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.

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.

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.

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?

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.