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...
Friday, December 14, 2012
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.
Tuesday, June 12, 2012
Dad, I'd like to talk.
Every summer, back when my dad was still alive, my parents and I would go to the Isle of Palms. This was a summer tradition. I didn't realize how lucky I was then, but by God I know now. Trips to the beach, to beautiful Charleston, to Patriot Points Naval and Maritime Museum. I have been aboard the USS Yorktown so many times, I could probably give you a tour. 
My dad loved the aircraft museum. He was a quiet man, but he grinned like a kid when he'd look at the Hellcat in the hangar. I was partial to the F4J-Phantom. I think his love for the aircraft came from his Air Force days. Before he was a civillian pathologist, he was in the AF during the 50's and 60's. He was actually trained to fly a few larger aircraft, although his primary job was to practice medicine. Sometimes when I go to Tennessee, I go to the garage and I find his flight helmet. I pick it up. I wonder. He really loved the Air Force.
And of course I find his stethoscope. An old blood pressure cuff. Even a black doctor's bag. I brush the dust off of these things, and I talk to my dad.
"Why didn't you tell me this world was a mad house?"
OR
"How did you survive the death of your first marriage?"
OR
"I'm doing the best I can. I really am."
OR
"Thank you for being a kind, wise, loving father, and not a jerk."
BUT MOSTLY
"I miss you."
If you have a loved one who's died, it's likely you talk to them too. I don't suppose I'll ever stop.
These days I am trying to recover something from the past. I've always been interested in the past. Anyway, I've decided that the symbol of this "recovery act" is my own body. I'm trying to eat well. Trying to exercise. I've lost thirty-five pounds so far. This means I weigh about 268 pounds. In high school, when I played football and wrestled, I weighed in the 190-205 range. Dad got sick in April of 1996. Died a few months later. I kind of just gave up after that. But now I've decided a change in policy is in order.
I know that getting to 200lbs again won't bring my dad back. But this process, for me, is about bringing something of myself back. It is about a journey to a place better than Charleston... or ANY city. Walt Whitman wrote a poem entitled, "Passage to India." In this poem he celebrates the great technological accomplishments of humankind. Laying down telegraph wire across an ocean... circumnavigating the globe... You'll remember that centuries ago, Europeans were obsessed with a shortcut to India. Finding a "passage to India" was a symbol for progress, and indeed, Whitman heaped praise upon the advances made over the centuries. But he laid a bold charge down for the reader at the end. We are charged to take "passage to MORE than India." Despite the technological advances, Whitman felt that the last great frontier was spiritual.
I do hope to return to Charleston again someday. I hope to return with people I love. But my deepest hope is to passage to more to India... to go more deeply into my own heart... more deeply into the heart of God. I imagine that I bring my dad with me in this journey, and all the people I love. With such good company, I know that I will not fail. And who knows what I might find?
My dad loved the aircraft museum. He was a quiet man, but he grinned like a kid when he'd look at the Hellcat in the hangar. I was partial to the F4J-Phantom. I think his love for the aircraft came from his Air Force days. Before he was a civillian pathologist, he was in the AF during the 50's and 60's. He was actually trained to fly a few larger aircraft, although his primary job was to practice medicine. Sometimes when I go to Tennessee, I go to the garage and I find his flight helmet. I pick it up. I wonder. He really loved the Air Force.
And of course I find his stethoscope. An old blood pressure cuff. Even a black doctor's bag. I brush the dust off of these things, and I talk to my dad.
"Why didn't you tell me this world was a mad house?"
OR
"How did you survive the death of your first marriage?"
OR
"I'm doing the best I can. I really am."
OR
"Thank you for being a kind, wise, loving father, and not a jerk."
BUT MOSTLY
"I miss you."
If you have a loved one who's died, it's likely you talk to them too. I don't suppose I'll ever stop.
These days I am trying to recover something from the past. I've always been interested in the past. Anyway, I've decided that the symbol of this "recovery act" is my own body. I'm trying to eat well. Trying to exercise. I've lost thirty-five pounds so far. This means I weigh about 268 pounds. In high school, when I played football and wrestled, I weighed in the 190-205 range. Dad got sick in April of 1996. Died a few months later. I kind of just gave up after that. But now I've decided a change in policy is in order.
I know that getting to 200lbs again won't bring my dad back. But this process, for me, is about bringing something of myself back. It is about a journey to a place better than Charleston... or ANY city. Walt Whitman wrote a poem entitled, "Passage to India." In this poem he celebrates the great technological accomplishments of humankind. Laying down telegraph wire across an ocean... circumnavigating the globe... You'll remember that centuries ago, Europeans were obsessed with a shortcut to India. Finding a "passage to India" was a symbol for progress, and indeed, Whitman heaped praise upon the advances made over the centuries. But he laid a bold charge down for the reader at the end. We are charged to take "passage to MORE than India." Despite the technological advances, Whitman felt that the last great frontier was spiritual.
I do hope to return to Charleston again someday. I hope to return with people I love. But my deepest hope is to passage to more to India... to go more deeply into my own heart... more deeply into the heart of God. I imagine that I bring my dad with me in this journey, and all the people I love. With such good company, I know that I will not fail. And who knows what I might find?
Monday, June 11, 2012
Anton's Syndrome
Today I learned about Anton's Syndrome. There are two symptoms of this stroke-induced disorder. The first is "cortical blindness." There's nothing wrong the eyes, it's that the part of the brain that translates what the eye sees is damaged, so that the person is blind. If it seems strange that a person with perfectly healthy eyes can be blind, then consider the next symptom... The patient is unaware that they are blind.
The doctor said that this was a less common syndrome. And truthfully, it's hard to imagine that it exists. Blind people who are not even aware that they are blind. So they will go to the doctor's office, and they will flat out deny to the physician that they are blind. So the good doctor asks the patient, "What does my tie look like?" And the patient answers. Of course, the description is wrong. He's blind, remember? But the patient actually believes he is seeing the doctor's tie. It's not like the patient is lying. His brain supplies an image for the "mind's eye," and it is as real to the patient as the brown dog I see lying at my feet. Of course, one could question the reality of my perspective. This goes to the old philosophical question of whether or not we are seeing "things in itself," or merely "representations of ideas." But that's not the dog I'm gonna send to go hunt. Not tonight anyway.
As I said, Anton's Syndrome isn't common. But I personally feel acquainted with it. Maybe you do too. Seems like we go about life, assuming that our common sense is actually common. We assume that we see things as they are. We're a practical people. And we trust our senses. But should we? Don't we all have "blind spots?" This can be particularly frightening if we are driving our cars. We prepare to merge into the next lane. We check our mirrors, we glance over our shoulder, and begin our drift... only to be honked at! A man drives by and you can't hear a word he's saying. But you know what he's saying. You know. And it scares us terribly... to be waylaid by unforeseen blindness.
As dangerous as this can be on the road, there is are places where eyes that normally see 20/20 fail to catch the light. That place is called "Love." Ain't nobody got an eagle-eye as far as Love is concerned.
This is because love involves people, and people are an ever unfolding mystery. Friendship is not dissimilar. Any type of relationship wiggles out of ability to apprehend it entirely. We see what we see... in others... in ourselves, for reasons we can scarcely comprehend. We see an enemy possibly because we have an enemy. Or maybe we merely need one. Maybe you know what I mean. We've all pointed an accusing finger at some whipping boy. "It's that bastard's fault I said... did... feel... etc." The opposite is often true. We need an ideal. A hero. Someone to adore. People do this to their ministers. We're expected to be "better," more pure. Our families are more orderly. We have calm, Spirit-rich lives. If we have any faults, they're laughable. We're Ned Flanders. We're sexless. I remember putting my pastor on a pedestal... with golden intentions. Of course, he never was a real person to me. He was a priestly function. An "enter" key that I could press to start a new paragraph.
We also do this to lovers. I was once accused to putting someone on a pedestal. She smiled when she said it. Joked with me and asked me if "Wonder Woman" had any faults. I smiled. I hurt. While I have put women on pedestals before, I realize now the pitfalls of such wide-eyed praise. When we elevate our Loves in impossible ways, when we refuse to acknowledge their limitations, their outright faults, or at least the things about them that drive us crazy, WE MISS WHO THEY ARE!
Wonder Woman's words hurt. I wondered, "Does she believe that anyone who really knows her would find it hard to love her?" And maybe my pride was hurt a little. I think I see things... people... pretty clearly. I believe I have the courage and the will to see others "as they are."
I know now that this is not always true. Sometimes, whether I'm pointing at a scape-goat or at someone I admire, I am actually pointing at my own blindness.
The heart is a dark place. We can barely know our own hearts, and it is faith that lets us feel like we can know another's.
Another word for "Faith" is "Trust." In the end, life requires a lot of Trust from us. It is a key ingredient in the recipe for love and/or friendship. It is essential for the reading of our own souls, because it's our soul that will tell us where to go, what to do. It is where God speaks. And even though we often see and hear God according to our own needs and conveniences, we "see through a glass darkly," as St. Paul says... we still catch a few glimpses.
The patient with Anton's Syndrome may not be physically able to trust the doctor's diagnosis. But we can accept our blind spots if we have the courage to acknowledge them. We might not ever see anything very clearly, but who knows... with a little trust, and a lot of love... we might get some of this Life stuff right.
The doctor said that this was a less common syndrome. And truthfully, it's hard to imagine that it exists. Blind people who are not even aware that they are blind. So they will go to the doctor's office, and they will flat out deny to the physician that they are blind. So the good doctor asks the patient, "What does my tie look like?" And the patient answers. Of course, the description is wrong. He's blind, remember? But the patient actually believes he is seeing the doctor's tie. It's not like the patient is lying. His brain supplies an image for the "mind's eye," and it is as real to the patient as the brown dog I see lying at my feet. Of course, one could question the reality of my perspective. This goes to the old philosophical question of whether or not we are seeing "things in itself," or merely "representations of ideas." But that's not the dog I'm gonna send to go hunt. Not tonight anyway.
As I said, Anton's Syndrome isn't common. But I personally feel acquainted with it. Maybe you do too. Seems like we go about life, assuming that our common sense is actually common. We assume that we see things as they are. We're a practical people. And we trust our senses. But should we? Don't we all have "blind spots?" This can be particularly frightening if we are driving our cars. We prepare to merge into the next lane. We check our mirrors, we glance over our shoulder, and begin our drift... only to be honked at! A man drives by and you can't hear a word he's saying. But you know what he's saying. You know. And it scares us terribly... to be waylaid by unforeseen blindness.
As dangerous as this can be on the road, there is are places where eyes that normally see 20/20 fail to catch the light. That place is called "Love." Ain't nobody got an eagle-eye as far as Love is concerned.
This is because love involves people, and people are an ever unfolding mystery. Friendship is not dissimilar. Any type of relationship wiggles out of ability to apprehend it entirely. We see what we see... in others... in ourselves, for reasons we can scarcely comprehend. We see an enemy possibly because we have an enemy. Or maybe we merely need one. Maybe you know what I mean. We've all pointed an accusing finger at some whipping boy. "It's that bastard's fault I said... did... feel... etc." The opposite is often true. We need an ideal. A hero. Someone to adore. People do this to their ministers. We're expected to be "better," more pure. Our families are more orderly. We have calm, Spirit-rich lives. If we have any faults, they're laughable. We're Ned Flanders. We're sexless. I remember putting my pastor on a pedestal... with golden intentions. Of course, he never was a real person to me. He was a priestly function. An "enter" key that I could press to start a new paragraph.
We also do this to lovers. I was once accused to putting someone on a pedestal. She smiled when she said it. Joked with me and asked me if "Wonder Woman" had any faults. I smiled. I hurt. While I have put women on pedestals before, I realize now the pitfalls of such wide-eyed praise. When we elevate our Loves in impossible ways, when we refuse to acknowledge their limitations, their outright faults, or at least the things about them that drive us crazy, WE MISS WHO THEY ARE!
Wonder Woman's words hurt. I wondered, "Does she believe that anyone who really knows her would find it hard to love her?" And maybe my pride was hurt a little. I think I see things... people... pretty clearly. I believe I have the courage and the will to see others "as they are."
I know now that this is not always true. Sometimes, whether I'm pointing at a scape-goat or at someone I admire, I am actually pointing at my own blindness.
The heart is a dark place. We can barely know our own hearts, and it is faith that lets us feel like we can know another's.
Another word for "Faith" is "Trust." In the end, life requires a lot of Trust from us. It is a key ingredient in the recipe for love and/or friendship. It is essential for the reading of our own souls, because it's our soul that will tell us where to go, what to do. It is where God speaks. And even though we often see and hear God according to our own needs and conveniences, we "see through a glass darkly," as St. Paul says... we still catch a few glimpses.
The patient with Anton's Syndrome may not be physically able to trust the doctor's diagnosis. But we can accept our blind spots if we have the courage to acknowledge them. We might not ever see anything very clearly, but who knows... with a little trust, and a lot of love... we might get some of this Life stuff right.
Sunday, June 3, 2012
Currency
I once met a dying actor. He enjoyed a "hey, it's THAT guy" sort a fame. Had a few guest roles in a few tv shows in the 80's. Was in a few B movies. Had a supporting role in one big movie. He had cancer.
"There is one thing I have learned," he said in a soft voice. "It's that money can give us a false sense of security." I was a CPE resident at the time, making half of what I make now as a professional staff chaplain, and what I make now makes me the poorest person you know with a Masters degree from Wake Forest University. So I was curious about this man's comment.
I had learned that a LACK of money gives me a very real sense of insecurity. Of course, I knew that money wasn't the panacea that our culture makes it out to be. If I had made money my goal, I'd have chosen a profession that commands a lot of bank. It's not that hard. Or it's no harder than what I do now. In any case, I feel fortunate. I have meaningful work, and I make enough. But when I was a resident, I did not make enough. Still, I listened to the patient.
"Take this cancer for instance," he said. "No matter how much money I throw at this, I'm going to die."
All of a sudden my mind is filled with literary and film references. Remember in the Jodie Foster movie Contact? She has a benefactor. A strange, some would say deranged, billionaire. He is riddled with cancer and as a last resort has paid for transport up to the Russian space station Mir. Apparently the zero G environment slows the progress of cancer. That's probably not factual (I mean, have studies been done on this? If I were an oncologist I would absolutely want to look into this, but only if it meant a trip into space). In any case, Mr. Twisted Benefactor of Jodie Foster ended up dying.
In the Michael Crichton novel, Next, there is, yet again, another billionare who runs into deadly health issues. He too, attempts to throw money at the problem. He owns a biotech company that does research on the cutting edge of gene therapy. At the end of the book, despite his mindblowingly vast resources, this man dies on the operating table.
Of course, this is fiction. It is also true. The movie star did eventually die, and his words have remained with me.
It strikes me that the acquistition of wealth is yet another attempt to control reality. To a limited extent, the wealthy DO have a lot of control. Certainly corporations "too big to fail," or those with money to invest in controlling our political leaders, have some degree of power.
But they still don't have the capital that really matters. They have a limping currency that only goes so far. Despite the "lording over" quality that many executives exhibit in their lives--just look at Donald Trump and his ability to make pronouncements for the world to hear, despite his lack of anything substantial to say--each of them will die. But even in the middle class, we live in the vale of illusion. Our climate controlled homes buffer us from the elements, our cars allow us a quality of convenience unheard of in the vast span of human history, our Medicine can temporarily pull us from the jaws of death... a person "dies" on the table, but medications and electricity can revive them. But what is any of this worth if no one considers the essential things?
The only currency worth a damn is love.
People living in abject poverty understand this. It is tempting for us living with air conditioning to sentimentalize "the poor" as merely salt of the earth folk. The truth is, they can be just as wretched as the rest of us, though their lives are shorter and more brutish than ours. I'm not going to go into Somalia expecting to find entire populations of centered, wise, contented people. However, there are people living in these hells-on-earth capable of experiencing and enjoying love. They have fewer distractions from mortality than we do, but some people have discovered that which makes life worth preserving and fighting for: Love.
We don't have much control over the universe. Despite the optimism of the movies, if an asteroid careens towards our planet, there is nothing we can do to stop it. Nuking a Texas sized asteroid is a fantasy. If said asteroid comes calling, we will be obliterated. If the sun goes beserk, we die. WHEN another ice age comes, many of us will die. Cancer will keep on coming, but even if we cure that... old age will surely get us.
Some people figure, "Hey, no problem. I'm going to Heaven anyway." But if THIS life didn't matter, Jesus wouldn't have spent his life teaching people how to live in. Whatever happens post-death... and no one knows for sure... we have the opportunity to love God, to love others.
So if you are tired of spending yourself for the woefully limited currency of money, consider investing yourself in Love. It's stock has never gone down, and it will prove more sustainable than Facebook.
But if you win the lottery tomorrow, remember the little people, ie, me. I'd love to try steak tartare in Paris someday.
"There is one thing I have learned," he said in a soft voice. "It's that money can give us a false sense of security." I was a CPE resident at the time, making half of what I make now as a professional staff chaplain, and what I make now makes me the poorest person you know with a Masters degree from Wake Forest University. So I was curious about this man's comment.
I had learned that a LACK of money gives me a very real sense of insecurity. Of course, I knew that money wasn't the panacea that our culture makes it out to be. If I had made money my goal, I'd have chosen a profession that commands a lot of bank. It's not that hard. Or it's no harder than what I do now. In any case, I feel fortunate. I have meaningful work, and I make enough. But when I was a resident, I did not make enough. Still, I listened to the patient.
"Take this cancer for instance," he said. "No matter how much money I throw at this, I'm going to die."
All of a sudden my mind is filled with literary and film references. Remember in the Jodie Foster movie Contact? She has a benefactor. A strange, some would say deranged, billionaire. He is riddled with cancer and as a last resort has paid for transport up to the Russian space station Mir. Apparently the zero G environment slows the progress of cancer. That's probably not factual (I mean, have studies been done on this? If I were an oncologist I would absolutely want to look into this, but only if it meant a trip into space). In any case, Mr. Twisted Benefactor of Jodie Foster ended up dying.
In the Michael Crichton novel, Next, there is, yet again, another billionare who runs into deadly health issues. He too, attempts to throw money at the problem. He owns a biotech company that does research on the cutting edge of gene therapy. At the end of the book, despite his mindblowingly vast resources, this man dies on the operating table.
Of course, this is fiction. It is also true. The movie star did eventually die, and his words have remained with me.
It strikes me that the acquistition of wealth is yet another attempt to control reality. To a limited extent, the wealthy DO have a lot of control. Certainly corporations "too big to fail," or those with money to invest in controlling our political leaders, have some degree of power.
But they still don't have the capital that really matters. They have a limping currency that only goes so far. Despite the "lording over" quality that many executives exhibit in their lives--just look at Donald Trump and his ability to make pronouncements for the world to hear, despite his lack of anything substantial to say--each of them will die. But even in the middle class, we live in the vale of illusion. Our climate controlled homes buffer us from the elements, our cars allow us a quality of convenience unheard of in the vast span of human history, our Medicine can temporarily pull us from the jaws of death... a person "dies" on the table, but medications and electricity can revive them. But what is any of this worth if no one considers the essential things?
The only currency worth a damn is love.
People living in abject poverty understand this. It is tempting for us living with air conditioning to sentimentalize "the poor" as merely salt of the earth folk. The truth is, they can be just as wretched as the rest of us, though their lives are shorter and more brutish than ours. I'm not going to go into Somalia expecting to find entire populations of centered, wise, contented people. However, there are people living in these hells-on-earth capable of experiencing and enjoying love. They have fewer distractions from mortality than we do, but some people have discovered that which makes life worth preserving and fighting for: Love.
We don't have much control over the universe. Despite the optimism of the movies, if an asteroid careens towards our planet, there is nothing we can do to stop it. Nuking a Texas sized asteroid is a fantasy. If said asteroid comes calling, we will be obliterated. If the sun goes beserk, we die. WHEN another ice age comes, many of us will die. Cancer will keep on coming, but even if we cure that... old age will surely get us.
Some people figure, "Hey, no problem. I'm going to Heaven anyway." But if THIS life didn't matter, Jesus wouldn't have spent his life teaching people how to live in. Whatever happens post-death... and no one knows for sure... we have the opportunity to love God, to love others.
So if you are tired of spending yourself for the woefully limited currency of money, consider investing yourself in Love. It's stock has never gone down, and it will prove more sustainable than Facebook.
But if you win the lottery tomorrow, remember the little people, ie, me. I'd love to try steak tartare in Paris someday.
Friday, May 4, 2012
Are you Neurotic, or Psychotic?
I once heard a psychologist say that there are no totally healthy people. We are either neurotic, or we are psychotic. This was meant to be a joke, but it seems pretty true to me.
But we should go easy on ourselves. Life itself calls to those unbalanced places inside of us. There is a mad spirit in each of us, just waiting for those special triggers so they can come out. As a neurotic, "silence" is sometimes one of those triggers.
When our neuroses is awakened, silence can be threatening. We meet a stranger, and they don't instantly warm to us in the ways that we can recognize, the neurotic assumes the worst. The ambiguity of the situation invites worry. "This person doesn't like me." Everyone needs to be accepted. But we neurotics crave it. What's worse, we're pretty sure we're not going to get it.
Some people, I suppose, go through life without ever worrying about this. They come and go in their social interactions without a care in the world. But I think most of us know what it is to wonder if the person in front of us is a friend, a foe, or apathetic either way.
There is tons of self-help literature on this. Therapists pay their bills with this. And many of us well-meaning neurotics wander the world just a little bit crazy.
Needy people absolutely annoy the hell out of me. When I reflect upon why that is... what that particular type of person bothers me... I become a little uncomfortable. Wise people have long known that what pisses us off in other people is often an issue we ourselves own.
I recognize that I am sometimes a difficult friend. I'm not going to write my Confessions here in a "blog," but I can at least say, "I am sometimes quite neurotic. It bothers me. I'm aware it's not always easy for others to bear."
My purpose in mentioning all of this, is that ALL of us are driven by subconscious forces pretty much all of the time. You may be a neurotic. I certainly am.
I think that an acknowledgement that we human beings are psychologically complex creatures helps us understand why we do what we do... hope for what we hope for... fret over what we fret over. With more understanding, our lives become richer. We cannot cure our own neuroses, but we can be suspicious of it when we recognize it. If we're aware of our respective strands of crazy, we MAY be more sensitive and aware regarding the struggles of others. If we can look inward and recognize "the crazy" when it gets triggered, and if we can refrain of judging ourselves harshly (as needy, for example), then maybe we'll have the energy to move through our self-doubts and our unhelpful "self-talk" and start living better lives.
All that is easier said than done. The last year... with a divorce... with a move (across town, but still..)... with the upheaval of so much so quickly... has brought me into a more tender, vulnerable frame of mind. When I assess patients, I look for what interior resources they draw upon to cope. As I assess myself, I know that on some days, I'm driving through the Mojave on fumes. And it is during these times that my brand of insanity kicks in overdrive. Perhaps you can relate... in your own way.
Life is more than what we know. For instance, I know that God holds me close and watches over me. I know that my friends and family love me. I know that I am worthy of love and respect (and so is everyone else). But on dark nights... or even when sitting across from a friend... or talking with a group of people... the specter of loneliness appears. Questions of our worth surface. We feel our regrets more sharply. We suspect that those who love us actually just put up with us. In short, we entertain deluded thoughts and feelings.
What would happen if each time this happened to us, we stopped and asked ourselves if this "triggering thought/feeling" were true? What if we refused to take for granted those woeful voices that echo in our hearts? What if most of the bad stuff we think about ourselves is just plain bull shit? And what if we neurotics could be okay with not being everyone's Number One? Life might just end up being a lot easier if we gave some of that up.
But we should go easy on ourselves. Life itself calls to those unbalanced places inside of us. There is a mad spirit in each of us, just waiting for those special triggers so they can come out. As a neurotic, "silence" is sometimes one of those triggers.
When our neuroses is awakened, silence can be threatening. We meet a stranger, and they don't instantly warm to us in the ways that we can recognize, the neurotic assumes the worst. The ambiguity of the situation invites worry. "This person doesn't like me." Everyone needs to be accepted. But we neurotics crave it. What's worse, we're pretty sure we're not going to get it.
Some people, I suppose, go through life without ever worrying about this. They come and go in their social interactions without a care in the world. But I think most of us know what it is to wonder if the person in front of us is a friend, a foe, or apathetic either way.
There is tons of self-help literature on this. Therapists pay their bills with this. And many of us well-meaning neurotics wander the world just a little bit crazy.
Needy people absolutely annoy the hell out of me. When I reflect upon why that is... what that particular type of person bothers me... I become a little uncomfortable. Wise people have long known that what pisses us off in other people is often an issue we ourselves own.
I recognize that I am sometimes a difficult friend. I'm not going to write my Confessions here in a "blog," but I can at least say, "I am sometimes quite neurotic. It bothers me. I'm aware it's not always easy for others to bear."
My purpose in mentioning all of this, is that ALL of us are driven by subconscious forces pretty much all of the time. You may be a neurotic. I certainly am.
I think that an acknowledgement that we human beings are psychologically complex creatures helps us understand why we do what we do... hope for what we hope for... fret over what we fret over. With more understanding, our lives become richer. We cannot cure our own neuroses, but we can be suspicious of it when we recognize it. If we're aware of our respective strands of crazy, we MAY be more sensitive and aware regarding the struggles of others. If we can look inward and recognize "the crazy" when it gets triggered, and if we can refrain of judging ourselves harshly (as needy, for example), then maybe we'll have the energy to move through our self-doubts and our unhelpful "self-talk" and start living better lives.
All that is easier said than done. The last year... with a divorce... with a move (across town, but still..)... with the upheaval of so much so quickly... has brought me into a more tender, vulnerable frame of mind. When I assess patients, I look for what interior resources they draw upon to cope. As I assess myself, I know that on some days, I'm driving through the Mojave on fumes. And it is during these times that my brand of insanity kicks in overdrive. Perhaps you can relate... in your own way.
Life is more than what we know. For instance, I know that God holds me close and watches over me. I know that my friends and family love me. I know that I am worthy of love and respect (and so is everyone else). But on dark nights... or even when sitting across from a friend... or talking with a group of people... the specter of loneliness appears. Questions of our worth surface. We feel our regrets more sharply. We suspect that those who love us actually just put up with us. In short, we entertain deluded thoughts and feelings.
What would happen if each time this happened to us, we stopped and asked ourselves if this "triggering thought/feeling" were true? What if we refused to take for granted those woeful voices that echo in our hearts? What if most of the bad stuff we think about ourselves is just plain bull shit? And what if we neurotics could be okay with not being everyone's Number One? Life might just end up being a lot easier if we gave some of that up.
Wednesday, April 25, 2012
Bread Crumbs in the Air
Disclaimer: In order to protect patient privacy, some of the details of the cases I write about have been changed. This is true in everything I write, unless I have been given permission to do otherwise. The end.
The other day I was called into a patient's room. She is very sick. A tube runs down her throat and a machine breathes for her. There are other medications dangling from IV poles. I once saw something written by a physician about the number of "lines" a patient has. If it is above a certain number, it is almost certain the patient will die. I don't remember the number. I wouldn't tell you if I did. Because I'm not a doctor, and I don't want you counting the IV bags in your loved one's ICU room. Let's look at our loved ones instead.
Family members stood around the patient's bed. They requested a chaplain visit, and so I came by. After introductions were made, which included me greeting the patient out of respect, we began to talk with one another.
I can guess that the family wants me to pray with them, but I don't jump ahead to that. First, we talk. I hear some of the surface details first. How she came to be sick. How it was for the family when she was taken to one hospital, and then finally she was transferred over here.
"She's was doing really well since the last time," said a daughter. "We thought we were going to lose her then, but she recovered." The woman heaves a shaky sigh. "She has had a few good months."
And now I'm listening closely. Because I am curious as to what the daughter thinks will happen. I want to know what her hope looks like, what flavor and texture it has. Because I've counted the IV lines and have an almost certain knowledge of how this will end. But they don't know that. And really... can I know for sure?
On another night I was on-call, there was a Code Blue called for a youngish woman. Her heart had stopped, and doctors and nurses, pharmacists and everyone else you could think of, were crowded around her with a crash cart. Nurses took turns doing CPR, driving her chest down to keep her blood moving, while probably breaking a few ribs in the process. Drugs were administered. And then a pulse. The heart rhythm didn't look good, but they could stop doing CPR for the moment. The blood pressure was moving in the right direction... and then it wasn't. Suddenly the patient crashed once again. CPR was needed, again. A river of medicine shot into her body, again.
This happened for hours. For most of the night, actually. I sat with the family in the waiting room, and I knew for certain this woman was going to die. It was only a matter of when the family would allow the team to let nature take its course. Because it was the medicines keeping her alive. As soon as they wore off, she'd crash all over again. You don't have to be a doctor to know that you can't live on epinephrine for the rest of your life.
After countless rounds of this, the family decided that if her heart stopped one more time, that the team should refrain from extraordinary measures. But her heart didn't stop any more. As they had decided to let her go, she turned a corner.
In the days that followed, I was sure that this patient would have serious brain damage. Our brains need oxygenated blood. When our hearts stop... even with the ACLS protocols running at full tilt... it is difficult to get enough blood to vital organs (like the brain) for any length of time. But as she roused, she was completely with it. I would visit, time and time again, only to find her stronger... smiling... joking with family. Family that I would have told that first night, "Let her go. There's nothing more they can do." Now... Reader... you may be thinking, "Don't practice medicine." But I wasn't the only one shaking my head. The doctor on-call figured she would die as well, and was just as surprised as I was. But she lived. She went home, somewhere in the hollers of eastern Kentucky. It was an honest to God miracle, not only that she survived, but that she didn't spend the rest of her days taking her food through a tube.
Back to this other patient... the older, sicker one I mentioned at the beginning. Their family has finally asked me to pray. I asked them what they would to pray for, and the daughter said, "That she'll be healed."
And this woman WILL be healed. It may be death that liberates her from the medicines and the machines, and God may receive her into a Home where no one gets sick anymore. Or it may be that she recovers in the traditional way. One never knows.
Sometimes I think prayer is like throwing bread crumbs in the air, hoping that a bird will fly by and catch them. You never know what's going to happen. We know that God isn't a Cosmic Santa Claus, who exists to give us what we want if we just pray hard enough. Plenty of people have died of cold or hunger with a prayer on their lips. A thought which makes me uncomfortable. There's always a theological answer to these questions. Panentheistic process theology offers theory that makes these deaths somewhat palatable. But in the world of flesh and blood, no answer can stand in the face of suffering. To blame it on a "fallen creation" is to be lazy. To accept that no answer will work requires a bit more humility.
I prayed for this woman, her family. As best as I could. And before the bread crumbs fall to the ground, or disappear forever, I have taken the hands of this sick woman's children into my own. In the quiet, we watch, together. They are not counting the lines. They are just looking upon their loved one, sending her prayers and love through the tears in her eyes.
The other day I was called into a patient's room. She is very sick. A tube runs down her throat and a machine breathes for her. There are other medications dangling from IV poles. I once saw something written by a physician about the number of "lines" a patient has. If it is above a certain number, it is almost certain the patient will die. I don't remember the number. I wouldn't tell you if I did. Because I'm not a doctor, and I don't want you counting the IV bags in your loved one's ICU room. Let's look at our loved ones instead.
Family members stood around the patient's bed. They requested a chaplain visit, and so I came by. After introductions were made, which included me greeting the patient out of respect, we began to talk with one another.
I can guess that the family wants me to pray with them, but I don't jump ahead to that. First, we talk. I hear some of the surface details first. How she came to be sick. How it was for the family when she was taken to one hospital, and then finally she was transferred over here.
"She's was doing really well since the last time," said a daughter. "We thought we were going to lose her then, but she recovered." The woman heaves a shaky sigh. "She has had a few good months."
And now I'm listening closely. Because I am curious as to what the daughter thinks will happen. I want to know what her hope looks like, what flavor and texture it has. Because I've counted the IV lines and have an almost certain knowledge of how this will end. But they don't know that. And really... can I know for sure?
On another night I was on-call, there was a Code Blue called for a youngish woman. Her heart had stopped, and doctors and nurses, pharmacists and everyone else you could think of, were crowded around her with a crash cart. Nurses took turns doing CPR, driving her chest down to keep her blood moving, while probably breaking a few ribs in the process. Drugs were administered. And then a pulse. The heart rhythm didn't look good, but they could stop doing CPR for the moment. The blood pressure was moving in the right direction... and then it wasn't. Suddenly the patient crashed once again. CPR was needed, again. A river of medicine shot into her body, again.
This happened for hours. For most of the night, actually. I sat with the family in the waiting room, and I knew for certain this woman was going to die. It was only a matter of when the family would allow the team to let nature take its course. Because it was the medicines keeping her alive. As soon as they wore off, she'd crash all over again. You don't have to be a doctor to know that you can't live on epinephrine for the rest of your life.
After countless rounds of this, the family decided that if her heart stopped one more time, that the team should refrain from extraordinary measures. But her heart didn't stop any more. As they had decided to let her go, she turned a corner.
In the days that followed, I was sure that this patient would have serious brain damage. Our brains need oxygenated blood. When our hearts stop... even with the ACLS protocols running at full tilt... it is difficult to get enough blood to vital organs (like the brain) for any length of time. But as she roused, she was completely with it. I would visit, time and time again, only to find her stronger... smiling... joking with family. Family that I would have told that first night, "Let her go. There's nothing more they can do." Now... Reader... you may be thinking, "Don't practice medicine." But I wasn't the only one shaking my head. The doctor on-call figured she would die as well, and was just as surprised as I was. But she lived. She went home, somewhere in the hollers of eastern Kentucky. It was an honest to God miracle, not only that she survived, but that she didn't spend the rest of her days taking her food through a tube.
Back to this other patient... the older, sicker one I mentioned at the beginning. Their family has finally asked me to pray. I asked them what they would to pray for, and the daughter said, "That she'll be healed."
And this woman WILL be healed. It may be death that liberates her from the medicines and the machines, and God may receive her into a Home where no one gets sick anymore. Or it may be that she recovers in the traditional way. One never knows.
Sometimes I think prayer is like throwing bread crumbs in the air, hoping that a bird will fly by and catch them. You never know what's going to happen. We know that God isn't a Cosmic Santa Claus, who exists to give us what we want if we just pray hard enough. Plenty of people have died of cold or hunger with a prayer on their lips. A thought which makes me uncomfortable. There's always a theological answer to these questions. Panentheistic process theology offers theory that makes these deaths somewhat palatable. But in the world of flesh and blood, no answer can stand in the face of suffering. To blame it on a "fallen creation" is to be lazy. To accept that no answer will work requires a bit more humility.
I prayed for this woman, her family. As best as I could. And before the bread crumbs fall to the ground, or disappear forever, I have taken the hands of this sick woman's children into my own. In the quiet, we watch, together. They are not counting the lines. They are just looking upon their loved one, sending her prayers and love through the tears in her eyes.
Tuesday, April 24, 2012
An Aging Sacrament
You never know about someone else's interior life. You see their heads in the hallway. Their eyes as they look at computer screens or at their patient's chart. Someone stands over an elderly man in a loose fitting hospital gown. His neck and shoulder are covered with age spots. When I see his face, his eyes are vacant. Open but seeing nothing. The nurse is adjusting one thing... then another. She is wearing pink scrubs. Her eyes are flickering around, gathering information. Seeing much, presumably, but one can never tell. Does she know that this blank faced man before her was once a toddling boy? Does she know that he's not just an elderly fall-risk, but an aging sacrament? Do I know these things?
I lug my body around like a boy in a nightmare. I used to be so fast. So weightless. Oh, I am still young. Youngish. I look in the mirror and I see myself. I see that my skin has its scars and blemishes, like a car that's not old yet, but not new anymore. I've picked up a few dings. I look into my eyes, which are too small for my taste, and wonder: "Who the hell are you?"
I look around and see people and wonder what they think and feel. The doctor is deep into the Epocrates app on his iPhone, but just before he was making a grocery list. A physical therapist carries something that looks like a giant seat belt, but a moment before she was thinking about the new Trader Joe's going up on Nicholasville Rd. Everyone else is working, carefully tending to their tasks, but probably thinking about sex. And even though most of us probably think about that quite a bit, I won't write more about it, lest you become embarrassed.
There is another temptation. To see each person as a random bag of meat. Or as a consumer. Or as a pathology. Even ministers fall prey to this. If a church loses bodies in the pews, then something must be wrong. "The church is dying." Every person is reduced to some quantifiable bit of commerce. We look for what we can get and we arrive at simple, obvious conclusions.
Look over there... THAT person is a patient. He has a patient ID number. An admitting diagnosis. Doctors have a list of numbers that tell us why that person is here. They have another list of numbers that tell us when they get to leave. At some point, the numbers get so bad that there's nothing much more to do than to just bury them.
But he could have been a hero. Or a devil. Yes, I've picked on the doctors. But professors and business execs muddle along in similar exercises. Chaplains do too.
Let's go back to the "aging sacrament" in the first paragraph. Here is the truth: We can't know what he's thinking. But he is a means of experiencing God.
He may have dementia, or he may be drugged, or he may have a low IQ, or he may be a genius. Doesn't matter. For all we know this patient is somewhere in his childhood. Visiting with friends from long ago. Sitting on his grandpa's knee. Stealing his first kiss from a girl at the high school dance. Toddling towards his mother's loving arms. We don't know. Maybe he is communing with God. He has nothing to say to us, because he's heading into an undiscovered country, and the views are extraordinary. We see a "fall risk," but who knows what he sees? Who knows what we could see if we looked hard enough.
We make lists... label things and people... to establish order out of chaos. We HAVE to. But the universe is strange. People are strange. And when we see another person, we are gazing at a mystery. We are looking at God.
When you see me next, you won't know what I'm thinking. And you will be a mystery to me. If we are honest, we might find that we are mysteries to ourselves much of the time. That is, perhaps, disturbing. True seeing doesn't give us fixed definitions. We see that everything, including our understanding, must always be in a state of flux. We look in the sky and see that even the stars are moving... changing. Does that frighten us? Or does it stir something adventurous inside of us? Every moment the world is created anew. Every moment that elderly man, draped in his hospital gown, points us towards the ineffable, riddles of the universe we will never fully grasp.
Our job is to keep searching anyway. The bread crumbs, I believe, will lead us somewhere. Then again, do they need to?
I lug my body around like a boy in a nightmare. I used to be so fast. So weightless. Oh, I am still young. Youngish. I look in the mirror and I see myself. I see that my skin has its scars and blemishes, like a car that's not old yet, but not new anymore. I've picked up a few dings. I look into my eyes, which are too small for my taste, and wonder: "Who the hell are you?"
I look around and see people and wonder what they think and feel. The doctor is deep into the Epocrates app on his iPhone, but just before he was making a grocery list. A physical therapist carries something that looks like a giant seat belt, but a moment before she was thinking about the new Trader Joe's going up on Nicholasville Rd. Everyone else is working, carefully tending to their tasks, but probably thinking about sex. And even though most of us probably think about that quite a bit, I won't write more about it, lest you become embarrassed.
There is another temptation. To see each person as a random bag of meat. Or as a consumer. Or as a pathology. Even ministers fall prey to this. If a church loses bodies in the pews, then something must be wrong. "The church is dying." Every person is reduced to some quantifiable bit of commerce. We look for what we can get and we arrive at simple, obvious conclusions.
Look over there... THAT person is a patient. He has a patient ID number. An admitting diagnosis. Doctors have a list of numbers that tell us why that person is here. They have another list of numbers that tell us when they get to leave. At some point, the numbers get so bad that there's nothing much more to do than to just bury them.
But he could have been a hero. Or a devil. Yes, I've picked on the doctors. But professors and business execs muddle along in similar exercises. Chaplains do too.
Let's go back to the "aging sacrament" in the first paragraph. Here is the truth: We can't know what he's thinking. But he is a means of experiencing God.
He may have dementia, or he may be drugged, or he may have a low IQ, or he may be a genius. Doesn't matter. For all we know this patient is somewhere in his childhood. Visiting with friends from long ago. Sitting on his grandpa's knee. Stealing his first kiss from a girl at the high school dance. Toddling towards his mother's loving arms. We don't know. Maybe he is communing with God. He has nothing to say to us, because he's heading into an undiscovered country, and the views are extraordinary. We see a "fall risk," but who knows what he sees? Who knows what we could see if we looked hard enough.
We make lists... label things and people... to establish order out of chaos. We HAVE to. But the universe is strange. People are strange. And when we see another person, we are gazing at a mystery. We are looking at God.
When you see me next, you won't know what I'm thinking. And you will be a mystery to me. If we are honest, we might find that we are mysteries to ourselves much of the time. That is, perhaps, disturbing. True seeing doesn't give us fixed definitions. We see that everything, including our understanding, must always be in a state of flux. We look in the sky and see that even the stars are moving... changing. Does that frighten us? Or does it stir something adventurous inside of us? Every moment the world is created anew. Every moment that elderly man, draped in his hospital gown, points us towards the ineffable, riddles of the universe we will never fully grasp.
Our job is to keep searching anyway. The bread crumbs, I believe, will lead us somewhere. Then again, do they need to?
Thursday, March 22, 2012
Chaplain's Corner (for the April newsletter)
A month or so ago, I went to the Kentucky Theater to see The Artist. You may recall hearing something about the film—it won Best Picture at the Oscars—but if you haven’t, I’ll give a spoiler-free synopsis. The Artist is a silent film, which makes it a bit different than pretty much every other film playing at the movie theater this year. This silent movie is about George Valentin, a silent film actor, at the peak of his career. He is darling of Hollywood. But they are on the cusp of a new era. Studios are ramping up to produce movies with sound… “talkies.”
One of the many poignant scenes in The Artist shows Valentin at a screening. An actress is singing on a sound stage. Movie executives are sitting in chairs smoking cigarettes as they watch the actress perform. Their faces are rapt with awe. Valentin, on the other hand, begins to laugh. One of the producers—the one played by John Goodman—looks at Valentin and says with stern certainty, “This is the future!”
And, of course, it is. When silent films begin to go the way of the dodo, Valentin’s fortunes begin to suffer. Silent films died, and Valentin not only lost his livelihood, but also his sense of self. Who was he now? And what was this crazy world coming to? Perhaps you have found yourself wondering the same things about yourself, about your world.
The Artist is not just a good film. It’s a good parable. In the twenty-first century our world is always in a state of flux. There is science to support this. From a cosmological perspective, things continue to move faster and faster. Remember the “big bang?” Well, the rate at which the universe is expanding, physicists have discovered, is increasing all the time. Unlike on planet Earth, when a thrown baseball gradually slows and eventually stops, the universe itself is picking up speed as it grows! Of course, Earth is moving quickly as well. We can’t feel it exactly, but at our current latitude, we are spinning anywhere from seven hundred to nine hundred miles per hour! At the equator the speed is over one thousand miles per hour. So if you’re feeling dizzy with exhaustion, it’s no wonder!
Today we may occasionally feel like Valentin. How do we cope? Well, Jesus encouraged his friends not to spend a lot of energy worrying about tomorrow. I don’t think he meant, “Don’t ever make plans.” But I do think that even two thousand years ago, well meaning people could easily become bogged down by things that could not be helped with worry. It’s likely Jesus spoke from personal experience. In the gospels, Jesus frequently goes off to be by himself for awhile. Crowds followed him around Judea and their needs were never-ending. Jesus needed time to recharge, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. One way he did that was to have alone time in the great outdoors. Other ways included eating supper with friends and going to social gatherings.
What do you do when you feel like Valentin? When you feel that the world is passing you by and you can’t keep up? Do you pray? Do you take walks? Do you garden? Watch movies? Write poetry? Listen to your kids play piano? Work on cars? Do we take time to breathe deeply and to focus on the present moment? Do we take even five minutes in a day to just lay our worries aside, and focus on those parts of our lives that feed us and make us smile? There are many ways to pray. And if we each find the way of prayer that works for us, then maybe, even as the world changes around us, we might find ourselves capable of not only surviving, but thriving.
One of the many poignant scenes in The Artist shows Valentin at a screening. An actress is singing on a sound stage. Movie executives are sitting in chairs smoking cigarettes as they watch the actress perform. Their faces are rapt with awe. Valentin, on the other hand, begins to laugh. One of the producers—the one played by John Goodman—looks at Valentin and says with stern certainty, “This is the future!”
And, of course, it is. When silent films begin to go the way of the dodo, Valentin’s fortunes begin to suffer. Silent films died, and Valentin not only lost his livelihood, but also his sense of self. Who was he now? And what was this crazy world coming to? Perhaps you have found yourself wondering the same things about yourself, about your world.
The Artist is not just a good film. It’s a good parable. In the twenty-first century our world is always in a state of flux. There is science to support this. From a cosmological perspective, things continue to move faster and faster. Remember the “big bang?” Well, the rate at which the universe is expanding, physicists have discovered, is increasing all the time. Unlike on planet Earth, when a thrown baseball gradually slows and eventually stops, the universe itself is picking up speed as it grows! Of course, Earth is moving quickly as well. We can’t feel it exactly, but at our current latitude, we are spinning anywhere from seven hundred to nine hundred miles per hour! At the equator the speed is over one thousand miles per hour. So if you’re feeling dizzy with exhaustion, it’s no wonder!
Today we may occasionally feel like Valentin. How do we cope? Well, Jesus encouraged his friends not to spend a lot of energy worrying about tomorrow. I don’t think he meant, “Don’t ever make plans.” But I do think that even two thousand years ago, well meaning people could easily become bogged down by things that could not be helped with worry. It’s likely Jesus spoke from personal experience. In the gospels, Jesus frequently goes off to be by himself for awhile. Crowds followed him around Judea and their needs were never-ending. Jesus needed time to recharge, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. One way he did that was to have alone time in the great outdoors. Other ways included eating supper with friends and going to social gatherings.
What do you do when you feel like Valentin? When you feel that the world is passing you by and you can’t keep up? Do you pray? Do you take walks? Do you garden? Watch movies? Write poetry? Listen to your kids play piano? Work on cars? Do we take time to breathe deeply and to focus on the present moment? Do we take even five minutes in a day to just lay our worries aside, and focus on those parts of our lives that feed us and make us smile? There are many ways to pray. And if we each find the way of prayer that works for us, then maybe, even as the world changes around us, we might find ourselves capable of not only surviving, but thriving.
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
Hell in a Hand-Basket
“What is the world coming to?” She asked and looked up at me with deadpan eyes. The woman was an acquaintance of mine from work. The question caught me off guard, and we were standing in a crowded place not conducive to prolonged conversation.
“The world is an interesting place, isn’t it?” I replied.
But that wasn’t enough. “It’s getting worse,” She blinked once, but continued to stare at my face, waiting for me to possibly validate her perspective. I did the best I could in the moments we had.
“It is indeed a difficult time for many.”
And that was all. More words could be said, but the river of people drew each of us along our respective currents. She went her way, I went mine. But I took her words with me.
The shabby State of the World is something people like to talk about with clergy. And make no mistake, the shabbiness of the world is what the “what is the world coming to” question is obliquely referencing. The assumption is that this world is going to hell in a hand basket. “Don’t you agree, Reverend?”
I wish we could have talked more, because if I take the question at face value, I’m not sure I do agree. I’m tempted to push back on the assumption that things are “getting worse.” In a long view of history, we might find that there have been times that would make today’s ills look like a cakewalk. The exception to this might be those living in tremendous poverty. A living hell today probably doesn't feel too differently than a living hell one thousand years ago. Certainly the world hasn't looked very good for the people of Haiti, whose lives were already desperate, when they were subjected to devastating earthquakes. And what about those living in areas of perpetual conflict? Whether ethnically or religiously driven, the unending violence forces them to know a staggering, chronic misery. So yes, some people live in hell. What is the world coming to? Well, for them, it can’t get much worse.
But if I was magically transported back to the First Crusade, and I find myself in a burning Jerusalem where knights in chain mail are bashing the heads of infants against walls, raping and murdering and robbing with every step… or I was sent back to Cherokee “trail of tears,” or to the witch trials in Salem, or Nazi concentration camps and Soviet gulags… or I were a black person in pre-Rosa Parks America (though it’s not like blacks in America today are living in King’s dream)… or a woman of most cultures throughout most of human history and thereby disempowered and dismissed… Well, and the terrible list could go on. Frankly, any period of history without aspirin or antibiotics seems worse than anything I deal with. When I think about that, it’s hard for me to complain.
Of course, there is another place we can go with this question of where this world is going. Certainly, for me as an educated, white, male in the middle class, life is reasonably comfortable. But what if I am a teenager faced with bullying? What if I am an abused woman or child (or man, though that’s less the case), and I don’t see any way out? What if I get cancer? There’s a lot of suffering an injustice across the globe… and across the street. Many of us nurse invisible wounds. The person sitting beside you likely does too.
So yeah, the world is getting worse for some people. Our individual worlds are volatile. I notice within me the urge to keep things safe and steady. I don’t like to think about friends or family members leaving… getting sick… or dying. But things fall apart. Things break down and decay. People do. Our jobs do. Our relationships do. Our lives do.
But instead of sinking into my own fear, could the shakiness of the ground itself not remind me to be more compassionate? Our time with one another... on planet Earth, is delicate and short. Life should come with a tag that reads: Handle with care!
In a world where God loves every living thing, I have to recognize that God is as concerned for the mentally ill homeless woman as God is for me. If I say I am a Christ-follower… I am bound to pay attention to the pain of others. To simply walk by every time I see another’s hurt is just not compatible with an authentic life of faith. That’s a hard pill to swallow. Because I hate having my peace disturbed. God knows, all too well, my love of my comforts.
Of course, when my acquaintance asked me about where the world was heading, she might not have been thinking of the world at all. My hunch is that her comments were a commentary on how she was doing at that moment. What would have happened if we had found a quiet place to talk? I could have said, “How is your world today?” Because maybe for her, it IS going straight down the toilet bowl. And you know what? As her chaplain, and as a human being, I care about that.
When we are hurting, the glass will likely seem half-empty. I wonder what would happen if when we felt overwhelmed with the world’s shabbiness we could stop for a moment, and look into our own hearts. Maybe if we tended to the wounds we carry, we would be better equipped to respond to the needs of others. If we love ourselves and our neighbors, I can’t help but believe we’ll be creating a better world. I think it’s worth a try. In any case, I might have to catch up with my acquaintance soon.
“The world is an interesting place, isn’t it?” I replied.
But that wasn’t enough. “It’s getting worse,” She blinked once, but continued to stare at my face, waiting for me to possibly validate her perspective. I did the best I could in the moments we had.
“It is indeed a difficult time for many.”
And that was all. More words could be said, but the river of people drew each of us along our respective currents. She went her way, I went mine. But I took her words with me.
The shabby State of the World is something people like to talk about with clergy. And make no mistake, the shabbiness of the world is what the “what is the world coming to” question is obliquely referencing. The assumption is that this world is going to hell in a hand basket. “Don’t you agree, Reverend?”
I wish we could have talked more, because if I take the question at face value, I’m not sure I do agree. I’m tempted to push back on the assumption that things are “getting worse.” In a long view of history, we might find that there have been times that would make today’s ills look like a cakewalk. The exception to this might be those living in tremendous poverty. A living hell today probably doesn't feel too differently than a living hell one thousand years ago. Certainly the world hasn't looked very good for the people of Haiti, whose lives were already desperate, when they were subjected to devastating earthquakes. And what about those living in areas of perpetual conflict? Whether ethnically or religiously driven, the unending violence forces them to know a staggering, chronic misery. So yes, some people live in hell. What is the world coming to? Well, for them, it can’t get much worse.
But if I was magically transported back to the First Crusade, and I find myself in a burning Jerusalem where knights in chain mail are bashing the heads of infants against walls, raping and murdering and robbing with every step… or I was sent back to Cherokee “trail of tears,” or to the witch trials in Salem, or Nazi concentration camps and Soviet gulags… or I were a black person in pre-Rosa Parks America (though it’s not like blacks in America today are living in King’s dream)… or a woman of most cultures throughout most of human history and thereby disempowered and dismissed… Well, and the terrible list could go on. Frankly, any period of history without aspirin or antibiotics seems worse than anything I deal with. When I think about that, it’s hard for me to complain.
Of course, there is another place we can go with this question of where this world is going. Certainly, for me as an educated, white, male in the middle class, life is reasonably comfortable. But what if I am a teenager faced with bullying? What if I am an abused woman or child (or man, though that’s less the case), and I don’t see any way out? What if I get cancer? There’s a lot of suffering an injustice across the globe… and across the street. Many of us nurse invisible wounds. The person sitting beside you likely does too.
So yeah, the world is getting worse for some people. Our individual worlds are volatile. I notice within me the urge to keep things safe and steady. I don’t like to think about friends or family members leaving… getting sick… or dying. But things fall apart. Things break down and decay. People do. Our jobs do. Our relationships do. Our lives do.
But instead of sinking into my own fear, could the shakiness of the ground itself not remind me to be more compassionate? Our time with one another... on planet Earth, is delicate and short. Life should come with a tag that reads: Handle with care!
In a world where God loves every living thing, I have to recognize that God is as concerned for the mentally ill homeless woman as God is for me. If I say I am a Christ-follower… I am bound to pay attention to the pain of others. To simply walk by every time I see another’s hurt is just not compatible with an authentic life of faith. That’s a hard pill to swallow. Because I hate having my peace disturbed. God knows, all too well, my love of my comforts.
Of course, when my acquaintance asked me about where the world was heading, she might not have been thinking of the world at all. My hunch is that her comments were a commentary on how she was doing at that moment. What would have happened if we had found a quiet place to talk? I could have said, “How is your world today?” Because maybe for her, it IS going straight down the toilet bowl. And you know what? As her chaplain, and as a human being, I care about that.
When we are hurting, the glass will likely seem half-empty. I wonder what would happen if when we felt overwhelmed with the world’s shabbiness we could stop for a moment, and look into our own hearts. Maybe if we tended to the wounds we carry, we would be better equipped to respond to the needs of others. If we love ourselves and our neighbors, I can’t help but believe we’ll be creating a better world. I think it’s worth a try. In any case, I might have to catch up with my acquaintance soon.
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Oh My Cotton Candy!!
What do you remember from your childhood?
I remember my friend Justin teaching me about God. He was a kid who lived across the street from me. I was probably six or seven at the time. It was an autumn day, because I remember the leaves were a charred, yellow. I could just barely see a squirrel nest in the towering oak tree above us. At the time I thought it belonged to a big bird. But no, my dad told me it was for squirrels.
Justin and I were playing a game. Don't remember what it was. Probably something warlike. Back then we played nothing but war games. When Ben came over and it was the three of us, we'd play a game called Psycho-Killer. Ben would put on my Friday the 13th hockey mask and brandish a plastic butcher's knife. I assumed the role of a police detective named, Frank Johnson... psycho-killer. The game's name had two meanings. Ben was the messed up, crazy, psycho killer. I was the killer of psychos like Ben. Except, he never could die. Like Jason Vorhees or Michael Myers, I could put him down with imaginary bullets, but within seconds he'd rise, as if empowered by a unholy, decidedly demonic Easter miracle. He'd chase us about... The game ended when we got tired or our moms told us to come home.
We weren't playing Psycho-Killer when Justin taught me about God. And Ben wasn't around. It was just us. Outside on a cool, weekend afternoon. Seems like it was a cloudy day, but I don't remember. Memory is funny that way. I don't know for sure what the sky looked like, but in my mind I imagine it as grey and overcast.
"Oh my God!" I exclaimed. Justin stared at me and gave me a disappointed look.
"What?" I asked.
"You're not supposed to used the Lord's name in vain."
"I wasn't doing that. What's that even mean?" I had no clue what this meant. I was a Christmas and Easter church goer at this time in my life. My parents just didn't feel like going I guess, and neither did I. I was a chubby kid, and the suits they dressed me in were hot and scratchy. There's a picture at my mom's house of me wearing a grey jacket with a dull, pinkish shirt. The clip on tie is like a lump on my throat. I'm smiling in the photo, but I couldn't have been happy. In any case, we didn't go to church, and I was not yet fluent in various dialects of Christianese.
You've heard Christianese...
"Are you saved?"
"The Lord led me..."
"I've been getting deep in the Word lately..."
Pretty basic, protestant flavored inanities. Folks, people in the real world don't know what these expressions mean, but that's to their credit. It's not because they're "lost," it's because they haven't yet been assimilated into a particularly asinine pseudo-Christian sub culture that lives mostly in the United States.
But taking the "Lord's name in vain" is not something to turn your nose up at. It's a King Jame's rendering of holy writ. Moses comes down and admonishes the Hebrews to not take the Lord's name in vain. Perhaps I'm a bit conservative, but I like to take Moses pretty seriously.
I had no idea, however, what in the hell Justin meant by his accusation. My vocabulary was thoroughly secular. We went to my mom, who was bustling about the house, cleaning something or another. Maybe she was making us cookies. She sometimes did that. She'd make chocolate chip cookies from scratch for me and my friends. We'd get huge glasses of milk and bathe each cookie liberally. Invariably, in my fervor to soak the cookie and then eat it, I would crack the softened cookie while attempting to withdraw it from the glass. A chunk of cookie would then float around in my glass of milk until I could rescue it with my fingers or pour it into my mouth by way of chugging.
But there was no milk and cookies this time. Plenty of other times, but not today. My mom was doing something, and Justin and I ran up to her and lay the matter before his judgment. Was I, her plump, well-favored son, guilty of a heretical disregard for God's name?! Justin told her what I said verbatim.
My mom agreed. "William, he's right. You shouldn't say 'Oh my God." Justin's mouth was open with a childlike wonder around his vindication.
"Oh... really?"
"Yes."
"Why?" I asked.
"Because... it isn't respectful to God."
I didn't want to disrespect God. So I accepted this lesson quickly and Justin and I went on playing. But I'm not really sure I understood what "taking the Lord's name in vain" actually meant. However, today I have a few more ideas. Here's a list... many of them, I've used myself.
Ways to Take the Lord's name in Vain:
1. Telling someone that God has moved you to either A) ask someone on a date or B) break up with a significant other.
2. Assigning God to political parties... and making God a central issue in political debate.
3. Hurting or murdering others because they don't believe in your God.
4. Telling a gay person that they are sinning against God by being who they are.
5. Expecting God to answer your prayers as if God was a Cosmic Santa Claus. Let me just tell you, God doesn't care about you getting a good parking space. God doesn't care about our favorite sports team. God cares if we are taking canned goods to the local food pantry.
6. Dressing our God up in red, white, and blue. God doesn't endorse one country over another. God bless the USA is a very narrow prayer... and if someone takes prayer seriously, they're going to be HAPPY to learn of better ways to pray. So let me suggest to you a pretty okay prayer: God bless the world... help us to be kind to one another, take care of the poor, and beat our swords into plowshares because...
7. ...God isn't cool with killing. Jesus never killed anyone, and he sure met people who could've used some killing. So, kill someone if you have to. Just be honest enough to realize you're NOT doing what Jesus would do. Because it's disrespectful to stamp God's name on killing.
8. Catchy Christian trends like WWJD bracelets and bumper stickers. Jesus said folks would know us by our fruits (by what we do), and not by our fashion accessories.
9. Making God smaller than God really is. For instance, God is bigger than one religious tradition. Oh, I know... someone's gonna bite my head off here. But seriously, Jews and Muslims and Sikhs and Hindus have prayed to God for a long time. We can debate the particulars, but never doubt it... God is the One they are talking too, no matter what name they're using. So let's not disgrace God by insisting that our version of God is the only way. This trend is based on faulty exegesis of the scriptures, anyway.
10. Lastly, acting as if the Bible is God. Technically, the "Word" of God is Jesus. "Word" also represents the orderly quality of creation. "Word," or "Logos" is why the laws of nature make sense (we believe). It's God's thumbprint on reality. Never is the Bible to be considered "the Word." While the Bible is an extremely important tool for hearing God, it is not a god... nor God, God's Self.
I think that using God's name vainly is about stamping God's brand on top of whatever agenda we want God to endorse. But maybe we do well to stop and wait when we feel this urge come over us. Maybe our best practice is to pray, "God, help me understand what you are about... and what I should be about today."
"Instead of saying 'Oh my god,'" my mom said. "You should say, 'Oh my goodness.'"
"Or oh my dear!" said Justin, being helpful.
"Or oh my gosh!" said my mom. "Or lots of things!"
I wanted to contribute, so I offered between self-satisfied guffaws,"'Oh my cotton candy!'"
Cheesy? Perhaps. But a lovely memory, nonetheless. And you bet your cotton candy that I'm still learning my lessons... mostly by being wrong.
I remember my friend Justin teaching me about God. He was a kid who lived across the street from me. I was probably six or seven at the time. It was an autumn day, because I remember the leaves were a charred, yellow. I could just barely see a squirrel nest in the towering oak tree above us. At the time I thought it belonged to a big bird. But no, my dad told me it was for squirrels.
Justin and I were playing a game. Don't remember what it was. Probably something warlike. Back then we played nothing but war games. When Ben came over and it was the three of us, we'd play a game called Psycho-Killer. Ben would put on my Friday the 13th hockey mask and brandish a plastic butcher's knife. I assumed the role of a police detective named, Frank Johnson... psycho-killer. The game's name had two meanings. Ben was the messed up, crazy, psycho killer. I was the killer of psychos like Ben. Except, he never could die. Like Jason Vorhees or Michael Myers, I could put him down with imaginary bullets, but within seconds he'd rise, as if empowered by a unholy, decidedly demonic Easter miracle. He'd chase us about... The game ended when we got tired or our moms told us to come home.
We weren't playing Psycho-Killer when Justin taught me about God. And Ben wasn't around. It was just us. Outside on a cool, weekend afternoon. Seems like it was a cloudy day, but I don't remember. Memory is funny that way. I don't know for sure what the sky looked like, but in my mind I imagine it as grey and overcast.
"Oh my God!" I exclaimed. Justin stared at me and gave me a disappointed look.
"What?" I asked.
"You're not supposed to used the Lord's name in vain."
"I wasn't doing that. What's that even mean?" I had no clue what this meant. I was a Christmas and Easter church goer at this time in my life. My parents just didn't feel like going I guess, and neither did I. I was a chubby kid, and the suits they dressed me in were hot and scratchy. There's a picture at my mom's house of me wearing a grey jacket with a dull, pinkish shirt. The clip on tie is like a lump on my throat. I'm smiling in the photo, but I couldn't have been happy. In any case, we didn't go to church, and I was not yet fluent in various dialects of Christianese.
You've heard Christianese...
"Are you saved?"
"The Lord led me..."
"I've been getting deep in the Word lately..."
Pretty basic, protestant flavored inanities. Folks, people in the real world don't know what these expressions mean, but that's to their credit. It's not because they're "lost," it's because they haven't yet been assimilated into a particularly asinine pseudo-Christian sub culture that lives mostly in the United States.
But taking the "Lord's name in vain" is not something to turn your nose up at. It's a King Jame's rendering of holy writ. Moses comes down and admonishes the Hebrews to not take the Lord's name in vain. Perhaps I'm a bit conservative, but I like to take Moses pretty seriously.
I had no idea, however, what in the hell Justin meant by his accusation. My vocabulary was thoroughly secular. We went to my mom, who was bustling about the house, cleaning something or another. Maybe she was making us cookies. She sometimes did that. She'd make chocolate chip cookies from scratch for me and my friends. We'd get huge glasses of milk and bathe each cookie liberally. Invariably, in my fervor to soak the cookie and then eat it, I would crack the softened cookie while attempting to withdraw it from the glass. A chunk of cookie would then float around in my glass of milk until I could rescue it with my fingers or pour it into my mouth by way of chugging.
But there was no milk and cookies this time. Plenty of other times, but not today. My mom was doing something, and Justin and I ran up to her and lay the matter before his judgment. Was I, her plump, well-favored son, guilty of a heretical disregard for God's name?! Justin told her what I said verbatim.
My mom agreed. "William, he's right. You shouldn't say 'Oh my God." Justin's mouth was open with a childlike wonder around his vindication.
"Oh... really?"
"Yes."
"Why?" I asked.
"Because... it isn't respectful to God."
I didn't want to disrespect God. So I accepted this lesson quickly and Justin and I went on playing. But I'm not really sure I understood what "taking the Lord's name in vain" actually meant. However, today I have a few more ideas. Here's a list... many of them, I've used myself.
Ways to Take the Lord's name in Vain:
1. Telling someone that God has moved you to either A) ask someone on a date or B) break up with a significant other.
2. Assigning God to political parties... and making God a central issue in political debate.
3. Hurting or murdering others because they don't believe in your God.
4. Telling a gay person that they are sinning against God by being who they are.
5. Expecting God to answer your prayers as if God was a Cosmic Santa Claus. Let me just tell you, God doesn't care about you getting a good parking space. God doesn't care about our favorite sports team. God cares if we are taking canned goods to the local food pantry.
6. Dressing our God up in red, white, and blue. God doesn't endorse one country over another. God bless the USA is a very narrow prayer... and if someone takes prayer seriously, they're going to be HAPPY to learn of better ways to pray. So let me suggest to you a pretty okay prayer: God bless the world... help us to be kind to one another, take care of the poor, and beat our swords into plowshares because...
7. ...God isn't cool with killing. Jesus never killed anyone, and he sure met people who could've used some killing. So, kill someone if you have to. Just be honest enough to realize you're NOT doing what Jesus would do. Because it's disrespectful to stamp God's name on killing.
8. Catchy Christian trends like WWJD bracelets and bumper stickers. Jesus said folks would know us by our fruits (by what we do), and not by our fashion accessories.
9. Making God smaller than God really is. For instance, God is bigger than one religious tradition. Oh, I know... someone's gonna bite my head off here. But seriously, Jews and Muslims and Sikhs and Hindus have prayed to God for a long time. We can debate the particulars, but never doubt it... God is the One they are talking too, no matter what name they're using. So let's not disgrace God by insisting that our version of God is the only way. This trend is based on faulty exegesis of the scriptures, anyway.
10. Lastly, acting as if the Bible is God. Technically, the "Word" of God is Jesus. "Word" also represents the orderly quality of creation. "Word," or "Logos" is why the laws of nature make sense (we believe). It's God's thumbprint on reality. Never is the Bible to be considered "the Word." While the Bible is an extremely important tool for hearing God, it is not a god... nor God, God's Self.
I think that using God's name vainly is about stamping God's brand on top of whatever agenda we want God to endorse. But maybe we do well to stop and wait when we feel this urge come over us. Maybe our best practice is to pray, "God, help me understand what you are about... and what I should be about today."
"Instead of saying 'Oh my god,'" my mom said. "You should say, 'Oh my goodness.'"
"Or oh my dear!" said Justin, being helpful.
"Or oh my gosh!" said my mom. "Or lots of things!"
I wanted to contribute, so I offered between self-satisfied guffaws,"'Oh my cotton candy!'"
Cheesy? Perhaps. But a lovely memory, nonetheless. And you bet your cotton candy that I'm still learning my lessons... mostly by being wrong.
Monday, February 20, 2012
Thinking... or Not
As human beings, so much of our day is run on auto-pilot. We perform amazing tasks without hardly a thought at all. Consider the task of walking. Only a stroke survivor can truly appreciate the delicate balance, the intricate coordination of muscles and timing that make up a stroll across the room. Walking is an incredibly complex task. It requires precision, even when clumsy. From heel to toe it is a marriage between gravity and grace. We learn to walk before we have developed the ability to graft short-term memory to long-term sense of self. So we can't remember how difficult it was to learn those baby steps. Now, as adults, most of us meander along without a thought. We are bipedal gods.
I've been fortunate enough to avoid having a stroke (so far), but I do have some sense of how complicated this whole ambulating business can be...
When I was in high school, I sustained a knee injury playing football. I tore some cartilege in my right knee. The skillful orthopod was able to repair it. My leg was placed in a brace that gave my leg a decidedly bionic look, and I had to use crutches for several weeks. I was told to keep my leg from bending or extending very much. It wasn't long that I forgot the ease of regular ambulation. I had to sit on the bleachers during gym class and watch as my friends played basketball or dodgeball. When the time came for me to take off my brace, I found a grotesquely atrophied limb that I was a little afraid to trust. My healthy leg was still muscular and toned, but my wounded leg was shriveled and weak in comparison. After quite a bit of physical therapy, and gingerly testing my ability to walk unaided with crutches, I eventually came to walk thoughtlessly again. There are Buddhists monks that would tsk tsk me for celebrating this quality of walking. After all, walking meditation is an ancient practice that can be quite rewarding. But for a fella to get a break from mindful walking is its own special boon.
It's not just walking. There's swallowing. Speech pathologists could tell you how complex that is... the perfect flexing of muscles that allow food to pass through the esophagus rather than the trachea. There's our heart, which beats to the drum of our brain stem. The life-giving twist of this muscle flushes oxygenated blood throughout the entire body without my giving it a second thought.
But we already know all this, don' we? Where's the novelty in a wonderment at our bodies? St. Paul taught that our bodies are temples... sacred ground. On a cellular level, its a sacred metropolis... a massive, inner world. It's not a new thought, but I confess that I'm still impressed. It's a world that runs without me having to think about it.
There's plenty than runs without much thought... Remember that night you lunged into your first kiss? Or when someone leaned in and stole one from you? There's the lips which find yours, and the genius of our love (or lust) takes over. I think that the really good kissers are the ones who pay attention, but who don't over think it. Someone could probably write an algorithm for the perfect kiss, but such a thing is sterile. Early in your kissing career, you lean in and hope for the best. As the years go by, you learn to trust the poetry of touch. You give yourself to an ebb and flow, and the miracle just happens. One could same is true for prayer...
I was fifteen when I got my first real kiss. My girlfriend was sitting on the sofa beside me at my house. My parents were not around. I had Planes, Trains, and Automobiles playing on the VCR. I put my arm behind her head, and there it rested, atop the ridge of the sofa for nearly an hour. At some point, with my heart beating faster than I could ever consciously pump it, I slowly plunged into her lips with mine. She received me, welcomed me, and I nearly swooned in utter disbelief at how good her mouth tasted. I had spent the whole movie thinking, wondering, "How will I start this kiss?" But I lost my conscious self once the kissing began. My intellect evaporated. It's only when the kissing becomes bland that you begin thinking again... making grocery lists or thinking about what chores need doing.
As a philosophy major, and as a graduate of a Divinity School rather insistent upon critical, reflective thinking, I am actually a huge fan of cogitation. Without an ability to focus, to absorb, to categorize and assess, we live as infants in our world. We don't invent antibiotics, or airplanes, or great literature. Nine out of ten times, I recommend thinking.
But sometimes its our impulses that make life worth living. This exists quite powerfully with people. The precognitive attraction we feel to someone, not simply on a sexual level, but also on an emotional and spiritual level, is a force that exists underneath our conscious thoughts. When we finally become attuned to the undercurrent, the shock is wonderful. We've found a friend, a lover, a home.
Or we find God... are found by God. We will never do a math problem or solve a logic puzzle that allows us to grasp hold of the Holy in any conscious way. It's been long known among mystics that if we know anything of God, if we knock on the sky and receive an answer, it is because God chose to open the door, and not because of the facility of our knocking. There may be something said for simply showing up on the doorstep, however.
The humbling truth is that our souls are wiser than we often realize. So many of our crucial moments consist of awaking to realities that have long awaited us. We often miss truth by over-thinking, by trying to "apprehend" what Nature will only give according to its own pleasure. We are better off learning from those fishermen who cast their nets and wait. We open hearts and minds, willing to gingerly reflect upon life as it comes, and maybe... just maybe... God will come to us in that open space.
I've been fortunate enough to avoid having a stroke (so far), but I do have some sense of how complicated this whole ambulating business can be...
When I was in high school, I sustained a knee injury playing football. I tore some cartilege in my right knee. The skillful orthopod was able to repair it. My leg was placed in a brace that gave my leg a decidedly bionic look, and I had to use crutches for several weeks. I was told to keep my leg from bending or extending very much. It wasn't long that I forgot the ease of regular ambulation. I had to sit on the bleachers during gym class and watch as my friends played basketball or dodgeball. When the time came for me to take off my brace, I found a grotesquely atrophied limb that I was a little afraid to trust. My healthy leg was still muscular and toned, but my wounded leg was shriveled and weak in comparison. After quite a bit of physical therapy, and gingerly testing my ability to walk unaided with crutches, I eventually came to walk thoughtlessly again. There are Buddhists monks that would tsk tsk me for celebrating this quality of walking. After all, walking meditation is an ancient practice that can be quite rewarding. But for a fella to get a break from mindful walking is its own special boon.
It's not just walking. There's swallowing. Speech pathologists could tell you how complex that is... the perfect flexing of muscles that allow food to pass through the esophagus rather than the trachea. There's our heart, which beats to the drum of our brain stem. The life-giving twist of this muscle flushes oxygenated blood throughout the entire body without my giving it a second thought.
But we already know all this, don' we? Where's the novelty in a wonderment at our bodies? St. Paul taught that our bodies are temples... sacred ground. On a cellular level, its a sacred metropolis... a massive, inner world. It's not a new thought, but I confess that I'm still impressed. It's a world that runs without me having to think about it.
There's plenty than runs without much thought... Remember that night you lunged into your first kiss? Or when someone leaned in and stole one from you? There's the lips which find yours, and the genius of our love (or lust) takes over. I think that the really good kissers are the ones who pay attention, but who don't over think it. Someone could probably write an algorithm for the perfect kiss, but such a thing is sterile. Early in your kissing career, you lean in and hope for the best. As the years go by, you learn to trust the poetry of touch. You give yourself to an ebb and flow, and the miracle just happens. One could same is true for prayer...
I was fifteen when I got my first real kiss. My girlfriend was sitting on the sofa beside me at my house. My parents were not around. I had Planes, Trains, and Automobiles playing on the VCR. I put my arm behind her head, and there it rested, atop the ridge of the sofa for nearly an hour. At some point, with my heart beating faster than I could ever consciously pump it, I slowly plunged into her lips with mine. She received me, welcomed me, and I nearly swooned in utter disbelief at how good her mouth tasted. I had spent the whole movie thinking, wondering, "How will I start this kiss?" But I lost my conscious self once the kissing began. My intellect evaporated. It's only when the kissing becomes bland that you begin thinking again... making grocery lists or thinking about what chores need doing.
As a philosophy major, and as a graduate of a Divinity School rather insistent upon critical, reflective thinking, I am actually a huge fan of cogitation. Without an ability to focus, to absorb, to categorize and assess, we live as infants in our world. We don't invent antibiotics, or airplanes, or great literature. Nine out of ten times, I recommend thinking.
But sometimes its our impulses that make life worth living. This exists quite powerfully with people. The precognitive attraction we feel to someone, not simply on a sexual level, but also on an emotional and spiritual level, is a force that exists underneath our conscious thoughts. When we finally become attuned to the undercurrent, the shock is wonderful. We've found a friend, a lover, a home.
Or we find God... are found by God. We will never do a math problem or solve a logic puzzle that allows us to grasp hold of the Holy in any conscious way. It's been long known among mystics that if we know anything of God, if we knock on the sky and receive an answer, it is because God chose to open the door, and not because of the facility of our knocking. There may be something said for simply showing up on the doorstep, however.
The humbling truth is that our souls are wiser than we often realize. So many of our crucial moments consist of awaking to realities that have long awaited us. We often miss truth by over-thinking, by trying to "apprehend" what Nature will only give according to its own pleasure. We are better off learning from those fishermen who cast their nets and wait. We open hearts and minds, willing to gingerly reflect upon life as it comes, and maybe... just maybe... God will come to us in that open space.
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
What Scares Super-Man
When I was five years old, I dressed up for my very first Halloween. It's possible that my parents had dressed me up previously, but I have no memory of it. On my first remembered Halloween, however, I was dressed in the blue, red, and yellow of Super-Man.
Super-Man. Man of Steel. American icon of masculinity, power, and goodwill. Most of that was under my radar as a five year old. I just knew that Super-Man was one of the good guys. It was cool that he could fly and pick up cars. He always won the day, and he was afraid of nothing.
We visited a few houses in the neighborhood. I had a small, plastic pumpkin to hold my candy. "Treat or treat," and the booty would come. I was loving it... until we came to one particular house.
Their driveway ran up from the street, and at the top, emanating from the garage, was an eerie glow. And the sounds... I heard fierce, animal sounds... barking, howling... mewling hell cats... bats chirping out of the darkness... and worst of all, the shrill cackling of an unseen witch. I wasn't half way up the driveway before I knew that going into the garage, from which the fell glamouring grew ominously brighter, was a bad idea.
But my parents urged me forward. I could see a woman, with a frighteningly large black hat. Could this be she who laughed with such maniacal abandon? Why in the hell should I go up there? She beckoned to me, and smiled with rotting teath, as mist or smoke poured forth from the giant cauldron before her. She beckoned to me, and mighty Super-Man began to weep...
Eventually, we got candy from this lady... whose Halloween production remains unmatched by anything else I ever saw in my subsequent Halloween experiences. I left with a pumpkin full of candy, and yet I was humbled. As much as I loved being Super-Man, pretending that I was impervious to most anything, the real truth was that I had a lot of fear... I was vulnerable and soft.
Many of us secretly desire to be heroic. One reason is that we'd like to help people in meaningful, significant ways. Another reason could be that heroes represent the best among us. Whether in fact, or in legend, we see heroes as special. And many of us would like to be special. To have great strength to do great things. Could be strength... could be intellect... or speed... or wisdom... or compassion... Christians look to Jesus and see the superlative man! Our creeds and Scriptures heap lauds and powers upon him... excuse me... Him. Our films USUALLY show us a Jesus who is centered, serene, and powerful.
I would like to be centered, serene, and powerful. But the truth is, Jesus wasn't those things... at least, not exclusively. His cackling witch was found in Gesthamane... except this time the threat was real! He was terrified, and he prayed that things would go differently. And in the end, the one who outwitted every trap, except the last, was captured, tried, and killed.
I think we have to make friends with our vulnerability. We may want to wear the cape of a hero, but we all too often shy away from our fears. But it through our fear that we can often discover and accomplish great things. For Jesus, it was resurrection. For me, when I was five, it was candy. But for us, today... on the edge of the vertigo-inducing precipices of our lives.... what might a little courage win us? And what might happen if we urge each other along the way? Despite my great fears, I hope to be hero enough to find out.
Super-Man. Man of Steel. American icon of masculinity, power, and goodwill. Most of that was under my radar as a five year old. I just knew that Super-Man was one of the good guys. It was cool that he could fly and pick up cars. He always won the day, and he was afraid of nothing.
We visited a few houses in the neighborhood. I had a small, plastic pumpkin to hold my candy. "Treat or treat," and the booty would come. I was loving it... until we came to one particular house.
Their driveway ran up from the street, and at the top, emanating from the garage, was an eerie glow. And the sounds... I heard fierce, animal sounds... barking, howling... mewling hell cats... bats chirping out of the darkness... and worst of all, the shrill cackling of an unseen witch. I wasn't half way up the driveway before I knew that going into the garage, from which the fell glamouring grew ominously brighter, was a bad idea.
But my parents urged me forward. I could see a woman, with a frighteningly large black hat. Could this be she who laughed with such maniacal abandon? Why in the hell should I go up there? She beckoned to me, and smiled with rotting teath, as mist or smoke poured forth from the giant cauldron before her. She beckoned to me, and mighty Super-Man began to weep...
Eventually, we got candy from this lady... whose Halloween production remains unmatched by anything else I ever saw in my subsequent Halloween experiences. I left with a pumpkin full of candy, and yet I was humbled. As much as I loved being Super-Man, pretending that I was impervious to most anything, the real truth was that I had a lot of fear... I was vulnerable and soft.
Many of us secretly desire to be heroic. One reason is that we'd like to help people in meaningful, significant ways. Another reason could be that heroes represent the best among us. Whether in fact, or in legend, we see heroes as special. And many of us would like to be special. To have great strength to do great things. Could be strength... could be intellect... or speed... or wisdom... or compassion... Christians look to Jesus and see the superlative man! Our creeds and Scriptures heap lauds and powers upon him... excuse me... Him. Our films USUALLY show us a Jesus who is centered, serene, and powerful.
I would like to be centered, serene, and powerful. But the truth is, Jesus wasn't those things... at least, not exclusively. His cackling witch was found in Gesthamane... except this time the threat was real! He was terrified, and he prayed that things would go differently. And in the end, the one who outwitted every trap, except the last, was captured, tried, and killed.
I think we have to make friends with our vulnerability. We may want to wear the cape of a hero, but we all too often shy away from our fears. But it through our fear that we can often discover and accomplish great things. For Jesus, it was resurrection. For me, when I was five, it was candy. But for us, today... on the edge of the vertigo-inducing precipices of our lives.... what might a little courage win us? And what might happen if we urge each other along the way? Despite my great fears, I hope to be hero enough to find out.
Saturday, February 11, 2012
The Mundane
Outside my window is a small, artificial pond. Drainage from nearby dwellings, roads, whatever supply the pond. On warm days, it sometimes has a suspicious smell. But on cold days, like today, when the water laps the snowy lips of the pond, the geese find it to be a nice rest stop.
The geese have been visiting regularly for a week. There two of them are, right now, padding along the perimeter. They are there, right outside my window, offering plaintive honks for no reason I can tell.
I sit inside at my desk swaddled in a blanket, attired in flannel pants and a white t-shirt. When I exhale, there is a slight wheezy sound. The antibiotics have helped, but we have a way to go. There is a cup of bitter coffee made from an ill favored bean (I must buy another brand next time). I have spent most of the last two days in bed or on the sofa, and I am glad to be in an upright position.
The worst part has been the cough. At times I have coughed so hard that I've almost lost consciousness. Thankfully, those moments are fewer now. The cough medicine prescribed for me is a narcotic. When I am drifting off to sleep, it feels as if my brain is floating on the swell and roll of an ocean wave. I think in half thoughts. Throughout the night I wake up and feel the waves washing over me. I hear bits of poetry. When I wake up I don't remember any of it.
I sometimes worry that I am missing something in these geese... in the snow outside... in the jet now flying overhead (where are those people going?). There, just on the periphery, is something true. Something twinkling on the edge of knowing in the snow bespeckled grass. There is Something that whispers the name of God again and again, but there is fluid in my ears. I can't hear a damn thing. I am not mystic enough.
But is that what is promised? That we will walk in the woods, read in a book, or listen to music and find something extraordinary? When we pray those wordless prayers, urging our spirits... somewhere... towards God or Nirvana or whatever... do we expect a payoff? A message? A voice from Beyond that will tell us what we need to know?
When the blinds open and the sunlight hits the watery gelatin of my eyes, that my brain is electrified with sight is more than enough. That my skin goosebumps as the cold seeps through the windowpane is reward in itself. That I can sit here and appreciate the faint gurgling in my lungs with every breath is all the Heaven I can demand.
Do I need something more? Do you?
The geese have been visiting regularly for a week. There two of them are, right now, padding along the perimeter. They are there, right outside my window, offering plaintive honks for no reason I can tell.
I sit inside at my desk swaddled in a blanket, attired in flannel pants and a white t-shirt. When I exhale, there is a slight wheezy sound. The antibiotics have helped, but we have a way to go. There is a cup of bitter coffee made from an ill favored bean (I must buy another brand next time). I have spent most of the last two days in bed or on the sofa, and I am glad to be in an upright position.
The worst part has been the cough. At times I have coughed so hard that I've almost lost consciousness. Thankfully, those moments are fewer now. The cough medicine prescribed for me is a narcotic. When I am drifting off to sleep, it feels as if my brain is floating on the swell and roll of an ocean wave. I think in half thoughts. Throughout the night I wake up and feel the waves washing over me. I hear bits of poetry. When I wake up I don't remember any of it.
I sometimes worry that I am missing something in these geese... in the snow outside... in the jet now flying overhead (where are those people going?). There, just on the periphery, is something true. Something twinkling on the edge of knowing in the snow bespeckled grass. There is Something that whispers the name of God again and again, but there is fluid in my ears. I can't hear a damn thing. I am not mystic enough.
But is that what is promised? That we will walk in the woods, read in a book, or listen to music and find something extraordinary? When we pray those wordless prayers, urging our spirits... somewhere... towards God or Nirvana or whatever... do we expect a payoff? A message? A voice from Beyond that will tell us what we need to know?
When the blinds open and the sunlight hits the watery gelatin of my eyes, that my brain is electrified with sight is more than enough. That my skin goosebumps as the cold seeps through the windowpane is reward in itself. That I can sit here and appreciate the faint gurgling in my lungs with every breath is all the Heaven I can demand.
Do I need something more? Do you?
Friday, February 3, 2012
Lizard
I am thirty-three years old today. It's my birthday, but I can't stop thinking about Liz Sterling. She was there at my birthday when I turned twelve. She have me one of those customized birthday cards. You know the kind. The ones that calculate how many hours you've slept since you were born... or how many breaths you will have taken by the time you turn ninety. A few days before my birthday party at Skatetown USA, Liz called my mom to get a few of the necessary details about my life. Then she had a card created and personalized just for me.
Liz Sterling. Lizard. Lizard was what some called back at Sam Houston Elementary. She was fiesty, intelligent, cute as hell... She never knew it, but I always had a crush on her.
We were in the Safety Patrol together back in 5th grade. This was where we got to wear badges and help direct traffic before and after school. We had orange hard hats. Somewhere I still have mine. At the end of the year we all signed each other's hats.
One day, some time before we signed each others' hats, she and I were putting up everybody's Safety Patrol crap in the Music Room. No one was around really, and Lizard and I had started talking about kissing. Memory is an unreliable historian, but I think I asked her about french kissing. "What is french kissing?"
No, Reader, she didn't show me. But she described it to me. She whet my curiosity... though unfortunately, I would have to wait YEARS to really understand what she meant. But I remember her laughing at my obvious discomfort. Between Liz, and another girl named Zoe (who was my best friend at the time), I learned early just how dumb boys were compared to girls. But that is all right. To see Liz laugh made everything cool. I wish that I could see her laugh again.
Liz died back when we were in high school. I don't remember exactly when (sophomore year?), or under what circumstances (car accident). Regardless, she is gone and it sucks.
I wasn't a close friend of hers. At some point in middle school, we started moving in different circles. You know how it goes. Most of us typically have a handful of kids we really pal around with, and most other folks are just kind of there. But I would see her and wave or say hello. There are others who have grieved her loss with a lot more heartache than me... although I join them in wishing she were still alive today.
Liz is my teacher today. She reminds me how precious people truly are... even those from the distant, foggy past. Even strangers with whom we've share some momentary flicker of recognition leave their mark. Liz reminds me of the transience of life. The people in our lives today will not always be there... at least, not in the same way.
Often we realize the lesson too late. And we come into the high holy days of our lives with fragmented memories and more questions than answers. I'm left wondering what Liz would have done with her "one wild life," if she had been able to enjoy more time on this earth.
Maybe the job for us now is to look around. Take a look at the people you see. Might be there is something extraordinary they can share with you... for a time, anyway. And without a doubt, the clock is ticking.
Liz Sterling. Lizard. Lizard was what some called back at Sam Houston Elementary. She was fiesty, intelligent, cute as hell... She never knew it, but I always had a crush on her.
We were in the Safety Patrol together back in 5th grade. This was where we got to wear badges and help direct traffic before and after school. We had orange hard hats. Somewhere I still have mine. At the end of the year we all signed each other's hats.
One day, some time before we signed each others' hats, she and I were putting up everybody's Safety Patrol crap in the Music Room. No one was around really, and Lizard and I had started talking about kissing. Memory is an unreliable historian, but I think I asked her about french kissing. "What is french kissing?"
No, Reader, she didn't show me. But she described it to me. She whet my curiosity... though unfortunately, I would have to wait YEARS to really understand what she meant. But I remember her laughing at my obvious discomfort. Between Liz, and another girl named Zoe (who was my best friend at the time), I learned early just how dumb boys were compared to girls. But that is all right. To see Liz laugh made everything cool. I wish that I could see her laugh again.
Liz died back when we were in high school. I don't remember exactly when (sophomore year?), or under what circumstances (car accident). Regardless, she is gone and it sucks.
I wasn't a close friend of hers. At some point in middle school, we started moving in different circles. You know how it goes. Most of us typically have a handful of kids we really pal around with, and most other folks are just kind of there. But I would see her and wave or say hello. There are others who have grieved her loss with a lot more heartache than me... although I join them in wishing she were still alive today.
Liz is my teacher today. She reminds me how precious people truly are... even those from the distant, foggy past. Even strangers with whom we've share some momentary flicker of recognition leave their mark. Liz reminds me of the transience of life. The people in our lives today will not always be there... at least, not in the same way.
Often we realize the lesson too late. And we come into the high holy days of our lives with fragmented memories and more questions than answers. I'm left wondering what Liz would have done with her "one wild life," if she had been able to enjoy more time on this earth.
Maybe the job for us now is to look around. Take a look at the people you see. Might be there is something extraordinary they can share with you... for a time, anyway. And without a doubt, the clock is ticking.
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