I want to take one of these posts, this one, to discuss the past and the future, hopefully spending no more than a moment of the present. It's always better to live it than it is to hash it over...unless the "hashing it over" is the kind that brings change to life. That kind is pretty OK. Apparently like everything else, it's more complicated than I thought.
I read a story once by Brother Andrew. Back in the day, Brother Andrew smuggled bibles into Communist Europe at great personal risk. He also made a point to attend some of the non-sanctioned churches there to to encourage the believers. He went to one such church and the old rector that served there invited him to their service. When Andrew showed up, he thought he had the time wrong, because even though he was directly on time, no one else was in the church. About 30 seconds after he sat down, the old rector came out and delivered his message...to Andrew only.
Andrew asked him about all this afterward. The rector said that no one had come in about 4 years or so because they were afraid of being arrested. Andrew asked him why he preached to no one. The rector said something like, "Just because no one is sitting there doesn't mean my words aren't used by God for things I don't understand." And, "God called me to preach. He didn't say I needed to have people there to hear me." I read that when I was a teenager a life time ago and both the truth and the depth of it has stuck with me.
I started writing this blog a little over a year ago. My wife had been poking at me to write for years. A friend (Todd Koonrad) who reads this from time to time used to challenge me to write stuff down after our long conversations - which are really the only kind he and I usually have. I did a couple times but that exercise somehow didn't have quite enough definition to allow me to focus much. That focus part is something I need.
Separately, his wife (Lorrie) said to me at a dinner at their house one night, "You should blog." I decided she was right and the blog format seemed to provide the focus part. Hence, Wanderin'.
I'm writing now and some people are reading what I write. I am very much amazed. It's funny, I often get the best feedback on entries that really didn't thrill me at all...and often hear nothing about entries that moved me to tears. That's OK. The entire exercise hits me like putting messages in bottles and throwing them into the ocean. You never know what's going to cross the ocean and find an audience or what's simply going to sink to the bottom. Regardless though, you still show up at the shoreline with your bottles and scraps of paper.
I've had a couple people ask me about making Wanderin' available in print media. I'm investigating that path but I promise you this: It will be a slow process. Practically speaking, it's not terribly difficult or expensive. However, a print offering would be something quite different. It is deserving of it's own form and vision...and I don't have any of that yet.
And so, on we go...whether or not you actually continue to show up, a la Brother Andrew's East European church of one. God willin' and creek don't rise (the runner up for the title to this blog entry-I'll likely use it next year), I'll be writing more of these in the coming year.
Day to day experience is the inspiration for what goes on here. We tend to chop that up as "circumstance" and "spirituality" and other things, imagining we can separate parts of our life experience out and put them in different boxes. You can give that approach a go if you want but it will all turn out to be part of the whole of your life in the end and probably sooner than that.
So...Happy New Year! I hope you and the ones you love do well in the coming 365 days. I hope and pray that you grow closer to other people and to God and that you feel the joy and truth of that. I hope this space contributes to the growing closer, even if the contribution from this corner is only by small degree. Let's do this again next year, God willin' and creek don't rise.
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
Friday, December 23, 2011
God Bless Us, Every One
There's just no denying that Christmas is the official season of busy. You don't even have to talk about gratuitous shopping and buying, decorating and travel plans. Just adding the special events to the monthly calendar will make you sigh like a mountain climber who reaches a false summit, only to realize that the real summit is still a lot of distance and work away.
And of course, there are our expectations. We carry expectations of enjoying old memories, creating new ones and being with family and friends. And all this of course with the prerequisite assumption that everyone gets along. Because it's Christmas, we somehow build the expectation that everything will be as we hope and imagine, just like when we opened presents as children years ago. Somehow back then, even our mild disappointments faded pretty quickly under the avalanche of excitement and play and food.
I still remember my train set Christmas. The whole thing was a simple two track oval. It was tacked onto a piece of plywood by a neighbor, so that the whole thing could be moved in and out of our small house easily. It was a steam engine replica and the best part was that it came with a little vile of goo that you could squeeze into the engine to make the thing smoke as it ran. I watched it go around that oval for hours. I stopped it; I started it, and I made up countless stories of work being done, people traveling places and of everything on the way to everywhere. Although that was a peak in a lot of ways, I don't remember any of my Christmases from childhood through my teenage years as being very much less.
If you've lived long enough past your "young" years, you've probably found that Christmas and it's denouement New Years are also bittersweet. It's the season to be particularly pained by family dysfunction, estrangement from loved ones and the more frequent bringing to mind of those who are no longer present at the table of this life and are truly missed.
Tiny Tim in Dickens' "Christmas Carol" had a couple of these Christmas complicating issues. Tim Cratchit's family was very poor and Tiny Tim's health was failing. Circumstances could have been better for the Cratchits in many ways. Even so, Tim was down right giddy at Christmas time. It seems that his vision of Christmas didn't involve regrets of summits not reached.
Seems like his family got caught up in his enthusiasm too. One portion of that was probably to humor and encourage Tim, but I think it was pretty hard to stay dour around that kid. Even an eave's dropping Scrooge couldn't help but get sucked in.
Tiny Tim is a fictional ideal but I don't think he lives too far down the street from reality. We don't meet him and his kind often because we're not willing to travel with our own Christmas ghosts. We're not willing to look honestly at our past, beyond the veneer of our present and into the possibilities of our future. Usually, we blink and say "No thank you." The Ghosts' gift to Scrooge was this: Honesty. The ghosts and all they reveal represent an invitation to Scrooge to abandon his chains...These were chains he was forging for himself in this life. They were of the same kind that Marley was doomed by his own self-deception to carry throughout eternity. All Scrooge had to do was say yes to the reality the ghosts offered and refuse to blink.
Happiness and completeness were not delivered by Scrooge's wealth nor discouraged by Tim's disease. For Tim, they existed independently of circumstance. Despite the fact that real happiness looks wonderful from the outside (and it is), it isn't easily acheived. Next time you watch or read about Tim et al, watch how many times Scrooge flinches, how much the revelation costs him. This is no self help whiz bang achieved by a mantra of activity with a dash of will power on the side. This is expensive. This is the offering unto death of Scrooge's identity, of all that he is. It is both risky and costly.
The gift that anyone can give to everyone is the gift of themselves. Note however, this gift costs everything. To give ourselves doesn't involve more doing, more buying or more busy, even if that's all undertaken in the name of doing for others. The gift is accepting who your are with all your brokenness and all your faults, honestly. The gift is offering to others the same grace that accepting yourself requires. This is the gift that Christ delivered in his person, at his birth. It's true that Christ paid the cost of the gift in full. But it's also equally true that the lives he bought must be lived through and with him or they remain forever chained and incomplete.
So...Merry Christmas. Christ's gift to us by his birth was the real and soaring truth contained in that fictional line: "God bless us, every one." We are blessed beyond all possible circumstance both now and forever. We need only the living exposure to the truth that was offered to Scrooge by the Ghosts of Christmas. In other language, the Ghosts are character metaphors for the truth and value of what Christ brought into this world with his birth and offered to us in his death and resurrection.
And of course, there are our expectations. We carry expectations of enjoying old memories, creating new ones and being with family and friends. And all this of course with the prerequisite assumption that everyone gets along. Because it's Christmas, we somehow build the expectation that everything will be as we hope and imagine, just like when we opened presents as children years ago. Somehow back then, even our mild disappointments faded pretty quickly under the avalanche of excitement and play and food.
I still remember my train set Christmas. The whole thing was a simple two track oval. It was tacked onto a piece of plywood by a neighbor, so that the whole thing could be moved in and out of our small house easily. It was a steam engine replica and the best part was that it came with a little vile of goo that you could squeeze into the engine to make the thing smoke as it ran. I watched it go around that oval for hours. I stopped it; I started it, and I made up countless stories of work being done, people traveling places and of everything on the way to everywhere. Although that was a peak in a lot of ways, I don't remember any of my Christmases from childhood through my teenage years as being very much less.
If you've lived long enough past your "young" years, you've probably found that Christmas and it's denouement New Years are also bittersweet. It's the season to be particularly pained by family dysfunction, estrangement from loved ones and the more frequent bringing to mind of those who are no longer present at the table of this life and are truly missed.
Tiny Tim in Dickens' "Christmas Carol" had a couple of these Christmas complicating issues. Tim Cratchit's family was very poor and Tiny Tim's health was failing. Circumstances could have been better for the Cratchits in many ways. Even so, Tim was down right giddy at Christmas time. It seems that his vision of Christmas didn't involve regrets of summits not reached.
Seems like his family got caught up in his enthusiasm too. One portion of that was probably to humor and encourage Tim, but I think it was pretty hard to stay dour around that kid. Even an eave's dropping Scrooge couldn't help but get sucked in.
Tiny Tim is a fictional ideal but I don't think he lives too far down the street from reality. We don't meet him and his kind often because we're not willing to travel with our own Christmas ghosts. We're not willing to look honestly at our past, beyond the veneer of our present and into the possibilities of our future. Usually, we blink and say "No thank you." The Ghosts' gift to Scrooge was this: Honesty. The ghosts and all they reveal represent an invitation to Scrooge to abandon his chains...These were chains he was forging for himself in this life. They were of the same kind that Marley was doomed by his own self-deception to carry throughout eternity. All Scrooge had to do was say yes to the reality the ghosts offered and refuse to blink.
Happiness and completeness were not delivered by Scrooge's wealth nor discouraged by Tim's disease. For Tim, they existed independently of circumstance. Despite the fact that real happiness looks wonderful from the outside (and it is), it isn't easily acheived. Next time you watch or read about Tim et al, watch how many times Scrooge flinches, how much the revelation costs him. This is no self help whiz bang achieved by a mantra of activity with a dash of will power on the side. This is expensive. This is the offering unto death of Scrooge's identity, of all that he is. It is both risky and costly.
The gift that anyone can give to everyone is the gift of themselves. Note however, this gift costs everything. To give ourselves doesn't involve more doing, more buying or more busy, even if that's all undertaken in the name of doing for others. The gift is accepting who your are with all your brokenness and all your faults, honestly. The gift is offering to others the same grace that accepting yourself requires. This is the gift that Christ delivered in his person, at his birth. It's true that Christ paid the cost of the gift in full. But it's also equally true that the lives he bought must be lived through and with him or they remain forever chained and incomplete.
So...Merry Christmas. Christ's gift to us by his birth was the real and soaring truth contained in that fictional line: "God bless us, every one." We are blessed beyond all possible circumstance both now and forever. We need only the living exposure to the truth that was offered to Scrooge by the Ghosts of Christmas. In other language, the Ghosts are character metaphors for the truth and value of what Christ brought into this world with his birth and offered to us in his death and resurrection.
Monday, December 19, 2011
Seeing is Believing
I went walking on the trail behind our house the other night, after dark with our dog. I have a light on a head band that everyone in our family likes to laugh at. It's OK though, even though I look pretty ridiculous at least I can see where I'm going.
I came to a wide spot in the trail and shut off the light, just standing there awhile letting my eyes adjust to the darkness. I don't know that it even registered in the dog's mind that anything had changed. He was obsessively sniffing every square inch he could reach before I shut the light off. Nothing changed afterward. It was a clear moonless night and it was truly dark.
At first I was completely blind and only able to see a few stars through the trees. While I was waiting for my eyes to adjust, I started thinking. I thought about the raccoons that are everywhere this year. One of our nieces had to take her dog to the vet after a run in with a raccoon. I thought about the well dressed, semi-mysterious vagrant that I've seen around the valley of late. And I even thought of the really thrilling mountain lion tracks I've seen in the sand by the railroad tracks. Did I mention that mountain lions hunt at night?
Thankfully, about the time my thoughts turned round to the mountain lion, I started to be able to make out more detail. Still though, much of what I'd been able to see only a moment before remained obscured by the ubiquitous reality of the darkness. In the forest at night, darkness is reality. Any light we take there is limited. Our lights help us only with the steps immediately in front of us. Flashlights do not offer much help identifying land marks which are easy to see during the day.
I got stuck on the trail once without a flashlight. I know this will be a great surprise to everyone who knows me but I am fully capable of talking too much. That evening I ran into a couple people up there that I've become acquainted with over the years, as well as a stranger that started telling me about the cooking school he was attending. By the time my jaws were tired and my voice was hoarse, it was very nearly dark and I was nearly two miles from home.
The first part of the walk wasn't bad. The sun was freshly set and there was still a bit of twilight. Hiking toward home, the trail follows railroad tracks for quite a ways and then morphs into a paved road, a dirt road and finally into a trail that's occasionally maintained when myself and few others choose to do so. By the time I got to the dirt road night had fallen and the beginning of the dirt road strongly resembled the entrance of a rather dark cave. In the end I got home (slowly) by using my cell phone display as though it were a really bad flashlight.
Since then, and with the addition of a flashlight, I've been hiking in the dark regularly for a while now. As a result, I've become aware of how much we don't see. The little lights we take into the darkness light our immediate area, the path we're on and our home base. Everything else though remains in darkness, indifferent to our small candles.
Turns out though, there's a great deal of beauty and life in the darkness. Full moons cast amazing shadows and create shafts of moonlight through the trees. Turkeys can be heard settling in for the night. There's a juvenile coyote that yips from time to time, trying to convince someone of something. None of this really stands out though or isn't even visible when you're busy trying to figure out what each stick is that enters your cone of light and where exactly you're going to put your next step.
Its' easy to fall prey to dependence on having to see and in so doing, miss the beauty that's all around us...because at first it all looks really dark. Instead of standing intentionally quiet and still, we point a light at something, turn it on and let it define the world around us, hoping that the little light will chase away our fear. It might accomplish that for a moment. However, if you're like me you'll start to look out to the edge of what the light reveals and try to imagine what the next shape is going to be, even before you get close enough to resolve it.
We take the light with us with the idea we can control the dark and protect ourselves. Of course, all we wind up doing is shining a light cone fifty or so feet in front of us. In the end, that small light limits and even defines everything we see. The staggering truth is that we were made for greater vision and a greater reality.
Traveling in the dark is a little scary. It gets less so over time but it will always have a level of trepidation associated with it that is unique. Even so, our fear of stumbling in the dark can become an invitation to slow down, to listen carefully, to pick out each step of the trail we're on deliberately and to learn to enjoy the night. And when all that's said and done, we'll still need a breath of faith to believe we've planted our step correctly and that the trail is as it's always been.
Darkness can be chased away or held at bay with a Maglite, headlight or even a cell phone. It can only be redeemed though when we accept it for what it is, accept ourselves for who we were spoken to be and accept that each step in darkness will require a good bit of patience, deliberateness and listening. Most of all though, it requires that we have faith both for the journey and for each step.
I came to a wide spot in the trail and shut off the light, just standing there awhile letting my eyes adjust to the darkness. I don't know that it even registered in the dog's mind that anything had changed. He was obsessively sniffing every square inch he could reach before I shut the light off. Nothing changed afterward. It was a clear moonless night and it was truly dark.
At first I was completely blind and only able to see a few stars through the trees. While I was waiting for my eyes to adjust, I started thinking. I thought about the raccoons that are everywhere this year. One of our nieces had to take her dog to the vet after a run in with a raccoon. I thought about the well dressed, semi-mysterious vagrant that I've seen around the valley of late. And I even thought of the really thrilling mountain lion tracks I've seen in the sand by the railroad tracks. Did I mention that mountain lions hunt at night?
Thankfully, about the time my thoughts turned round to the mountain lion, I started to be able to make out more detail. Still though, much of what I'd been able to see only a moment before remained obscured by the ubiquitous reality of the darkness. In the forest at night, darkness is reality. Any light we take there is limited. Our lights help us only with the steps immediately in front of us. Flashlights do not offer much help identifying land marks which are easy to see during the day.
I got stuck on the trail once without a flashlight. I know this will be a great surprise to everyone who knows me but I am fully capable of talking too much. That evening I ran into a couple people up there that I've become acquainted with over the years, as well as a stranger that started telling me about the cooking school he was attending. By the time my jaws were tired and my voice was hoarse, it was very nearly dark and I was nearly two miles from home.
The first part of the walk wasn't bad. The sun was freshly set and there was still a bit of twilight. Hiking toward home, the trail follows railroad tracks for quite a ways and then morphs into a paved road, a dirt road and finally into a trail that's occasionally maintained when myself and few others choose to do so. By the time I got to the dirt road night had fallen and the beginning of the dirt road strongly resembled the entrance of a rather dark cave. In the end I got home (slowly) by using my cell phone display as though it were a really bad flashlight.
Since then, and with the addition of a flashlight, I've been hiking in the dark regularly for a while now. As a result, I've become aware of how much we don't see. The little lights we take into the darkness light our immediate area, the path we're on and our home base. Everything else though remains in darkness, indifferent to our small candles.
Turns out though, there's a great deal of beauty and life in the darkness. Full moons cast amazing shadows and create shafts of moonlight through the trees. Turkeys can be heard settling in for the night. There's a juvenile coyote that yips from time to time, trying to convince someone of something. None of this really stands out though or isn't even visible when you're busy trying to figure out what each stick is that enters your cone of light and where exactly you're going to put your next step.
Its' easy to fall prey to dependence on having to see and in so doing, miss the beauty that's all around us...because at first it all looks really dark. Instead of standing intentionally quiet and still, we point a light at something, turn it on and let it define the world around us, hoping that the little light will chase away our fear. It might accomplish that for a moment. However, if you're like me you'll start to look out to the edge of what the light reveals and try to imagine what the next shape is going to be, even before you get close enough to resolve it.
We take the light with us with the idea we can control the dark and protect ourselves. Of course, all we wind up doing is shining a light cone fifty or so feet in front of us. In the end, that small light limits and even defines everything we see. The staggering truth is that we were made for greater vision and a greater reality.
Traveling in the dark is a little scary. It gets less so over time but it will always have a level of trepidation associated with it that is unique. Even so, our fear of stumbling in the dark can become an invitation to slow down, to listen carefully, to pick out each step of the trail we're on deliberately and to learn to enjoy the night. And when all that's said and done, we'll still need a breath of faith to believe we've planted our step correctly and that the trail is as it's always been.
Darkness can be chased away or held at bay with a Maglite, headlight or even a cell phone. It can only be redeemed though when we accept it for what it is, accept ourselves for who we were spoken to be and accept that each step in darkness will require a good bit of patience, deliberateness and listening. Most of all though, it requires that we have faith both for the journey and for each step.
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
The Thing That's Bigger
"The Thing That's Bigger" is an awkward title. Melville had a better title for his book on the same subject. He called his story "Moby Dick."
In "Moby Dick," Melville writes about a great white whale that is both malevolent and irresistible. The central character, Ahab, is as driven a man as Melville could find words to express and he knew where to look for words. In the book, Ahab spends his life trying to destroy the thing that took his leg, the thing that gave offense. In the end though, the great whale takes Ahab and his determination and extinguishes him in a great, wild ocean without ever expressing the barest hint of even having been in a fight. Although the great beast carries scars and wounds, it swims on as it always had.
I'm writing this during Advent. It's maybe an odd subject for Advent but I think this season is really the season of "The Thing That's Bigger." The miracle of Christmas, the love of our friends and family stacked on one side, often in stark contrast with our unmet expectations and disappointments and maybe even loneliness on the other. These two polar opposites can leave us at the bottom of a valley of our own making. On each side of rise things that are truly bigger than we are.
The New Testament Joseph faced things bigger than he was. When he found out Mary (his fiancee at the time) was pregnant with someone else's baby, he decided to break up with her quietly rather than subject her to some of the punishments that were in play at the time. Then an angel came to Joseph. The angel said an interesting thing to Joseph. He said this: "...do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife..." That's always hit me as interesting because of the things the angel didn't say. He didn't say, don't be jealous or don't be angry. Joseph was afraid. Whether or not Joseph understood that he was afraid, the angel did. The angel knew that Joseph was facing The Thing That's Bigger.
It's easy to imagine that seeing an angel would make you brave and help you understand the ins and outs of the problem(s) facing you. The truth is though that it will be only a brief time until you're distracted, scared by some new facet of the situation or start to doubt that "the thing with angel" happened at all. Too often our forgetfulness causes us to be afraid. We think we're mad, hurt, discouraged or even at wits end. Really though, we're just afraid.
I could probably take pretty good guesses at our common fears because "such is common to man." None of them really matter though. What matters is Joseph's decision. Joseph with the help of the angel decided to not be afraid.
The thing that Joseph understood before most of the rest of us is that the fact and person of Christ makes fear irrelevant. We still trip over it and even embrace it. We dress it up all different ways and get confused about what we're feeling but it's hold on us, it's relevance in our lives is dead.
White whales come in many flavors. It might be cancer, unemployment, kids behaving badly or any number of other things. We all face them multiple times during our lifetimes. When an angel or even Christ himself shows up in whatever form to tell us to not be afraid, he reminds us that we have a different path we can choose. There's no fear on the path at all unless we bring it with us...and he'll even help us put our fear down. Remember that the "valley of the shadow of death" isn't the valley of death; it's the valley of the shadow. The white whales are real but as Joseph learned, they don't matter any more.
In "Moby Dick," Melville writes about a great white whale that is both malevolent and irresistible. The central character, Ahab, is as driven a man as Melville could find words to express and he knew where to look for words. In the book, Ahab spends his life trying to destroy the thing that took his leg, the thing that gave offense. In the end though, the great whale takes Ahab and his determination and extinguishes him in a great, wild ocean without ever expressing the barest hint of even having been in a fight. Although the great beast carries scars and wounds, it swims on as it always had.
I'm writing this during Advent. It's maybe an odd subject for Advent but I think this season is really the season of "The Thing That's Bigger." The miracle of Christmas, the love of our friends and family stacked on one side, often in stark contrast with our unmet expectations and disappointments and maybe even loneliness on the other. These two polar opposites can leave us at the bottom of a valley of our own making. On each side of rise things that are truly bigger than we are.
The New Testament Joseph faced things bigger than he was. When he found out Mary (his fiancee at the time) was pregnant with someone else's baby, he decided to break up with her quietly rather than subject her to some of the punishments that were in play at the time. Then an angel came to Joseph. The angel said an interesting thing to Joseph. He said this: "...do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife..." That's always hit me as interesting because of the things the angel didn't say. He didn't say, don't be jealous or don't be angry. Joseph was afraid. Whether or not Joseph understood that he was afraid, the angel did. The angel knew that Joseph was facing The Thing That's Bigger.
It's easy to imagine that seeing an angel would make you brave and help you understand the ins and outs of the problem(s) facing you. The truth is though that it will be only a brief time until you're distracted, scared by some new facet of the situation or start to doubt that "the thing with angel" happened at all. Too often our forgetfulness causes us to be afraid. We think we're mad, hurt, discouraged or even at wits end. Really though, we're just afraid.
I could probably take pretty good guesses at our common fears because "such is common to man." None of them really matter though. What matters is Joseph's decision. Joseph with the help of the angel decided to not be afraid.
The thing that Joseph understood before most of the rest of us is that the fact and person of Christ makes fear irrelevant. We still trip over it and even embrace it. We dress it up all different ways and get confused about what we're feeling but it's hold on us, it's relevance in our lives is dead.
White whales come in many flavors. It might be cancer, unemployment, kids behaving badly or any number of other things. We all face them multiple times during our lifetimes. When an angel or even Christ himself shows up in whatever form to tell us to not be afraid, he reminds us that we have a different path we can choose. There's no fear on the path at all unless we bring it with us...and he'll even help us put our fear down. Remember that the "valley of the shadow of death" isn't the valley of death; it's the valley of the shadow. The white whales are real but as Joseph learned, they don't matter any more.
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
Storms
My wife and I share among other things, a mutual love of storms. We were at the North Rim of the Grand Canyon once in mid summer while a front was passing through. The storms were pretty small but impressive in terms of their thunder and lightning. We went out on a point below the lodge to see one of the mini-storms make it's way up the canyon toward us. The front of the storm was a lightning fireworks show accompanied by explosive thunder. We watched for a bit as the kids played in a wide place on the point we occupied. Suddenly the same thought hit us both at the same moment, "We really need to get out of here NOW." We corralled the kids and hurried back to the lodge.
In literature, storms are quite often used to foreshadow major change of some sort. Generally it's not happy change. One of our neighbors became familiar with this concept the other night when a storm carrying high winds blew Redwood branch through one of their skylights. That changed their night in a significant way and gave them a vent where their skylight used to be.
The bible contains a good many storms. I can't think of any recorded there that describe scared, storm watching couples that should know better. Still though, there are storms that get people thrown overboard, storms that wreck ships, storms that pass by without doing anything at all and even a storm that Jesus tells to be still.
Storms of one sort or another will find you wherever you are; it's the nature of who we are and where we live. It's sometimes possible to the pick the kind of storm you want but avoiding them simply isn't possible. Life has seasons and life has storms. Life even has seasons of storms. And sometimes we either wait in place too long, can't get out of the way fast enough or are just completely surprised and overcome by the onrushing fury.
Often, our first response to a storm is denial. That's a bit like the child that stands in front of you shivering, telling you they aren't cold because they don't want to stop playing long enough to come in and put on a jacket. Or maybe like imagining that the lightning storm shaking the ground, ionizing the air and almost blinding you would never actually hit you. Another common reaction is to hide the fact of the storm from others...like when our children with literally droopy eyes and slurred speech would tell us they weren't tired, bare seconds before they passed out.
The truth is, we all live through and even with storms. There's a theological word for acknowledging storms. The word is this: confession. Confession is not just a list of right and wrong, naughty and nice. Neither is confession limited to only speaking the positive. It's an invitation by the living God who spoke us to be utterly transparent with him and with each other. It covers everything, finds us where we are and invites us into the reality of who he is and who we were spoken to be.
The best we can do really in response to a storm is to believe in God. By that I don't mean believe that he exists, believe that he pre-, post-, a- millennial or believe that he's a list of attributes, or study how he's omni this or that or even memorize the Old and New Testament in the original languages. I mean instead that the very best we can do is believe and accept that God is who he says he is, "I AM WHO I AM." Because, if that's true, then we are who he spoke us to be, and the storm is what he says it is.
We've had so many people help us through our storms over the last five years it's literally impossible to call them all to mind...not to mention the people who have chosen to help us anonymously. In part, they helped us because at one point, we just laid down in imperfect part at least, our pretense that everything was OK and that we weren't scared, hurt and vulnerable. It's one of the hardest things Christy and I have done in either of our lives. We didn't know it at the moment, but in that moment we turned and started running toward safety, toward the lodge, toward the stuffed chairs and the hearth fire.
In literature, storms are quite often used to foreshadow major change of some sort. Generally it's not happy change. One of our neighbors became familiar with this concept the other night when a storm carrying high winds blew Redwood branch through one of their skylights. That changed their night in a significant way and gave them a vent where their skylight used to be.
The bible contains a good many storms. I can't think of any recorded there that describe scared, storm watching couples that should know better. Still though, there are storms that get people thrown overboard, storms that wreck ships, storms that pass by without doing anything at all and even a storm that Jesus tells to be still.
Storms of one sort or another will find you wherever you are; it's the nature of who we are and where we live. It's sometimes possible to the pick the kind of storm you want but avoiding them simply isn't possible. Life has seasons and life has storms. Life even has seasons of storms. And sometimes we either wait in place too long, can't get out of the way fast enough or are just completely surprised and overcome by the onrushing fury.
Often, our first response to a storm is denial. That's a bit like the child that stands in front of you shivering, telling you they aren't cold because they don't want to stop playing long enough to come in and put on a jacket. Or maybe like imagining that the lightning storm shaking the ground, ionizing the air and almost blinding you would never actually hit you. Another common reaction is to hide the fact of the storm from others...like when our children with literally droopy eyes and slurred speech would tell us they weren't tired, bare seconds before they passed out.
The truth is, we all live through and even with storms. There's a theological word for acknowledging storms. The word is this: confession. Confession is not just a list of right and wrong, naughty and nice. Neither is confession limited to only speaking the positive. It's an invitation by the living God who spoke us to be utterly transparent with him and with each other. It covers everything, finds us where we are and invites us into the reality of who he is and who we were spoken to be.
The best we can do really in response to a storm is to believe in God. By that I don't mean believe that he exists, believe that he pre-, post-, a- millennial or believe that he's a list of attributes, or study how he's omni this or that or even memorize the Old and New Testament in the original languages. I mean instead that the very best we can do is believe and accept that God is who he says he is, "I AM WHO I AM." Because, if that's true, then we are who he spoke us to be, and the storm is what he says it is.
We've had so many people help us through our storms over the last five years it's literally impossible to call them all to mind...not to mention the people who have chosen to help us anonymously. In part, they helped us because at one point, we just laid down in imperfect part at least, our pretense that everything was OK and that we weren't scared, hurt and vulnerable. It's one of the hardest things Christy and I have done in either of our lives. We didn't know it at the moment, but in that moment we turned and started running toward safety, toward the lodge, toward the stuffed chairs and the hearth fire.
Sunday, November 27, 2011
Mary
I'm writing this on the first day of Advent. The origins of Advent are a bit misty, originating in the early Catholic church. As with most things in churchianity of all types and denominations, the history and reason for the Advent observance is fraught with conflicting theories, opinions and ideas.
There's another "advent" though that has been asking for my attention lately. That is, the advent associated with the angel appearing to Mary to announce the coming of Christ. The angel's first words to Mary are "Don't be afraid..." (One reference is Luke 1:30.) I think it's also worth noting in passing that the angel says to Joseph, "Don't be afraid to take Mary as your wife..." (Matt 1:20).
There's an old joke that Mary was the perfect Jewish mother in that she was the mother of a doctor, her son was born to her while she was still a virgin and she thought her boy was the son of God.
The admonition to Mary to not be afraid though I think is both for the moment and also serves as a foreshadowing of the future. Indeed, to be Jesus' mom was a tall mountain to climb. Beginning with conception and birth circumstances, continuing on through child rearing, carpentry, at some point probably single motherhood, ministry, death and resurrection. And the opening words by the messenger of God to Mary are, "Don't be afraid." It seems that Mary takes the angel's words to heart, as she goes off to celebrate what has happened with her cousin who is experiencing a lesser yet still related miracle.
Years later, we see Jesus at the age of 12 teaching in the temple. Mary and Joseph are a little frantic at Jesus' apparently not being where they expected him to be. Eventually they find him and when they ask the 1st century equivalent of "What do you think you're doing?" he says, "Don't you not know that I have to be about my father's business?" The bible says they thought about that some. The bible doesn't say but I suspect that there was also a generous portion of, "Huh. Okay. Now...go - get - on - the - MULE!" or like construct. Because at this point our creator and God was fully manifest as one of us. Mary, perhaps of all people in history understood this then and understands this now more completely than any other human soul.
At the wedding feast at Cana, the tide is turned somewhat. Mary says, "Jesus, they're all out of wine. Do something." Jesus says, "Now's not my time." The bible doesn't record all of the next bit exactly like this but I can imagine Mary arching one eyebrow a bit, looking God square in the face and saying to everyone else there, "Do what he says to do", all the while talking directly to Jesus. The subtext of course is, "And he WILL be doing what his mother requires that he do." And amazingly, he (that is, God) actually does as she requires in that moment. God abandons whatever concept of what "his time" is and chooses instead to honor his mom's wish of the moment. I think I'm on pretty safe ground to say he loved her and respected her...as his mom. I can't think of another time when Jesus performed a miracle in response to a demand for one.
I want to fast forward to a less pleasant occasion. Mary, was witness to the cross. John 19:27 says roughly that Jesus, knowing he was not going to be around to fulfill his duties as a son, spoke to one of the disciples to the effect of, "Please take care of my mom." It's hard to say why Jesus didn't call on his brothers but regardless, some of his last words concerned the ongoing care of his mom.
"Don't be afraid..." Truly, Mary had much reason to fear. I do not doubt that she had bad moments. I know she wasn't perfect. Still though, the bible records that she was indeed a loving, faithful and in-charge mom.
Jesus is the reason for Christmas. Those of us who are protestant though tend to overlook his mom. Those who are Catholic tend to diminish her humanity. Taken as a real flesh and blood person though, she was amazing. I don't know if there's another person in the bible who teaches more completely with the warp and woof of her very life what it means when God tells us, "Don't be afraid."
There's another "advent" though that has been asking for my attention lately. That is, the advent associated with the angel appearing to Mary to announce the coming of Christ. The angel's first words to Mary are "Don't be afraid..." (One reference is Luke 1:30.) I think it's also worth noting in passing that the angel says to Joseph, "Don't be afraid to take Mary as your wife..." (Matt 1:20).
There's an old joke that Mary was the perfect Jewish mother in that she was the mother of a doctor, her son was born to her while she was still a virgin and she thought her boy was the son of God.
The admonition to Mary to not be afraid though I think is both for the moment and also serves as a foreshadowing of the future. Indeed, to be Jesus' mom was a tall mountain to climb. Beginning with conception and birth circumstances, continuing on through child rearing, carpentry, at some point probably single motherhood, ministry, death and resurrection. And the opening words by the messenger of God to Mary are, "Don't be afraid." It seems that Mary takes the angel's words to heart, as she goes off to celebrate what has happened with her cousin who is experiencing a lesser yet still related miracle.
Years later, we see Jesus at the age of 12 teaching in the temple. Mary and Joseph are a little frantic at Jesus' apparently not being where they expected him to be. Eventually they find him and when they ask the 1st century equivalent of "What do you think you're doing?" he says, "Don't you not know that I have to be about my father's business?" The bible says they thought about that some. The bible doesn't say but I suspect that there was also a generous portion of, "Huh. Okay. Now...go - get - on - the - MULE!" or like construct. Because at this point our creator and God was fully manifest as one of us. Mary, perhaps of all people in history understood this then and understands this now more completely than any other human soul.
At the wedding feast at Cana, the tide is turned somewhat. Mary says, "Jesus, they're all out of wine. Do something." Jesus says, "Now's not my time." The bible doesn't record all of the next bit exactly like this but I can imagine Mary arching one eyebrow a bit, looking God square in the face and saying to everyone else there, "Do what he says to do", all the while talking directly to Jesus. The subtext of course is, "And he WILL be doing what his mother requires that he do." And amazingly, he (that is, God) actually does as she requires in that moment. God abandons whatever concept of what "his time" is and chooses instead to honor his mom's wish of the moment. I think I'm on pretty safe ground to say he loved her and respected her...as his mom. I can't think of another time when Jesus performed a miracle in response to a demand for one.
I want to fast forward to a less pleasant occasion. Mary, was witness to the cross. John 19:27 says roughly that Jesus, knowing he was not going to be around to fulfill his duties as a son, spoke to one of the disciples to the effect of, "Please take care of my mom." It's hard to say why Jesus didn't call on his brothers but regardless, some of his last words concerned the ongoing care of his mom.
"Don't be afraid..." Truly, Mary had much reason to fear. I do not doubt that she had bad moments. I know she wasn't perfect. Still though, the bible records that she was indeed a loving, faithful and in-charge mom.
Jesus is the reason for Christmas. Those of us who are protestant though tend to overlook his mom. Those who are Catholic tend to diminish her humanity. Taken as a real flesh and blood person though, she was amazing. I don't know if there's another person in the bible who teaches more completely with the warp and woof of her very life what it means when God tells us, "Don't be afraid."
Monday, November 14, 2011
Fire
I've been spending some time with the past lately. TV has finally worn me down and I now find it unbearable much more often than I used to. There's a line in a David Byrne song that says "Fighting fire with fire." In context, I think he might be talking about quenching our imagination with the "fire" of T.V. That's not a good thing.
As a result, I've gone off to Google images to review some of the images from my younger days that I haven't seen in a great many years and that I very much miss.
There are a few of these but I think the one that has drawn me in to the greatest extent is the Owens Valley section of U.S. 395. During most of my growing up, this area was a gateway to other places, as well as being an end in itself.
In terms of it's own destination, it was a way station. Lone Pine, Independence and Bishop all saw us stop for food, ice cream or to spend the night. In terms of a gateway, it was pure magic. After the valley, which includes Mt Whitney on the Western side, you run into the Bristle Cone Pines, Mammoth Lakes and surrounding area, Tioga Pass, Bodie, Mono Lake and eventually the eastern slope of the Cascades.
We never stopped at what is probably the southernmost point in the valley. This is a place called Little Lake. There was an old hotel and restaurant there that burned down in 1998. It had been there since the 30's and showed the signs of age. It was always fascinating to drive by though because it had a little tower structure on top of it...for absolutely no discernible reason. The owner couldn't get any of the fire departments in the area to respond to his call. Gotta be a story there.
One night, we went to dinner at the north end of Bishop at the VFW. The VFW was right off of 395, plainly visible from the road. (I've never understood the fraternal/commercial dynamic of the VFW.) My mom was married then and the VFW had band playing. It was actually quite a nice restaurant. I remember that my mom and her husband danced. I was about 10 at that point and I remember thinking how wonderful everything seemed.
Years later after the divorce, we went through that area again and the saw that the VFW had burned. The burned carcass of the building hung around a couple years until it was bulldozed. It's now impossible to see where it was. Fire's taken a few Owens Valley landmarks.
Fire's also an illuminating and cleansing thing. I have an old picture for which I'm keeping an eye out for. When I was a teenager, I saved my shekels and bought a 35mm SLR. In experimenting with the camera while we were camped at Mammoth Lakes, I used a self timer and a timed exposure to take a picture of my mother and myself staring into a camp fire. (I'd have included it here if I could find the thing.) In the picture, the fire is quite bright and we appear as colored shadows.
Fire can be either destructive, purifying or both. Fire takes much of our past but that's a good thing. If our past is bad, it's great that it's in the past and done. If our past is good, it's a springboard to what's beyond. Ultimately, it's who we're riding with through time that determines whether the effect of the fire on us is destructive or beautiful. The short version of this is that if we let Christ drive and throw a bunch of other people in the car that think he's going to take us someplace amazing, then the fires of time and circumstance destroy our broken pasts are wonderful.
These are the fires that can light our nights, defining us in their reflection and warming us. The past is gone. Camp fires and sweeping forests streaming down off high mountains wait for us up ahead.
As a result, I've gone off to Google images to review some of the images from my younger days that I haven't seen in a great many years and that I very much miss.
There are a few of these but I think the one that has drawn me in to the greatest extent is the Owens Valley section of U.S. 395. During most of my growing up, this area was a gateway to other places, as well as being an end in itself.
In terms of it's own destination, it was a way station. Lone Pine, Independence and Bishop all saw us stop for food, ice cream or to spend the night. In terms of a gateway, it was pure magic. After the valley, which includes Mt Whitney on the Western side, you run into the Bristle Cone Pines, Mammoth Lakes and surrounding area, Tioga Pass, Bodie, Mono Lake and eventually the eastern slope of the Cascades.
We never stopped at what is probably the southernmost point in the valley. This is a place called Little Lake. There was an old hotel and restaurant there that burned down in 1998. It had been there since the 30's and showed the signs of age. It was always fascinating to drive by though because it had a little tower structure on top of it...for absolutely no discernible reason. The owner couldn't get any of the fire departments in the area to respond to his call. Gotta be a story there.
One night, we went to dinner at the north end of Bishop at the VFW. The VFW was right off of 395, plainly visible from the road. (I've never understood the fraternal/commercial dynamic of the VFW.) My mom was married then and the VFW had band playing. It was actually quite a nice restaurant. I remember that my mom and her husband danced. I was about 10 at that point and I remember thinking how wonderful everything seemed.
Years later after the divorce, we went through that area again and the saw that the VFW had burned. The burned carcass of the building hung around a couple years until it was bulldozed. It's now impossible to see where it was. Fire's taken a few Owens Valley landmarks.
Fire's also an illuminating and cleansing thing. I have an old picture for which I'm keeping an eye out for. When I was a teenager, I saved my shekels and bought a 35mm SLR. In experimenting with the camera while we were camped at Mammoth Lakes, I used a self timer and a timed exposure to take a picture of my mother and myself staring into a camp fire. (I'd have included it here if I could find the thing.) In the picture, the fire is quite bright and we appear as colored shadows.
Fire can be either destructive, purifying or both. Fire takes much of our past but that's a good thing. If our past is bad, it's great that it's in the past and done. If our past is good, it's a springboard to what's beyond. Ultimately, it's who we're riding with through time that determines whether the effect of the fire on us is destructive or beautiful. The short version of this is that if we let Christ drive and throw a bunch of other people in the car that think he's going to take us someplace amazing, then the fires of time and circumstance destroy our broken pasts are wonderful.
These are the fires that can light our nights, defining us in their reflection and warming us. The past is gone. Camp fires and sweeping forests streaming down off high mountains wait for us up ahead.
Friday, October 28, 2011
What Happens Next
If you're going to talk about living in the moment, living for the moment or even tell someone "in just a moment," it's a good idea to know what a moment is. Cheap definitions of "moment" are, well, cheap. One time back in school, a teacher asked me to define health. I said, "Freedom from disease." The teacher blinked at me approximately 5 times and said in response, "That's the worst correct definition I've ever heard."
Moments are where we live. They're an address we have in time and space. Example: "I'll meet you at Starbuck's at 10."
You also have to add in that moments are an artifact of human consciousness. Without people there would be no time as we like to think of it, only the order in which things happen. It's true that seconds, minutes, hours et al reflect our world but really they reflect our relationship to our world. Dividing up the day into 24 equal segments at one point served someone's purpose. The rest of us picked it up because our parents enforced it.
I'll assert that most of our moments seem to be spent pondering or worrying about other moments. We often fret about the unchangeable past in the hope that our fretting will help us control our future.
One exception to this is entertainment. Entertainment happens in time and space and pretty much requires us to at least pay some attention if it's going to serve the purpose we implicitly assigned to it by sitting down and watching or listening. It pulls us into the current moment.
I would submit that the invention of writing first made entertainment repeatable and made it such that other people weren't required to be present for us to experience entertainment. Before writing about all you had were traveling poets and minstrels and when they left, so did your entertainment. With writing, you could pick up a tablet, papyrus or scroll anytime you wanted and read all the silly stuff that the great kidder Euripides wrote. Actually, he wasn't much of a kidder. We know that because even though he's been gone for a few millennia, we can still know at least something about him by his writing. I never had a relationship with Euripides but I do know he wasn't particularly funny.
Entertainment requires less and less immediate relationship all the time. I think it's safe to say that everyone who reads this space has some sort of relationship with me. That's unusual. Most people who blog don't know most of their audience and never ever will look them in the eye. I have at least a couple friends that I wouldn't know at all if it weren't for the internet. That's good. It would be better to go to a meal with them but I'd much rather know them digitally than not at all.
As information becomes more and more accessible, the need for relationship as an information transport mechanism becomes less and less important. And as we become more and more dependent on information, we tend to value it correspondingly over relationship. That is, we'd rather fill our moments with information of our own choosing or in maintenance of our needs and wants.
I think this necessarily leads to the point where fewer and fewer of our moments are spent in relationship and more moments are consumed by entertainment in all it's forms. And I think that is a kind of narcissism...of which I might personally be a bit guilty.
I have been working for awhile in the direction of opening myself to more and better relationships. And even though everyone's moments seem pretty consumed, I'm going to keep chipping away. And that's because in the end, the best moments for all of us are the one's that we share with each other and with our God. Relationships feed us and give us the fellowship of others. Information is just information.
Moments are where we live. They're an address we have in time and space. Example: "I'll meet you at Starbuck's at 10."
You also have to add in that moments are an artifact of human consciousness. Without people there would be no time as we like to think of it, only the order in which things happen. It's true that seconds, minutes, hours et al reflect our world but really they reflect our relationship to our world. Dividing up the day into 24 equal segments at one point served someone's purpose. The rest of us picked it up because our parents enforced it.
I'll assert that most of our moments seem to be spent pondering or worrying about other moments. We often fret about the unchangeable past in the hope that our fretting will help us control our future.
One exception to this is entertainment. Entertainment happens in time and space and pretty much requires us to at least pay some attention if it's going to serve the purpose we implicitly assigned to it by sitting down and watching or listening. It pulls us into the current moment.
I would submit that the invention of writing first made entertainment repeatable and made it such that other people weren't required to be present for us to experience entertainment. Before writing about all you had were traveling poets and minstrels and when they left, so did your entertainment. With writing, you could pick up a tablet, papyrus or scroll anytime you wanted and read all the silly stuff that the great kidder Euripides wrote. Actually, he wasn't much of a kidder. We know that because even though he's been gone for a few millennia, we can still know at least something about him by his writing. I never had a relationship with Euripides but I do know he wasn't particularly funny.
Entertainment requires less and less immediate relationship all the time. I think it's safe to say that everyone who reads this space has some sort of relationship with me. That's unusual. Most people who blog don't know most of their audience and never ever will look them in the eye. I have at least a couple friends that I wouldn't know at all if it weren't for the internet. That's good. It would be better to go to a meal with them but I'd much rather know them digitally than not at all.
As information becomes more and more accessible, the need for relationship as an information transport mechanism becomes less and less important. And as we become more and more dependent on information, we tend to value it correspondingly over relationship. That is, we'd rather fill our moments with information of our own choosing or in maintenance of our needs and wants.
I think this necessarily leads to the point where fewer and fewer of our moments are spent in relationship and more moments are consumed by entertainment in all it's forms. And I think that is a kind of narcissism...of which I might personally be a bit guilty.
I have been working for awhile in the direction of opening myself to more and better relationships. And even though everyone's moments seem pretty consumed, I'm going to keep chipping away. And that's because in the end, the best moments for all of us are the one's that we share with each other and with our God. Relationships feed us and give us the fellowship of others. Information is just information.
Saturday, October 15, 2011
Us and Them
Virtually all public back and forth today is based on the fallacy known as the false dilemma. This silliness is known by various names, including but not limited to the false dilemma, false binary, either-or fallacy or any other of numerous names. Here's a bad example of it: "You don't believe in my idea! Well you're just stupid." You can substitute bad, arrogant, ridiculous, a hater, mean, greedy, uncaring, unwashed for "stupid," or any pejorative adjective you can conjure and you still have a false dilemma.
While that is kind of a broad ad hominem example, there are other more subtle forms that are based on false assertions of fact. Imagine Joe and Harry talking about oil changes:
Joe: "I use synthetic oil and you don't have to change your oil every 3000 miles when you use synthetic oil."
Harry: "What? You don't think changing oil every 3000 miles is important?? Well I can tell you that every 10,000 miles isn't often enough and if you do it your way, you'll ruin your engine!"
There are a couple things here. First, Harry ignores the fact that there are 6999 possible values between 3000 and 10000. Second, he also ignores that there might be other mitigating information that might make 10,000 a good number in this context. In short, Harry substitutes his own suppositions about what Joe is saying, ignores any possible information that Joe might have that he doesn't and leaps to a conclusion that he apparently holds dearly.
The great majority of public disagreement these days contains some flavor of the false dilemma. I think the main reason for this is that too many of those doing the blabbering rather cynically assume they don't really have to convince anyone of the efficacy of their point. Instead, they just have to have a message with sufficient personal appeal to whip 51% of the listeners into a froth.
This is how the division inherent in the construct of "Us and Them" or maybe "Us vs. Them" is made. This is how the false dilemma literally cuts "us" and "them" into pieces.
Ultimately though, I don't think this has anything to do with "Them" or "Us" or even "Us vs. Them." I think instead it has to with me. I think it has to do with "me," because to ignore what others are saying to assert what I have to say exclusively, is much more about me and my brokenness than it is about any point I might be making.
Go back a minute to the first part of one of the sentences above: "I think it has to do with 'me,'..." That sounds sort of egotistical and narcissistic and at the same time self denigrating...and that's really the point. The false dilemma in all it's forms defines so much that is wrong about all of us, both as communities and as individuals.
Still though, there's an interesting and maybe even beautiful thing in the subtext of the false dilemma swimming just below the surface of its broken form, as well as in all the ranting in the media it generates. Although it abandons logic and sense and encourages the individual to put allegiance in an idea (and sometimes a person) over a valid argument to the contrary, the false dilemma requires an unyielding allegiance to an end or person in order for it to prevail. That is, you really have to believe you're right and that you're a part of "the right" to assert the false dilemma. And to believe you're right, you have to believe in a way that's usually deeper than just knowing. You have to feel it.
We are made for that kind of feeling. That's why the false dilemma works at all; for it to work you have to be and feel yourself to be a part of something bigger. That feeling was breathed into us in time before time. As misguided as it can be in a broken world, it still contains the breath, belief and wonder of who we are, of who we were created to be. It's core is so very beautiful and profound, that even when obscured by the distorted echoes of our wildest rages, the hope in it can be seen somewhere below the surface. The best, most compelling and even most righteous argument is nothing without the prescribed, necessary feeling behind it; without this feeling, any argument is a banging gong or a clashing cymbal. And the name of the prescribed feeling is love.
There's an Us in every Them and a me in all of it. The sacrifice of Christ and the presence and reality of the Spirit of God make it so.
While that is kind of a broad ad hominem example, there are other more subtle forms that are based on false assertions of fact. Imagine Joe and Harry talking about oil changes:
Joe: "I use synthetic oil and you don't have to change your oil every 3000 miles when you use synthetic oil."
Harry: "What? You don't think changing oil every 3000 miles is important?? Well I can tell you that every 10,000 miles isn't often enough and if you do it your way, you'll ruin your engine!"
There are a couple things here. First, Harry ignores the fact that there are 6999 possible values between 3000 and 10000. Second, he also ignores that there might be other mitigating information that might make 10,000 a good number in this context. In short, Harry substitutes his own suppositions about what Joe is saying, ignores any possible information that Joe might have that he doesn't and leaps to a conclusion that he apparently holds dearly.
The great majority of public disagreement these days contains some flavor of the false dilemma. I think the main reason for this is that too many of those doing the blabbering rather cynically assume they don't really have to convince anyone of the efficacy of their point. Instead, they just have to have a message with sufficient personal appeal to whip 51% of the listeners into a froth.
This is how the division inherent in the construct of "Us and Them" or maybe "Us vs. Them" is made. This is how the false dilemma literally cuts "us" and "them" into pieces.
Ultimately though, I don't think this has anything to do with "Them" or "Us" or even "Us vs. Them." I think instead it has to with me. I think it has to do with "me," because to ignore what others are saying to assert what I have to say exclusively, is much more about me and my brokenness than it is about any point I might be making.
Go back a minute to the first part of one of the sentences above: "I think it has to do with 'me,'..." That sounds sort of egotistical and narcissistic and at the same time self denigrating...and that's really the point. The false dilemma in all it's forms defines so much that is wrong about all of us, both as communities and as individuals.
Still though, there's an interesting and maybe even beautiful thing in the subtext of the false dilemma swimming just below the surface of its broken form, as well as in all the ranting in the media it generates. Although it abandons logic and sense and encourages the individual to put allegiance in an idea (and sometimes a person) over a valid argument to the contrary, the false dilemma requires an unyielding allegiance to an end or person in order for it to prevail. That is, you really have to believe you're right and that you're a part of "the right" to assert the false dilemma. And to believe you're right, you have to believe in a way that's usually deeper than just knowing. You have to feel it.
We are made for that kind of feeling. That's why the false dilemma works at all; for it to work you have to be and feel yourself to be a part of something bigger. That feeling was breathed into us in time before time. As misguided as it can be in a broken world, it still contains the breath, belief and wonder of who we are, of who we were created to be. It's core is so very beautiful and profound, that even when obscured by the distorted echoes of our wildest rages, the hope in it can be seen somewhere below the surface. The best, most compelling and even most righteous argument is nothing without the prescribed, necessary feeling behind it; without this feeling, any argument is a banging gong or a clashing cymbal. And the name of the prescribed feeling is love.
There's an Us in every Them and a me in all of it. The sacrifice of Christ and the presence and reality of the Spirit of God make it so.
Sunday, October 9, 2011
Stories
Stories are everywhere. They are the warp and weft of the fabric of our lives. All stories whether labeled fact or fiction contain substantial components of both.
Scientists like to think their work and writings represent fact, to the exclusion of fiction. In fact, their science wouldn't exist without the human perspective each one of them carries and reveals to the rest of us. Sometimes this story is reflected plainly in their science. Other times, the story is better hidden but is never the less to be found plainly, at the very least in the building of the context for their flavor of science. You can never get away from story no matter how fast and hard you run.
Artists can embrace story to the exclusion of reality. This misses the fact that story cannot exist without reality. Without reality, there would be nothing to write a story about. The surest way to convince yourself of your story's need to embrace reality is to stub your tow on your metal bed frame. "WOW. THAT HURTS!" Lesson over, end of (this) story.
The point is that you ignore either story or reality at your great peril. Every drop of reality has to live in a story and every story is located in reality. (And by the way, what I'm saying here is actually consistent with the last hundred or so years of quantum physics. For more information, first tell your family you'll be gone for a couple years and start by googling Schrodinger's Cat. That will likely take you places that will change the way you look at reality...into something that looks a bit like human story + reality.)
We often tell ourselves stories. We tell ourselves stories about people and things we love but often we tell ourselves stories about things and people we loathe as well. These stories serve to reinforce our opinions and experiences and prop up our self esteem, among other things. I'm learning that there are a great many stories that I don't need to tell myself anymore. I'm learning that it can be much better to listen to the stories of others and respond to them than to have to constantly generate my own.
God certainly understands story. He invented it (it's pretty much automatic once you create time). Of course, it's also true that he authored us and our ability to create stories of our own. Additionally, in the Old Testament, he inserted himself into the narrative here and there and even withdrew himself on occasion. In the New Testament, he came to live in the narrative. ("...and the Word became flesh...") He introduced himself to humanity in the person of Jesus. Then bought a room in each of us, paid in full on the cross. The only thing we needed to do starting at that point was to put out a vacancy sign, announcing our emptiness. This part is a story about vacancy and filling the vacancy.
I was on the railroad tracks yesterday, near the place that's pictured above left. There I saw a guy with a sleeping bag and a tarp coming a ways off. First thing I did was tell myself a story based on my past story. It was something about, "OK, remember to keep a bit of distance to give yourself time to respond physically if you need to. Keep half an eye on his hands. Be nice." That last part was a combination of non-sequitur mixed with a generous portion of autobiographical fiction.
As I got closer, Sleeping Bag Guy (the character's name) must have told himself a story too. He put his stuff down, just outside the tracks and sat down on a rail, staring at the ground in front of him. I considered how useless my story had been when compared to the reality in which it lived. As I got closer, the "Be nice" part of the story became less fictional. When I got close I said, "Hey man. How you doing?" He continued staring at the ground, never moved his eyes, never spoke. I'm guessing he was so distracted telling himself a story of equal parts history, pain and fantasy that it crowded out reality completely. I didn't see him on my way back. The part of my story with him in it is over for now.
And that all points to the most important parts of the stories we tell ourselves. Our stories must be rooted in the deeper stories we care about, the deepest being the story of vacancy followed by residency. We have to work to make sure our stories carry healthy amounts of our own stories and at the same time, the toe stubbing reality that happens "out there." We have to remember that stories change. And we have to give God and each other the grace and acceptance to be able to tell their stories in our lives.
Scientists like to think their work and writings represent fact, to the exclusion of fiction. In fact, their science wouldn't exist without the human perspective each one of them carries and reveals to the rest of us. Sometimes this story is reflected plainly in their science. Other times, the story is better hidden but is never the less to be found plainly, at the very least in the building of the context for their flavor of science. You can never get away from story no matter how fast and hard you run.
Artists can embrace story to the exclusion of reality. This misses the fact that story cannot exist without reality. Without reality, there would be nothing to write a story about. The surest way to convince yourself of your story's need to embrace reality is to stub your tow on your metal bed frame. "WOW. THAT HURTS!" Lesson over, end of (this) story.
The point is that you ignore either story or reality at your great peril. Every drop of reality has to live in a story and every story is located in reality. (And by the way, what I'm saying here is actually consistent with the last hundred or so years of quantum physics. For more information, first tell your family you'll be gone for a couple years and start by googling Schrodinger's Cat. That will likely take you places that will change the way you look at reality...into something that looks a bit like human story + reality.)
We often tell ourselves stories. We tell ourselves stories about people and things we love but often we tell ourselves stories about things and people we loathe as well. These stories serve to reinforce our opinions and experiences and prop up our self esteem, among other things. I'm learning that there are a great many stories that I don't need to tell myself anymore. I'm learning that it can be much better to listen to the stories of others and respond to them than to have to constantly generate my own.
God certainly understands story. He invented it (it's pretty much automatic once you create time). Of course, it's also true that he authored us and our ability to create stories of our own. Additionally, in the Old Testament, he inserted himself into the narrative here and there and even withdrew himself on occasion. In the New Testament, he came to live in the narrative. ("...and the Word became flesh...") He introduced himself to humanity in the person of Jesus. Then bought a room in each of us, paid in full on the cross. The only thing we needed to do starting at that point was to put out a vacancy sign, announcing our emptiness. This part is a story about vacancy and filling the vacancy.
I was on the railroad tracks yesterday, near the place that's pictured above left. There I saw a guy with a sleeping bag and a tarp coming a ways off. First thing I did was tell myself a story based on my past story. It was something about, "OK, remember to keep a bit of distance to give yourself time to respond physically if you need to. Keep half an eye on his hands. Be nice." That last part was a combination of non-sequitur mixed with a generous portion of autobiographical fiction.
As I got closer, Sleeping Bag Guy (the character's name) must have told himself a story too. He put his stuff down, just outside the tracks and sat down on a rail, staring at the ground in front of him. I considered how useless my story had been when compared to the reality in which it lived. As I got closer, the "Be nice" part of the story became less fictional. When I got close I said, "Hey man. How you doing?" He continued staring at the ground, never moved his eyes, never spoke. I'm guessing he was so distracted telling himself a story of equal parts history, pain and fantasy that it crowded out reality completely. I didn't see him on my way back. The part of my story with him in it is over for now.
And that all points to the most important parts of the stories we tell ourselves. Our stories must be rooted in the deeper stories we care about, the deepest being the story of vacancy followed by residency. We have to work to make sure our stories carry healthy amounts of our own stories and at the same time, the toe stubbing reality that happens "out there." We have to remember that stories change. And we have to give God and each other the grace and acceptance to be able to tell their stories in our lives.
Sunday, October 2, 2011
Listening
It's ironic that I'm sitting here, typing about listening. It's ironic because I'm typing (not actually listening) and it's ironic because writing is about creating something to listen to rather than actually listening. It's akin to, "Let me tell you how to listen."
Listening has so many cliches associated with it that it can be hard to not react reflexively when we hear a discussion or a diatribe about it. That is, it can be hard to listen when we talk about listening because of all the noise in our heads about the idea. It can be hard not only to listen but even just to hear.
In fairness, most of us most of the time won't have the wherewithal to really listen. Schedules, emergencies and celebrations all foster a kind of reaction that goes immediately from hearing to reacting. Listening is usually not a part of this circuit and even then happens only well after the fact.
At core, listening involves something that is very very hard for me. That is, vulnerability. To really listen, we have to quiet our cherished beliefs, tender places and even deep hurts long enough to really listen to the voice of the other soul. And it's really important to note here that the other soul in this conversation can even be God.
I think that true listening is one of the things that gives human beings their greatest value. We can listen and hear each other, the angels of heaven and even the God of creation and redemption. Of course, we can listen to the wrong things and as a result hear great evil as well.
It's worth bearing in mind that the things we speak or otherwise communicate may well be listened to by someone else, or even taken to heart. Again, another cliche: Our speaking in conjunction with someone else's listening can deliver either blessing or curse. Either of these can continue for years or even generations.
I do not mind either argument or confrontation. I used to, but not any more. That's both good and bad. The bad part is, and I can say this from personal experience, listening in the context of confrontation is possible but very very rare. Listening in the middle of conflict involves allowing yourself to be vulnerable even though your blood is up. In fact, this might be the most important time to truly listen.
In all circumstances, I aspire to greater vulnerability. I aspire to listen more.
Listening has so many cliches associated with it that it can be hard to not react reflexively when we hear a discussion or a diatribe about it. That is, it can be hard to listen when we talk about listening because of all the noise in our heads about the idea. It can be hard not only to listen but even just to hear.
In fairness, most of us most of the time won't have the wherewithal to really listen. Schedules, emergencies and celebrations all foster a kind of reaction that goes immediately from hearing to reacting. Listening is usually not a part of this circuit and even then happens only well after the fact.
At core, listening involves something that is very very hard for me. That is, vulnerability. To really listen, we have to quiet our cherished beliefs, tender places and even deep hurts long enough to really listen to the voice of the other soul. And it's really important to note here that the other soul in this conversation can even be God.
I think that true listening is one of the things that gives human beings their greatest value. We can listen and hear each other, the angels of heaven and even the God of creation and redemption. Of course, we can listen to the wrong things and as a result hear great evil as well.
It's worth bearing in mind that the things we speak or otherwise communicate may well be listened to by someone else, or even taken to heart. Again, another cliche: Our speaking in conjunction with someone else's listening can deliver either blessing or curse. Either of these can continue for years or even generations.
I do not mind either argument or confrontation. I used to, but not any more. That's both good and bad. The bad part is, and I can say this from personal experience, listening in the context of confrontation is possible but very very rare. Listening in the middle of conflict involves allowing yourself to be vulnerable even though your blood is up. In fact, this might be the most important time to truly listen.
In all circumstances, I aspire to greater vulnerability. I aspire to listen more.
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
I Don't Think Jesus was Kidding
I can't think of any time Jesus said, "...just kidding" or "gotcha!" It seems though that a lot of our knowledge and theology is based on both "just kidding" and yea verily, even "gotcha!" You can also throw in, "what Jesus REALLY meant..." followed by a description that serves as a projection of our own sensibilities.
A couple weeks ago I heard somebody explain the wedding feast at Cana. This was Jesus' first public, recorded miracle. The explanation they gave was notable for the complete absence of apologies given for the fact that Jesus created wine. The guy telling the story said, "Do you realize that these people had been drinking for the better part of a week? And that after that, Jesus created something over 130 GALLONS of wine?? What are we to conclude from this? Well, at least one thing for sure: Jesus likes a party!" (And if you've heard that the wine that people drank back then was really cut with water, please be advised that there is exactly zero serious scholarship to support that premise.)
I'm going to second the "Jesus likes a party" part as being the primary point of that miracle. There are other things going on as well; being around Jesus seemed to be a pretty full experience. However, I think the major point there is that he likes to have fun himself and he REALLY likes to see other people having fun and he LOVES it when everyone, including him, is having fun together.
If time permits, read some of the Leviticus laws on sacrifice. It would seem that God really enjoys a good barbecue as well. Note how many times the burnt offerings are described as a "sweet smelling savor." Pay attention to how many times at the end of this or that cycle of sacrifices everyone sits down and eats the sacrifice. I did not catch this until a very few years ago. God was inviting his kids to a party even back then. And just as an aside, I think when you consider the dogma and ritualistic thing this became, it's easy to understand how things got and continue to get confused.
We get confused sometimes about what was said in the Bible. And too often we don't get confused at all; we just don't like what we read so we ignore it or make up theology about it. Or maybe even the worst case is that we like to project onto Jesus things that make us comfortable. Would Jesus ever let us suffer for our own good or maybe for the good of others? If you have a knee jerk reaction to that, saying "No, never!" consider how the Apostles lived and died. I don't think we were made for comfy chairs.
I think we're prone to hearts and minds that wander from this reality because we don't really believe what the bible says about God's Spirit coming to live in us when we ask him to...and we REALLY like being comfortable and completely unchallenged. We tend to think of that as an experience, maybe as a ritual or maybe as just an intellectual concept wrapped in a nice metaphor, depending on our theology. We sure don't seem to take it seriously for the relationship that it is.
Part of the good news in this though is that God gets how we are...which makes sense since he made us. He's pretty patient when we don't talk to him for a long time and he doesn't get mad when we only call on him when we're in a bad way. I should throw in "usually" a place or two in that sentence, because sometimes he can get a little angry with us...well at least I can think of few times he's been unhappy with me. My experience of his "unhappy" is not particularly pleasant but I will say that I'd rather be spoken to harshly by God than to be complimented or praised by anyone else. I don't think I've ever seen him really mad and he does get that way. Remember, Jesus often got angry with the Pharisees and when the God of the Old Testament got going he could be pretty fierce.
I conclude all of the above from two facts. One is biblical record. The other is my experience of God which is completely consistent with point one. We really don't need more than these two. I think the problem is we often don't embrace both or either of them.
I have every confidence that we will go on projecting on to God our preferences and desires. Whether that's a teetotaling God of prohibitions, a God of grace extending to bacchanalia or a systematic system of systemology, we'll do our level best to shove him into an image that we find comfortable and comforting. However, God is a patient, he is real and he is waiting. And he is in ridiculous love with us. If we stay with it, he will not let us not slip away.
A couple weeks ago I heard somebody explain the wedding feast at Cana. This was Jesus' first public, recorded miracle. The explanation they gave was notable for the complete absence of apologies given for the fact that Jesus created wine. The guy telling the story said, "Do you realize that these people had been drinking for the better part of a week? And that after that, Jesus created something over 130 GALLONS of wine?? What are we to conclude from this? Well, at least one thing for sure: Jesus likes a party!" (And if you've heard that the wine that people drank back then was really cut with water, please be advised that there is exactly zero serious scholarship to support that premise.)
I'm going to second the "Jesus likes a party" part as being the primary point of that miracle. There are other things going on as well; being around Jesus seemed to be a pretty full experience. However, I think the major point there is that he likes to have fun himself and he REALLY likes to see other people having fun and he LOVES it when everyone, including him, is having fun together.
If time permits, read some of the Leviticus laws on sacrifice. It would seem that God really enjoys a good barbecue as well. Note how many times the burnt offerings are described as a "sweet smelling savor." Pay attention to how many times at the end of this or that cycle of sacrifices everyone sits down and eats the sacrifice. I did not catch this until a very few years ago. God was inviting his kids to a party even back then. And just as an aside, I think when you consider the dogma and ritualistic thing this became, it's easy to understand how things got and continue to get confused.
We get confused sometimes about what was said in the Bible. And too often we don't get confused at all; we just don't like what we read so we ignore it or make up theology about it. Or maybe even the worst case is that we like to project onto Jesus things that make us comfortable. Would Jesus ever let us suffer for our own good or maybe for the good of others? If you have a knee jerk reaction to that, saying "No, never!" consider how the Apostles lived and died. I don't think we were made for comfy chairs.
I think we're prone to hearts and minds that wander from this reality because we don't really believe what the bible says about God's Spirit coming to live in us when we ask him to...and we REALLY like being comfortable and completely unchallenged. We tend to think of that as an experience, maybe as a ritual or maybe as just an intellectual concept wrapped in a nice metaphor, depending on our theology. We sure don't seem to take it seriously for the relationship that it is.
Part of the good news in this though is that God gets how we are...which makes sense since he made us. He's pretty patient when we don't talk to him for a long time and he doesn't get mad when we only call on him when we're in a bad way. I should throw in "usually" a place or two in that sentence, because sometimes he can get a little angry with us...well at least I can think of few times he's been unhappy with me. My experience of his "unhappy" is not particularly pleasant but I will say that I'd rather be spoken to harshly by God than to be complimented or praised by anyone else. I don't think I've ever seen him really mad and he does get that way. Remember, Jesus often got angry with the Pharisees and when the God of the Old Testament got going he could be pretty fierce.
I conclude all of the above from two facts. One is biblical record. The other is my experience of God which is completely consistent with point one. We really don't need more than these two. I think the problem is we often don't embrace both or either of them.
I have every confidence that we will go on projecting on to God our preferences and desires. Whether that's a teetotaling God of prohibitions, a God of grace extending to bacchanalia or a systematic system of systemology, we'll do our level best to shove him into an image that we find comfortable and comforting. However, God is a patient, he is real and he is waiting. And he is in ridiculous love with us. If we stay with it, he will not let us not slip away.
Sunday, September 18, 2011
My Better Half
A week or so ago Christy (my wife, aka my better half) was working the night shift at the school where she works. In this case, "the night shift" involved fielding parent questions and manually ringing the school bells all in support of Back To School Night. Steve the principal came in and we all chatted a bit.
In the middle of our gab fest, a family that had recently returned from a trip to South America came in with a present for Steve. The present was the stylized crucifix pictured above. We were all pretty taken by it. For my part, I loved the image but I just couldn't think quite why. In the course of our back and forth, someone said, "You should write about this." I remember thinking at that moment, "That's a great idea but what do I say besides, 'Hey look! This is REALLY COOL!'"
Out loud I said something like, "I like it but I just don't know quite why." I think it was Christy (although I'll give Steve credit if he argues the point) that said something about it being an invitation to put yourself in the sculpture. That wasn't exactly what was said but what it morphed into when I'd thought about it a little bit.
It is true of course that this is what we're invited into, both the suffering and the triumph of it. There's systematic theology about the cross ad nauseum. The best thing about systematic theology is of course way it evaporates into smoke in presence of the fire of life. In the moment you say "OUCH" in response to what you're facing and suffering, you stop entertaining yourself with logical structures and rules and start instead looking for relationship and help from the one who spoke you into existence. "Help dad. I'm hurt. I'm scared." In that moment, systematic theology burns away like the old flash paper bookies and other miscreants used to keep their records on. When the police would come in, they'd just touch it with a cigarette and POOF...all evidence of bad behavior was gone.
Of course, this is also true with human relationships. We complete each other to the point that we are eventually after time in relationship to be found in each other. I've quoted John Donne here before but his "...no man is an island unto himself..." comes immediately to mind as does "Ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee." In the bible, this idea is found in an amazing verse, Eph 4:16, quoted here in King James to roughly match Donne above:
"16From whom the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love."
At Back to School Night a family came in with a gift that moved everyone there. We all discussed what the gift was and meant, coming at once to consensus while at the same time forming our own, unique ideas on the subject. In the time since, I've gotten to write it all down so we can all remember it and share it with others. And now they too can appreciate the piece as well as a bit of the moment of discovery.
We really all do share each others lives. It's not at all something we do merely if we choose to. It's what we are, and what happens regardless of contrary intent. Consider that even the sudden absence of someone creates anything from pain, to longing, to relief to all of these and more at once.
And all of this is what is carried at once in the action and message of the cross. Jesus doesn't aspire to being a consistent logic lesson. He wants to share our lives. He wants to complete us even as he uses each of us to complete each other. Jesus has made himself completely vulnerable to us both at the time of the cross and I would also submit, in all the time since. He asks for that back. He asks us to join him on the cross and his invitation to us is in the perfect present tense; it is and will be constantly asked and constantly answered. We don't just answer once and move on. We must answer with the direction and course of our lives.
Thursday, September 8, 2011
"I refuse that order..."
The run up the 10th anniversary of 9/11 has been what such things have become in the last few years, a finite series of events being chewed over by an apparently infinite number of media personalities, TV shows, web casts, radio shows and probably a dozen other things I'm leaving out. I'm not sad or upset that we remember. I am however tired of the noise.
As a nation, we seem to be developing a knack for monuments. The Vietnam memorial, with it's large dark presence reflecting those who look upon through the names of those that died in the conflict is astonishing. As we look into the darkness of that memory, we see ourselves distorted through the names of those who gave us the right and ability to ponder what it meant and what it means.
The new monument at Ground Zero is of similar character. This monument is an excavated area surrounded by black stone with the names of the deceased upon it. Water flows over the stone into the excavated area to create a waterfall. Thus, this artificially created void presents us with the void created in each of us by the loss of 3000 souls. The water flows over it all just as life washes over us and carries us along.
I only want to make sure that one brief thing does not get lost in the TV, the radio, the speeches of politicians or even in the very fine monument. I want to re-tell the story of Pat Brown.
Pat was a fireman that died in the North Tower on 9/11. Just a few minutes before the North Tower collapsed, Pat's chief ordered him out of the building. Pat, from transcripts gleaned from several witnesses spoke this into his radio in response
There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.
As a nation, we seem to be developing a knack for monuments. The Vietnam memorial, with it's large dark presence reflecting those who look upon through the names of those that died in the conflict is astonishing. As we look into the darkness of that memory, we see ourselves distorted through the names of those who gave us the right and ability to ponder what it meant and what it means.
The new monument at Ground Zero is of similar character. This monument is an excavated area surrounded by black stone with the names of the deceased upon it. Water flows over the stone into the excavated area to create a waterfall. Thus, this artificially created void presents us with the void created in each of us by the loss of 3000 souls. The water flows over it all just as life washes over us and carries us along.
I only want to make sure that one brief thing does not get lost in the TV, the radio, the speeches of politicians or even in the very fine monument. I want to re-tell the story of Pat Brown.
Pat was a fireman that died in the North Tower on 9/11. Just a few minutes before the North Tower collapsed, Pat's chief ordered him out of the building. Pat, from transcripts gleaned from several witnesses spoke this into his radio in response
There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.
Monday, September 5, 2011
People of the Bubble
The morning TV shows are an archetype in a lot of ways of all TV. That is, they're fast moving, shiny, noisy and pretty nearly completely vacuous. I'm willing to stand corrected as to "completely" by those who like "educational" TV, as long as it's not the ironically named Learning Channel - which used to carry John and Kate Plus Eight.
This morning, my wife and I were watching a couple different morning shows using the commercial avoidance mechanism (aka. the remote control). Sprinkled in with the cooking, burps of news and a weepy feature or two, were the daily shots of the hosts out on the street with "The People." Most days, some of the People of the Street hold up signs. From time to time they get to meet Mr. Microphone in order to talk about what their sign means, say where they're from and "meet" Matt Lauer et al. In the middle of this, my wife asked a question about the hosts. "I wonder what bubble those people live in?"
That is an excellent question. She comes up with excellent questions all the time. It's one of my favorite things about her...except maybe when the questions are about me but that's a different blog entry.
I was thinking about it while I was watching all the noise ("watching the noise," huh, guess I wasn't paying much attention). The thought crawled into my brain that they live in the same kind of bubble we all do. If there's a difference, I think it's that there's more shiny and reflective stuff on the inside of their bubbles than for People of the Street. There might even be a ratio or proportion that says that the more people you have looking at you, the harder it is to see out of your own bubble.
Still though, all bubbles are shiny enough on the inside. So much so that sometimes their reflection makes it hard to see other people. Bubbles seem to reflect back sound as well so that way too often, we hear ourselves quite clearly and others only through the muffling of both their bubbles as well as our own.
The great thing about this kind of a bubble is that when it is ignored consistently, it goes away. Ignoring your bubble is difficult because it's shiny and distracting and can even be protective.
At another point this morning, my wife muted the Bubble People and read to me from a book she's reading. The book is "A Testament of Devotion" by Thomas Kelly. It was published in 1941. At that time of course, the world minus the United States had gone to war and we were soon to follow. Even with 24/7 media constantly feeding our paranoia and countless rumors of medical, social and political anger and angst, I believe 1941 was a more fundamentally frightening time than the present. Curiously, our ancestors of that time did not seem to exhibit the quaking fears and self loathing that we tend toward today. Maybe this was because they didn't have nearly as many tools to help them shiny up the inside of their bubbles. They were after all, only slowly emerging from The Great Depression. They were in many cases, too busy staying alive to worry much about their bubbles.
Partially no doubt in response to the times though, Kelly was writing on the good, even extreme good that's to be found in suffering. His thoughts are beautiful and complex and do not reduce well. However, I did hear something in them to do with bubbles.
It seems that there is something that can encourage us and even compel us to ignore our own bubbles, even when those bubbles have hardened into something more like prison bars or maybe chains. In fact, that "something" might even be the only thing strong enough to readjust our focus outside ourselves, such that we can truly and clearly see and hear others, and even see and hear God, who spoke us. Of course, this often happens only when our reflections become such a horror we can no longer bear them. And that I believe is both the core as well as the extreme value of suffering.
The work of suffering over time erodes the walls of our bubbles, until they grow so thin they pop and are completely gone. Suffering compels us to listen carefully to the voice of the God that spoke us. And it also forces us to look into the eyes, listen carefully and receive help from those who would offer us from themselves.
If this doesn't sound crazy or maybe even sounds like something good that's a little too scary to want for yourself because you might get what you ask for, that's absolutely fine. We weren't made to want suffering. Kelly's point in part is that suffering comes of it's own accord. His point also is that it is not to be feared and that it can even be embraced and thereby eventually redeemed...along with everything else Jesus and his brothers and sisters embrace. We are however moved toward completion of our best possible selves not by avoiding suffering but by traveling through it...and that we cannot do successfully by ourselves. The world is such that suffering will arrive for each of us at one time or another. The Good News is that the possibility life is eternal and redemption of both us and our suffering is infinitely available.
This morning, my wife and I were watching a couple different morning shows using the commercial avoidance mechanism (aka. the remote control). Sprinkled in with the cooking, burps of news and a weepy feature or two, were the daily shots of the hosts out on the street with "The People." Most days, some of the People of the Street hold up signs. From time to time they get to meet Mr. Microphone in order to talk about what their sign means, say where they're from and "meet" Matt Lauer et al. In the middle of this, my wife asked a question about the hosts. "I wonder what bubble those people live in?"
That is an excellent question. She comes up with excellent questions all the time. It's one of my favorite things about her...except maybe when the questions are about me but that's a different blog entry.
I was thinking about it while I was watching all the noise ("watching the noise," huh, guess I wasn't paying much attention). The thought crawled into my brain that they live in the same kind of bubble we all do. If there's a difference, I think it's that there's more shiny and reflective stuff on the inside of their bubbles than for People of the Street. There might even be a ratio or proportion that says that the more people you have looking at you, the harder it is to see out of your own bubble.
Still though, all bubbles are shiny enough on the inside. So much so that sometimes their reflection makes it hard to see other people. Bubbles seem to reflect back sound as well so that way too often, we hear ourselves quite clearly and others only through the muffling of both their bubbles as well as our own.
The great thing about this kind of a bubble is that when it is ignored consistently, it goes away. Ignoring your bubble is difficult because it's shiny and distracting and can even be protective.
At another point this morning, my wife muted the Bubble People and read to me from a book she's reading. The book is "A Testament of Devotion" by Thomas Kelly. It was published in 1941. At that time of course, the world minus the United States had gone to war and we were soon to follow. Even with 24/7 media constantly feeding our paranoia and countless rumors of medical, social and political anger and angst, I believe 1941 was a more fundamentally frightening time than the present. Curiously, our ancestors of that time did not seem to exhibit the quaking fears and self loathing that we tend toward today. Maybe this was because they didn't have nearly as many tools to help them shiny up the inside of their bubbles. They were after all, only slowly emerging from The Great Depression. They were in many cases, too busy staying alive to worry much about their bubbles.
Partially no doubt in response to the times though, Kelly was writing on the good, even extreme good that's to be found in suffering. His thoughts are beautiful and complex and do not reduce well. However, I did hear something in them to do with bubbles.
It seems that there is something that can encourage us and even compel us to ignore our own bubbles, even when those bubbles have hardened into something more like prison bars or maybe chains. In fact, that "something" might even be the only thing strong enough to readjust our focus outside ourselves, such that we can truly and clearly see and hear others, and even see and hear God, who spoke us. Of course, this often happens only when our reflections become such a horror we can no longer bear them. And that I believe is both the core as well as the extreme value of suffering.
The work of suffering over time erodes the walls of our bubbles, until they grow so thin they pop and are completely gone. Suffering compels us to listen carefully to the voice of the God that spoke us. And it also forces us to look into the eyes, listen carefully and receive help from those who would offer us from themselves.
If this doesn't sound crazy or maybe even sounds like something good that's a little too scary to want for yourself because you might get what you ask for, that's absolutely fine. We weren't made to want suffering. Kelly's point in part is that suffering comes of it's own accord. His point also is that it is not to be feared and that it can even be embraced and thereby eventually redeemed...along with everything else Jesus and his brothers and sisters embrace. We are however moved toward completion of our best possible selves not by avoiding suffering but by traveling through it...and that we cannot do successfully by ourselves. The world is such that suffering will arrive for each of us at one time or another. The Good News is that the possibility life is eternal and redemption of both us and our suffering is infinitely available.
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
I Don't Know Why...
I don't know how or why, but when I was finishing up with kindergarten I somehow had the idea that I was done with school forever. I'd been great at spelling, pretty good at math and who really cared if I couldn't color inside the lines? (No seriously, I really couldn't.) It might been have the emphasis on getting out of school by classmates and teachers, my own wishful thinking, the lack of older brothers and sisters but regardless the reason, when the final bell sounded I thought I was done forever.
We wore caps and gowns to our graduation. As a parent and grandparent I can say that I'm sure it was nauseatingly cute. However, it was sometime later that day when the celebration was still going on when I got the awful news. "You mean I have to do this again?? ...You're kidding, right?"
It turned out nobody was kidding. I pinned my mom down for a complete and accurate explanation. I was good enough at math that when she explained the details to me (I really wanted to make sure we got it right this time), I knew the correct answer. I think she said, "You will have to be in school infinity plus forever," at least that's what it sounded like. That made the summer suddenly seem very very important.
I suppose I didn't get it from the beginning because I started with an assumption that seemed to make sense and never bothered to question it.
It's easy when we look back on a trial, accomplishment or passage to see the context in came from and what it led to. Often though, in the time before resolution or accomplishment, we imagine a finish line we're going to lean through, break the ribbon and be done. Maybe there will be awards or something but certainly no one is going to tell us we have to do that again.
There's one finish line of course that is similar to the others but has an important distinctive or two that separate it from the rest. And that would be the finish line at the end of our lives. Now admittedly, that one's a little different. Clearly it was designed to be opaque; run through the ribbon and you're gone.
Still though, despite or maybe because of the opacity we have thoughts, dreams and even faith and hope as to what's on the other side of that finish line. I think this is true even for those that claim unbelief in an afterlife of any kind. They need to assert that nothing really exists. To those people, nothingness is good. It is a relief. It could be a bit of a surprise though. Even if you're a rabid materialist, I don't see anywhere in the universe where something ever becomes truly nothing.
My wife and I have known another younger couple at a distance for a number of years. They are just a little older than our own children. They have two small children of their own. Last week, the mom in this family found out she has an advanced and aggressive form of cancer.
I have been given more than my fair share of grace as regards understanding the finishing line we all must cross. I'll write about that some time but not tonight. Tonight I will only mention the line itself and the inevitability of crossing it. And though I think I see the reasons of our "school year" here, I can't tell you why there's a mom who's afraid for her life right now and likely more afraid for the hearts of her family.
It's not really coming across in this writing but I'm more broken by this single event than anything I can remember. I can't really say why. I don't know. But I do know this, knowing the reasons things are as they are is important but never, ever sufficient. Knowing the rules, the doctrine and forms are fine until the wave washes over you; in that moment you will lose your footing and have to swim for your life. As our former military son has said, "All plans are perfect until the first contact with the enemy."
This must be lived out, by all of us, certainly by Amy and Josh and their boys and by those who know them and even at some level, those who do not. I do not know the path this will take. However, I do know this, while some sort of finish line of either one type or another must be crossed, both life and love go on to infinity plus forever.
We must negotiate the intervening space to the finish as best we can. We must accept help from those who offer it and give help when and where we can. We must also look to the one who made the race and the contestants. He is our best teacher and our only hope and none of us are as yet across the line.
We wore caps and gowns to our graduation. As a parent and grandparent I can say that I'm sure it was nauseatingly cute. However, it was sometime later that day when the celebration was still going on when I got the awful news. "You mean I have to do this again?? ...You're kidding, right?"
It turned out nobody was kidding. I pinned my mom down for a complete and accurate explanation. I was good enough at math that when she explained the details to me (I really wanted to make sure we got it right this time), I knew the correct answer. I think she said, "You will have to be in school infinity plus forever," at least that's what it sounded like. That made the summer suddenly seem very very important.
I suppose I didn't get it from the beginning because I started with an assumption that seemed to make sense and never bothered to question it.
It's easy when we look back on a trial, accomplishment or passage to see the context in came from and what it led to. Often though, in the time before resolution or accomplishment, we imagine a finish line we're going to lean through, break the ribbon and be done. Maybe there will be awards or something but certainly no one is going to tell us we have to do that again.
There's one finish line of course that is similar to the others but has an important distinctive or two that separate it from the rest. And that would be the finish line at the end of our lives. Now admittedly, that one's a little different. Clearly it was designed to be opaque; run through the ribbon and you're gone.
Still though, despite or maybe because of the opacity we have thoughts, dreams and even faith and hope as to what's on the other side of that finish line. I think this is true even for those that claim unbelief in an afterlife of any kind. They need to assert that nothing really exists. To those people, nothingness is good. It is a relief. It could be a bit of a surprise though. Even if you're a rabid materialist, I don't see anywhere in the universe where something ever becomes truly nothing.
My wife and I have known another younger couple at a distance for a number of years. They are just a little older than our own children. They have two small children of their own. Last week, the mom in this family found out she has an advanced and aggressive form of cancer.
I have been given more than my fair share of grace as regards understanding the finishing line we all must cross. I'll write about that some time but not tonight. Tonight I will only mention the line itself and the inevitability of crossing it. And though I think I see the reasons of our "school year" here, I can't tell you why there's a mom who's afraid for her life right now and likely more afraid for the hearts of her family.
It's not really coming across in this writing but I'm more broken by this single event than anything I can remember. I can't really say why. I don't know. But I do know this, knowing the reasons things are as they are is important but never, ever sufficient. Knowing the rules, the doctrine and forms are fine until the wave washes over you; in that moment you will lose your footing and have to swim for your life. As our former military son has said, "All plans are perfect until the first contact with the enemy."
This must be lived out, by all of us, certainly by Amy and Josh and their boys and by those who know them and even at some level, those who do not. I do not know the path this will take. However, I do know this, while some sort of finish line of either one type or another must be crossed, both life and love go on to infinity plus forever.
We must negotiate the intervening space to the finish as best we can. We must accept help from those who offer it and give help when and where we can. We must also look to the one who made the race and the contestants. He is our best teacher and our only hope and none of us are as yet across the line.
Sunday, August 21, 2011
Tombstones and Tattoos
A few years ago I'd toyed with the idea of getting a tattoo. I was looking for something that would be meaningful. I wanted to go with meaningful because it seemed that something as permanent as death and taxes should have some sort of depth beyond a heart with "Baby Doll" scrawled across the top of it. I finally hit on the Latin phrase "Esse quam Videri" on a sash across a Celtic cross. The translation is usually given as "To be rather than to appear." (I favor my personal translation, "essence trumps appearance" but I suppose 10,000 translators can only be partly wrong.)
As I was working through the decision process of what tattoo I'd get, it occurred to me at some point that I should have a value of some kind informing my decision. I decided that the value would be that anything that I would be willing to make a permanent part of my body should be something that I'd be happy to have on my tombstone.
A few years ago, I went back to Kansas on a journey to become acquainted with my father's family. In the tiny town of Morrill, my last surviving uncle introduced me to a great many McKims. Sadly, most of these were dead by the time I got around to making their acquaintance. My great grandfather had had 14 children and my grandfather had had 9. They both lived in the same town. McKim's own a lot of real estate in Kansas. Most of it is owned six feet at a time.
The poet Kenneth Rexroth has this epitaph on his tombstone: "As the full moon rises / The swan sings in sleep / On the lake of the mind." What's interesting here is that a statement marking the finality of death could be so open ended. There's probably enough images there to turn the whole thing into a drawing...and then a tattoo.
A good epitaph makes you curious about the life that produced it and makes you just a bit sorry you can't ask that person what those few words mean. I had the chance to meet Rexroth a couple years before he died. I turned it down because I'm not good at being a fan. I am one but I'm no good at it.
I never got a tattoo. I never came up with an objection to getting one. At some point I just stopped considering it at all.
Thinking about the similarities between tombstones and tattoos, I realized at some point that there are differences as well. The big one is that life goes on after a tattoo. Why permanently mark something that's designed to change?
Our lives are meant for something. In almost no matter what state we find ourselves, a huge component of any human state isn't state at all. It's change. Imagining that things will stay the same or even go on in the same way they always have is as inaccurate as it is inappropriate.
I don't know what if anything will eventually mark my final resting place...which is an odd choice of words because I don't think it's really final and I don't believe I'll be resting, at least in the sense of being inactive. No, life goes on and passes anything that could ever be written on a tombstone.
In the end, I think there isn't an end at all, either to our current state or to our presumed final one. In the end, tombstones and tattoos are memorials to an illusionary permanence that never existed in any form. At core, they are at one level anyway, monuments to a faulty perspective on the nature of life. In the end, there is no end.
I still might get a tombstone. I think I'd say something like, "This is my Hallmark card to you. I've gone on and you will too." Nah, don't worry. I won't really do that. My tombstone might just wind up having exactly the same kind of permanence as my tattoo...You never know though, in the end I might go for something like "Love you. See you soon." Why not? I always have.
As I was working through the decision process of what tattoo I'd get, it occurred to me at some point that I should have a value of some kind informing my decision. I decided that the value would be that anything that I would be willing to make a permanent part of my body should be something that I'd be happy to have on my tombstone.
A few years ago, I went back to Kansas on a journey to become acquainted with my father's family. In the tiny town of Morrill, my last surviving uncle introduced me to a great many McKims. Sadly, most of these were dead by the time I got around to making their acquaintance. My great grandfather had had 14 children and my grandfather had had 9. They both lived in the same town. McKim's own a lot of real estate in Kansas. Most of it is owned six feet at a time.
The poet Kenneth Rexroth has this epitaph on his tombstone: "As the full moon rises / The swan sings in sleep / On the lake of the mind." What's interesting here is that a statement marking the finality of death could be so open ended. There's probably enough images there to turn the whole thing into a drawing...and then a tattoo.
A good epitaph makes you curious about the life that produced it and makes you just a bit sorry you can't ask that person what those few words mean. I had the chance to meet Rexroth a couple years before he died. I turned it down because I'm not good at being a fan. I am one but I'm no good at it.
I never got a tattoo. I never came up with an objection to getting one. At some point I just stopped considering it at all.
Thinking about the similarities between tombstones and tattoos, I realized at some point that there are differences as well. The big one is that life goes on after a tattoo. Why permanently mark something that's designed to change?
Our lives are meant for something. In almost no matter what state we find ourselves, a huge component of any human state isn't state at all. It's change. Imagining that things will stay the same or even go on in the same way they always have is as inaccurate as it is inappropriate.
I don't know what if anything will eventually mark my final resting place...which is an odd choice of words because I don't think it's really final and I don't believe I'll be resting, at least in the sense of being inactive. No, life goes on and passes anything that could ever be written on a tombstone.
In the end, I think there isn't an end at all, either to our current state or to our presumed final one. In the end, tombstones and tattoos are memorials to an illusionary permanence that never existed in any form. At core, they are at one level anyway, monuments to a faulty perspective on the nature of life. In the end, there is no end.
I still might get a tombstone. I think I'd say something like, "This is my Hallmark card to you. I've gone on and you will too." Nah, don't worry. I won't really do that. My tombstone might just wind up having exactly the same kind of permanence as my tattoo...You never know though, in the end I might go for something like "Love you. See you soon." Why not? I always have.
Friday, August 12, 2011
The British are Coming, the British are Coming
My approach to current events and things political is about the same as everyone else's, with perhaps a few extra syllables thrown in here and there. I intentionally avoid political wandering, mainly because there's already plenty of language and gas thrown in that direction. Too many voices on a hill all too quickly become a discordant and even cacophonous choir.
Even so, the recent rioting in Great Britain has surprised and startled me. As a result, I've found myself casting about for reasonable explanations.
Our family has been to England only once, in 1999. We spent about two and a half weeks there, with about five days in England and London with the rest being spent in Scotland. In London, we rode the underground multiple times a day, both during the commute as well as off hours. In addition, we rode buses and walked for miles. I do not claim to be an authority on all things British. However, in all our time there I saw nothing that would have tipped me to the idea that the events of the recent weeks were even a remote possibility.
It's possible that things have changed drastically there since our visit but it's more likely I think that things were already changing then. The change was just not yet particularly obvious. Even so, given a dozen years of "progress" I doubt that walking around downtown London would be much different now than it was then. After all, the British invented the concept of keeping up appearances.
I've read a number of articles by various commentators regarding the riots. Most of them were not particularly satisfying. Especially annoying were the sermons that this was somehow a political consequence of the British class system and related inequities in the economy. Of course, that would be the same class system that at one point ruled a good part of the world, fought and was victorious in two world wars, opposed the spread of Marxist tyranny and eventually released nearly all of their colonial conquests...and that's just the last couple of hundred years. Since the class system was in place for all of that time and one can assume that there have been poor people in Britain for all of that time plus forever, I think that's a bunch of, I'll use a good British word here, poppycock.
Similarly, the related idea being floated that the underlying cause of the riots is that "there's no hope" is so intellectually and socially vacuous as to be insulting. I've lived half a century now and it's all too easy to see someone trying to turn a circumstance into a lever used to advance them toward the object or policy of their desire.
I've seen a couple people hint at what I've come to suspect myself is the underlying cause. I think the answer to the question of what's happened in Britain is this: A large percentage of British parents have gone missing in action. The easiest evidence of this is to be found in the surveillance videos available on the web. Whatever the situation was the day these riots began, they've been carried forward by British youth, apparently regardless of gender. I've found a good many other evidences of this phenomenon as well but this is the easiest to site briefly.
Through a truly terrible combination of narcissism and social policy, it seems that Britain has managed to undermine a substantial portion of their society and family structure. It's not looking good for the coming generation of their decision makers.
Things are still a bit different here. Despite T.V. and the predominantly progressive coasts, there's a large number of Americans who still believe that it's inappropriate to hate ourselves for being Americans, that believe we sometimes have to make our kids do hard things they don't like, and that would rather work to get ahead rather than not work and live off of others.
I hope we have more than a dozen years but its hard to say. As Britain is demonstrating, a landslide begins with a few dislodged pebbles.
Even so, the recent rioting in Great Britain has surprised and startled me. As a result, I've found myself casting about for reasonable explanations.
Our family has been to England only once, in 1999. We spent about two and a half weeks there, with about five days in England and London with the rest being spent in Scotland. In London, we rode the underground multiple times a day, both during the commute as well as off hours. In addition, we rode buses and walked for miles. I do not claim to be an authority on all things British. However, in all our time there I saw nothing that would have tipped me to the idea that the events of the recent weeks were even a remote possibility.
It's possible that things have changed drastically there since our visit but it's more likely I think that things were already changing then. The change was just not yet particularly obvious. Even so, given a dozen years of "progress" I doubt that walking around downtown London would be much different now than it was then. After all, the British invented the concept of keeping up appearances.
I've read a number of articles by various commentators regarding the riots. Most of them were not particularly satisfying. Especially annoying were the sermons that this was somehow a political consequence of the British class system and related inequities in the economy. Of course, that would be the same class system that at one point ruled a good part of the world, fought and was victorious in two world wars, opposed the spread of Marxist tyranny and eventually released nearly all of their colonial conquests...and that's just the last couple of hundred years. Since the class system was in place for all of that time and one can assume that there have been poor people in Britain for all of that time plus forever, I think that's a bunch of, I'll use a good British word here, poppycock.
Similarly, the related idea being floated that the underlying cause of the riots is that "there's no hope" is so intellectually and socially vacuous as to be insulting. I've lived half a century now and it's all too easy to see someone trying to turn a circumstance into a lever used to advance them toward the object or policy of their desire.
I've seen a couple people hint at what I've come to suspect myself is the underlying cause. I think the answer to the question of what's happened in Britain is this: A large percentage of British parents have gone missing in action. The easiest evidence of this is to be found in the surveillance videos available on the web. Whatever the situation was the day these riots began, they've been carried forward by British youth, apparently regardless of gender. I've found a good many other evidences of this phenomenon as well but this is the easiest to site briefly.
Through a truly terrible combination of narcissism and social policy, it seems that Britain has managed to undermine a substantial portion of their society and family structure. It's not looking good for the coming generation of their decision makers.
Things are still a bit different here. Despite T.V. and the predominantly progressive coasts, there's a large number of Americans who still believe that it's inappropriate to hate ourselves for being Americans, that believe we sometimes have to make our kids do hard things they don't like, and that would rather work to get ahead rather than not work and live off of others.
I hope we have more than a dozen years but its hard to say. As Britain is demonstrating, a landslide begins with a few dislodged pebbles.
Friday, August 5, 2011
The Worst Word in the History of the World
I feel sorry for John Calvin. He wrote a bunch of pretty good stuff that people still read regularly. Interestingly, the more people read it, the less they seem to understand it or at least to get the point of what he was saying.
This post isn't about Calvin, although it could be.
In fact, most of the stuff Calvin wrote about gets morphed into a thing called doctrine. Doctrine is a set of instructions that you can memorize and you don't have to really think about much. You just have to be able to read them and do what they say, like a recipe. Sometimes, the recipe says you should feel something and then doctrine tells you how to go about feeling it. If you're married, that's probably how you met your spouse, right...by following the recipe? Well, maybe not.
This post isn't about doctrine, although it could be.
A guy named Arminius said that Calvin was almost right but that there was a bit more to his recipe, a couple things Calvin left out. He tried to add a little bit about how people and God actually related to each other. His temerity in messing with Calvin's recipe damn near got him killed. This is interesting because when he was in court arguing for his life, he said at least three times that he liked, yea verily, LOVED everything Calvin said. He just thought there was a bit more. Eventually the court decided that he really hadn't said anything that wrong. It's interesting though that they felt the need to put him on trial.
This post isn't about Arminius, although it could be.
I think in heaven, John and Jacobus (Arminius) sit together on a bench and offer apologies to everyone who wanders over their way. I don't think they need to be sorry really, but when something you've written gets so completely warped by so many other people, I think you're likely to wish you'd chosen a few different words here and there or maybe even kept silent entirely.
I wish this post was about silence, but it's not.
The above diatribe is actually about the causes and effects of a particular word. This post is about a word that is sometimes spoken, sometimes necessarily implied but always present when people disagree. That word might be the most horrible word ever spoken by man. I've used it in both spoken and unspoken forms way too many times in my life. This is the word: Therefore.
"Therefore" is a word that delivers finality and ending. For example, "We've done everything we can possibly do. Therefore, it's time to give up." More positively, "Well it looks like he's getting better. Therefore, we don't have to do anything." Virtually all social and intellectual context can apply this word.
This word is a two syllable invitation to an ending. I do think this word has some of the same problems associated with that Calvin and Arminius encountered. Namely, the word itself is fine, it just gets folded, spindled and even mutilated into things it was never intended to be.
"Therefore" is a wonderful word in engineering and fair to midlin' in science. In engineering, you can say things like, "I started the engine. Therefore it ran." In this case, there's an implicit but absolutely necessary link between an action and a result. For example, it wouldn't make sense to say, "I started the engine. Therefore it started laying eggs." Note that the only reason this doesn't make sense is because we all understand that laying eggs is not something an engine does.
In science "therefore" can still be OK, as in a test of gravity: "I dropped the pencil. Therefore it fell." That's pretty good...unless you're orbiting in space and then it's just flat wrong. And that example points to the very definite and completely ignored boundary of "therefore." This is the boundary: "Therefore" can only live out it's intended purpose in a clearly and completely defined context. That is, "therefore" can only add its intended value if it's applied in a completely understood and defined context.
People and relationships aren't anything like engines or even gravity. They aren't well defined or at least their definition isn't always clear. If their definition ever is clear, then this salient fact applies: Whatever we understand about a person now will change over time and we won't necessarily get a memo that things have changed. It's even true that our state changes and that in turn can change the way we look at others. Change, change, change...all relationships change. That simple fact severely limits the correct use of the word therefore.
Calvin and Arminius were in conversation about their relationship with God. By being in conversation, albeit indirectly, they were in relationship. (If you're bored right now, as a distraction you can note the implicit and I think appropriate use of "therefore" in the preceding sentence.) For the 400 or so intervening years between their lives and ours, there's been no conclusion to this conversation. That makes me want to say, huh...which I think is a humbler, more universal and all around better word than "therefore."
"Therefore" is way too much like an ending and even death for us to use it like we do. When we use it about each other either individually or as groups, we too often slam a door in ourselves that shouldn't even be closed.
Honestly, I don't care overmuch about the writings of Calvin, Arminius and their differences and similarities. I find them more interesting as historical figures than I do as thinkers or even spiritual mentors. As they sit on the imaginary bench I built for them, I doubt they care much about their writings either. I would imagine though that they care more about open doors than they used to.
As for me, I am slowly and sometimes painfully learning to keep doors open. Maybe they'll eventually make room on the bench for me and we can make up jokes. "Did you hear the one about the Calvinist and the Arminiust that went into the bar together?" I'll probably have to explain to them that in addition to it's other faults, "therefore" makes a lousy punch line.
This post isn't about Calvin, although it could be.
In fact, most of the stuff Calvin wrote about gets morphed into a thing called doctrine. Doctrine is a set of instructions that you can memorize and you don't have to really think about much. You just have to be able to read them and do what they say, like a recipe. Sometimes, the recipe says you should feel something and then doctrine tells you how to go about feeling it. If you're married, that's probably how you met your spouse, right...by following the recipe? Well, maybe not.
This post isn't about doctrine, although it could be.
A guy named Arminius said that Calvin was almost right but that there was a bit more to his recipe, a couple things Calvin left out. He tried to add a little bit about how people and God actually related to each other. His temerity in messing with Calvin's recipe damn near got him killed. This is interesting because when he was in court arguing for his life, he said at least three times that he liked, yea verily, LOVED everything Calvin said. He just thought there was a bit more. Eventually the court decided that he really hadn't said anything that wrong. It's interesting though that they felt the need to put him on trial.
This post isn't about Arminius, although it could be.
I think in heaven, John and Jacobus (Arminius) sit together on a bench and offer apologies to everyone who wanders over their way. I don't think they need to be sorry really, but when something you've written gets so completely warped by so many other people, I think you're likely to wish you'd chosen a few different words here and there or maybe even kept silent entirely.
I wish this post was about silence, but it's not.
The above diatribe is actually about the causes and effects of a particular word. This post is about a word that is sometimes spoken, sometimes necessarily implied but always present when people disagree. That word might be the most horrible word ever spoken by man. I've used it in both spoken and unspoken forms way too many times in my life. This is the word: Therefore.
"Therefore" is a word that delivers finality and ending. For example, "We've done everything we can possibly do. Therefore, it's time to give up." More positively, "Well it looks like he's getting better. Therefore, we don't have to do anything." Virtually all social and intellectual context can apply this word.
This word is a two syllable invitation to an ending. I do think this word has some of the same problems associated with that Calvin and Arminius encountered. Namely, the word itself is fine, it just gets folded, spindled and even mutilated into things it was never intended to be.
"Therefore" is a wonderful word in engineering and fair to midlin' in science. In engineering, you can say things like, "I started the engine. Therefore it ran." In this case, there's an implicit but absolutely necessary link between an action and a result. For example, it wouldn't make sense to say, "I started the engine. Therefore it started laying eggs." Note that the only reason this doesn't make sense is because we all understand that laying eggs is not something an engine does.
In science "therefore" can still be OK, as in a test of gravity: "I dropped the pencil. Therefore it fell." That's pretty good...unless you're orbiting in space and then it's just flat wrong. And that example points to the very definite and completely ignored boundary of "therefore." This is the boundary: "Therefore" can only live out it's intended purpose in a clearly and completely defined context. That is, "therefore" can only add its intended value if it's applied in a completely understood and defined context.
People and relationships aren't anything like engines or even gravity. They aren't well defined or at least their definition isn't always clear. If their definition ever is clear, then this salient fact applies: Whatever we understand about a person now will change over time and we won't necessarily get a memo that things have changed. It's even true that our state changes and that in turn can change the way we look at others. Change, change, change...all relationships change. That simple fact severely limits the correct use of the word therefore.
Calvin and Arminius were in conversation about their relationship with God. By being in conversation, albeit indirectly, they were in relationship. (If you're bored right now, as a distraction you can note the implicit and I think appropriate use of "therefore" in the preceding sentence.) For the 400 or so intervening years between their lives and ours, there's been no conclusion to this conversation. That makes me want to say, huh...which I think is a humbler, more universal and all around better word than "therefore."
"Therefore" is way too much like an ending and even death for us to use it like we do. When we use it about each other either individually or as groups, we too often slam a door in ourselves that shouldn't even be closed.
Honestly, I don't care overmuch about the writings of Calvin, Arminius and their differences and similarities. I find them more interesting as historical figures than I do as thinkers or even spiritual mentors. As they sit on the imaginary bench I built for them, I doubt they care much about their writings either. I would imagine though that they care more about open doors than they used to.
As for me, I am slowly and sometimes painfully learning to keep doors open. Maybe they'll eventually make room on the bench for me and we can make up jokes. "Did you hear the one about the Calvinist and the Arminiust that went into the bar together?" I'll probably have to explain to them that in addition to it's other faults, "therefore" makes a lousy punch line.
Friday, July 29, 2011
Mirror, Mirror and the Evidence of Things Not Seen
Most old literature we still read or even fairy tales that Disney makes into movies still command an audience because they have a resonance that transcends the surface of the story. In a literature class, this might be referred to as a theme a sub text or perhaps a sub plot. Interestingly, the same is true of histories and biographies (a sub type of history). This latter bit makes sense because as we live out our lives we in effect author our own autobiography.
The Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs story, while pure fiction has a great deal of relevant (i.e. to real life) subtext. It's one of the things, along with the happy ending, that has caused it to remain popular. The Mirror On The Wall is one of the more fascinating images in the story. You will recall that the evil witch consults the mirror for guidance on the subject of the witch's beauty relative to everyone else.
When the witch looks in the mirror, she sees herself as "the fairest in the land." This report is one part objective description, one part vanity. It contains both the report of the mirror as well as the reflection of the witch. All this is working swimmingly well for the witch. Her vanity aligns nicely with objective reality. Until, as is wont to happen in both real life and fairy tales, objective reality intrudes on the status quo. In this case, the happy relationship the witch has with her face.
The witch subsequently sets out on what will ultimately become a tragic and evil quest to force reality into the image she has of reality. I don't think I'll give much away to say that this path leads to death.
By way of both challenge and contrast, here's verse from Hebrews (11:1 specifically). I think the KJV offers by far the best rendering of this verse, both technically and esthetically, so here it is: Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
Contrasting this with the mirror and all we've found it to be, there's no appeal here to self or vanity. Everything is "out there," that is, objective. The rest of Hebrews 11 catalogs a number of bible biographies of people who looked only outside themselves, never in the mirror, and found God. These are references to stories co-authored by God and man, with first forms written in flesh and blood.
And here's the deal, faith is not about wishing no matter how good or bad the wish. Faith is not about our projections and reflections of vanity or of having the world the way we want it. Faith is allowing ourselves to be led and being deliberate and consistent about following the leading. In this way, "substance" and "evidence" are realized and even made manifest in the flesh and blood stories of our lives. And in turn, it is this story that over time defines the respective cores of our souls.
Sometimes the result of faith is fun and easy to accept. Sometimes it involves great sacrifice and suffering. The fact of these highs and lows is incidental to the target. And the target can't be found in the mirror. The target is "out there." The target is, has been and always will be, life, relationship and love with Christ.
The Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs story, while pure fiction has a great deal of relevant (i.e. to real life) subtext. It's one of the things, along with the happy ending, that has caused it to remain popular. The Mirror On The Wall is one of the more fascinating images in the story. You will recall that the evil witch consults the mirror for guidance on the subject of the witch's beauty relative to everyone else.
When the witch looks in the mirror, she sees herself as "the fairest in the land." This report is one part objective description, one part vanity. It contains both the report of the mirror as well as the reflection of the witch. All this is working swimmingly well for the witch. Her vanity aligns nicely with objective reality. Until, as is wont to happen in both real life and fairy tales, objective reality intrudes on the status quo. In this case, the happy relationship the witch has with her face.
The witch subsequently sets out on what will ultimately become a tragic and evil quest to force reality into the image she has of reality. I don't think I'll give much away to say that this path leads to death.
By way of both challenge and contrast, here's verse from Hebrews (11:1 specifically). I think the KJV offers by far the best rendering of this verse, both technically and esthetically, so here it is: Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
Contrasting this with the mirror and all we've found it to be, there's no appeal here to self or vanity. Everything is "out there," that is, objective. The rest of Hebrews 11 catalogs a number of bible biographies of people who looked only outside themselves, never in the mirror, and found God. These are references to stories co-authored by God and man, with first forms written in flesh and blood.
And here's the deal, faith is not about wishing no matter how good or bad the wish. Faith is not about our projections and reflections of vanity or of having the world the way we want it. Faith is allowing ourselves to be led and being deliberate and consistent about following the leading. In this way, "substance" and "evidence" are realized and even made manifest in the flesh and blood stories of our lives. And in turn, it is this story that over time defines the respective cores of our souls.
Sometimes the result of faith is fun and easy to accept. Sometimes it involves great sacrifice and suffering. The fact of these highs and lows is incidental to the target. And the target can't be found in the mirror. The target is "out there." The target is, has been and always will be, life, relationship and love with Christ.
Friday, July 22, 2011
The Fear of Perfect Love
1Jn 4:18 There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love.
The bible often gets reduced to a kind of Hallmark card world view. The ideas this approach produces are usually pretty and pastel...like Hallmark cards. I'm looking out my window right now. It's raining. There are many colors including blacks, grays and browns and because I live in Santa Cruz there is a lot of green. There's not one pastel. Pastels are favored by impressionists. That is, those who paint "impressions" of how things look rather than trying to truthfully render the thing itself. (In example, Van Gogh was an impressionist. J. J. Audubon was not.)
The verse above often falls prey to this sort of theological impressionism. "Perfect love casts out fear" is an often quoted phrase. The excerpt though, although both true and good, is a good bit deeper than the artificially extracted phrase would suggest.
The word "perfect" in that verse is interesting. It means "perfect" in the sense of completion in a way such that it cannot be made more complete. The word fear is interesting too. It means fear...pure and simple. And that's what makes it interesting.
I think most people reading this and me as I write it don't have an immediate apprehension of the fear that we all live with. This fear was birthed in our earliest memories. It came from things that we expected and trusted in our world that disappointed or even hurt us. It might have been our parents in part, it might have been siblings. It might have shaped by finance or health issues beyond our parent's ability to control. It might even have been partly about that nasty, mostly tame squirrel that when offered a nut in kindness, bites your thumb and takes the nut too. (I'll write about bitterness some other time...unless you count that last sentence.)
If you're experiencing a tough situation right now, you might have a more focused flavor of fear. Sometimes this sort of thing manifests as a persistent worry. Whether it's the potential loss of a person or a circumstance, the possibility of pain or other issue, the fear takes a form. I think it was always there though. Really, it was just looking for the opportunity to clothe itself in a specific circumstance. That is, a circumstance that looks a bit like and subliminally reminds us of a parental rejection, failed hope or maybe even a scheming squirrel.
The reflexes of caution, restraint and withdrawal we cultivate as responses to shock and adversity are born in this type of deep seated fear. The promise John gives us of life in Christ is that this sort of fear will be displaced by love as Christ carries us over time closer and closer to him.
Given all this, you'd think fear is something we'd want to get away from, to put behind us. However, fear has a couple features that we've learned to embrace enthusiastically. One of these is that its all ours. The other is that we've learned to imagine that we control it.
The fact that this fear's all ours means that we don't have depend on others or even God to enable or complete anything. We can imagine ourselves to be an island unto ourselves. It's like asserting a right. "No one can tell me what to think." "No one can tell me I'm wrong." That sort of idea is the home address of this sort of fear.
We imagine that we control our fear and that this in turn allows us to control the people and situations around us. This comes from responses we've learned to make in reaction to our fears. When someone threatens our self image, our situation or threatens to withhold themselves or withdraw from us, the responses we've learned in response to our fears get exercised. "You don't understand me," or "You don't care" or any host of responses that invalidate the offending proposition are immediately and reflexively at hand for response. All because of the help of our good friend Fear.
It's true that others may make statements to us that are extraordinarily hurtful, pointed or even mean. However, why should we not search even those comments for possible insight into ourselves? There are other personal hurts as well, not necessarily from personal attack. But really, what help is provided by any reflex response to this sort of pain?
When John says that the perfect love ushered in by Christ destroys our fear, I think we become afraid to accept the banishment of our long time friend. After all, we imagine that we control him and he is uniquely ours.
This is of course, a lie. Fear limits us to the sum of our learned, reflexive responses. When we're defined by our learned responses to our innermost fears, growth becomes impossible. When growth is impossible, death is only the ratification of the cessation of existence.
Further, fear will only be controlled in contexts already learned. New stuff coming our way means new fears must be encountered and mastered...mastered that is until the next one comes along. And eventually, something will show up that is simply too overpowering to be integrated. This is where break downs are born.
In the end, we have to let love banish our false friend. We were made for love. Not for the false, broken imitation that is the soul of our deepest fears.
The bible often gets reduced to a kind of Hallmark card world view. The ideas this approach produces are usually pretty and pastel...like Hallmark cards. I'm looking out my window right now. It's raining. There are many colors including blacks, grays and browns and because I live in Santa Cruz there is a lot of green. There's not one pastel. Pastels are favored by impressionists. That is, those who paint "impressions" of how things look rather than trying to truthfully render the thing itself. (In example, Van Gogh was an impressionist. J. J. Audubon was not.)
The verse above often falls prey to this sort of theological impressionism. "Perfect love casts out fear" is an often quoted phrase. The excerpt though, although both true and good, is a good bit deeper than the artificially extracted phrase would suggest.
The word "perfect" in that verse is interesting. It means "perfect" in the sense of completion in a way such that it cannot be made more complete. The word fear is interesting too. It means fear...pure and simple. And that's what makes it interesting.
I think most people reading this and me as I write it don't have an immediate apprehension of the fear that we all live with. This fear was birthed in our earliest memories. It came from things that we expected and trusted in our world that disappointed or even hurt us. It might have been our parents in part, it might have been siblings. It might have shaped by finance or health issues beyond our parent's ability to control. It might even have been partly about that nasty, mostly tame squirrel that when offered a nut in kindness, bites your thumb and takes the nut too. (I'll write about bitterness some other time...unless you count that last sentence.)
If you're experiencing a tough situation right now, you might have a more focused flavor of fear. Sometimes this sort of thing manifests as a persistent worry. Whether it's the potential loss of a person or a circumstance, the possibility of pain or other issue, the fear takes a form. I think it was always there though. Really, it was just looking for the opportunity to clothe itself in a specific circumstance. That is, a circumstance that looks a bit like and subliminally reminds us of a parental rejection, failed hope or maybe even a scheming squirrel.
The reflexes of caution, restraint and withdrawal we cultivate as responses to shock and adversity are born in this type of deep seated fear. The promise John gives us of life in Christ is that this sort of fear will be displaced by love as Christ carries us over time closer and closer to him.
Given all this, you'd think fear is something we'd want to get away from, to put behind us. However, fear has a couple features that we've learned to embrace enthusiastically. One of these is that its all ours. The other is that we've learned to imagine that we control it.
The fact that this fear's all ours means that we don't have depend on others or even God to enable or complete anything. We can imagine ourselves to be an island unto ourselves. It's like asserting a right. "No one can tell me what to think." "No one can tell me I'm wrong." That sort of idea is the home address of this sort of fear.
We imagine that we control our fear and that this in turn allows us to control the people and situations around us. This comes from responses we've learned to make in reaction to our fears. When someone threatens our self image, our situation or threatens to withhold themselves or withdraw from us, the responses we've learned in response to our fears get exercised. "You don't understand me," or "You don't care" or any host of responses that invalidate the offending proposition are immediately and reflexively at hand for response. All because of the help of our good friend Fear.
It's true that others may make statements to us that are extraordinarily hurtful, pointed or even mean. However, why should we not search even those comments for possible insight into ourselves? There are other personal hurts as well, not necessarily from personal attack. But really, what help is provided by any reflex response to this sort of pain?
When John says that the perfect love ushered in by Christ destroys our fear, I think we become afraid to accept the banishment of our long time friend. After all, we imagine that we control him and he is uniquely ours.
This is of course, a lie. Fear limits us to the sum of our learned, reflexive responses. When we're defined by our learned responses to our innermost fears, growth becomes impossible. When growth is impossible, death is only the ratification of the cessation of existence.
Further, fear will only be controlled in contexts already learned. New stuff coming our way means new fears must be encountered and mastered...mastered that is until the next one comes along. And eventually, something will show up that is simply too overpowering to be integrated. This is where break downs are born.
In the end, we have to let love banish our false friend. We were made for love. Not for the false, broken imitation that is the soul of our deepest fears.
Thursday, July 14, 2011
"If You Go Over the Falls, You Will Die"
A good many years ago now, we were camping with Christy's sister's family in Yosemite. A day or two before we were to leave, our brother in law Greg suggested that he and I "run" up Half Dome. Due to schedules and and a complete lack of planning, only one day would be available. In addition, since this was around the end of September/first of October, the cable rails on the backside of the Dome were down, hanging loose down the massif's back side. In this scenario, you climb hand over hand. Many people do this every year but yes, it is dangerous.
As an example of our flexibility-as-substitute-for-planning approach, we didn't have gloves but we did have socks, so we gave ourselves extra socks to use as gloves in order to help avoid getting steel cuts from any cable fray. And fortunately, we did have enough water bottles to support the effort.
We set off well before dawn. Again, due to a truly insane lack of planning, we wound up starting about 2 miles from the trail head...because 16 miles and about 4000 vertical feet (8000 if you count up and down) apparently just wasn't enough work for a day.
As is often the case, once we got on the trail everything seemed pretty reasonable. We were taking what's commonly referred to as The Mist Trail. It starts from the valley floor and climbs the right hand side (facing) of Vernal and Nevada Falls.
At the base of Nevada Falls, I discovered a sign that literally burned itself in my mind. The sign showed a stick figure being swept off the top of water fall. The only words on the sign (albeit in half a dozen or more languages) were these: "If you go over the falls, you will die." I can't think of ever experiencing a more immediate and direct communication.
In recent years, talking to Yosemite employees I've discovered that there is a Yosemite Book of Death. It is informally maintained by both Park Service and concession employees. It chronicles accidental deaths in the park. New entries are made, literally every year. They include everything from lightning strikes, to exposure to drowning to, presumably, being swept over waterfalls. You can read an example of this latter sort of tragedy here.
After passing the sign, Greg and I passed Vernal falls and eventually began to plan a break at the top of Nevada. At the top of Nevada falls, you cross a foot bridge probably about 20 feet back from the edge of the face.
There are many pictures of this on the web. All of them that I've seen show the Merced river in full flow. Since we were there in early fall after a fairly dry summer, the top of the falls was defined by a completely clear pool that exited over the cliff through a keyhole of granite. Due mostly to it's clarity, the pool looked dead still, but every now and then a stick would float by on it's way to the valley floor at surprising speed.
Greg and I discovered a spot on the other side of the bridge, on a cliff with a bench and a fence that loomed out over the valley, that gave a view back toward the falls. As we sat there sucking air, gulping water and shoveling down cookies, a father/daughter backpack team came down the trail, presumably after having spent the night in Little Yosemite Valley. They crossed the bridge. Even at ebb flow, the water made it impossible to hear their conversation but apparently the little girl wanted to go closer to the water. Her dad stood at the top of the pool while she inched downward toward the water.
The small family I grew up in spent most of our leisure time in the mountains. I hiked, learned trail craft, learned to navigate and take care of myself and somewhere along the way learned the difference between fearing the wilderness and respecting it. In the moment I saw that little girl, and to this day when I think of it, I knew fear as I've only known one other time in the outdoors (the subject of a future post no doubt). The steep granite slope down to the pool was completely coated with glacial polish. Short version: Glacial polish is usually granite that's been polished smooth with a combination of glaciation (the crucial component) and water erosion. If you add an amount of water approximately equal to what you can hold in one hand, it acts exactly like ice.
As I watched that little girl edge toward the clear, fast moving water, I became physically ill and had to look away. I couldn't be heard over the river and even if I could have been, yelling could have quite possibly scared that little girl into the slight loss of balance that would have taken her life.
She eventually had her fill of whatever she was seeking and backed slowly off the slope. No one died there that day. However this is true: If she'd have slipped even the least bit, she'd have been beyond hope. If you go over those falls you will die.
We encounter thresholds like this in our lives from time to time. Sometimes we recognize them and sometimes, either through ignorance or intentional blindness we can't recognize the dangerous ground on which we stand. Often the only thing that saves us is that grace abounds even when it's not requested.
I have learned to look for thresholds and at the nature of the ground under my feet. I have learned that there are lines that if transgressed, will bring death either immediate or lingering. In the face of this reality I try to walk thoughtfully, openly and open to the possibility of my own ignorance and error.
As an example of our flexibility-as-substitute-for-planning approach, we didn't have gloves but we did have socks, so we gave ourselves extra socks to use as gloves in order to help avoid getting steel cuts from any cable fray. And fortunately, we did have enough water bottles to support the effort.
We set off well before dawn. Again, due to a truly insane lack of planning, we wound up starting about 2 miles from the trail head...because 16 miles and about 4000 vertical feet (8000 if you count up and down) apparently just wasn't enough work for a day.
As is often the case, once we got on the trail everything seemed pretty reasonable. We were taking what's commonly referred to as The Mist Trail. It starts from the valley floor and climbs the right hand side (facing) of Vernal and Nevada Falls.
At the base of Nevada Falls, I discovered a sign that literally burned itself in my mind. The sign showed a stick figure being swept off the top of water fall. The only words on the sign (albeit in half a dozen or more languages) were these: "If you go over the falls, you will die." I can't think of ever experiencing a more immediate and direct communication.
In recent years, talking to Yosemite employees I've discovered that there is a Yosemite Book of Death. It is informally maintained by both Park Service and concession employees. It chronicles accidental deaths in the park. New entries are made, literally every year. They include everything from lightning strikes, to exposure to drowning to, presumably, being swept over waterfalls. You can read an example of this latter sort of tragedy here.
After passing the sign, Greg and I passed Vernal falls and eventually began to plan a break at the top of Nevada. At the top of Nevada falls, you cross a foot bridge probably about 20 feet back from the edge of the face.
There are many pictures of this on the web. All of them that I've seen show the Merced river in full flow. Since we were there in early fall after a fairly dry summer, the top of the falls was defined by a completely clear pool that exited over the cliff through a keyhole of granite. Due mostly to it's clarity, the pool looked dead still, but every now and then a stick would float by on it's way to the valley floor at surprising speed.
Greg and I discovered a spot on the other side of the bridge, on a cliff with a bench and a fence that loomed out over the valley, that gave a view back toward the falls. As we sat there sucking air, gulping water and shoveling down cookies, a father/daughter backpack team came down the trail, presumably after having spent the night in Little Yosemite Valley. They crossed the bridge. Even at ebb flow, the water made it impossible to hear their conversation but apparently the little girl wanted to go closer to the water. Her dad stood at the top of the pool while she inched downward toward the water.
The small family I grew up in spent most of our leisure time in the mountains. I hiked, learned trail craft, learned to navigate and take care of myself and somewhere along the way learned the difference between fearing the wilderness and respecting it. In the moment I saw that little girl, and to this day when I think of it, I knew fear as I've only known one other time in the outdoors (the subject of a future post no doubt). The steep granite slope down to the pool was completely coated with glacial polish. Short version: Glacial polish is usually granite that's been polished smooth with a combination of glaciation (the crucial component) and water erosion. If you add an amount of water approximately equal to what you can hold in one hand, it acts exactly like ice.
As I watched that little girl edge toward the clear, fast moving water, I became physically ill and had to look away. I couldn't be heard over the river and even if I could have been, yelling could have quite possibly scared that little girl into the slight loss of balance that would have taken her life.
She eventually had her fill of whatever she was seeking and backed slowly off the slope. No one died there that day. However this is true: If she'd have slipped even the least bit, she'd have been beyond hope. If you go over those falls you will die.
We encounter thresholds like this in our lives from time to time. Sometimes we recognize them and sometimes, either through ignorance or intentional blindness we can't recognize the dangerous ground on which we stand. Often the only thing that saves us is that grace abounds even when it's not requested.
I have learned to look for thresholds and at the nature of the ground under my feet. I have learned that there are lines that if transgressed, will bring death either immediate or lingering. In the face of this reality I try to walk thoughtfully, openly and open to the possibility of my own ignorance and error.
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