This Monday, my grandfather, Eddie Bayuszik would have turned 100 years old. Just 29 years ago, before his 71st birthday, he had a massive heartattack while taking a deposition at the courthouse he still freelanced for, and died.

I wasn't yet 19 years old, our birthdays are seperated by just 10 days, and I'm the oldest of the grandkids. We were devasted as he was a, as my Spanish friends say, personaje, or a character.

I won't talk about everything here, but he was a WW2 Navy vet that had impeccable handwriting and became a court reporter or stenographer.  He was tall, loud, funny, adored chocolate and tomatoes even though he was allergic later in life. He laughed hard, played hard, had a brilliant mind and memory and was the first real feminist to send all 5 of his daughters to college and wave his big red hankerchief when they walked down the graduation aisle.

I know I owe my brains to him (and of course my mother!) my ability to talk to to anyone from anywhere at anytime (driving my introvert people insane) and boy did he pass down his vanity. When Nana died, my sister phoned me from Africa to remind me, this was a Bayuszik funeral and we had to drag out the curlers, panyhose and lipstick. We did, and I still remember the 6inch heels I wore.

And over time, and especially this last week, I realized that I married a man that has a lot of things in common. Grandad wrestled with anger as a young man, and my own has had his moments too. However, time and faith did and have softened both. But the fire for justice, peacy and mercy burns bright and hard.

This translated both into Grandad and Andrew into a deep abiding faith of practicality. Quick to speak of God's love, but first, hugs, long talks, service, and more of the practical aspect of faith rather than mysticisim.

This is not to derail or deny a mystic encounter with God. Eddie did. He had dreams that pushed him to find a minister that knew Jesus' love, and Andrew knows that the world is not all that we only see. However, it is the working out of faith with fear and trembling that marked my grandfather, and marks Andrew as well.

The past and and present of these men in my life ground me. It's easier for me to find the emotional/mystic/meditative experience, but frankly, as good as those all are, it only serves my ego and not much more. Granted, when I feel better, and more firm, relaxed, convinced, its easier for me to serve. However, my service to God, first to myself and then to others, is not based on a feeling.

The Good news is far from only emotionalism or intellectualism. If we focus on one, the other fails and ceases to exist. And sadly enough, may of the current and past branches of evangelicalism have focused on one or the other.

I have suffered at the hands of both sides. I've been accused of lacking in correct theology and lacking my spiritual discipline. Because I've not peppered with writing with verses and citations, I've been accused of not preaching the gospel.

My grandfather was soaked in God's word. He memorized large tracts of it, even into his 60s, as if he was making up for lost time. His last years were dedicated to being the treasurer of the Child Evanglism Fellowship in Butler, PA, where they are dedicated to instructing kids about Jesus, and probably because he felt he never learned young enough in life.

But his daily life was marked by service. When our car broke down in the middle of the night in some random place in Ohio, he jumped in his car and drove 3 hours to come and get us. He and Nana drove, DROVE, with my aunt and uncle and baby cousin from PA all the way to Costa Rica just because they knew it would be safer to do so with an older couple. He built houses in the jungle, he fixed engines, he gave out hugs and kisses and doggedgly served a community he loved and lived in passionately. And so much more I don't even know about.

He was misunderstood. It was too practical. Too daily bread for the mystics, the theologians, and he got critiqued.

And so is my own husband. Neither of these men if they stood before you would claim to be perfect, on the contrary, they would tell you they were sinners, but NOW they are new creations. They lived and live in that joy of being a new person because of Jesus' love and the quiet, constant transformation power of the Holy Spirit.

The horrific horror of the current evangelical church today is that it is determined that men need to be patriachs without giving them permission to be lamenters, feminists, passionate servants in the work and art and physical realm. The prophets are still rejected. The justice seekers are still denied. The servants are unrecogznied. The creatives critqued and decried for pushing the envelope to understand God's image in all of us.

And this will never change. The men and women who long for these aspects of the Kingdom of heaven will always be ostracised. Service in humilty makes many people feel uncomfortable. Being helped means you have to have a response. Love, when given unconditionally, demands quietly a reaction, and not everyone is emotionally prepared or ready to reciprocate.

Its why those men and women who were most morally dedicated to the Jewish cause, both in religious and political manners, lost the point with Jesus. They weren't ready, they were hardened, and they couldn't understand that love, in service, can merely be received and thanked. The women who cried and anointed Jesus' feet got it. The centurion who's beloved servant lived instead of dying, got it. Blind Bartiemous who asked for his dignity back, got it. Even wealthy Joseph of Arimathea, and Mary and Martha who had all they wanted but their brother, got it. Yes, and even stubborn, proud, fisherman, jock Peter, got it.

But the moral police, won't. The people who clutch their pearls over alternative lifetstyles, may never. The racists, the sexists, the patriarchal society, never will see Jesus.

Because he shows up in so many faces, some that look like my blustery, brilliant grandfather and husband who love so much, because they realized how much they were loved first.