The woman’s face twisted in a paroxysm of wounded rage and confuson. I could see the red webbing spread across the sclera of her widened eyes as she stared at the wall. Then she shook her head.
“He’s going to be all right. This is something they can fix. It’s going to be all right.” She half whimpered, half laughed while her feet kicked up and down like a child sitting in a large, high chair.
“We are going to admit him to one of our intensive care units,” said the doctor. “But I want to be honest with you, I don’t think he can survive this.” The “this” here was a devastating cardiac event. When the heart doesn’t pump properly, oxygenated blood can’t reach the places it needs to reach. Organs begin to fail very quickly, and if enough of these systems fail, we die. This was what Mr. Deng was doing in room eleven of the Emergency Department.
My hand rested upon Mrs. Deng’s shoulder as she shut her eyes and shook her head. Her friend sat close beside her, quiet but attentive. And that is how it is with truth sometimes. Some truths are horrible, and when they rush upon us like a tidal wave, we close our eyes, turn our heads, and pray that we are left standing. Or our loved ones. Above all, we’d like for them to keep their feet, to be protected from the roaring wave.
“Would you like to see him before he’s transferred to the ICU?”
She looked up at me and nodded fervently. “Yes!”
“Okay, if you’re ready, we can go now?”
She nodded again, and her friend and I stood by her and she slowly rose from the chair. Mrs. Deng was about forty years old. Unlike her husband, who was Chinese, she was Caucasian. I watched her closely as she made uncertain steps downs the hallway. I half expected her to face plant onto the cool tile of the floor.
Grief can make anyone crazy. I’ve seen grown adults throw themselves upon the ground in loud demonstrations of grief. It’s easy to judge such displays of vulnerability, and to shake one’s head and ask, “Why can’t they just keep it together?” But sometimes we fall apart. Death can take us apart and leave us blubbering.
But something felt off with Mrs. Deng. She seemed strangely infantile. People regress in crises, but I felt red flags go up that day. Maybe some mental illness, I thought. Or maybe the influence of some drug. It didn’t matter at that moment. At that moment, I walked beside her as she lurched through the hall, shamble-footed and unsteady. I tried to prepare her for when she saw her husband. I told her about the ventilator breathing for him, and the tube that was inserted into his mouth and guided into his trachea. The doctor had said as much earlier, and I was parroting him. It can be shocking to see a loved one connected to strange medical machines.
“He was reading a fucking book!” she said. “That was what he was going to do today, and I wanted him to clean to house!” She laughed. It was a rueful, barking sound. I half crazily wondered what book it was he was planning to read, but I wisely refrained from asking.
We paused outside the room. “We can go in when you’re ready,” I said. She nodded her head, her mouth twitching. And we stepped into the room.
She sat in a chair at his bedside, urging him to wake up. But he never would. Other family members arrived. It wasn’t long before everyone realized that this was a goodbye. They kissed his face, one by one, and left the room.
I spent a lot of time with Mrs. Deng and her family that day, and there is more that could be said about it. Probably a lot that I have forgotten happened. That’s how life is. It rushes by, and some things brand themselves onto our brains and hearts. Some things are lost forever. Her strange suffering is imprinted on me. And I wonder what has become of her. But I’ll always remember the last thing Mrs. Deng said to her husband:
“I’m sorry you didn’t get to finish your book.”
There is something about life I am supposed to learn here. About the chances and changes of life and death. How each moment could be our last. But I can't draw out an easy moral this time. I suppose that sometimes the best we can do is shamble along, hoping that even if we can't understand... we aren't alone. But sometimes even that truth feels as far away as another galaxy, and we feel alone... cold in outer space.
I pray Mrs. Deng does not feel alone...
**Names and medical details have been altered to protect patient privacy.
Saturday, June 29, 2013
Friday, June 28, 2013
Home...Home...Home.
A hermit crab's life must be hell. Or at least one requiring a great deal of adaptability. As life marches on, the crab outgrows its shell. It must find a replacement. One big enough to call home.
I don't know the habits of the hermit crab. These anchorites of the beach have a way of life that is mysterious to me. I suppose I could go to a Wikipedia page, or dust off an old Encyclopedia Britannica, but truly, I'm okay with not knowing everything, or even a little, about hermit crabs. But I do know that they change shells. They heave off the old shell, perhaps with some effort, like an old ring trapped on a swollen finger. I wonder, do they wait until they've found a suitable replacement? Some shiny big shell that calls out, "Home...home...home..." Or do they wriggle out of the shell, and simply crawl into the sand with the crab's equivalent of a hope and a prayer?
I just moved into a house. My first ever purchased home. The boxes were moved. Most of them are even unpacked. The ones that aren't have found a comfortable resting place in an upstairs closet. There are quite a few boxes in that closet... But my point is, moving I did is a kind of First World challenge. I found the house. Packed my belongings. Shucked my shell and slipped quickly into a new one.
If I were to go to the Mojave desert, park my car, and just start walking towards the sunset... with no sense of where I might lay my head that night, or what shelter might protect me, that would be quite like the hermit crab. As stressful as moving as been... it hasn't been dangerous. Not truly.
And of course there are times in life when we are exactly like the crab. We step forward, out of the familiar past and into the future. We slip out of old ideas and entertain new ones. Perhaps we have an idea of who we are... or who someone else is... and what our lives mean together. Or perhaps we step away from an old idea about God. The Holy beckons in some inexplicable way. Calls us into the heat-shimmering desert. We wonder if we will ever see water again. Sure, the well we've been drinking from has grown bitter. But it's wet. It's familiar. Couldn't we just hang back in the shade and drink from the old well? No. Because if we do, we will surely die. And with that knowledge, we follow the lure to find a new Home. With some hybrid of trepidation and hope, we chance the unknown.
And it may be, despite all signs to the contrary... despite our parched throats and sun blistered skin... there is water out there yet, and a place we can call Home.
I don't know the habits of the hermit crab. These anchorites of the beach have a way of life that is mysterious to me. I suppose I could go to a Wikipedia page, or dust off an old Encyclopedia Britannica, but truly, I'm okay with not knowing everything, or even a little, about hermit crabs. But I do know that they change shells. They heave off the old shell, perhaps with some effort, like an old ring trapped on a swollen finger. I wonder, do they wait until they've found a suitable replacement? Some shiny big shell that calls out, "Home...home...home..." Or do they wriggle out of the shell, and simply crawl into the sand with the crab's equivalent of a hope and a prayer?
I just moved into a house. My first ever purchased home. The boxes were moved. Most of them are even unpacked. The ones that aren't have found a comfortable resting place in an upstairs closet. There are quite a few boxes in that closet... But my point is, moving I did is a kind of First World challenge. I found the house. Packed my belongings. Shucked my shell and slipped quickly into a new one.
If I were to go to the Mojave desert, park my car, and just start walking towards the sunset... with no sense of where I might lay my head that night, or what shelter might protect me, that would be quite like the hermit crab. As stressful as moving as been... it hasn't been dangerous. Not truly.
And of course there are times in life when we are exactly like the crab. We step forward, out of the familiar past and into the future. We slip out of old ideas and entertain new ones. Perhaps we have an idea of who we are... or who someone else is... and what our lives mean together. Or perhaps we step away from an old idea about God. The Holy beckons in some inexplicable way. Calls us into the heat-shimmering desert. We wonder if we will ever see water again. Sure, the well we've been drinking from has grown bitter. But it's wet. It's familiar. Couldn't we just hang back in the shade and drink from the old well? No. Because if we do, we will surely die. And with that knowledge, we follow the lure to find a new Home. With some hybrid of trepidation and hope, we chance the unknown.
And it may be, despite all signs to the contrary... despite our parched throats and sun blistered skin... there is water out there yet, and a place we can call Home.
Friday, December 14, 2012
Ablutions
Our lives are never what we think they are. Not completely. As St. Paul wrote a long time ago, "we see in part." And how we see ourselves is likely alien to how others see us. Oh sure, we may strike the same broad strokes from time to time. But mostly we see one another packaged in the wrapping of our own preconceptions.
People have an atmosphere about them like little enfleshed worlds. Meaty brains, numinous minds, and a slew of identities. There's the doctor with his bow tie and his black bag. We know he's a sharp dresser. We know he knows medical science. I enjoy his dry sense of humor, but I have no idea what he thinks of me. But when he woke up this morning he padded his way to bathroom sink and washed the sleep from his eyes. Or some variation on this theme. Maybe he went to the kitchen sink. Maybe he lives by a lake and every morning he dips himself ritually into the near frozen murk as an offering to the gods. He may have dreamed... most likely he did, though he never remembers them. Or maybe he does. He writes in voluminous journals vivid accounts of worlds that melt and bleed into one another, cloud rays and sun showers and stars as cold and soft as snowflakes...
I will never know, entirely. But I can imagine.
It is the same with me. I put on my identity with my trousers and my button up shirt and I go to work. This morning I scraped the ice off my windshield. I smelled hickory burning from some faraway fireplace (and at once I was young again, my dad alive again, and we in his workshop and we making wooden candle sticks shaped like stars and painted red and green just for my mom...). You, sir or madam, pass me in the hall, I smile, look you in the eye, say hello... Or maybe I'm feeling bashful and I look down. To inflict you with my aspect, my eyes, my analysis is something I wish to spare you. And anyway maybe I don't want you inside. Who knows what might be betrayed in a handful of moments? What part of me will been seen that I want hidden? We all have those parts... and we cover them, each in our own way.
The post-modern thinker is aware of context. We have our layers of influence and identity. Our very thoughts are poured within the urn of our place and time. We don't hear it often, but there is always the swishing sound of disturbed waters we carry...
Do you remember the strange story in the Gospel of John about the man waiting by the pool? The man is a "paralytic," and he tells Jesus that he is waiting by the pool because an angel will come and stir up the waters. Being lowered into these waters brings about healing. I wondered how long this man would have waited for that angel? "But I have no one to help me into the water," he said to Jesus. And of course Jesus heals the man. But it is interesting that he never asked Jesus to heal him. In this gospel, miracles are known as "signs." Semeia. The man never saw the angel... never waded into those wing brushed waters... but he took up his mat and walked away... disturbed water and all...
People have an atmosphere about them like little enfleshed worlds. Meaty brains, numinous minds, and a slew of identities. There's the doctor with his bow tie and his black bag. We know he's a sharp dresser. We know he knows medical science. I enjoy his dry sense of humor, but I have no idea what he thinks of me. But when he woke up this morning he padded his way to bathroom sink and washed the sleep from his eyes. Or some variation on this theme. Maybe he went to the kitchen sink. Maybe he lives by a lake and every morning he dips himself ritually into the near frozen murk as an offering to the gods. He may have dreamed... most likely he did, though he never remembers them. Or maybe he does. He writes in voluminous journals vivid accounts of worlds that melt and bleed into one another, cloud rays and sun showers and stars as cold and soft as snowflakes...
I will never know, entirely. But I can imagine.
It is the same with me. I put on my identity with my trousers and my button up shirt and I go to work. This morning I scraped the ice off my windshield. I smelled hickory burning from some faraway fireplace (and at once I was young again, my dad alive again, and we in his workshop and we making wooden candle sticks shaped like stars and painted red and green just for my mom...). You, sir or madam, pass me in the hall, I smile, look you in the eye, say hello... Or maybe I'm feeling bashful and I look down. To inflict you with my aspect, my eyes, my analysis is something I wish to spare you. And anyway maybe I don't want you inside. Who knows what might be betrayed in a handful of moments? What part of me will been seen that I want hidden? We all have those parts... and we cover them, each in our own way.
The post-modern thinker is aware of context. We have our layers of influence and identity. Our very thoughts are poured within the urn of our place and time. We don't hear it often, but there is always the swishing sound of disturbed waters we carry...
Do you remember the strange story in the Gospel of John about the man waiting by the pool? The man is a "paralytic," and he tells Jesus that he is waiting by the pool because an angel will come and stir up the waters. Being lowered into these waters brings about healing. I wondered how long this man would have waited for that angel? "But I have no one to help me into the water," he said to Jesus. And of course Jesus heals the man. But it is interesting that he never asked Jesus to heal him. In this gospel, miracles are known as "signs." Semeia. The man never saw the angel... never waded into those wing brushed waters... but he took up his mat and walked away... disturbed water and all...
Friday, November 23, 2012
Meaning Around the Edge of Darkness
Last night I dreamed I was in the kitchen. It was no kitchen I'd ever seen. Nothing special about it. But it was not mine. Mom and Dad were there. We were talking and I was washing a pan in the sink. That was when the spiders came out. About five or six of them. Little, black jumping spiders. I felt their legs tickle across the top of my hand as they crawled and leaped. And then they began to swarm. Hundreds of spiders, a demon army of tiny biters, gnawing into my arms...
I woke up in the on-call room (where I'm writing this). I turned over on my back and looked up into the dark. It was quiet except for that industrial hum you hear in big buildings. Most of the time it goes unheard. It's just background noise. But it's never truly silent here. The hospital hummed and I let my left hand search my right arm just to reassure myself... that dreams are just dreams.
When the pager shrieked to life, it took me a moment to realize what was happening. Oh, I'm at the hospital. I'm the chaplain on-call. And that's the pager. How strange it is to wake up and put on the garment of one identity... or another. When I wake up in the middle of the night, especially in this place. The stories I tell myself about who I am... what I am... why I am... gather about me like a fog. But in the first few moments, I am No One... and pure being.
It was a Code Blue. A cardiac event. I roused myself, put on my clothes, gathered my cluttered thoughts, and went down... down... down.
The patient's companion was there. She was scared. The doctors and nurses injected medicines and tubes for ventilation for the patient. Still half asleep, I found his anxious loved one waiting outside...
Sometimes it is jarring, going from strange dreams to strange realities. Who knows which is which? Drifting in from the night into someone else's story (she has known him for two decades). Setting aside the biting spiders and my wounds to bear witness to another's nightmare ("even if it's his last breath, I have to see him"). Going from my ambiguous history into another's mystery ("before you knew it, we had a child together").
There is so little I understand. I search and seek, but find few answers. But occasionally I look into the solar eclipse and see light spilling out over the edges of darkness. In life as it happens, in this ongoing river of mystery... we can look into the black heart of Mystery, and if we look hard enough... if we look with one another... maybe we'll catch a glimpse of meaning as it escapes the edges of darkness.
They were able to save him.
For now.
I woke up in the on-call room (where I'm writing this). I turned over on my back and looked up into the dark. It was quiet except for that industrial hum you hear in big buildings. Most of the time it goes unheard. It's just background noise. But it's never truly silent here. The hospital hummed and I let my left hand search my right arm just to reassure myself... that dreams are just dreams.
When the pager shrieked to life, it took me a moment to realize what was happening. Oh, I'm at the hospital. I'm the chaplain on-call. And that's the pager. How strange it is to wake up and put on the garment of one identity... or another. When I wake up in the middle of the night, especially in this place. The stories I tell myself about who I am... what I am... why I am... gather about me like a fog. But in the first few moments, I am No One... and pure being.
It was a Code Blue. A cardiac event. I roused myself, put on my clothes, gathered my cluttered thoughts, and went down... down... down.
The patient's companion was there. She was scared. The doctors and nurses injected medicines and tubes for ventilation for the patient. Still half asleep, I found his anxious loved one waiting outside...
Sometimes it is jarring, going from strange dreams to strange realities. Who knows which is which? Drifting in from the night into someone else's story (she has known him for two decades). Setting aside the biting spiders and my wounds to bear witness to another's nightmare ("even if it's his last breath, I have to see him"). Going from my ambiguous history into another's mystery ("before you knew it, we had a child together").
There is so little I understand. I search and seek, but find few answers. But occasionally I look into the solar eclipse and see light spilling out over the edges of darkness. In life as it happens, in this ongoing river of mystery... we can look into the black heart of Mystery, and if we look hard enough... if we look with one another... maybe we'll catch a glimpse of meaning as it escapes the edges of darkness.
They were able to save him.
For now.
Tuesday, August 28, 2012
Frustration, Desperation, and Hope
I put a new roof on a house of cards. Or triple axle on thin ice. Or clean the teeth of a ravenous leopard. That is how life feels on some days.
Or maybe it is like the dream. You see someone you love in the distance, and when you try to walk towards them, then run towards them, they remain far away. No. They are outdistancing you. Straining forward with all your might, whipping through the wind with every step, but they grow smaller and smaller, unil finally they disappear behind the horizon.
Or it is like climbing that venerable magnolia. At first there are so many branches, easy footholds, handholds... The fat leaves brush across your face and your arms, but you don't notice. You're going upward. You're going as high as you can before your mom sees you and tells you to "Get down from that tree before you kill yourself." You are climbing like Jack and the Beanstock, expecting the uppermost vistas to show you something new. What new perspective will we gain from that height? Will it terrify us, finally, to know how far we can fall?
The entire thing is a gamble. Life. Atoms are mostly empty space. What is to stop me from falling through the floor, the earth, or the sky on the other side of the globe? Physics has an answer (strong force, or weak force, I'm not sure), as to why things are bound so that we do not plummet ceaselessly.
But somedays I feel like I am falling through space. The starfield around me shifts and spins. I can find no north because there is no north. No constellation can guide me home like the old time sailors. I am traveling with strange stars.
And then sometimes I feel as if I am encoffined. I can't press my way above ground again. I can't breathe fresh air. The strength of my will, even at its most brutish, falls short of moving one grain of dirt.
O Reader... I know there is serenity to be found. The absence of desire. Silence and stillness in the peace of God. I know that I live, move, and have my being in the One who both created and sustains the universe. Oh... I know... I know...
But knowing is different than feeling. And somedays, there is only the house of cards and my shakey hands. I take a deep breath and hold the card in between my fingers... praying for stillness. Hoping that this will make a home.
Or maybe it is like the dream. You see someone you love in the distance, and when you try to walk towards them, then run towards them, they remain far away. No. They are outdistancing you. Straining forward with all your might, whipping through the wind with every step, but they grow smaller and smaller, unil finally they disappear behind the horizon.
Or it is like climbing that venerable magnolia. At first there are so many branches, easy footholds, handholds... The fat leaves brush across your face and your arms, but you don't notice. You're going upward. You're going as high as you can before your mom sees you and tells you to "Get down from that tree before you kill yourself." You are climbing like Jack and the Beanstock, expecting the uppermost vistas to show you something new. What new perspective will we gain from that height? Will it terrify us, finally, to know how far we can fall?
The entire thing is a gamble. Life. Atoms are mostly empty space. What is to stop me from falling through the floor, the earth, or the sky on the other side of the globe? Physics has an answer (strong force, or weak force, I'm not sure), as to why things are bound so that we do not plummet ceaselessly.
But somedays I feel like I am falling through space. The starfield around me shifts and spins. I can find no north because there is no north. No constellation can guide me home like the old time sailors. I am traveling with strange stars.
And then sometimes I feel as if I am encoffined. I can't press my way above ground again. I can't breathe fresh air. The strength of my will, even at its most brutish, falls short of moving one grain of dirt.
O Reader... I know there is serenity to be found. The absence of desire. Silence and stillness in the peace of God. I know that I live, move, and have my being in the One who both created and sustains the universe. Oh... I know... I know...
But knowing is different than feeling. And somedays, there is only the house of cards and my shakey hands. I take a deep breath and hold the card in between my fingers... praying for stillness. Hoping that this will make a home.
Saturday, August 25, 2012
On Love: After a Beer in the Moonlight
"You are what you love, not what loves you back." This is true, at least, according to a Jenny Lewis song.
Lifted right out of the context of the song, I suppose that could mean quite a few things. But in my mind I imagine it being the kind of thing you'd say to someone disappointed by love.
To be "dis-appointed" suggests that there is a way things ought to be... that things are appointed. That there is an "oughtness" appointed by Fate or God or by the passion of our hearts. When this "appointment" is foiled... dissed... negated... corrupted... we experience a jarring betrayal. Our appointment with what felt like destiny has been canceled. Life, others, God, ourselves... has not delivered the promised goods.
There is a feverish lie that some believe... I've bought into it. Even though I reject it on an intellectual level, my heart believes this one particular lie; My worth lies in the hearts of other people. So if I am unloved, this must mean I am unloveable. Are you cozy with that lie? Many of us are. So let's unpack this a little more...
"You are what you love, not what loves you back." There is no real guidance here. Just an observation. But I think this could be an empowering statement. What "loves us back" has never been in our control. What we invest our hearts in, is always our choice. We have control there. But what should we love? I wish the song told us.
I also wish the song offered some protective measures. A magic spell against pain. Because the truth is, loving is dangerous. If you love someone with whom you've committed to share your life, and you live happily together "till death do us part," you will not escape the particular parting that death will lay upon you or your spouse. Even if you are together for sixty years, your soul mate will someday die. If you're lucky, you'll go first and never know that pain.
So, that's not looking very good. Perhaps we think about this and feel "disappointed" with God about how this world is set up. We love... only to lose. Is that it? The stakes are so incredibly high...
You may know that marriage is an identity. It is a relationship that permeates your whole being. You ARE what you love... who you love. What happens when the one you love dies? Do people ever think about that last clause in the wedding vows?
I imagine people do. But it's often uncomfortable. The death of someone we love... a partner... spouse... child... parent... means that a part of who we are, maybe even a large part of who we are, has died as well.
Religion offers a few antedotes. One in particular can make a difference, but accessing this antedote requires a strong spirit. You have to practice for a lifetime, because the reality of death is a full contact assault on your entire being. So what, in God's name, helps?
Gratitude, that's what. Now, before you hit the X at the top of your screen because you're put off by the triteness of my antedote, just chill out and keep reading...
I remember the ninety-one year old woman whose heart was weakened and barely working. Her mind remained sharp, however, and as I sat by her bedside I was able to hear about her gratitude. She was grateful for the big Montana sky of her childhood... the horses on her parents' ranch... the life and love she lived her entire life. If she was what she loved, she was many things. She had a large spirit.
Maybe that's a part of the secret. The scope of her love was broad, and so she was able to weather many losses without ever completely losing herself. Instead, she told me she was grateful. She didn't talk to me about the hope of Heaven. She talked about the gift of her life as she lived it. She did not seem "disappointed."
She is an unnamed saint in my memory. An ordinary person who loved extraordinarily. Her gratitude comes from a love that has learned not to grasp onto people, places, or things. Remember in high school when you got your heart broken and someone said to you, "If you love it, you'll let it go... if it loves you, it will return." Well, it's annoying, and even just typing the words makes me want to punch myself in my own face. But that doesn't change the fact that in some sense, it's true. In any case, the important part is the letting go. Love can let go. Because love doesn't own anyone. It accepts... it welcomes... even at great cost.
The courage of the wedding vow comes in the acknowledgement that nothing lasts forever. Health gives way to sickness... death leads to parting... And knowing that, two people can choose to love one another anyway. Grief will someday come, but it is also possible that gratitude will follow someday. The life lived between the alter and the grave means something. It has enriched life... created life... "You are what you love, not what loves you back."
If we love, we may find something that is painful to lose. We are at risk for pain. But if we love no one and no thing... we are nothing. We are frozen in non-living.
I do not know what I will feel on my death bed. But I hope it will be gratitude. I hope that I will be able to look back on a life characterized by loving others, despite what was offered back... despite what eventual loss has come. And I hope that someone loving me... losing me... will find that the journey has been worth the while.
Lifted right out of the context of the song, I suppose that could mean quite a few things. But in my mind I imagine it being the kind of thing you'd say to someone disappointed by love.
To be "dis-appointed" suggests that there is a way things ought to be... that things are appointed. That there is an "oughtness" appointed by Fate or God or by the passion of our hearts. When this "appointment" is foiled... dissed... negated... corrupted... we experience a jarring betrayal. Our appointment with what felt like destiny has been canceled. Life, others, God, ourselves... has not delivered the promised goods.
There is a feverish lie that some believe... I've bought into it. Even though I reject it on an intellectual level, my heart believes this one particular lie; My worth lies in the hearts of other people. So if I am unloved, this must mean I am unloveable. Are you cozy with that lie? Many of us are. So let's unpack this a little more...
"You are what you love, not what loves you back." There is no real guidance here. Just an observation. But I think this could be an empowering statement. What "loves us back" has never been in our control. What we invest our hearts in, is always our choice. We have control there. But what should we love? I wish the song told us.
I also wish the song offered some protective measures. A magic spell against pain. Because the truth is, loving is dangerous. If you love someone with whom you've committed to share your life, and you live happily together "till death do us part," you will not escape the particular parting that death will lay upon you or your spouse. Even if you are together for sixty years, your soul mate will someday die. If you're lucky, you'll go first and never know that pain.
So, that's not looking very good. Perhaps we think about this and feel "disappointed" with God about how this world is set up. We love... only to lose. Is that it? The stakes are so incredibly high...
You may know that marriage is an identity. It is a relationship that permeates your whole being. You ARE what you love... who you love. What happens when the one you love dies? Do people ever think about that last clause in the wedding vows?
I imagine people do. But it's often uncomfortable. The death of someone we love... a partner... spouse... child... parent... means that a part of who we are, maybe even a large part of who we are, has died as well.
Religion offers a few antedotes. One in particular can make a difference, but accessing this antedote requires a strong spirit. You have to practice for a lifetime, because the reality of death is a full contact assault on your entire being. So what, in God's name, helps?
Gratitude, that's what. Now, before you hit the X at the top of your screen because you're put off by the triteness of my antedote, just chill out and keep reading...
I remember the ninety-one year old woman whose heart was weakened and barely working. Her mind remained sharp, however, and as I sat by her bedside I was able to hear about her gratitude. She was grateful for the big Montana sky of her childhood... the horses on her parents' ranch... the life and love she lived her entire life. If she was what she loved, she was many things. She had a large spirit.
Maybe that's a part of the secret. The scope of her love was broad, and so she was able to weather many losses without ever completely losing herself. Instead, she told me she was grateful. She didn't talk to me about the hope of Heaven. She talked about the gift of her life as she lived it. She did not seem "disappointed."
She is an unnamed saint in my memory. An ordinary person who loved extraordinarily. Her gratitude comes from a love that has learned not to grasp onto people, places, or things. Remember in high school when you got your heart broken and someone said to you, "If you love it, you'll let it go... if it loves you, it will return." Well, it's annoying, and even just typing the words makes me want to punch myself in my own face. But that doesn't change the fact that in some sense, it's true. In any case, the important part is the letting go. Love can let go. Because love doesn't own anyone. It accepts... it welcomes... even at great cost.
The courage of the wedding vow comes in the acknowledgement that nothing lasts forever. Health gives way to sickness... death leads to parting... And knowing that, two people can choose to love one another anyway. Grief will someday come, but it is also possible that gratitude will follow someday. The life lived between the alter and the grave means something. It has enriched life... created life... "You are what you love, not what loves you back."
If we love, we may find something that is painful to lose. We are at risk for pain. But if we love no one and no thing... we are nothing. We are frozen in non-living.
I do not know what I will feel on my death bed. But I hope it will be gratitude. I hope that I will be able to look back on a life characterized by loving others, despite what was offered back... despite what eventual loss has come. And I hope that someone loving me... losing me... will find that the journey has been worth the while.
Saturday, July 7, 2012
The Beginning of Wisdom
"Fear is the mind-killer."
Bene-gesarit saying
from Frank Herbert's Dune
Fear can save us from the sabertooth tiger, but it often keeps us in terrible marriages, keeps us from pursuing a particular vocation, keeps us from opening our hearts... from living life, even. But why should that matter?
It is said in the book of Proverbs that the beginning of wisdom is the "fear of the Lord." The better translation probably would render "fear" as "respect," but on some days I wonder if there is something to the traditional wording.
We are born in a certain time. I was born on a snowy morning Anno Domini 1979, on the planet Earth, the continent known as North America, in the State known as Tennessee. My father was a fifty-two year old pathologist. My mother was younger. They'd been married two years when the "bump" known as Me began to show. For years they told me I was not an "uh-oh" baby, but it WAS an accidental pregnancy. One "slipped through the goalie," apparently.
Or maybe it was the hand of God that orchestrated it. I am here for a purpose. Like John the Baptist or Jacob the Cheat. I'm "William the..." I won't suggest an adjective. I'm "Will." It's less formal that way.
Yeah, sure. God planned it out that I would be here. But does this mean that God also planned the unknown miscarriages that occur for most sexually active women? Something like one in three conceptions self-aborts. I don't have the documentation on this. This may be bunk. But I remember that the number surprised me. Life is conceived... often it is never known to exist... and it dies. All in the bright shadows of life and love and happenstance. It happens all the time.
There is the shadow of terror here. I could have been one of "those" that Life did not select. And you also!
In an alternative universe, which many theoretical physicists now believe exist, I have died. In a billion trillion other worlds, I have lived, died, and never been born. I am beginning to feel some of that fear... I mean, respect, for the Lord.
Yet, I have trouble bending the knee. Calling God the "Lord" is suspect to me for many reasons. There are the social-academic reasons. Imperial models of relating to God are very medieval... nay... antique! In first century Rome, where one inclined their heads before an Emperor, it was well and good to refer to God as "Kurios," or "Lord." New Testament authors, comfortable with the monarchical models suggested by their Old Testament forebears, spoke of the Kingdom of God. But do we have any real kingdoms here today? Tooday everything is democratic. Everyone has a voice. In the United States, we have no class. Er... classes. I meant to say CLASSES. And so, in this day, we imagine that God does not WANT to be called a King. It's too masculine. Too imperial. And despite the tongue in cheek quality of this paragraph, such imperial labels have wedded religious justification to the oppression of millions over the centuries. The way we talk, after all, affects how we think and live. So if you talk about "the Lord" a lot, you have a very strong sense of hierarchy. Perhaps you are the king of you own castle?
Still, in our attempts to evolve our images of God and life, I wonder if we have disempowered God?
Damn it all to hell. I was not trying to turn this into a sermon. This was to be a personal type blog. It never fails, however, that I sway towards the preacherly. I was trying to talk about FEAR... and I swerved into God's lane.
We should probably fear God. Any Being that could generate these myriad universes is a Power.
Oh, it's not that I think God is "up there" waiting to smite us because we have premarital sex or have a shot of whisky. Course, we might get smote with a baby if we don't use protection. Or a DUI. But I don't think God will drop a piano on our heads out of indignation.
I think I fear God in the same way I fear the edge of the Grand Canyon. If I fall off this ledge, I'm gone. I fear God the same way I fear an asteroid flying throught the blank dark of space. How many worlds have been destroyed in the history of the universe? Is my life so special as to be protected? Does God "have a special plan" for me that protects me from such? Yet I am drawn forward by siren song. Will I be lured towards Meaning, or dashed upon the rocks? Don't we live in a universe where the rocks are inevitable? Is Meaning as clearly promised?
All of that is the fear of mysterious great powers. Things Bigger Than Us. Awe. Terror. Rilke says that "Beauty is the beginning of Terror." and that "Every angel is terrifying." And so it is. So it is. God is beautiful.
I think the grief our world lives with today is the death of Destiny. At least, this seems true among intelligent folks. People who have reflected upon the chances and changes of life, who have seen the Universe strike down the innocent with pancreatic cancer or aneurysms with utter capriciousness... they find it hard to believe in personal destiny. Echoes of Job, there.
On the other hand, there are still plenty of people who DO seem to believe in it, but their victory seems cheap. Sunshine Christians who never admit to feeling doubt or fear. Of course, when tragedy does strike, and they do not feel so perpetually "blessed," many become psychotic religionists... unwilling to mesh their personal experience with their triumphalistic understanding of God... OR they become the most violent of atheists. What can you say to these people? Even the Psalmist had enough faith to doubt. Even Jesus sweated the big stuff in the garden.
But I think there are many people who have lost their sense of Destiny. I am sometimes one of them.
To feel as if we are a part of a grand Story may or may not be an option. We are born and place our feet into the cold stream as it passes. The river's beginning or end has no practical bearing on us. We are only one foot in, and soon we are done, followed by others who have made their way there from unknown provinces.
Yet there is the shock of cold water we feel on our ankles when we tenderly step into the water. There is the smoothness of the stone underneath the balls of our feet. There is the crawdad that disappears into a cloud of murk, while the water spiders transport across the surface like electrons. We look up and see others around us, tenderly padding their way across the stream, hands and arms outstretched for balance. The rapid knocking of an unseen woodpecker resonates in the air... nature's jackhammering, to be sure, yet cleaner somehow than the human version. We feel the warm air on our faces, the sunshine... or the rain. We smile, we lament, we hold hands, we walk alone.
Maybe there is a Story. Maybe there isn't. But we have the walk across the stream. We have our brief moment with others who share this time and space with us. This time has never existed before and will never come again. We share our atoms with stars and dinosaurs and ancestors, but THIS configuration right now is unique to us... just as theirs was unique to them.
There are fools who sometimes get it right. People who tatoo "YOLO" somewhere on their bodies. The sentiment seems to be "You only live once," so party hard while you can. But what if we used an awareness of our mortality... the single, strange limitedness of our one wild lives... to spur us towards awakening? What if we find ourselves walking across the stream, and realize that we should give this journey our best efforts, our best attention?
Life is a mysterious guest sitting across from us at the table. We are sharing a meal. There is a beginning, and there is an end. Will we be attentive to what this interesting Stranger could tell us? Will we lean forward on our elbows, and gaze into the Stranger's eyes, hanging onto every word? What would we ask of this One? What would we offer of ourselves?
If you feel a little intimidated... a tinge of fear. Then perhaps you really have arrived at the beginning of wisdom.
Bene-gesarit saying
from Frank Herbert's Dune
Fear can save us from the sabertooth tiger, but it often keeps us in terrible marriages, keeps us from pursuing a particular vocation, keeps us from opening our hearts... from living life, even. But why should that matter?
It is said in the book of Proverbs that the beginning of wisdom is the "fear of the Lord." The better translation probably would render "fear" as "respect," but on some days I wonder if there is something to the traditional wording.
We are born in a certain time. I was born on a snowy morning Anno Domini 1979, on the planet Earth, the continent known as North America, in the State known as Tennessee. My father was a fifty-two year old pathologist. My mother was younger. They'd been married two years when the "bump" known as Me began to show. For years they told me I was not an "uh-oh" baby, but it WAS an accidental pregnancy. One "slipped through the goalie," apparently.
Or maybe it was the hand of God that orchestrated it. I am here for a purpose. Like John the Baptist or Jacob the Cheat. I'm "William the..." I won't suggest an adjective. I'm "Will." It's less formal that way.
Yeah, sure. God planned it out that I would be here. But does this mean that God also planned the unknown miscarriages that occur for most sexually active women? Something like one in three conceptions self-aborts. I don't have the documentation on this. This may be bunk. But I remember that the number surprised me. Life is conceived... often it is never known to exist... and it dies. All in the bright shadows of life and love and happenstance. It happens all the time.
There is the shadow of terror here. I could have been one of "those" that Life did not select. And you also!
In an alternative universe, which many theoretical physicists now believe exist, I have died. In a billion trillion other worlds, I have lived, died, and never been born. I am beginning to feel some of that fear... I mean, respect, for the Lord.
Yet, I have trouble bending the knee. Calling God the "Lord" is suspect to me for many reasons. There are the social-academic reasons. Imperial models of relating to God are very medieval... nay... antique! In first century Rome, where one inclined their heads before an Emperor, it was well and good to refer to God as "Kurios," or "Lord." New Testament authors, comfortable with the monarchical models suggested by their Old Testament forebears, spoke of the Kingdom of God. But do we have any real kingdoms here today? Tooday everything is democratic. Everyone has a voice. In the United States, we have no class. Er... classes. I meant to say CLASSES. And so, in this day, we imagine that God does not WANT to be called a King. It's too masculine. Too imperial. And despite the tongue in cheek quality of this paragraph, such imperial labels have wedded religious justification to the oppression of millions over the centuries. The way we talk, after all, affects how we think and live. So if you talk about "the Lord" a lot, you have a very strong sense of hierarchy. Perhaps you are the king of you own castle?
Still, in our attempts to evolve our images of God and life, I wonder if we have disempowered God?
Damn it all to hell. I was not trying to turn this into a sermon. This was to be a personal type blog. It never fails, however, that I sway towards the preacherly. I was trying to talk about FEAR... and I swerved into God's lane.
We should probably fear God. Any Being that could generate these myriad universes is a Power.
Oh, it's not that I think God is "up there" waiting to smite us because we have premarital sex or have a shot of whisky. Course, we might get smote with a baby if we don't use protection. Or a DUI. But I don't think God will drop a piano on our heads out of indignation.
I think I fear God in the same way I fear the edge of the Grand Canyon. If I fall off this ledge, I'm gone. I fear God the same way I fear an asteroid flying throught the blank dark of space. How many worlds have been destroyed in the history of the universe? Is my life so special as to be protected? Does God "have a special plan" for me that protects me from such? Yet I am drawn forward by siren song. Will I be lured towards Meaning, or dashed upon the rocks? Don't we live in a universe where the rocks are inevitable? Is Meaning as clearly promised?
All of that is the fear of mysterious great powers. Things Bigger Than Us. Awe. Terror. Rilke says that "Beauty is the beginning of Terror." and that "Every angel is terrifying." And so it is. So it is. God is beautiful.
I think the grief our world lives with today is the death of Destiny. At least, this seems true among intelligent folks. People who have reflected upon the chances and changes of life, who have seen the Universe strike down the innocent with pancreatic cancer or aneurysms with utter capriciousness... they find it hard to believe in personal destiny. Echoes of Job, there.
On the other hand, there are still plenty of people who DO seem to believe in it, but their victory seems cheap. Sunshine Christians who never admit to feeling doubt or fear. Of course, when tragedy does strike, and they do not feel so perpetually "blessed," many become psychotic religionists... unwilling to mesh their personal experience with their triumphalistic understanding of God... OR they become the most violent of atheists. What can you say to these people? Even the Psalmist had enough faith to doubt. Even Jesus sweated the big stuff in the garden.
But I think there are many people who have lost their sense of Destiny. I am sometimes one of them.
To feel as if we are a part of a grand Story may or may not be an option. We are born and place our feet into the cold stream as it passes. The river's beginning or end has no practical bearing on us. We are only one foot in, and soon we are done, followed by others who have made their way there from unknown provinces.
Yet there is the shock of cold water we feel on our ankles when we tenderly step into the water. There is the smoothness of the stone underneath the balls of our feet. There is the crawdad that disappears into a cloud of murk, while the water spiders transport across the surface like electrons. We look up and see others around us, tenderly padding their way across the stream, hands and arms outstretched for balance. The rapid knocking of an unseen woodpecker resonates in the air... nature's jackhammering, to be sure, yet cleaner somehow than the human version. We feel the warm air on our faces, the sunshine... or the rain. We smile, we lament, we hold hands, we walk alone.
Maybe there is a Story. Maybe there isn't. But we have the walk across the stream. We have our brief moment with others who share this time and space with us. This time has never existed before and will never come again. We share our atoms with stars and dinosaurs and ancestors, but THIS configuration right now is unique to us... just as theirs was unique to them.
There are fools who sometimes get it right. People who tatoo "YOLO" somewhere on their bodies. The sentiment seems to be "You only live once," so party hard while you can. But what if we used an awareness of our mortality... the single, strange limitedness of our one wild lives... to spur us towards awakening? What if we find ourselves walking across the stream, and realize that we should give this journey our best efforts, our best attention?
Life is a mysterious guest sitting across from us at the table. We are sharing a meal. There is a beginning, and there is an end. Will we be attentive to what this interesting Stranger could tell us? Will we lean forward on our elbows, and gaze into the Stranger's eyes, hanging onto every word? What would we ask of this One? What would we offer of ourselves?
If you feel a little intimidated... a tinge of fear. Then perhaps you really have arrived at the beginning of wisdom.
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