A Fellow Named Floyd (& The Wonder of Whimsy)

Floyd.

He has been known for many things. In the early fifties, he was a part of 511 Airborne Division of the United States Army, serving as a paratrooper in Korea. He has been a faithful husband for nearly 64 years to his bride, Patricia and through the years, logged thousands of miles as a truck driver. He joyfully sings in the finest community choirs and hands out Friends and Family Coupons from the local department store when their running the yearly sale. These are just a very few facts about a man named Floyd. The children of our church family simply know him as "The Candy Man".

Every Sunday the bevy of boys in the row in front us (ours included) have been conditioned to excitedly await the passing of the plate and the ushers have learned to brace themselves for the onslaught of hands seeking the Root Beer Barrels and Fire Balls hidden under white offering envelopes, placed there first by Floyd, who is one of the first to pass the plate in his pew up front. Every Sunday he's there (which is nearly every), he'll give you a warm greeting, his hand subtly reaching into his sport coat and reappearing with a licorice string or coffee caramel. He's kind, he's warm, he's funny...and even though it may seem simple, his endless pockets of hard candy belie a soft heart ever ready to hand out a little TLC. 

Floyd's got whimsy and whimsy is wonder-full quality to bestow into the lives of those who have come to expect status quo in the nooks and crannies of life. 

The risk of whimsy is perhaps being misunderstood or inducing eye rolls from the more rigid among us. The wonder of whimsy is sneaking in a little joy between the junk mail and jaded expectations of the every day, handing out small pieces of hope that pull the human heart out of it's funk.

When I pause to consider, I can pull up the faces of those who in my past and present whose lives possess this hallmark of playfulness, and I desperately want to be more like them. The thing with whimsy is it never presents itself quite the same way. It comes from the heart of each individual, never forcing itself on another, but instead offering small acts of care in the most unexpected ways...yet once it's discovered you possess it, there comes an unspoken expectation that the sweet stuff will be waiting in the offering plate each Sunday. Perhaps this is the best kind of dependency we humans can wish for each other...that our love clothed in the wonder of whimsy never wears out or runs dry.