soldier going to battle. Not one inch of skin showed beneath all that clothing.

But life, as you and I know, isn’t always that easy. You’ll remember that somehow a bee would always get caught underneath his hood or clothes and drive him crazy.

Ah, we can laugh about that now. So, Uncle Luther did the smart thing (It wasn’t so smart what he tried at first, right?) He called ‘Dut.’ Of course, that’s you.

Dad, you could go out there in a short-sleeved shirt, wearing your regular attire of khaki pants and a white short-sleeved tee-shirt, and you could rob those beehives without even one of the bees even wanting to sting you. I love that story, and I am glad that Emily shared it long ago. What she didn’t say was the reason you could do that. I thought about it a long time, and it became clear to me –

You could rob the beehive that way because you had no fear. The bees knew that, could sense that, and they went about their business doing whatever bees do when they buzz around all day.

Dad, that was a gift you gave me, even without knowing it: You taught me to rob the beehive without fear.

I try to do that every day. Ah, there are a lot of beehives you run into in life, as you know. They’re everywhere, around every corner. You can run into one at the most unexpected of times. I will have to tell you about some of these things later in more detail.

But I was thinking of what I did recently. You’ll shake your head at me probably – or maybe not. You’ll probably understand; but most everybody else we love and who love us have been shaking their head at me. I just kind of smile and go head out to the ‘bee hive.’ I can’t explain it.

What I’m talking about is when I decided a couple of months ago to go back and teach a bit, here at a little school called Ferris High School.

The job kind of fell in my lap. Oh, it has been a full decade since I walked into a classroom, not counting walking into your granddaughter’s fourth grade room – my daughter Rachel’s – and telling her kiddos a story and hyping them up and promising them that they will not have any homework that day, then walking out with a smile. Sometimes I would run into the principal as I headed out and would tell her that she may want to check on that classroom upstairs where my daughter is. The kids are kind of wild, I’d say with a smile.

Outside of that, I had not been in a classroom for ten years. The kiddos I’m teaching were maybe six years old when I last taught. But they’re big now, and they make up quite the beehive.

Oh my, there is new technology you have to learn, new people, and – most of all – adjusting your body and mind to walk into a room and have twenty young people looking at you and wanting to know what you have today to offer.

Sometimes one or two seem to be thinking, “Okay, Coach, I dare you to try to teach me today.” Oh, they’re funny. I guess there are bees like that in every bee hive, but they’re harmless. Now, my job isn’t to rob them, though, but it is to try to give them something they can use. I don’t know how well I’ve done, but I at least can make that trek every day and walk into that hive and do what I do because of what you taught me: Rob the beehive, son, without fear.

That was a great gift – and I want to thank you for it.

Thanks, Dad – your Son

P.S. Dad, wish me luck: These bees are already stirring today, buzzing about the way they do, waiting to see what I’ve got when they buzz into Room 104 later. But don’t worry – I’m walking in with short sleeves and all, just the way my dad used to do a long time ago.