When I was a child, the Christ in Christmas was pretty hard to miss. We attended a denominational church and I went to a Protestant parochial school so pretty much all I had to do was wake up in the morning to be greeted from all sides by "the reason for the season."
We attended a midnight Christmas Eve service regularly. I remember that I once burned my fingers on the hot wax that dripped from the candle. We'd go home afterward and because it was now officially Christmas, I was allowed to open one present that had to be approved my mom.
Sometime in elementary school, I had to write a report about where Santa Claus came from. Looking back now and given my Christian school context, that hits me as a brilliant assignment. I was then and to some extent remain puzzled about how the giving of gifts to those we love became the central focus of Christmas. I suspect it was Charles Dickens that ratified the idea for us moderns but it had clearly been in play for centuries before.
The explanation given to me at school and home was that we give gifts to each other because of the gift God gave us of his son. I remember that connection hitting me as odd and even jarring. What possible connection was there between my Screaming Meemee rifle/grenade launcher and the 2nd chapter of Luke? What was the point?
The point was hinted at in the traditional, seasonal entertainment of the day. Movies like "It's a Wonderful Life" and "Miracle on 34th Street" pointed in the direction of transcendence with a quivering finger. It was as if they were more than just a little afraid to embrace the idea that a loving and just God might be more than just a deus ex machina plot device. Even the much older story of "A Christmas Carol" was oblique on the ultimate point. Still however, these stories recognized something that provided a hope for people in hurt and need. Hope and faith were somehow understood to be necessary even if their correct target was lost.
I've minimized the name of Christ in the preceding with a bit of hope that you,the reader, who I now address directly in the occasional style of Dickens, will have experienced a bit of the jangling that happens in me when I watch and read these stories of incomplete completion. The fact that George Bailey comes to recognize his value through revelation is...wonderful. Not meaning to be a Grinch but I think there's more to redemption than the restoration that happens to George. Come Monday, George Bailey will still have Potter and Uncle Billy to deal with. George has discovered that people surely love him. I hope though that doesn't represent anything like the sum of George's value. If it does, then all depends on George always being nice and doing the right thing. Not even Jimmy Stewart can pull that off.
This year I'm experiencing Advent in a form most similar to what I remember in my childhood. I've been attending morning prayer at an Anglican church as part of the fabric of Christmas observance. The season of Advent and it's core cause have supplanted morning news in my life. Tonight I will attend a service that contains only hymn singing and bible reading. I will attend Christmas Eve prayers tomorrow, anticipating a bit what the Book of Common Prayer, penned about 350 years ago has to say about that day. Much so far has been aimed in the direction of preparing myself through submission, confession and reflection for the observance of the Epiphany. This preparation is perhaps the primary point of the Advent season.
No "naughty and nice" lists have appeared and reindeer are conspicuous by their absence. This I find wildly refreshing. I also find it an invitation to smile a bit sadly as I respond to greetings of "Happy Holidays" with "Merry Christmas." At least I'm able to offer the Merry Christmas response these days without first clenching my teeth.
After a half century of life, I find less and less time for the pale substitutes that have invaded our culture, masquerading themselves as "the Christmas Spirit." They all fall short and leave me wanting for the reality of the one who gave everything imaginable each of us, yea verily, every one.
My prayer for myself this Advent is that I can be an overflowing vessel of the love of Christ and a witness to the reality of the presence of Christ in the lives of those with whom I am present. And one other thing, I hope desperately as those of us who know Christ shop, watch TV and get over tired with Christmas observances that we start to feel like something very very important might be missing. I pray that because our lives are the living Advent invitation to those who we meet. When we are present in Christ and in the season, it is Merry Christmas. When we are absent to our calling, it is only a well lit, tinsel covered happy holiday.
Sunday, December 23, 2012
Friday, December 7, 2012
Santa Claus the Easter Bunny and Social Justice
Generally, the idea of Santa Claus is said to have had its origin in the life and work of St. Nicholas.
St. Nick it seems did a good many things but none of them had anything
to do with reindeer, presents and chimneys. As I write this, it is the
feast day of St. Nicholas. Probably as a result, I've heard the
following factoid regarding St. Nick about a half dozen times in the
last couple of days: "He slapped Arius." I think Arius probably
deserved it (you can Google it and discover why). In any case
though, that clearly doesn't have anything to do with him being kind to
Rudolph on Christmas Eve.
As a society, we've removed a lot of the reason and much of the heart and depth of Christmas. We've made it about shopping, presents, the "right" gift and of course Black Friday and Cyber Monday. The Christians among us (me for example) still observe the holiday as the observed birthday of Christ and perhaps even celebrate Advent. There is an ongoing, much ballyhooed "culture war" that involves whether we as a society will continue to remember the reason we celebrate Christmas or whether we will find the observance (now more than 2000 years old) so offensive that we must avoid mentioning the word Christmas because it contains the religious word Christ. Although I hate to admit it, this is likely a case where if you have to have the debate, you've already lost the point.
This only applies to the public forum of course. What we do personally we are free to hold. This is true even when holding to that which is unpopular costs us and even costs us dearly.
The clearer vision of what's going on with St. Nick and Christmas is found in the Easter Bunny. In this case, the Christian church deliberately co-opted a long standing pagan tradition. The problem with the Easter Bunny as opposed to St. Nick is that the "co-opting" had nothing discernible to do with the death and resurrection of Christ. Thus, once the reason for the holiday is forgotten as a matter of societal practice, the Easter Bunny continues without even an echo of its intent to reinforce the life and work of Christ. Even the faint echo of the original cause is lost, to society at least.
I've saved the most egregious example of this kind of distortion of purpose and intent for last. The greatest heathen in the pantheon of linguistic blasphemy is this: social justice.
Note that Christianity survived approximately 1,807 years without benefit of that phrase but somehow during that time, managed to far surpass anything the concept could hope to express. It was cooked up by the Jesuits sometime around 1840. During the years before we were all saved by the shiny new word, missionaries carrying the truth and love of Christ, healing and economic aid and every manner of good and sacrifice (sometimes unto death) were sent out. It was (and always has been - even absent special new words) a holistic Gospel that encompassed both the physical and spiritual well being; exactly as it was when Christ taught and lived it. And even as it still most often is now in the post social justice revelation era in which we find ourselves.
I've known a Jesuit or two and I suspect that if those boys had kept the phrase to themselves, we'd all still be OK. By OK, I mean we'd have a common understanding of what the goal of a social mission is...And we'd have that sort of clarity of mission because we'd recognize the love of Christ in those that sent us, those that traveled with as and those we eventually served.
Of course, this being a broken world, there have been many failures and abuses in the carrying forward of Christ's mission, regardless of the language used to describe it. However, any complete tally of virtue vs. trespass in this regard will result in only one conclusion. Namely, Christians have been stumbling along in their brokenness for 2000 years trying to live out the love and and care of their namesake. In that time, God has worked miracles large and small to bring the love of Christ to all mankind in both physical and spiritual realities.
It's not enough to address physical need but not embrace the broken in your best imitation of Christ's love. Both are necessary. Mother Teresa said this: “Today it is fashionable to talk about the poor. Unfortunately, it is not fashionable to talk with them.” On that path lies the point. Social justice is a legal and moral concept. It is fine as such. However, person to person, man to God and God to man it ignores the fundamental reason for any virtue of service. Namely, it ignores the healing, love and wonder of Jesus Christ. It ignores the reality and hope of redemption and completion implicit in the gift. The thing is, that kind of giving has to include an element of the self of the giver.
When I raise this point, I usually get a few different things played back to me: "Well it's just a word and we all know what it means." Actually we don't. It's been co-opted by everyone from Protestants to the Libertarians to the Green Party and virtually every other assembly of humanity that might ever have interest in helping someone else.
Another playback is: "It's just good to do something regardless of the reason." The problem here is that where the presence of man is, there also is his heart. When the heart of man is involved you don't just do something. You do it for a reason. In the kingdom of God, the heart of the individual always trumps the shadows dancing in front of us.
When I told my wife what I was going to write about today she said something to the effect of, "Oh, that's very efficient. You'll make everyone mad all at once and then you can just have one big apology for everyone." I have to say, that right there is a wise woman. You don't need to be afraid if you run into me when you're on a social justice mission or errand though. I don't correct grammar or spelling either any more unless asked and then I try to let it be a gentle thing.
Still though, my aspiration for this Christmas and Easter and always is that the great body of Christ can carry forward the present reality of his love and Spirit. My prayer is that we can communicate the reality that man doesn't live just by bread, but by the breath, will and love of the God that spoke us. I pray that I can carry that message in the warp and woof of my soul and my deepest inner being. And finally I pray that the love and nature of Christ so consumes me that its presence in me is unmistakable, even for those closest to me.
As a society, we've removed a lot of the reason and much of the heart and depth of Christmas. We've made it about shopping, presents, the "right" gift and of course Black Friday and Cyber Monday. The Christians among us (me for example) still observe the holiday as the observed birthday of Christ and perhaps even celebrate Advent. There is an ongoing, much ballyhooed "culture war" that involves whether we as a society will continue to remember the reason we celebrate Christmas or whether we will find the observance (now more than 2000 years old) so offensive that we must avoid mentioning the word Christmas because it contains the religious word Christ. Although I hate to admit it, this is likely a case where if you have to have the debate, you've already lost the point.
This only applies to the public forum of course. What we do personally we are free to hold. This is true even when holding to that which is unpopular costs us and even costs us dearly.
The clearer vision of what's going on with St. Nick and Christmas is found in the Easter Bunny. In this case, the Christian church deliberately co-opted a long standing pagan tradition. The problem with the Easter Bunny as opposed to St. Nick is that the "co-opting" had nothing discernible to do with the death and resurrection of Christ. Thus, once the reason for the holiday is forgotten as a matter of societal practice, the Easter Bunny continues without even an echo of its intent to reinforce the life and work of Christ. Even the faint echo of the original cause is lost, to society at least.
I've saved the most egregious example of this kind of distortion of purpose and intent for last. The greatest heathen in the pantheon of linguistic blasphemy is this: social justice.
Note that Christianity survived approximately 1,807 years without benefit of that phrase but somehow during that time, managed to far surpass anything the concept could hope to express. It was cooked up by the Jesuits sometime around 1840. During the years before we were all saved by the shiny new word, missionaries carrying the truth and love of Christ, healing and economic aid and every manner of good and sacrifice (sometimes unto death) were sent out. It was (and always has been - even absent special new words) a holistic Gospel that encompassed both the physical and spiritual well being; exactly as it was when Christ taught and lived it. And even as it still most often is now in the post social justice revelation era in which we find ourselves.
I've known a Jesuit or two and I suspect that if those boys had kept the phrase to themselves, we'd all still be OK. By OK, I mean we'd have a common understanding of what the goal of a social mission is...And we'd have that sort of clarity of mission because we'd recognize the love of Christ in those that sent us, those that traveled with as and those we eventually served.
Of course, this being a broken world, there have been many failures and abuses in the carrying forward of Christ's mission, regardless of the language used to describe it. However, any complete tally of virtue vs. trespass in this regard will result in only one conclusion. Namely, Christians have been stumbling along in their brokenness for 2000 years trying to live out the love and and care of their namesake. In that time, God has worked miracles large and small to bring the love of Christ to all mankind in both physical and spiritual realities.
It's not enough to address physical need but not embrace the broken in your best imitation of Christ's love. Both are necessary. Mother Teresa said this: “Today it is fashionable to talk about the poor. Unfortunately, it is not fashionable to talk with them.” On that path lies the point. Social justice is a legal and moral concept. It is fine as such. However, person to person, man to God and God to man it ignores the fundamental reason for any virtue of service. Namely, it ignores the healing, love and wonder of Jesus Christ. It ignores the reality and hope of redemption and completion implicit in the gift. The thing is, that kind of giving has to include an element of the self of the giver.
When I raise this point, I usually get a few different things played back to me: "Well it's just a word and we all know what it means." Actually we don't. It's been co-opted by everyone from Protestants to the Libertarians to the Green Party and virtually every other assembly of humanity that might ever have interest in helping someone else.
Another playback is: "It's just good to do something regardless of the reason." The problem here is that where the presence of man is, there also is his heart. When the heart of man is involved you don't just do something. You do it for a reason. In the kingdom of God, the heart of the individual always trumps the shadows dancing in front of us.
When I told my wife what I was going to write about today she said something to the effect of, "Oh, that's very efficient. You'll make everyone mad all at once and then you can just have one big apology for everyone." I have to say, that right there is a wise woman. You don't need to be afraid if you run into me when you're on a social justice mission or errand though. I don't correct grammar or spelling either any more unless asked and then I try to let it be a gentle thing.
Still though, my aspiration for this Christmas and Easter and always is that the great body of Christ can carry forward the present reality of his love and Spirit. My prayer is that we can communicate the reality that man doesn't live just by bread, but by the breath, will and love of the God that spoke us. I pray that I can carry that message in the warp and woof of my soul and my deepest inner being. And finally I pray that the love and nature of Christ so consumes me that its presence in me is unmistakable, even for those closest to me.
Monday, November 5, 2012
A Really Really Big Tent
Technically, very technically, Hildegard of Bingen (1098 – 17 September 1179) is not a saint. While she hasn't been formally canonized she has been beatified and made a doctor of the church. I'm told that that amounts to being a saint but isn't quite there. She does have her own feast day though so that pretty much validates it for me. She wrote music, had visions and advised high church leadership among a bunch of other stuff. One source called her a polymath. That's a great word that I hope you have fun looking up.
I once saw Johnathan Edwards described as a better Calvinist than Calvin, or at least a better reasoned one. He wrote a number of blistering sermons but two of my favorites of his are, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" and "On the Future and Just Punishment of the Wicked." I'll bet he had some great jokes to open his sermons so he could draw everyone in. I might be wrong be wrong about that though. He was a leading figure in The First Great Awakening in the United States. One contemporary said that he delivered his sermons to the bell rope at the back of his church down the center aisle from his pulpit. The contemporary said that after church, people often expected to see the bell rope charred and smoking from the intensity of his delivery.
Blaise Pascal in his early years was a curious combination of Stephen Hawking and Mick Jagger. One day, he encountered God and everything changed instantly and profoundly. It was such a huge thing for him that he wrote it down in a couple places. One of them was discovered to have been sewn inside his coat after he died. He died young, probably because he spent his money and health taking care of the desperately ill in Paris.
Joel Osteen has great hair, a TV show a smile that is hard to loathe (I know, I've tried) and is often criticized for not being complete in his delivery of the biblical message. He also has one of the biggest protestant churches in the known universe and seems to love God.
Robert Schuller built the Crystal Cathedral, the "Hour of Power" TV show and apparently a bunch of fairly unhealthy relationships. He's suing his old church right now for something like 5 million dollars. Of course, he's also had Henry Nouwen to the Crystal Cathedral, supported foreign missions and admits from time to time that he doesn't completely "get" God.
Mother Theresa was pretty much the gold standard of Christian reality in the 20th century. One of he quotes that I really like is to the effect of: "Killing a child because it is unwanted is a peculiar form of poverty." She confessed at one point to going a year, while living in poverty, caring for orphans and mentoring her staff, without being sure whether God actually existed.
I could go on like this for a very long time. I remember just enough of this stuff to be able to Google it endlessly. (Anybody want to hear the dirt between John Wesley and Zinzendorf?) However, this sort of bone jarring jerking to and fro from person to personage has a point other than winning a Red Bull off of one of your buddies after a particularly vicious church basketball game. The point is that the body of Christ covers a lot more ground than can be covered in one person, one church, one generation or even one millennium. The body of Christ because of the love and grace of Christ is about the biggest tent ever conceived. How big is it? Damn big.
Apparently it's a lot bigger than our memories or our tastes. I hear people complain about Osteen; I hear people dis Edwards; I hear people dis all Catholics that ever lived. Confession: I used to hear myself doing some of this sort of dis'sing from time to time.
I've pretty much stopped listening to this stuff and my great aspiration is to stop talking, thinking or fretting about it. Jesus, who invented all those people mentioned up there, is in charge of them. Not me. If you know the story of the Prodigal Son, look at it this way: Do you like the idea of being the older brother? I've discovered you have to shut up to avoid the possibility and even that doesn't help sometimes.
Occasionally, I'll decide that someone isn't the best influence on me. These days when that possibility presents itself I just stop listening to them. Recently and happily, I've discovered that my mouth isn't involved in listening. I don't have to run my cake hole to have an opinion or to move on with my life. Amazing. Who would have thought?
If you want to blame someone for all these broken people calling themselves Christians or Christian leaders, you better blame Jesus. He made them. I have to say though, I've tried that (although I didn't realize for years that I was actually blaming him when I'd whine about "those people"). From my experience, I'd have to say this is a singularly unsatisfactory approach to the problem.
Jesus' tent is humongous. It's also not at all subject to the rules and theology we think it should be. I'm pretty convinced there's an inside and an outside but apart from a few who are very close to me, I wouldn't hazard any guesses as to who's standing where. It's hard to come up with language that describes the size of Christ's grace and love and his ability to include absolutely everyone in it who wants to be included. I think the best I can do is this: It's so big, it hurts.
I once saw Johnathan Edwards described as a better Calvinist than Calvin, or at least a better reasoned one. He wrote a number of blistering sermons but two of my favorites of his are, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" and "On the Future and Just Punishment of the Wicked." I'll bet he had some great jokes to open his sermons so he could draw everyone in. I might be wrong be wrong about that though. He was a leading figure in The First Great Awakening in the United States. One contemporary said that he delivered his sermons to the bell rope at the back of his church down the center aisle from his pulpit. The contemporary said that after church, people often expected to see the bell rope charred and smoking from the intensity of his delivery.
Blaise Pascal in his early years was a curious combination of Stephen Hawking and Mick Jagger. One day, he encountered God and everything changed instantly and profoundly. It was such a huge thing for him that he wrote it down in a couple places. One of them was discovered to have been sewn inside his coat after he died. He died young, probably because he spent his money and health taking care of the desperately ill in Paris.
Joel Osteen has great hair, a TV show a smile that is hard to loathe (I know, I've tried) and is often criticized for not being complete in his delivery of the biblical message. He also has one of the biggest protestant churches in the known universe and seems to love God.
Robert Schuller built the Crystal Cathedral, the "Hour of Power" TV show and apparently a bunch of fairly unhealthy relationships. He's suing his old church right now for something like 5 million dollars. Of course, he's also had Henry Nouwen to the Crystal Cathedral, supported foreign missions and admits from time to time that he doesn't completely "get" God.
Mother Theresa was pretty much the gold standard of Christian reality in the 20th century. One of he quotes that I really like is to the effect of: "Killing a child because it is unwanted is a peculiar form of poverty." She confessed at one point to going a year, while living in poverty, caring for orphans and mentoring her staff, without being sure whether God actually existed.
I could go on like this for a very long time. I remember just enough of this stuff to be able to Google it endlessly. (Anybody want to hear the dirt between John Wesley and Zinzendorf?) However, this sort of bone jarring jerking to and fro from person to personage has a point other than winning a Red Bull off of one of your buddies after a particularly vicious church basketball game. The point is that the body of Christ covers a lot more ground than can be covered in one person, one church, one generation or even one millennium. The body of Christ because of the love and grace of Christ is about the biggest tent ever conceived. How big is it? Damn big.
Apparently it's a lot bigger than our memories or our tastes. I hear people complain about Osteen; I hear people dis Edwards; I hear people dis all Catholics that ever lived. Confession: I used to hear myself doing some of this sort of dis'sing from time to time.
I've pretty much stopped listening to this stuff and my great aspiration is to stop talking, thinking or fretting about it. Jesus, who invented all those people mentioned up there, is in charge of them. Not me. If you know the story of the Prodigal Son, look at it this way: Do you like the idea of being the older brother? I've discovered you have to shut up to avoid the possibility and even that doesn't help sometimes.
Occasionally, I'll decide that someone isn't the best influence on me. These days when that possibility presents itself I just stop listening to them. Recently and happily, I've discovered that my mouth isn't involved in listening. I don't have to run my cake hole to have an opinion or to move on with my life. Amazing. Who would have thought?
If you want to blame someone for all these broken people calling themselves Christians or Christian leaders, you better blame Jesus. He made them. I have to say though, I've tried that (although I didn't realize for years that I was actually blaming him when I'd whine about "those people"). From my experience, I'd have to say this is a singularly unsatisfactory approach to the problem.
Jesus' tent is humongous. It's also not at all subject to the rules and theology we think it should be. I'm pretty convinced there's an inside and an outside but apart from a few who are very close to me, I wouldn't hazard any guesses as to who's standing where. It's hard to come up with language that describes the size of Christ's grace and love and his ability to include absolutely everyone in it who wants to be included. I think the best I can do is this: It's so big, it hurts.
Sunday, October 7, 2012
The Many Kinds of Faith
Singer/songwriter John Hyatt said once that if he had a nickel for every time someone played his song, "Have a Little Faith in Me" at a wedding, he'd stop working. Even though he doesn't get a $.05 royalty for wedding performance, I'll still bet he's doing OK.
We can have faith in all kinds of people and things. We have faith in loved ones, team mates, people at work and/or their performance and in the 21st century we are encouraged to even have faith in products and brand names. Faith seems to be crawling around everywhere.
A lot of what we call faith if held up to the light is really hope. We hope our iWhatever does what it's supposed to, looks really cool and is universally loved and revered, perhaps in the hope that we will participate in the love and reverence a bit ourselves.
Hope is good. However, hope is not the same thing as faith.
There's a place in the bible that describes faith as "the substance of things hoped for." Many many books, chapters and sermons have been written about this passage. Putting all that aside for the moment, one thing that is incontrovertible from this construct is that "faith" is considered to be somewhat more substantial than hope. As an example, we might hope for Christmas presents but we have faith that Christ is the reason we celebrate Christmas.
Faith and hope can get real confused. We usually hope for good outcomes in situations we face, particularly challenging situations. That's natural and fine. Sometimes people tell us to have "faith" that everything will come out OK. That's fine too but it does raise the question as to what "OK" means, or maybe what it actually is. The potential confusion here is pretty easy to see if you imagine a child being told that the way to get good things is to "have faith" that he'll receive them. Back when I was a kid, that would likely result in me having faith that I'd get my 2nd hot fudge sundae. Apparently my mom had more sense than I had faith because I never got sundae number two.
We Christians use the word faith about every which way it can be used and then throw in a few just to make sure everything is covered. That's generally fine but it can result in some disappointment or confusion when events don't unfold in a way that's consistent with our hope. And that's usually because we have confused faith with hope.
Sometimes faith gets confused with expectation. Faith and expectation are pretty easy to differentiate as well. We have the expectation that the sun will come up tomorrow. We don't exercise faith for that.
There's a good example of faith at work in the concept of marriage. When we marry, we assume that our spouses will be faithful. In effect, we have faith in their faithfulness. That points to another word though that is more closely aligned with faith than the alternatives we've looked at so far. That word is confidence.
Confidence in the good of people (i.e. the faithfulness of a spouse) is akin to faith. Having confidence that someone will "do the right thing" is parallel to having faith in them. Confidence and faith both represent investments of heart.
When we talk about having faith in God, it's not so much that we have "faith" that he'll do this or that. Maybe we expect him to do a particular thing but maybe he has something else in mind. Maybe we'd like him to do something now but later seems better to him.
That's actually when we have to have faith. The title here is ironic because in all the universe there's really only one kind of faith, at least as it applies to God. Faith is this: Knowing, expecting, hoping, committing and living life in a way that's consistent with the idea that God is who he says he is. In addition, there is exactly one commentary on this doctrine that's appropriate. Namely, God is good. (The idea that God is good is really contained in the idea that God is who he says he is but sometimes it helps to throw in that second bit.)
Most of our pain that's of the self-inflicted kind, most of our railing at situations or other people derive from the idea that God isn't really and completely who he says he is. I talked briefly to a woman the other night who thought that bankers were evil and should be punished. I saw kind of problem with this, not because it's impossible that bankers could ever do anything wrong, but rather because this woman apparently felt a lot of angst about the "unfairness" of the things "they" had done. What was hidden just below the surface of her anger was, "How can this be? This will not stand! This is not fair AND everyone should think so." That's fine but God says that redressing such wrongs is his job.
Laws are there to prevent systematic victimization and certainly they must be followed and upheld but self-righteous vengeance is a poor substitute for justice. When we indulge in that kind of thinking (as I too often do), we de facto deny the idea that God is who he says he is and all the cascading truths like, he'll take care of the spiritual injustice of it. In the moment we take up the cudgel, we deny that God really is our champion.
I'm gradually getting better with the idea that God is who he says he is. It takes a long time and we have to learn to except a fact about ourselves someplace in this process. Namely, we are who he spoke us to be. The truth of that is a story that each of us shares with God...because he is who he says he is.
We can have faith in all kinds of people and things. We have faith in loved ones, team mates, people at work and/or their performance and in the 21st century we are encouraged to even have faith in products and brand names. Faith seems to be crawling around everywhere.
A lot of what we call faith if held up to the light is really hope. We hope our iWhatever does what it's supposed to, looks really cool and is universally loved and revered, perhaps in the hope that we will participate in the love and reverence a bit ourselves.
Hope is good. However, hope is not the same thing as faith.
There's a place in the bible that describes faith as "the substance of things hoped for." Many many books, chapters and sermons have been written about this passage. Putting all that aside for the moment, one thing that is incontrovertible from this construct is that "faith" is considered to be somewhat more substantial than hope. As an example, we might hope for Christmas presents but we have faith that Christ is the reason we celebrate Christmas.
Faith and hope can get real confused. We usually hope for good outcomes in situations we face, particularly challenging situations. That's natural and fine. Sometimes people tell us to have "faith" that everything will come out OK. That's fine too but it does raise the question as to what "OK" means, or maybe what it actually is. The potential confusion here is pretty easy to see if you imagine a child being told that the way to get good things is to "have faith" that he'll receive them. Back when I was a kid, that would likely result in me having faith that I'd get my 2nd hot fudge sundae. Apparently my mom had more sense than I had faith because I never got sundae number two.
We Christians use the word faith about every which way it can be used and then throw in a few just to make sure everything is covered. That's generally fine but it can result in some disappointment or confusion when events don't unfold in a way that's consistent with our hope. And that's usually because we have confused faith with hope.
Sometimes faith gets confused with expectation. Faith and expectation are pretty easy to differentiate as well. We have the expectation that the sun will come up tomorrow. We don't exercise faith for that.
There's a good example of faith at work in the concept of marriage. When we marry, we assume that our spouses will be faithful. In effect, we have faith in their faithfulness. That points to another word though that is more closely aligned with faith than the alternatives we've looked at so far. That word is confidence.
Confidence in the good of people (i.e. the faithfulness of a spouse) is akin to faith. Having confidence that someone will "do the right thing" is parallel to having faith in them. Confidence and faith both represent investments of heart.
When we talk about having faith in God, it's not so much that we have "faith" that he'll do this or that. Maybe we expect him to do a particular thing but maybe he has something else in mind. Maybe we'd like him to do something now but later seems better to him.
That's actually when we have to have faith. The title here is ironic because in all the universe there's really only one kind of faith, at least as it applies to God. Faith is this: Knowing, expecting, hoping, committing and living life in a way that's consistent with the idea that God is who he says he is. In addition, there is exactly one commentary on this doctrine that's appropriate. Namely, God is good. (The idea that God is good is really contained in the idea that God is who he says he is but sometimes it helps to throw in that second bit.)
Most of our pain that's of the self-inflicted kind, most of our railing at situations or other people derive from the idea that God isn't really and completely who he says he is. I talked briefly to a woman the other night who thought that bankers were evil and should be punished. I saw kind of problem with this, not because it's impossible that bankers could ever do anything wrong, but rather because this woman apparently felt a lot of angst about the "unfairness" of the things "they" had done. What was hidden just below the surface of her anger was, "How can this be? This will not stand! This is not fair AND everyone should think so." That's fine but God says that redressing such wrongs is his job.
Laws are there to prevent systematic victimization and certainly they must be followed and upheld but self-righteous vengeance is a poor substitute for justice. When we indulge in that kind of thinking (as I too often do), we de facto deny the idea that God is who he says he is and all the cascading truths like, he'll take care of the spiritual injustice of it. In the moment we take up the cudgel, we deny that God really is our champion.
I'm gradually getting better with the idea that God is who he says he is. It takes a long time and we have to learn to except a fact about ourselves someplace in this process. Namely, we are who he spoke us to be. The truth of that is a story that each of us shares with God...because he is who he says he is.
Sunday, September 9, 2012
This 'n That
Some of this (and that) are things I've written about before. Some of (this and) that are new things. Don't look for relatedness or coherence. I seldom do.
Forgiveness
The fake forgiveness ceremony:
"HEY! You stepped on my foot!"
"Oh! I'm sorry."
"That's all right. I forgive you."
Fake forgiveness is like a dance with 2 to n people. All the dancers have to agree to move in time to the same music and then actually take the energy to move. If any of the dancers happen to step on any feet during the forgiveness ceremony, everyone has to start over.
Real forgiveness:
Jesus, while hanging on the cross allowing himself to be the victim of all mankind said, "Father forgive them for they don't know what they're doing." He not only forgave us himself, he even argued a bit on our behalf. No one danced.
Real forgiveness is unilateral and exists without a response from anyone else. Real forgiveness is born in love (see below).
Anger
Being angry isn't a sin. It's what you do when your angry that potentially turns it into sin. In any case though, I don't think anger is ever fun or even pleasant. As someone once said, "Anger is like a headache. It's not wrong to have one but why would you want one?"
Sacrifice
Sacrifice is nearly always confusing for nearly everyone. Sacrifice gets confused with giving up food, sex, smoking, time, health, vigor, money, someone you love and almost anything you can think of. All it ever really is, is "giving up," as in surrendering. You can't surrender without actually surrendering something but the nature of the something usually matters little. Here are some phrases that indicate the initiation of surrender:
"I don't need this anymore."
"I still REALLY feel like I need this but I'll just leave it here."
"I REALLY like doing but I think I'll just sacrifice it."
Sacrifice is an act of will, often ongoing. Sometimes circumstances almost force it (i.e. having kids). However, sacrifice can never be forced. It is always a matter of will, a matter of choice.
Sometimes, maybe even often, depending on the nature of the sacrifice the sacrifice winds up not really feeling like sacrifice at all.
Having an opinion
Morality is important. Living according to it is important. Having an opinion is not.
Expressing an opinion
Much less important than actually having an opinion. Standing for morality though is important. That's not because it's my opinion though.
Life and Death
Both are very real and exist for everyone reading this. Those of us who believe in Christ believe there's a reason and reality associated with both. Most of us aren't quite clear on the reason though because we haven't read or maybe yet understood the book of Job. Many of us who follow Christ seem to get confused about death too.
My wife likens the death of a loved one who dies in Christ to them being given a ticket to Hawaii with unlimited food, snorkeling and other fun things and even some serious lanai lounging. The only kickers are that there isn't any cell service there and since they're going be very busy lanai lounging and doing fun things, you won't be able to talk to them until you get your ticket and can go there too. Yes, it's sad missing someone you still love. But they're OK. In fact, they're a lot better than just OK. They're getting really tan with no possibility of skin cancer, eating everything they want without getting fat and having great fun. How sad can you really be for either them or you?
Fear
Fear usually starts out as being very helpful. It can even help us to not go to Hawaii too soon. However, over time things fear turns into things we try to avoid because they're unpleasant and even painful. It can get so bad that we avoid everything, even parts of ourselves. Fear is fine for hot stoves, the bulls in Pamplona, the face of Half Dome, race car driving and any numbers of other activities. It's not so good for relationships and it has no place in the context of love. If you have fear in a relationship, it should probably be sacrificed. After the sacrifice, you might want to think about taking up something in it's place...maybe intention and purpose.
If you have fear about life and death, you should know that if you follow Christ you're going to Hawaii. In fact, you're on your way right now.
Love
Love goes on forever. It's the reason those who follow Christ don't die (sacrifice is in there too but it all starts with love - true sacrifice is always a kind of love). Since we weren't designed for the brokenness in the place we live, our love often gets disappointed. That can turn into fear if we're not careful. If we let it though, the perfect love of Christ will pretty much toss our fear under the nearest bus.
Sometimes we have to sacrifice something in the name of love. That's OK though because the love we get in return for the sacrifice completes life and transcends death. It's hard to imagine how you can accept that much love though if you're not able to sacrifice all of the hurts that have been done to you and give up your right (well - your right in your opinion anyway) to get even. Well in point of fact, it's not just hard to imagine, it's impossible.
I hope none of this makes you angry but if it does I hope you forgive me. I won't ask for forgiveness because you owe it to yourself and nothing to me and that's not just my opinion. That's forgiveness...and love. Most of all it's love.
Forgiveness
The fake forgiveness ceremony:
"HEY! You stepped on my foot!"
"Oh! I'm sorry."
"That's all right. I forgive you."
Fake forgiveness is like a dance with 2 to n people. All the dancers have to agree to move in time to the same music and then actually take the energy to move. If any of the dancers happen to step on any feet during the forgiveness ceremony, everyone has to start over.
Real forgiveness:
Jesus, while hanging on the cross allowing himself to be the victim of all mankind said, "Father forgive them for they don't know what they're doing." He not only forgave us himself, he even argued a bit on our behalf. No one danced.
Real forgiveness is unilateral and exists without a response from anyone else. Real forgiveness is born in love (see below).
Anger
Being angry isn't a sin. It's what you do when your angry that potentially turns it into sin. In any case though, I don't think anger is ever fun or even pleasant. As someone once said, "Anger is like a headache. It's not wrong to have one but why would you want one?"
Sacrifice
Sacrifice is nearly always confusing for nearly everyone. Sacrifice gets confused with giving up food, sex, smoking, time, health, vigor, money, someone you love and almost anything you can think of. All it ever really is, is "giving up," as in surrendering. You can't surrender without actually surrendering something but the nature of the something usually matters little. Here are some phrases that indicate the initiation of surrender:
"I don't need this anymore."
"I still REALLY feel like I need this but I'll just leave it here."
"I REALLY like doing but I think I'll just sacrifice it."
Sacrifice is an act of will, often ongoing. Sometimes circumstances almost force it (i.e. having kids). However, sacrifice can never be forced. It is always a matter of will, a matter of choice.
Sometimes, maybe even often, depending on the nature of the sacrifice the sacrifice winds up not really feeling like sacrifice at all.
Having an opinion
Morality is important. Living according to it is important. Having an opinion is not.
Expressing an opinion
Much less important than actually having an opinion. Standing for morality though is important. That's not because it's my opinion though.
Life and Death
Both are very real and exist for everyone reading this. Those of us who believe in Christ believe there's a reason and reality associated with both. Most of us aren't quite clear on the reason though because we haven't read or maybe yet understood the book of Job. Many of us who follow Christ seem to get confused about death too.
My wife likens the death of a loved one who dies in Christ to them being given a ticket to Hawaii with unlimited food, snorkeling and other fun things and even some serious lanai lounging. The only kickers are that there isn't any cell service there and since they're going be very busy lanai lounging and doing fun things, you won't be able to talk to them until you get your ticket and can go there too. Yes, it's sad missing someone you still love. But they're OK. In fact, they're a lot better than just OK. They're getting really tan with no possibility of skin cancer, eating everything they want without getting fat and having great fun. How sad can you really be for either them or you?
Fear
Fear usually starts out as being very helpful. It can even help us to not go to Hawaii too soon. However, over time things fear turns into things we try to avoid because they're unpleasant and even painful. It can get so bad that we avoid everything, even parts of ourselves. Fear is fine for hot stoves, the bulls in Pamplona, the face of Half Dome, race car driving and any numbers of other activities. It's not so good for relationships and it has no place in the context of love. If you have fear in a relationship, it should probably be sacrificed. After the sacrifice, you might want to think about taking up something in it's place...maybe intention and purpose.
If you have fear about life and death, you should know that if you follow Christ you're going to Hawaii. In fact, you're on your way right now.
Love
Love goes on forever. It's the reason those who follow Christ don't die (sacrifice is in there too but it all starts with love - true sacrifice is always a kind of love). Since we weren't designed for the brokenness in the place we live, our love often gets disappointed. That can turn into fear if we're not careful. If we let it though, the perfect love of Christ will pretty much toss our fear under the nearest bus.
Sometimes we have to sacrifice something in the name of love. That's OK though because the love we get in return for the sacrifice completes life and transcends death. It's hard to imagine how you can accept that much love though if you're not able to sacrifice all of the hurts that have been done to you and give up your right (well - your right in your opinion anyway) to get even. Well in point of fact, it's not just hard to imagine, it's impossible.
I hope none of this makes you angry but if it does I hope you forgive me. I won't ask for forgiveness because you owe it to yourself and nothing to me and that's not just my opinion. That's forgiveness...and love. Most of all it's love.
Sunday, September 2, 2012
Letting Go
There are a lot of contradictory messages in life and there seems to be someone to carry the water for each of them. For example, some espouse pursuing greatness while others think that one should pursue passion and that greatness will follow. As with all such apparent contradictions, there will be those who have read both sets of books on the subject. To explain or to try to integrate the two camps, they'll simply put "sometimes..." in front of both constructs and call it a day. As in sometimes you have to pursue greatness and sometimes you have to pursue passion.
All these types of arguments tend to be about doing something or maybe hanging on through tough circumstances. I don't think they're bad (mostly), but there's a greater truth. The real chore is always binary. The real choice is whether to hang on or whether to let go.
And in that context it's almost always time to be letting go of something. Letting go is not about sometimes. Letting go is very important as is in fact one of the things that makes us human and gives us life.
Even hanging on is wrapped in a big package of letting go. If you're hanging on to something, presumably you're either trying to go wherever it goes or keep it from leaving. Inside that reality, choices exist. Do I hang on and leave everything behind? Do I choose to stop hanging on and let the person or opportunity go?
It's true that there are things pertaining to identity that represent the DNA of who you are that are important to hang on to. Faith and morality are examples of these as are family (where you came from) and even friends (at lest the close ones who you allow to participate in the unfolding definition of your identity). However the list is remarkably short.
Most things come and stay awhile and then must be released. That includes virtually all the stuff in your closet and garage and even includes your closet and garage. More distant friends will also be let go as they move away or move on. There just isn't enough of whatever to support all the stuff or enough time to support everyone. Some, must be let go.
It's counter intuitive, but we seem to hang on to pain with a grip that borders and occasionally transgresses into the desperate. Whether it's continuing to hate someone who wronged us years ago (hate's essentially the same thing as not forgiving) or our own feelings of inadequacy or even nursing a physical wound long since healed, we hang on to our catalog of things and crutches like grim death. Exactly like grim death as a matter of fact.
Our place here is not forever. That is what learning to let go teaches us.
All these types of arguments tend to be about doing something or maybe hanging on through tough circumstances. I don't think they're bad (mostly), but there's a greater truth. The real chore is always binary. The real choice is whether to hang on or whether to let go.
And in that context it's almost always time to be letting go of something. Letting go is not about sometimes. Letting go is very important as is in fact one of the things that makes us human and gives us life.
Even hanging on is wrapped in a big package of letting go. If you're hanging on to something, presumably you're either trying to go wherever it goes or keep it from leaving. Inside that reality, choices exist. Do I hang on and leave everything behind? Do I choose to stop hanging on and let the person or opportunity go?
It's true that there are things pertaining to identity that represent the DNA of who you are that are important to hang on to. Faith and morality are examples of these as are family (where you came from) and even friends (at lest the close ones who you allow to participate in the unfolding definition of your identity). However the list is remarkably short.
Most things come and stay awhile and then must be released. That includes virtually all the stuff in your closet and garage and even includes your closet and garage. More distant friends will also be let go as they move away or move on. There just isn't enough of whatever to support all the stuff or enough time to support everyone. Some, must be let go.
It's counter intuitive, but we seem to hang on to pain with a grip that borders and occasionally transgresses into the desperate. Whether it's continuing to hate someone who wronged us years ago (hate's essentially the same thing as not forgiving) or our own feelings of inadequacy or even nursing a physical wound long since healed, we hang on to our catalog of things and crutches like grim death. Exactly like grim death as a matter of fact.
Our place here is not forever. That is what learning to let go teaches us.
Wednesday, August 8, 2012
Esther
My theory is that there is a fairly finite catalog of sermons or homilies or whatever you choose to call the Sunday morning time where someone stands up and front and speaks while everyone else listens.
There are a lot of reasons this subject list tends to be closed ended. One reason is that while there's an infinite scope and variety of the experiences of people interacting with God, there's a finite number of stories in the bible. Another reason is that the theology that's popular at any given moment in time limits the perspective we have of God. Put that second one another way, it's probably not a good idea to assume that the Catholics of the late Middle Ages were all wrong and that the emerging Protestants were all right...You can reverse that if you're Catholic and the meaning will be virtually the same.
I think the biggest reason for a finite catalog of weekly inspiration though, is that those who have gotten comfortable with where they are with Christ tend to get a bit bored of the whole thing. Bored might be too strong but we could certainly say that most people don't wake up in the morning and feel challenged and inspired to ferret out a new revelation from old King James. Usually we're just happy to wake up again and have the hope that someone got up before us and made the coffee.
Thus, the Finite Sermon Catalog Syndrome usually leads to the Boring Bible Reading Corollary. That's the part where we imagine that the bible can no longer surprise us...And who wants to get up to read something that we "know" front to back? I think the truth is that the bible contains the capacity to give us slap across the mouth revelation, persistently and consistently if we'll just abandon our preconceived, boring preconceptions and accept the bible at it's word.
The book of Esther is a pretty good example of what I'm talking about. Somewhere down in the fourth chapter of Esther, her cousin Mordecai (who was her surrogate father) says: “Do not think that because you are in the king’s house you alone of all the Jews will escape. 14 For if you remain silent at this time, "... I think when we read this our sense of justice, our modern sensibilities and our "all's well that ends well" reflexes (albeit in this case, "all then ends badly") want to fill in something like, ..."you and all your house will be destroyed." Here's how Mordecai finishes that sentence: ..."relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place, but you and your father’s family will perish. And who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this?”
Mordecai appeals to one thing in Esther and it's something we in modern times have insulated ourselves from using every artifice of thought and theology we can muster. Mordecai appeals to who Esther was spoken by God to be.
I paid someone a compliment today. He's 60 something. I don't know him well but I do know that he has walked with God nearly all his life and unless all men and books do lie, he is a habitually nice guy. He thanked me for my compliment and said he was trying to do a better job of accepting compliments but that it was still hard. After a half century of knowing Christ, he still found it hard to accept that he's a beautiful creation, well worth compliment.
Mordecai is telling Esther that God's purpose will ultimately be fulfilled regardless of her choice. However, by choosing to align her life with what God spoke her to be, done at great personal risk, she fulfilled herself and saved her nation. But something else happens too. She created a story.
The story she created is the story of a partnership with God. The partnership made her a queen talked about throughout time. One day in heaven, I'll walk up to a campfire where a woman will be sitting, staring into the flames. I'll ask her name. She'll say, "Esther." In that moment I will know the story that she co-wrote with God, in the form of the person who risked everything to complete it. She will carry that story with her throughout eternity. Out of the story's overflow, a nation was saved.
I will also walk up to other campfires and learn other names. Likely, most of them will have echoes of Esther's story. They will be equal parts choosing away from fear and pain, offered and accepted grace and love. They will all be testimony to the God who like Esther, risked everything to partner with each story, with each soul.
And when they look at me and hear my name, they will know the same of me...and of you too if you so choose.
There are a lot of reasons this subject list tends to be closed ended. One reason is that while there's an infinite scope and variety of the experiences of people interacting with God, there's a finite number of stories in the bible. Another reason is that the theology that's popular at any given moment in time limits the perspective we have of God. Put that second one another way, it's probably not a good idea to assume that the Catholics of the late Middle Ages were all wrong and that the emerging Protestants were all right...You can reverse that if you're Catholic and the meaning will be virtually the same.
I think the biggest reason for a finite catalog of weekly inspiration though, is that those who have gotten comfortable with where they are with Christ tend to get a bit bored of the whole thing. Bored might be too strong but we could certainly say that most people don't wake up in the morning and feel challenged and inspired to ferret out a new revelation from old King James. Usually we're just happy to wake up again and have the hope that someone got up before us and made the coffee.
Thus, the Finite Sermon Catalog Syndrome usually leads to the Boring Bible Reading Corollary. That's the part where we imagine that the bible can no longer surprise us...And who wants to get up to read something that we "know" front to back? I think the truth is that the bible contains the capacity to give us slap across the mouth revelation, persistently and consistently if we'll just abandon our preconceived, boring preconceptions and accept the bible at it's word.
The book of Esther is a pretty good example of what I'm talking about. Somewhere down in the fourth chapter of Esther, her cousin Mordecai (who was her surrogate father) says: “Do not think that because you are in the king’s house you alone of all the Jews will escape. 14 For if you remain silent at this time, "... I think when we read this our sense of justice, our modern sensibilities and our "all's well that ends well" reflexes (albeit in this case, "all then ends badly") want to fill in something like, ..."you and all your house will be destroyed." Here's how Mordecai finishes that sentence: ..."relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place, but you and your father’s family will perish. And who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this?”
Mordecai appeals to one thing in Esther and it's something we in modern times have insulated ourselves from using every artifice of thought and theology we can muster. Mordecai appeals to who Esther was spoken by God to be.
I paid someone a compliment today. He's 60 something. I don't know him well but I do know that he has walked with God nearly all his life and unless all men and books do lie, he is a habitually nice guy. He thanked me for my compliment and said he was trying to do a better job of accepting compliments but that it was still hard. After a half century of knowing Christ, he still found it hard to accept that he's a beautiful creation, well worth compliment.
Mordecai is telling Esther that God's purpose will ultimately be fulfilled regardless of her choice. However, by choosing to align her life with what God spoke her to be, done at great personal risk, she fulfilled herself and saved her nation. But something else happens too. She created a story.
The story she created is the story of a partnership with God. The partnership made her a queen talked about throughout time. One day in heaven, I'll walk up to a campfire where a woman will be sitting, staring into the flames. I'll ask her name. She'll say, "Esther." In that moment I will know the story that she co-wrote with God, in the form of the person who risked everything to complete it. She will carry that story with her throughout eternity. Out of the story's overflow, a nation was saved.
I will also walk up to other campfires and learn other names. Likely, most of them will have echoes of Esther's story. They will be equal parts choosing away from fear and pain, offered and accepted grace and love. They will all be testimony to the God who like Esther, risked everything to partner with each story, with each soul.
And when they look at me and hear my name, they will know the same of me...and of you too if you so choose.
Thursday, July 12, 2012
Immoral Equivalence
Now that I'm in my second half century of life, I freely admit that there aren't a lot of interpersonal disagreements, misunderstandings and hurt feelings that can actually be solved by the correct application of logic. Heaven knows, I've tried. I could make myself dizzy and old(er) counting the number of arguments, disagreements and debates that I've won hands down on point of logic, only to be dismissed on grounds that they're uncaring, irrelevant or don't take into account the feelings of...everyone, everywhere that ever lived. There might have even been a little upset here and there as a result of my being right on point of logic.
It's useful to have guidelines for disagreeing and for stating and rebutting a point. In real life though, rules for this kind of encounter vanish around the time that shoulders, eyebrows and voices raise. That's unfortunate because I think if we could follow the rules just a bit, we could have more hope of finding the ground that's common rather than the ground that's higher. However, reality is pretty real and we have to negotiate the distance between respective positions and perspectives, yielding enough to let someone else pick their way around our tender places as well.
The normal flow of the disagreement is to either withdraw or to establish some form of moral equivalence. Moral equivalence is the form of argument that says something that sounds like, "Oh sure, my t-shirt might be out but YOUR socks don't match!" Of course, there's even the more basic form learned originally on the playground, "You're a bigger one!"
Of course, none of that has anything to do with the point at hand and only serves to reinforce the presumably broken status quo. It's not so much agreeing to disagree as it is being disagreeable about disagreeing on the matter of your disagreement.
This leads to a very knotty question: How do you fight a war with virtually no agreed upon rules of engagement, act equitably and bring the matter to not just truce but finally peace? There's really only one way out of this feedback loop of infinite angst and sadly it's the most difficult behavior found in modern discourse in 21st century culture. You have to listen.
Listening is not achieved by sitting still with your mouth mostly closed while you hear someone talk. Neither is it achieved by simply taking turns in a conversation. You actually have to entertain the possibility that the person on the other side of the argument might be at least partially right...or even completely right.
To achieve listening you have to let yourself be a bit vulnerable. You have to start out by surrendering, even if just a little bit. You don't necessarily surrender completely, unless maybe you've been obviously and egregiously wrong.
The idea has been found on the battlefield for at least 2000 years, in the form of the white flag. I think it's fascinating that the white flag is used as both a sign of surrender as well as a sign of temporary truce. Even though the nature of the exchange may range anywhere from negotiating mutual interest to dictating terms to abject surrender, it's accomplished under a flag of peace. The greater issues of the war might still remain but for the moment at least we can stand on our common ground.
Sadly, passing with the idea of structured and perhaps civilized disagreement are other good things. These include mutual respect, shared value and even grace. Wars, battles and arguments are now unconditional. Treaties are ignored when it is convenient to do so and outrage at "the other side's" treaty transgression is genuine and deep seated. Abandoning civility in the name of "winning" has become both a social and personal norm. "Feelings" at both the societal and personal levels have been elevated to the level of deity. How we feel now trumps how we think, objective reality and even the rule of law.
I don't have a great solution to this societal avalanche of self-righteous feeling. I have only one suggestion. Make your next step to be in the direction of reconciliation. It might leave you vulnerable or even hurt straight off but sometimes surrender is a step in the right direction. And maybe while you're making that next step, just listen a little.
It's useful to have guidelines for disagreeing and for stating and rebutting a point. In real life though, rules for this kind of encounter vanish around the time that shoulders, eyebrows and voices raise. That's unfortunate because I think if we could follow the rules just a bit, we could have more hope of finding the ground that's common rather than the ground that's higher. However, reality is pretty real and we have to negotiate the distance between respective positions and perspectives, yielding enough to let someone else pick their way around our tender places as well.
The normal flow of the disagreement is to either withdraw or to establish some form of moral equivalence. Moral equivalence is the form of argument that says something that sounds like, "Oh sure, my t-shirt might be out but YOUR socks don't match!" Of course, there's even the more basic form learned originally on the playground, "You're a bigger one!"
Of course, none of that has anything to do with the point at hand and only serves to reinforce the presumably broken status quo. It's not so much agreeing to disagree as it is being disagreeable about disagreeing on the matter of your disagreement.
This leads to a very knotty question: How do you fight a war with virtually no agreed upon rules of engagement, act equitably and bring the matter to not just truce but finally peace? There's really only one way out of this feedback loop of infinite angst and sadly it's the most difficult behavior found in modern discourse in 21st century culture. You have to listen.
Listening is not achieved by sitting still with your mouth mostly closed while you hear someone talk. Neither is it achieved by simply taking turns in a conversation. You actually have to entertain the possibility that the person on the other side of the argument might be at least partially right...or even completely right.
To achieve listening you have to let yourself be a bit vulnerable. You have to start out by surrendering, even if just a little bit. You don't necessarily surrender completely, unless maybe you've been obviously and egregiously wrong.
The idea has been found on the battlefield for at least 2000 years, in the form of the white flag. I think it's fascinating that the white flag is used as both a sign of surrender as well as a sign of temporary truce. Even though the nature of the exchange may range anywhere from negotiating mutual interest to dictating terms to abject surrender, it's accomplished under a flag of peace. The greater issues of the war might still remain but for the moment at least we can stand on our common ground.
Sadly, passing with the idea of structured and perhaps civilized disagreement are other good things. These include mutual respect, shared value and even grace. Wars, battles and arguments are now unconditional. Treaties are ignored when it is convenient to do so and outrage at "the other side's" treaty transgression is genuine and deep seated. Abandoning civility in the name of "winning" has become both a social and personal norm. "Feelings" at both the societal and personal levels have been elevated to the level of deity. How we feel now trumps how we think, objective reality and even the rule of law.
I don't have a great solution to this societal avalanche of self-righteous feeling. I have only one suggestion. Make your next step to be in the direction of reconciliation. It might leave you vulnerable or even hurt straight off but sometimes surrender is a step in the right direction. And maybe while you're making that next step, just listen a little.
Sunday, July 1, 2012
The Promise of Something Old and Something New
Our daughter Sarah was married to our new son Brandon about a week ago. From the guests to the community that helped pull it off to the weather to the bride and groom, it was a story book day. It will take me a long time to process the beauty of it.
As father of the bride preparing for the wedding, I found I had duties. I knew I had to give our daughter away of course. (Mostly I knew that factoid from movies and T.V.) I also was encouraged to prepare a toast.
From the way this was presented to me it seemed like I could probably wiggle out of this without too much fuss. I decided that if I had something to say I'd say it. Otherwise, I planned to just stand around and stare at the tops of my new, black, pretty awesome DC basketball shoes.
As happens occasionally, I woke up in the middle of the night and realized I had something to say. I knew this because I was so overcome with the beauty of what I'd heard and seen in moments between sleeping and waking that I was sobbing uncontrollably, almost convulsing. Over the last several years I've found that there are things that are so beautiful that no measured human response is possible. When you encounter such things, they are so unique and outside the boundaries of daily activity you may not see them for what they are. However, when you start to recognize them and what lies behind them, you tend to explode emotionally.
I was struck by the fact that Sarah and Brandon were going to make promises to each other in the presence of God and community. The great good intention of those promises can only be fulfilled by the passing of time and circumstance. And of course this place we live in is pretty broken and time and circumstance can be rough. From their wedding vows it was clear that the intent was that the joy of the moment of promise would be fulfilled over time, in love.
This is pretty consistent with most weddings I've been to. In the middle of the night though, just before I went over my emotional cliff a question hit me: That's where the promise is going but where did it come from? The first thing that occurred to me was that it descended in part from a nearly identical promise that Christy and I had made to each other and work to fulfill every day. Obviously though, that was just a link in a chain of promises that stretches back before time and will exist until there are no longer people on earth. And that I think was the point at which I started to lose it.
The marriage promises we make to each other are links forged into a chain of time created in time before time and redeemed two thousand years ago. This I think is the greatest point made by the inclusion of Christ's genealogy in the Bible. The chain described there of the gracious and the loving, the rapists and the whores, the kings and barbarians are all given to us as a family portrait of the King and Redeemer of man. It is a portrait that stretches across millennia back to the origin of man in time. It teaches us that even in the most broken of families the potential for redemption and love is staggering beyond imagination.
There's a scene in Genesis (3:21) that describes God making Adam and Eve's first clothes. I've heard a couple people over the years comment on this. One imagined God sitting on rock. As he drew the needle and cut the skin He saw the future as a great now. In that now, he saw the love of creation, mercy and redemption but he also saw the monstrous cost to both himself and to his children. He saw a road of infinite promise, faith, persistence and love set against constant struggle, betrayal and lies. I imagine a sigh escaping as thread joins skin to skin.
He would remind generation after generation of this great reality through stories in the form of lives and parables lived out and retold over thousands of years.
And he'd give us a vignette that would be our entry point into time, our desperate pursuit and our life's mission. It would be the thing through which he would deliver generation after generation of souls already spoken. That vignette is marriage, both it's promise and it's realization. It is marriage in it's love and passion but also marriage in it's struggle, effort and even betrayal. It is the journey of becoming and redemption. It is the journey to becoming one.
After the promises, the road stretches out before us. Each step offers a choice of promise or betrayal; each step is a choice. Persistence on that road offers one certain promise that supports all other possibility. It offers the hope of ever deepening and expanding love that extends to the point of two becoming one.
As father of the bride preparing for the wedding, I found I had duties. I knew I had to give our daughter away of course. (Mostly I knew that factoid from movies and T.V.) I also was encouraged to prepare a toast.
From the way this was presented to me it seemed like I could probably wiggle out of this without too much fuss. I decided that if I had something to say I'd say it. Otherwise, I planned to just stand around and stare at the tops of my new, black, pretty awesome DC basketball shoes.
As happens occasionally, I woke up in the middle of the night and realized I had something to say. I knew this because I was so overcome with the beauty of what I'd heard and seen in moments between sleeping and waking that I was sobbing uncontrollably, almost convulsing. Over the last several years I've found that there are things that are so beautiful that no measured human response is possible. When you encounter such things, they are so unique and outside the boundaries of daily activity you may not see them for what they are. However, when you start to recognize them and what lies behind them, you tend to explode emotionally.
I was struck by the fact that Sarah and Brandon were going to make promises to each other in the presence of God and community. The great good intention of those promises can only be fulfilled by the passing of time and circumstance. And of course this place we live in is pretty broken and time and circumstance can be rough. From their wedding vows it was clear that the intent was that the joy of the moment of promise would be fulfilled over time, in love.
This is pretty consistent with most weddings I've been to. In the middle of the night though, just before I went over my emotional cliff a question hit me: That's where the promise is going but where did it come from? The first thing that occurred to me was that it descended in part from a nearly identical promise that Christy and I had made to each other and work to fulfill every day. Obviously though, that was just a link in a chain of promises that stretches back before time and will exist until there are no longer people on earth. And that I think was the point at which I started to lose it.
The marriage promises we make to each other are links forged into a chain of time created in time before time and redeemed two thousand years ago. This I think is the greatest point made by the inclusion of Christ's genealogy in the Bible. The chain described there of the gracious and the loving, the rapists and the whores, the kings and barbarians are all given to us as a family portrait of the King and Redeemer of man. It is a portrait that stretches across millennia back to the origin of man in time. It teaches us that even in the most broken of families the potential for redemption and love is staggering beyond imagination.
There's a scene in Genesis (3:21) that describes God making Adam and Eve's first clothes. I've heard a couple people over the years comment on this. One imagined God sitting on rock. As he drew the needle and cut the skin He saw the future as a great now. In that now, he saw the love of creation, mercy and redemption but he also saw the monstrous cost to both himself and to his children. He saw a road of infinite promise, faith, persistence and love set against constant struggle, betrayal and lies. I imagine a sigh escaping as thread joins skin to skin.
He would remind generation after generation of this great reality through stories in the form of lives and parables lived out and retold over thousands of years.
And he'd give us a vignette that would be our entry point into time, our desperate pursuit and our life's mission. It would be the thing through which he would deliver generation after generation of souls already spoken. That vignette is marriage, both it's promise and it's realization. It is marriage in it's love and passion but also marriage in it's struggle, effort and even betrayal. It is the journey of becoming and redemption. It is the journey to becoming one.
After the promises, the road stretches out before us. Each step offers a choice of promise or betrayal; each step is a choice. Persistence on that road offers one certain promise that supports all other possibility. It offers the hope of ever deepening and expanding love that extends to the point of two becoming one.
Sunday, June 3, 2012
The Incredible Vanishing Log
Forgiveness is difficult, complicated, time consuming and at least at some level painful. That's probably why we're so awful at it. There is virtually no chance that anyone reading this (and certainly the writer) has mastered forgiveness. At least I've never met anyone who has.
Interestingly, I've never met anyone who actually acknowledged having a problem with forgiveness. I've met people who have been betrayed by family, spouses, and business associates not to mention Republicans, Democrats and the Illuminati. Point being that feelings of betrayal and other general forms of hurt span time and distance and even transcend reality. Still, try as I might I can find no human being that struggles with forgiveness.
I met a guy once who had found a theologian he really liked. The guy liked the theologian because the theologian had "discovered" that when Christ gave his sermons, he was only speaking to Jews. That meant that according to the theologian (and by extension the guy), the things that Christ said about forgiveness only applied to Jews. Paul was "the one" who was "anointed" to speak to gentiles. Therefore, we as gentiles only had to do things that Paul said. Apparently, Paul didn't say as much about forgiveness as Jesus did. I ignored that last bit (which is pretty wrong and wildly irrelevant) and asked him, "How does that help you?" He said, "That means I don't have to forgive Adolph Hitler who killed members of my family." His wife whisked him off at this point. This vaguely reminded me of my wife operating in similar context. My next question to him would have been, "How does hating Adolph Hitler help you?"
There are a lot of other examples of failed forgiveness. I've got some for almost everyone I know. If I don't have an example for someone, it's probably because I haven't learned it yet. Not because it isn't there.
All this raises the question, "Why can't we see our own problems with forgiveness?" I think the answer to this is pretty simple. The answer is this: Unforgiveness is invisible. Well technically, it's not invisible. Rather, the thing that unforgiveness is attached to is invisible, namely, the Incredible Vanishing log.
Jesus taught all manner of things about forgiveness...to everyone. One thing he taught on this subject was a comparison about an individual's issues vs. his neighbor's issues. This all is found in his question about a beam (or log) and a speck. To paraphrase, "Why do you fret and accuse your brother of having an itsy bitsy speck in his eye when there's a giant Redwood log in your eye?"
I think we have a perspective extending from a churchianity culture of convenience that renders our respective Redwoods invisible. We don't see them because individually we don't want to acknowledge them and socially we don't bear each other's issues well. It's better if we just shut our eyes...which is hard of course when you've got a huge thing in it. What's fascinating is that we can still see everyone else's issues while remaining oblivious to our own.
This particular question Jesus asked grabbed me a long time ago. Over the years, I've noticed a couple things about it. One is that this is in part a matter of perspective. The thing in your own eye is a lot bigger, in part at least, because it's a lot closer. You can't run away from it because wherever you go you take it with you. The other is that any foreign object in your own eye is bound to distort what you see. Something in someone else's eye distorts nothing in yours. Distortion leads to all kinds of other things...bad theology is one example of "other things."
I confess that I don't see my own log well at all. I've gotten better over the years but it still needs considerable pruning...chainsawing actually. I tell people about it from time to time. The response is usually either a bit of pique that I could be so fallen and barbaric as to harbor unforgiveness, or a look that I have come to refer to as "the look of the stunned Mullet." That's OK though. Those are responses I've learned to forgive.
I have some areas I've managed to look at and recognize for the mammoth growth they represent. Even so, a number of these have gotten much smaller over time and now only crop up occasionally if at all. There are almost certainly some I still don't see. I'm looking forward to discovering them. Seems like where I live there are always tress to cut.
Interestingly, I've never met anyone who actually acknowledged having a problem with forgiveness. I've met people who have been betrayed by family, spouses, and business associates not to mention Republicans, Democrats and the Illuminati. Point being that feelings of betrayal and other general forms of hurt span time and distance and even transcend reality. Still, try as I might I can find no human being that struggles with forgiveness.
I met a guy once who had found a theologian he really liked. The guy liked the theologian because the theologian had "discovered" that when Christ gave his sermons, he was only speaking to Jews. That meant that according to the theologian (and by extension the guy), the things that Christ said about forgiveness only applied to Jews. Paul was "the one" who was "anointed" to speak to gentiles. Therefore, we as gentiles only had to do things that Paul said. Apparently, Paul didn't say as much about forgiveness as Jesus did. I ignored that last bit (which is pretty wrong and wildly irrelevant) and asked him, "How does that help you?" He said, "That means I don't have to forgive Adolph Hitler who killed members of my family." His wife whisked him off at this point. This vaguely reminded me of my wife operating in similar context. My next question to him would have been, "How does hating Adolph Hitler help you?"
There are a lot of other examples of failed forgiveness. I've got some for almost everyone I know. If I don't have an example for someone, it's probably because I haven't learned it yet. Not because it isn't there.
All this raises the question, "Why can't we see our own problems with forgiveness?" I think the answer to this is pretty simple. The answer is this: Unforgiveness is invisible. Well technically, it's not invisible. Rather, the thing that unforgiveness is attached to is invisible, namely, the Incredible Vanishing log.
Jesus taught all manner of things about forgiveness...to everyone. One thing he taught on this subject was a comparison about an individual's issues vs. his neighbor's issues. This all is found in his question about a beam (or log) and a speck. To paraphrase, "Why do you fret and accuse your brother of having an itsy bitsy speck in his eye when there's a giant Redwood log in your eye?"
I think we have a perspective extending from a churchianity culture of convenience that renders our respective Redwoods invisible. We don't see them because individually we don't want to acknowledge them and socially we don't bear each other's issues well. It's better if we just shut our eyes...which is hard of course when you've got a huge thing in it. What's fascinating is that we can still see everyone else's issues while remaining oblivious to our own.
This particular question Jesus asked grabbed me a long time ago. Over the years, I've noticed a couple things about it. One is that this is in part a matter of perspective. The thing in your own eye is a lot bigger, in part at least, because it's a lot closer. You can't run away from it because wherever you go you take it with you. The other is that any foreign object in your own eye is bound to distort what you see. Something in someone else's eye distorts nothing in yours. Distortion leads to all kinds of other things...bad theology is one example of "other things."
I confess that I don't see my own log well at all. I've gotten better over the years but it still needs considerable pruning...chainsawing actually. I tell people about it from time to time. The response is usually either a bit of pique that I could be so fallen and barbaric as to harbor unforgiveness, or a look that I have come to refer to as "the look of the stunned Mullet." That's OK though. Those are responses I've learned to forgive.
I have some areas I've managed to look at and recognize for the mammoth growth they represent. Even so, a number of these have gotten much smaller over time and now only crop up occasionally if at all. There are almost certainly some I still don't see. I'm looking forward to discovering them. Seems like where I live there are always tress to cut.
Thursday, May 24, 2012
Every Now and Then
Kurt Vonnegut used to have a number of go to phrases. One of them that was particularly prominent in his book "Slaughterhouse Five" was "So it goes." Since I don't think he ever wrote a sentence that was absent irony, usually that phrase was tossed off as a response to some amazingly horrible event that had just happened to one of his characters.
Vonnegut is my favorite author on the subject of funny. He was often (mis)labeled a science fiction author, as he often included extraterrestrial beings in his stories. His favorite invented alien beings were the Tralfamadorians. Tralfamadorians were not located in time the same way we are. At any particular moment they would un-stick in time and wind up at some other particular moment. Here's how he explained it in "Slaughterhouse Five" in the words of his lead character, Billy Pilgrim:
"When a Tralfamadorian sees a corpse, all he thinks is that the dead person is in bad condition in the particular moment, but that the same person is just fine in plenty of other moments. Now, when I myself hear that somebody is dead, I simply shrug and say what the Tralfamadorians say about dead people, which is 'So it goes.'"
Interestingly, Tralfamadorians would use exactly the same language when encountering a really great condition as well. According to Kurt and the Tralfamadorians, when there's no such thing as waiting for the next thing to happen, everything starts to look vaguely similar and eternal.
I think that's true as far as it goes. However, whether you're dealing with the eternity of "So it goes" or the stuck in the place in time perspective of "Every Now and Then," you're still there...after all, wherever you go, there you are.
You're going to have a reaction to everything you encounter. If you return to the same location in space hoping to recapture a good time you might have had there once, you might be bored or disappointed with that particular location. Still, boredom is a reaction. Reactions can be good, as in our reaction to surprise party in our honor. And reactions can be bad as in a scary medical diagnosis.
Often, we don't let the word "reaction" hang around by itself. We frequently stick a word in front of reaction and create the idea of "involuntary reaction." When talking about someone getting bad news, we'll often ask out of concern, "How did he react?" That's because emotions don't have the same cause and effect that our knees do when someone taps them with a mallet. However, unlike our knees we're pretty sure there will be a reaction. We just don't know what it might be. In turn, all of us will then react to the report of the reaction if not the reaction itself.
There is both beauty and pain in the "every now and then" of passing through time. "Every now and then," we experience a sunset or a sunrise, a windfall or a look on a face or any number of other things that make us catch our breath or even tear up with joy. Of course, "Every now and then" we have very similar physiological reactions to bad things that happen as well. Since we move in a straight line through time, every now and then we experience the highs and lows that we use as building blocks to define our lives.
If we were meant for a living eternity, consider how this time spent living time in straight line time might teach us about how to live like a Tralfamadorian, or even a little beyond that. Since eternity is all they've ever known, Tralfamadorians have the reaction of "So it goes." However, if there's one thing that living at an actual place in time teaches us, it's that every now and then something beautiful happens.
And what if the beautiful part of the "every now and then" of this world, through the work of one man, could be transformed and completed into a fulfilled eternity of "so it goes"? I think we might call that heaven.
And even more, if we fully realized the value of the work of that one man (Jesus), if we really believed what he said about the Kingdom of God, maybe then we'd start to become a little un-stuck in time ourselves. Maybe we'd see past both our "here and nows" and our "every now and thens," and into a "so it goes" that is completed peace, fulfillment, transformation and joy.
We might even go beyond calling that heaven. We might call it the Kingdom of God.
People have argued for two thousand years about whether the kingdom of heaven (or "Kingdom of God" - the New Testament uses the ideas pretty much interchangeably) is in the future or starts now. I can't decide if we have these kinds of arguments because theologians want to be lawyers or lawyers want to be theologians or if both have become vocationally un-stuck. All I can think to say about that is, so it goes.
I think when we decide to follow Christ, what really happens is that we become aware of a future that's much more beautiful and full than our now; this even extends to us being more beautiful and complete than we ever imagined. This is a case where "then" is actually a lot better than "now."
However, I think we also become a little un-stuck from our now. Sometimes we get carried forward and backward and we see that the entire time we've been part of a beautiful and divine "so it goes" that's really more of a "And God said." We call our images of the past memory, and our images of the future imagination or visions, but really when you're part of "And God said," they're all now...and then. And so it goes, in peace, love, joy and completion in the creation that God long ago spoke for us. Anybody feel like un-sticking a little?
Vonnegut is my favorite author on the subject of funny. He was often (mis)labeled a science fiction author, as he often included extraterrestrial beings in his stories. His favorite invented alien beings were the Tralfamadorians. Tralfamadorians were not located in time the same way we are. At any particular moment they would un-stick in time and wind up at some other particular moment. Here's how he explained it in "Slaughterhouse Five" in the words of his lead character, Billy Pilgrim:
"When a Tralfamadorian sees a corpse, all he thinks is that the dead person is in bad condition in the particular moment, but that the same person is just fine in plenty of other moments. Now, when I myself hear that somebody is dead, I simply shrug and say what the Tralfamadorians say about dead people, which is 'So it goes.'"
Interestingly, Tralfamadorians would use exactly the same language when encountering a really great condition as well. According to Kurt and the Tralfamadorians, when there's no such thing as waiting for the next thing to happen, everything starts to look vaguely similar and eternal.
I think that's true as far as it goes. However, whether you're dealing with the eternity of "So it goes" or the stuck in the place in time perspective of "Every Now and Then," you're still there...after all, wherever you go, there you are.
You're going to have a reaction to everything you encounter. If you return to the same location in space hoping to recapture a good time you might have had there once, you might be bored or disappointed with that particular location. Still, boredom is a reaction. Reactions can be good, as in our reaction to surprise party in our honor. And reactions can be bad as in a scary medical diagnosis.
Often, we don't let the word "reaction" hang around by itself. We frequently stick a word in front of reaction and create the idea of "involuntary reaction." When talking about someone getting bad news, we'll often ask out of concern, "How did he react?" That's because emotions don't have the same cause and effect that our knees do when someone taps them with a mallet. However, unlike our knees we're pretty sure there will be a reaction. We just don't know what it might be. In turn, all of us will then react to the report of the reaction if not the reaction itself.
There is both beauty and pain in the "every now and then" of passing through time. "Every now and then," we experience a sunset or a sunrise, a windfall or a look on a face or any number of other things that make us catch our breath or even tear up with joy. Of course, "Every now and then" we have very similar physiological reactions to bad things that happen as well. Since we move in a straight line through time, every now and then we experience the highs and lows that we use as building blocks to define our lives.
If we were meant for a living eternity, consider how this time spent living time in straight line time might teach us about how to live like a Tralfamadorian, or even a little beyond that. Since eternity is all they've ever known, Tralfamadorians have the reaction of "So it goes." However, if there's one thing that living at an actual place in time teaches us, it's that every now and then something beautiful happens.
And what if the beautiful part of the "every now and then" of this world, through the work of one man, could be transformed and completed into a fulfilled eternity of "so it goes"? I think we might call that heaven.
And even more, if we fully realized the value of the work of that one man (Jesus), if we really believed what he said about the Kingdom of God, maybe then we'd start to become a little un-stuck in time ourselves. Maybe we'd see past both our "here and nows" and our "every now and thens," and into a "so it goes" that is completed peace, fulfillment, transformation and joy.
We might even go beyond calling that heaven. We might call it the Kingdom of God.
People have argued for two thousand years about whether the kingdom of heaven (or "Kingdom of God" - the New Testament uses the ideas pretty much interchangeably) is in the future or starts now. I can't decide if we have these kinds of arguments because theologians want to be lawyers or lawyers want to be theologians or if both have become vocationally un-stuck. All I can think to say about that is, so it goes.
I think when we decide to follow Christ, what really happens is that we become aware of a future that's much more beautiful and full than our now; this even extends to us being more beautiful and complete than we ever imagined. This is a case where "then" is actually a lot better than "now."
However, I think we also become a little un-stuck from our now. Sometimes we get carried forward and backward and we see that the entire time we've been part of a beautiful and divine "so it goes" that's really more of a "And God said." We call our images of the past memory, and our images of the future imagination or visions, but really when you're part of "And God said," they're all now...and then. And so it goes, in peace, love, joy and completion in the creation that God long ago spoke for us. Anybody feel like un-sticking a little?
Wednesday, May 16, 2012
Sarcasm
I read a good many news and feature stories from major media outlets. Virtually all of them are on-line. Most allow for the digital equivalent of letters to the editor. I am (too) often drawn to these comments as much or more than the original story. I think the reason is that opinions are usually more interesting than facts. Facts are usually of binary form, being either correct or incorrect. Opinions can run the gamut from compelling to stark raving insane; they cover more human geography.
Worse yet (for me at least), the comment sections often allow you respond to the commenters. Thus, when someone says something particularly egregious, and these sites are magnets for egregious, it's possible to respond. Generally, the response posts are not what one would call profound. Something along the lines of, "Your mother wears military style footwear" would be seen a both erudite and refrained in the context of response posts. I'm not sure how many words I've typed so far as either a commenter or respondent but it's probably roughly equivalent to what I wrote as formal papers during at least a year or two of college...and I was a philosophy and English major.
For those of you who don't know me well, I have what is a sometimes unfortunate talent for argumentation. The talent extends to formal logical constructs of fact and argument as well as back and forth human conversation. Within that overall talent lives a subset of the "back and forth human conversation" part. That subset is sarcasm and sometimes it might even be accurately described as biting sarcasm.
Sarcasm can be funny, illustrative and fun if used carefully. It's much easier for some people to "get" sarcasm than it is for others. Understanding which people are which is part of using sarcasm carefully. I will appeal to George Will for a fit example of sarcasm. Once in what was a bit of a hostile interview, the interviewer continually interrupted George in the middle of his sentences. Eventually Mr. Will had enough and at the end of one such interruption he paused, looked the interviewer in the eye and said, "I'm sure there are many things on which we disagree. However, I think we can both agree beyond doubt that I am the world's foremost authority on the end of my own sentences." And that ladies and gentlemen is the correct application of world class sarcasm.
There have been and still are too many times in my life when I don't use sarcasm carefully at all. Sometimes that's in response to commenters or articles. Even though these are sometimes biting, I usually receive digital validation from small numbers of people, rooting for my position and in some cases, maybe even my biting tone. (...Maybe it's really "numbers of small people.") It's usual for me to get several "thumbs ups." Occasionally, I'll get ten or twenty thumbs ups...Rah.
There's a reason I'm explaining the ad hoc digital commentary community. The other day I read an article on a book that's recently been published in Great Britain. The book is "Mum's List." It's the story of St. John (Sinjin) and Kathleen Greene and their 2 boys. The very very short version of the story is that Kathleen Greene passed away a couple years ago of cancer, leaving her husband and two small boys. She had been doing well with her disease and then suddenly relapsed. From the time of her relapse to her passing was about three weeks.
Once when she was sick at home during her last three weeks, her husband brought her in some tea. She took off her oxygen mask and looked him in the eye for a quite awhile and then she spoke. She told him that she wanted him to take their boys to Belize. The two of them had planned to retire there. She said that at least in that way, a small "bit" (her word) of her would get there. After that, a flood of other things followed, including urging her husband to fall in love again and re-marry, to kiss their boys good night twice each night, once for him and once for her and a host of similar thoughts and wishes. Eventually there were 200 items in all. Sinjin and his boys are now learning to continue to enjoy life with mum as they work through her list. Kathleen did a beautiful and sacrificial thing as she used her last days to plan with her soul mate for their family's life without her.
I was moved after reading the article and I will likely buy the book at some point. I breezed through the comments and thankfully there was nothing...egregious. Some people used their favorite, "sorry for your loss" language and others spoke Hallmark sentiments. It didn't really matter though. Everyone was looking for a place to put the tremendous, staggering beauty that existed in the telling of the story of family Greene.
It occurred to me that maybe I could help a couple people who were posting comments see this for what it is. Toward that end, I wrote this: "That's what love looks like." This comment was not the first by any stretch. (First comments usually get a lot of reads and responses.) In fact my comment was a thousand or so removed from being the first. Typical in this scenario might be a few thumbs ups and maybe a comment. Those five words have received well over 500 thumbs ups to date. When I last looked, there were 17 comments including one woman who accused me of being Shakespeare (note sarcastic use of "accused"), another who slightly confused the issue by offering me condolences on my loss. However, they were all beautiful and represented hearts that groan for the love that Sinjin and Kathleen had for each other and that they were kind enough to share with the rest of us.
I would have to conclude that love spoken in five words or five thousand can crush the impact of all clever, sarcastic argumentation and flood the people who read it with the overflow of the response of their own hearts. Put another way, better is one word spoken in love than all clever arguments spoken and written throughout all time. Without love, I am nothing.
Worse yet (for me at least), the comment sections often allow you respond to the commenters. Thus, when someone says something particularly egregious, and these sites are magnets for egregious, it's possible to respond. Generally, the response posts are not what one would call profound. Something along the lines of, "Your mother wears military style footwear" would be seen a both erudite and refrained in the context of response posts. I'm not sure how many words I've typed so far as either a commenter or respondent but it's probably roughly equivalent to what I wrote as formal papers during at least a year or two of college...and I was a philosophy and English major.
For those of you who don't know me well, I have what is a sometimes unfortunate talent for argumentation. The talent extends to formal logical constructs of fact and argument as well as back and forth human conversation. Within that overall talent lives a subset of the "back and forth human conversation" part. That subset is sarcasm and sometimes it might even be accurately described as biting sarcasm.
Sarcasm can be funny, illustrative and fun if used carefully. It's much easier for some people to "get" sarcasm than it is for others. Understanding which people are which is part of using sarcasm carefully. I will appeal to George Will for a fit example of sarcasm. Once in what was a bit of a hostile interview, the interviewer continually interrupted George in the middle of his sentences. Eventually Mr. Will had enough and at the end of one such interruption he paused, looked the interviewer in the eye and said, "I'm sure there are many things on which we disagree. However, I think we can both agree beyond doubt that I am the world's foremost authority on the end of my own sentences." And that ladies and gentlemen is the correct application of world class sarcasm.
There have been and still are too many times in my life when I don't use sarcasm carefully at all. Sometimes that's in response to commenters or articles. Even though these are sometimes biting, I usually receive digital validation from small numbers of people, rooting for my position and in some cases, maybe even my biting tone. (...Maybe it's really "numbers of small people.") It's usual for me to get several "thumbs ups." Occasionally, I'll get ten or twenty thumbs ups...Rah.
There's a reason I'm explaining the ad hoc digital commentary community. The other day I read an article on a book that's recently been published in Great Britain. The book is "Mum's List." It's the story of St. John (Sinjin) and Kathleen Greene and their 2 boys. The very very short version of the story is that Kathleen Greene passed away a couple years ago of cancer, leaving her husband and two small boys. She had been doing well with her disease and then suddenly relapsed. From the time of her relapse to her passing was about three weeks.
Once when she was sick at home during her last three weeks, her husband brought her in some tea. She took off her oxygen mask and looked him in the eye for a quite awhile and then she spoke. She told him that she wanted him to take their boys to Belize. The two of them had planned to retire there. She said that at least in that way, a small "bit" (her word) of her would get there. After that, a flood of other things followed, including urging her husband to fall in love again and re-marry, to kiss their boys good night twice each night, once for him and once for her and a host of similar thoughts and wishes. Eventually there were 200 items in all. Sinjin and his boys are now learning to continue to enjoy life with mum as they work through her list. Kathleen did a beautiful and sacrificial thing as she used her last days to plan with her soul mate for their family's life without her.
I was moved after reading the article and I will likely buy the book at some point. I breezed through the comments and thankfully there was nothing...egregious. Some people used their favorite, "sorry for your loss" language and others spoke Hallmark sentiments. It didn't really matter though. Everyone was looking for a place to put the tremendous, staggering beauty that existed in the telling of the story of family Greene.
It occurred to me that maybe I could help a couple people who were posting comments see this for what it is. Toward that end, I wrote this: "That's what love looks like." This comment was not the first by any stretch. (First comments usually get a lot of reads and responses.) In fact my comment was a thousand or so removed from being the first. Typical in this scenario might be a few thumbs ups and maybe a comment. Those five words have received well over 500 thumbs ups to date. When I last looked, there were 17 comments including one woman who accused me of being Shakespeare (note sarcastic use of "accused"), another who slightly confused the issue by offering me condolences on my loss. However, they were all beautiful and represented hearts that groan for the love that Sinjin and Kathleen had for each other and that they were kind enough to share with the rest of us.
I would have to conclude that love spoken in five words or five thousand can crush the impact of all clever, sarcastic argumentation and flood the people who read it with the overflow of the response of their own hearts. Put another way, better is one word spoken in love than all clever arguments spoken and written throughout all time. Without love, I am nothing.
Tuesday, May 1, 2012
The Very Last Thing I Learned
I read a Wayne Dyer book once a long time ago. It was the original book that put him on the map, "Your Erroneous Zones." I was taking a college psychology course and for an assignment I had to select a pop psychology book to read, present and review. The short version of my review went along the lines of, "He has some very nice thoughts if you happen to be living by alone by yourself in the universe." I'm very happy that his book wasn't the last thing I ever learned.
In fairness to Dr. Dyer, the sum of that particular book probably isn't the last thing he learned. He's been through three divorces and a couple of serious health episodes over the years. Adversity, whether it's of your own making or happens to fall on you out of the sky has a way of teaching you unexpected new things.
Dr. Dyer talks some about Christ. Here's a quote of his, "I don't think that Jesus was teaching Christianity, Jesus was teaching kindness, love, concern, and peace." Certainly Jesus was teaching those things. He taught a few other things as well. He was for example teaching the Pharisees that they were white washed tombs. I don't think that fits with Dr. Dyers listing of Christ's curriculum. What Dr. Dyer says isn't a problem. The problem is that he stops. It seems like his list is the very last thing he learned about Christ.
I am blessed with a number of quality relationships. I love all my children. I love my wife. I love my extended family. I have very good friends. I haven't yet learned the last thing about any of those relationships. They keep teaching me new things, both about others and about myself.
It's interesting to me is that I'm still learning things about my mother who's been gone for ten years this year. I don't have any new facts. However I have started to reexamine some things about her that I'd glossed over or even ignored completely. She climbed Mt. Whitney in the early 1950's. There weren't a lot of women running around at that time who could say that. In turn, she let me go up the Western slope of the mountain, after having crossed the Sierra from Sequoia when I was 13. I was with a group and she wasn't along and I know she worried a bit. She was a member of a folk dance troop that performed in Southern California. There are a number of other things as well. I can be a bit slow and it's only recently that I've come to realized that these weren't the kinds of things everyone did.
I think I've been able to keep learning about my mother because some deep part of me recognizes that I haven't learned the last thing about her yet. The reason that's true now and will always be true as long as I'm alive is because she was (and is) a real human being and I'm still be completed. I'm starting to believe that real people can never be summed completely. It makes sense if you believe that humanity was intended for eternity. It's a bit like the bumper sticker that says "Be patient with me, God isn't finished with me yet." If God can wait the span of our life times to complete in us what he has for us, I think it makes sense that we should strive to be at least that patient.
I can no longer imagine myself being able to make a statement about Christ of the kind that Dr. Dyer makes above. How could I? I can't say I know what Christ taught in totality any more than I completely know and understand my mother. Both are real and Christ is more present with me just now than my mother is. How could I have any idea of the totality of Christ's teaching? I haven't learned it all yet.
We will always argue about what Christ meant when he said this or that. Some of us will even lie about what Christ said, misrepresent it or turn it into what we feel like he should have said. It's real easy to understand why people do that sort of thing. It's because they don't think Christ is real or at least they don't really believe he still lives in the present reality. If they did believe he was present and real, why would they try to tell him what he thinks? Christ is fully capable of speaking for himself. For my part, I find it a lot harder to be patient with that sort of projection than I do to understand it.
I'm deriving great value from dropping my idea that I knew my mother completely. I don't think I ever did. I knew she was very good and that she loved me very much. As I embrace what some of this new revelation might mean about her, I'm learning more about her all the time. And really, it all just makes me love and appreciate her more.
With Jesus it is even more so. He's a lot bigger than our ideas of love and peace. He's bigger than any of our formulas for relating to him. He will tolerate our lack of love, faith and patience even to the point of delivering things to us that we don't deserve. You know, I'll bet he'd even climb Mt. Whitney if I asked him.
In fairness to Dr. Dyer, the sum of that particular book probably isn't the last thing he learned. He's been through three divorces and a couple of serious health episodes over the years. Adversity, whether it's of your own making or happens to fall on you out of the sky has a way of teaching you unexpected new things.
Dr. Dyer talks some about Christ. Here's a quote of his, "I don't think that Jesus was teaching Christianity, Jesus was teaching kindness, love, concern, and peace." Certainly Jesus was teaching those things. He taught a few other things as well. He was for example teaching the Pharisees that they were white washed tombs. I don't think that fits with Dr. Dyers listing of Christ's curriculum. What Dr. Dyer says isn't a problem. The problem is that he stops. It seems like his list is the very last thing he learned about Christ.
I am blessed with a number of quality relationships. I love all my children. I love my wife. I love my extended family. I have very good friends. I haven't yet learned the last thing about any of those relationships. They keep teaching me new things, both about others and about myself.
It's interesting to me is that I'm still learning things about my mother who's been gone for ten years this year. I don't have any new facts. However I have started to reexamine some things about her that I'd glossed over or even ignored completely. She climbed Mt. Whitney in the early 1950's. There weren't a lot of women running around at that time who could say that. In turn, she let me go up the Western slope of the mountain, after having crossed the Sierra from Sequoia when I was 13. I was with a group and she wasn't along and I know she worried a bit. She was a member of a folk dance troop that performed in Southern California. There are a number of other things as well. I can be a bit slow and it's only recently that I've come to realized that these weren't the kinds of things everyone did.
I think I've been able to keep learning about my mother because some deep part of me recognizes that I haven't learned the last thing about her yet. The reason that's true now and will always be true as long as I'm alive is because she was (and is) a real human being and I'm still be completed. I'm starting to believe that real people can never be summed completely. It makes sense if you believe that humanity was intended for eternity. It's a bit like the bumper sticker that says "Be patient with me, God isn't finished with me yet." If God can wait the span of our life times to complete in us what he has for us, I think it makes sense that we should strive to be at least that patient.
I can no longer imagine myself being able to make a statement about Christ of the kind that Dr. Dyer makes above. How could I? I can't say I know what Christ taught in totality any more than I completely know and understand my mother. Both are real and Christ is more present with me just now than my mother is. How could I have any idea of the totality of Christ's teaching? I haven't learned it all yet.
We will always argue about what Christ meant when he said this or that. Some of us will even lie about what Christ said, misrepresent it or turn it into what we feel like he should have said. It's real easy to understand why people do that sort of thing. It's because they don't think Christ is real or at least they don't really believe he still lives in the present reality. If they did believe he was present and real, why would they try to tell him what he thinks? Christ is fully capable of speaking for himself. For my part, I find it a lot harder to be patient with that sort of projection than I do to understand it.
I'm deriving great value from dropping my idea that I knew my mother completely. I don't think I ever did. I knew she was very good and that she loved me very much. As I embrace what some of this new revelation might mean about her, I'm learning more about her all the time. And really, it all just makes me love and appreciate her more.
With Jesus it is even more so. He's a lot bigger than our ideas of love and peace. He's bigger than any of our formulas for relating to him. He will tolerate our lack of love, faith and patience even to the point of delivering things to us that we don't deserve. You know, I'll bet he'd even climb Mt. Whitney if I asked him.
Sunday, April 15, 2012
Sickness
I've probably had more than my fair share of interesting friends and acquaintances over the years. This was particularly true in high school and college. In high school I had a friend Dave, that went on an "expedition" (his words) to the Salton Sea. He was going with some of his family's friends. Dave told me he was taking his new shotgun and that they were going hunting. I asked him what they were going to be hunting. Dave said that when he asked that question of the guy that was taking him he was told, "Anything that moves."
He sent me a post card while on his expedition. It opened with this line: "I hope you're healthy. That might seem like an odd greeting but if you're sick, you'll know what I mean." The last ten or so days, I've known what he meant...again. I don't have anything seriously wrong but I've had a nasty, persistent and constantly morphing cold for way too long now. I won't go into the specific symptoms (you're welcome) but suffice to say this particular ailment has manifested every possible cold related physiological process.
There are a few possible categories of human response to sickness of all kinds. Among these are denial, fear, being stoic and the ever popular whining. There are more of course and as is the case with most of us most of the time, we don't like to limit ourselves to just one. Particularly when we don't feel well for more than say, fifteen minutes.
I haven't really had fear with this cold. However, I have had frustration, impatience, definitely denial and yea verily even a little bit of whining.
Thanks to the current biological onslaught, I find myself now settling into something I first learned around the time that I received that post card from the Salton Sea. It's taken longer this time than it usually does. It's a lesson I always manage to completely forget when I'm healthy and feeling good. Sometimes when denial works it's evil magic and I get well sooner rather than later, I miss it all together. This of course means that I miss the hidden (sometimes well hidden) value in sickness, discomfort and even misery.
One of the flavors of whining you hear when people have colds is to the effect that the brain of the afflicted is not firing on all cylinders. Even the memory of what cylinders actually are may seem a bit distant. Taken together with the more obvious difficulties, the whole sick package becomes a wonderful invitation to take a seat and be quiet for awhile. Quiet is a step on the way to the lesson.
The lesson I've learned from sickness and have forgotten too many times over the years is this, wait. While that seems simple here's what our reaction virtually always is to being made to wait: "And while I'm waiting, I can read a book, watch movies, feel sorry for myself..." and on and on. Here's another way to communicate what wait means in this context: "Shhhhhhh. Just be still."
Illness is an invitation to acknowledge our limitations and weaknesses. Weakness is an invitation to faith. Faith is an invitation to everything good about being created human. And the most important good thing about being created human is love.
Here I sit typing with an upper respiratory tract chocked full of that which shall not be named. I'm not waiting right now exactly but I have remembered the intrinsic beauty of the place which I've fallen into. For example, there's music playing and for the first time in years, I can hear each note the band strikes on their instruments, even the drummer's feet. At the same time, I can hear them all playing together. I'm not there yet but after ten days of this garbage (note how hard the whining dies) I'm finally becoming still.
God's here. He's no more here of course than he is when I'm busy working, rushing and worrying. However, as I fall into forced stillness born out of weakness, I can see a little more clearly through the veil. I can hear his whispering without leaning quite so far forward. I'm a little closer and he's beautiful.
After a few decades I can say, "Yes Dave. I do know what you mean."
He sent me a post card while on his expedition. It opened with this line: "I hope you're healthy. That might seem like an odd greeting but if you're sick, you'll know what I mean." The last ten or so days, I've known what he meant...again. I don't have anything seriously wrong but I've had a nasty, persistent and constantly morphing cold for way too long now. I won't go into the specific symptoms (you're welcome) but suffice to say this particular ailment has manifested every possible cold related physiological process.
There are a few possible categories of human response to sickness of all kinds. Among these are denial, fear, being stoic and the ever popular whining. There are more of course and as is the case with most of us most of the time, we don't like to limit ourselves to just one. Particularly when we don't feel well for more than say, fifteen minutes.
I haven't really had fear with this cold. However, I have had frustration, impatience, definitely denial and yea verily even a little bit of whining.
Thanks to the current biological onslaught, I find myself now settling into something I first learned around the time that I received that post card from the Salton Sea. It's taken longer this time than it usually does. It's a lesson I always manage to completely forget when I'm healthy and feeling good. Sometimes when denial works it's evil magic and I get well sooner rather than later, I miss it all together. This of course means that I miss the hidden (sometimes well hidden) value in sickness, discomfort and even misery.
One of the flavors of whining you hear when people have colds is to the effect that the brain of the afflicted is not firing on all cylinders. Even the memory of what cylinders actually are may seem a bit distant. Taken together with the more obvious difficulties, the whole sick package becomes a wonderful invitation to take a seat and be quiet for awhile. Quiet is a step on the way to the lesson.
The lesson I've learned from sickness and have forgotten too many times over the years is this, wait. While that seems simple here's what our reaction virtually always is to being made to wait: "And while I'm waiting, I can read a book, watch movies, feel sorry for myself..." and on and on. Here's another way to communicate what wait means in this context: "Shhhhhhh. Just be still."
Illness is an invitation to acknowledge our limitations and weaknesses. Weakness is an invitation to faith. Faith is an invitation to everything good about being created human. And the most important good thing about being created human is love.
Here I sit typing with an upper respiratory tract chocked full of that which shall not be named. I'm not waiting right now exactly but I have remembered the intrinsic beauty of the place which I've fallen into. For example, there's music playing and for the first time in years, I can hear each note the band strikes on their instruments, even the drummer's feet. At the same time, I can hear them all playing together. I'm not there yet but after ten days of this garbage (note how hard the whining dies) I'm finally becoming still.
God's here. He's no more here of course than he is when I'm busy working, rushing and worrying. However, as I fall into forced stillness born out of weakness, I can see a little more clearly through the veil. I can hear his whispering without leaning quite so far forward. I'm a little closer and he's beautiful.
After a few decades I can say, "Yes Dave. I do know what you mean."
Sunday, April 8, 2012
Ancient Fire
It's easy to get confused about time. We run late, show up early and forget to set our clocks ahead or behind. I keep the clock in my truck running fast so I'm a little more likely to be places on time...or or maybe feel guiltier about being late.
I can't count the times when I've been running behind and thought, "I wasn't made for this." I've been wrong about a lot of things, but I'm right about that.
When I say "I wasn't made for this," I don't mean that I'm not made for schedules or that there's too much to do. My problem's a lot bigger. Time is broken and our idea of it is even more broken. I'm not made for broken time. Not a second of it.
The love of money might be the root of all evil but it's really time that commands our deepest lust. We want more time so that we can do what we want, feel relaxed, not have to rush, work to get more money so we can buy more time to do more of what we want with the time we "have." Having a lot of time also makes us feel safe, like we're going to live forever.
Conversely, we may want time to pass faster so we can put the unpleasant thing that's making time seem to crawl go away. We'd could do everything we wanted if we just had the time...to do what we want. Time's a great spinning pain that causes the hands on our clocks to bear an unpleasant resemblance to the blades in a blender spinning set on high.
A few years ago I was paying attention to the time as I barbequed outside after dark. Our family likes the meat done but not too done...gotta watch the time. Around that time of my life, I'd been studying some constellations and the stars that compose them. To pass the time until I needed to turn over the steak, I was looking at Orion. Orion is my favorite constellation. I miss him in the summer when he runs off and hides below the night horizon, hunting after something I can't see.
Orion has a great many stars that compose his form. I could try and show off and tell you how many stars make up that particular constellation. However, virtually any number I'd pick would be wrong. That's because at least one of the "stars" that typically define the constellation is actually a nebula, containing a lot of gas and likely hundreds of thousands of stars. There's a globular cluster or two in the general vicinity as well, so you could pop the count up into the millions (possibly hundreds of millions) and be a lot closer to being right than if you said eight or so. Orion is tricky that way; he isn't what he looks like at all...even if you're an ancient Greek making things up.
The light from Orion that arrives in the Northern hemisphere of earth every winter represents a wild variety of age. Some of the light is arriving a scant 240 years after the reaction that created it. The light from the close edge of the Great Nebula that defines part of Orion's sword is about 1500 years old.
Of course, there's light in both the summer and winter skies that's much older than anything from Orion. Every night sky is a bath in ancient fire that was created at virtually all possible moments between everlasting and everlasting. At night we can step outside, look up and see the most distant possible moments of history.
We were created for seeing such things, wondering over them and eventually discovering our place in a context that includes the edges of forever hiding in the night sky.
I'm writing this on Easter Sunday. A little less than 2000 years ago, about a 100 or so years before the oldest light you'll see tonight from Orion, just before he runs off and hides from summer, Jesus created a God-human super nova that fundamentally changed our realities forever. God invites us back to him with the vast wonder of all creation, including Orion and much more. This particularly includes the wonder of our own creation. Each of us is created and intended for timeless love and friendship with God and each other. Each of us is a complement to the beautiful and eternal whole.
Christ lives. He's not just in the night sky. He's not just for 2000 years ago and he's not just for a feeling we have right now. Because of the way he made us, we're not for any of that either. We were created as part of the ancient fire. We wandered off into darkness. Two thousand years ago, Christ left the fire to go and find us and give us a direction back. He made that sacrifice so we'd know love and not have to worry about whether we're early or late or if we have enough time left. He invites us to learn that the past and future through and with him is all a great, complete, beautiful now. Happy Easter.
I can't count the times when I've been running behind and thought, "I wasn't made for this." I've been wrong about a lot of things, but I'm right about that.
When I say "I wasn't made for this," I don't mean that I'm not made for schedules or that there's too much to do. My problem's a lot bigger. Time is broken and our idea of it is even more broken. I'm not made for broken time. Not a second of it.
The love of money might be the root of all evil but it's really time that commands our deepest lust. We want more time so that we can do what we want, feel relaxed, not have to rush, work to get more money so we can buy more time to do more of what we want with the time we "have." Having a lot of time also makes us feel safe, like we're going to live forever.
Conversely, we may want time to pass faster so we can put the unpleasant thing that's making time seem to crawl go away. We'd could do everything we wanted if we just had the time...to do what we want. Time's a great spinning pain that causes the hands on our clocks to bear an unpleasant resemblance to the blades in a blender spinning set on high.
A few years ago I was paying attention to the time as I barbequed outside after dark. Our family likes the meat done but not too done...gotta watch the time. Around that time of my life, I'd been studying some constellations and the stars that compose them. To pass the time until I needed to turn over the steak, I was looking at Orion. Orion is my favorite constellation. I miss him in the summer when he runs off and hides below the night horizon, hunting after something I can't see.
Orion has a great many stars that compose his form. I could try and show off and tell you how many stars make up that particular constellation. However, virtually any number I'd pick would be wrong. That's because at least one of the "stars" that typically define the constellation is actually a nebula, containing a lot of gas and likely hundreds of thousands of stars. There's a globular cluster or two in the general vicinity as well, so you could pop the count up into the millions (possibly hundreds of millions) and be a lot closer to being right than if you said eight or so. Orion is tricky that way; he isn't what he looks like at all...even if you're an ancient Greek making things up.
The light from Orion that arrives in the Northern hemisphere of earth every winter represents a wild variety of age. Some of the light is arriving a scant 240 years after the reaction that created it. The light from the close edge of the Great Nebula that defines part of Orion's sword is about 1500 years old.
Of course, there's light in both the summer and winter skies that's much older than anything from Orion. Every night sky is a bath in ancient fire that was created at virtually all possible moments between everlasting and everlasting. At night we can step outside, look up and see the most distant possible moments of history.
We were created for seeing such things, wondering over them and eventually discovering our place in a context that includes the edges of forever hiding in the night sky.
I'm writing this on Easter Sunday. A little less than 2000 years ago, about a 100 or so years before the oldest light you'll see tonight from Orion, just before he runs off and hides from summer, Jesus created a God-human super nova that fundamentally changed our realities forever. God invites us back to him with the vast wonder of all creation, including Orion and much more. This particularly includes the wonder of our own creation. Each of us is created and intended for timeless love and friendship with God and each other. Each of us is a complement to the beautiful and eternal whole.
Christ lives. He's not just in the night sky. He's not just for 2000 years ago and he's not just for a feeling we have right now. Because of the way he made us, we're not for any of that either. We were created as part of the ancient fire. We wandered off into darkness. Two thousand years ago, Christ left the fire to go and find us and give us a direction back. He made that sacrifice so we'd know love and not have to worry about whether we're early or late or if we have enough time left. He invites us to learn that the past and future through and with him is all a great, complete, beautiful now. Happy Easter.
Friday, March 30, 2012
Vanishing Point
There's a great phrase in the bible that's translated in the King James as "from everlasting to everlasting." The concept is as if you're standing in the middle of the desert, squinting off to the horizon trying to see where the line is between reality and mirage. The best you can make of reality while squinting into the shimmering heat is the "from" part of the phrase. The "to" part is turning around one hundred and eighty degrees and doing the same thing in the opposite direction.
Much of our life's energy is spent searching out some point on the horizon, just past the distance at which things can be easily seen. The range of possibilities associated with our relentless squinting and straining is infinite. We might be trying to anticipate something fun (e.g. "What am I going to get for Christmas?") or trying to adapt to a changing challenge, a threat or even a potentially horrible circumstance. All these exercises depend on our imagination for their existence.
The distant dancing shadows can be our biggest invitation to worry. It's an invitation we usually grab with both hands and hang on to like grim death. When someone is kind enough to point out that we're wrestling with shadows, we usually respond with a self justification that sounds like, "But they're my shadows." Somehow we imagine that because they're ours they're more real or at least more legitimate than everyone else's.
Of course, we give birth these shadows. We give them life, dress them up and sometimes even build our entire lives around them. Even though we work hard at ignoring, despising or at least managing them. we return to them every chance we get.
Shadow's lack normal perspective. As they grow closer due to the passing of time or our gravitating toward them, they grow in size out of proportion to everything else. They get big fast and as shadows do, they darken everything they touch.
Oddly though, once we pass them they shrink quickly or even vanish completely. In the end, the only purpose they've served is to distort the view that extends between everlasting and everlasting.
All shadows are cast by something; they never have a life of their own. In keeping with the theme of broken perspective, it is the universal characteristic of our invented shadows that they cast darkness out of all reasonable proportion to the object that creates them. Even when the originating object is what we might all agree to as being serious, our creation of the corresponding shadow creeps over everything, obscuring the original subject so much that it can barely be seen at all. This makes it all the harder to engage the issue itself as we're off flailing in the darkness, wrestling with nothing.
To oversimplify some, here's a simple layout of the course all lives follow: Birth, living, death, the thing that's next. Over arching the "birth, living, death" phases is the idea that the world is not perfect. In turn, we're asked during the "living" phase to respond to the present reality of imperfection with our power of choice. We can choose to rail against it, ignore it (still a choice), run away from it or accept it. While all these choices exist within the realm of the possible, accepting reality is the only option that makes sense. In the end, our choices are a necessary causal component of "the thing that's next." This is an area where it's important to be within the generous boundaries of right.
That brings the next question, what is reality? The clearest place to find the answer to this isn't in propositional logic. That's because human logic exists only in the narrative context of human life and society. It's shaded by everyone's respective shadows. My vote for a solid take on reality is the narrative found in the bible. I've written before about the book of Job. The book of Job is the best condensed expression of human state and of man's relationship to God I know of. Here's the short version of what God says there: "To understand reality, you must accept that I am who I say I am. You must accept that you are who I spoke you to be. Physical reality is the product of my creation and your broken choices."
That perspective is the yardstick by which all shadows should be measured. And in fact, shadows of proper proportion may be ignored completely because all we ever cared about was the object anyway.
I'll end this with a writer's confession. I find myself wanting to say more here, to address again the reflexive, "But you don't understand how tragic and scary my situation is." Any such reflex on my part is bound to fail. We must each find our own perspective and with God's help, force our shadows to submit. As we move between our vanishing points, we need, deeply need, to accept who and what God is, who we are and where we live. Everything else is distortion, darkness and shadow.
Much of our life's energy is spent searching out some point on the horizon, just past the distance at which things can be easily seen. The range of possibilities associated with our relentless squinting and straining is infinite. We might be trying to anticipate something fun (e.g. "What am I going to get for Christmas?") or trying to adapt to a changing challenge, a threat or even a potentially horrible circumstance. All these exercises depend on our imagination for their existence.
The distant dancing shadows can be our biggest invitation to worry. It's an invitation we usually grab with both hands and hang on to like grim death. When someone is kind enough to point out that we're wrestling with shadows, we usually respond with a self justification that sounds like, "But they're my shadows." Somehow we imagine that because they're ours they're more real or at least more legitimate than everyone else's.
Of course, we give birth these shadows. We give them life, dress them up and sometimes even build our entire lives around them. Even though we work hard at ignoring, despising or at least managing them. we return to them every chance we get.
Shadow's lack normal perspective. As they grow closer due to the passing of time or our gravitating toward them, they grow in size out of proportion to everything else. They get big fast and as shadows do, they darken everything they touch.
Oddly though, once we pass them they shrink quickly or even vanish completely. In the end, the only purpose they've served is to distort the view that extends between everlasting and everlasting.
All shadows are cast by something; they never have a life of their own. In keeping with the theme of broken perspective, it is the universal characteristic of our invented shadows that they cast darkness out of all reasonable proportion to the object that creates them. Even when the originating object is what we might all agree to as being serious, our creation of the corresponding shadow creeps over everything, obscuring the original subject so much that it can barely be seen at all. This makes it all the harder to engage the issue itself as we're off flailing in the darkness, wrestling with nothing.
To oversimplify some, here's a simple layout of the course all lives follow: Birth, living, death, the thing that's next. Over arching the "birth, living, death" phases is the idea that the world is not perfect. In turn, we're asked during the "living" phase to respond to the present reality of imperfection with our power of choice. We can choose to rail against it, ignore it (still a choice), run away from it or accept it. While all these choices exist within the realm of the possible, accepting reality is the only option that makes sense. In the end, our choices are a necessary causal component of "the thing that's next." This is an area where it's important to be within the generous boundaries of right.
That brings the next question, what is reality? The clearest place to find the answer to this isn't in propositional logic. That's because human logic exists only in the narrative context of human life and society. It's shaded by everyone's respective shadows. My vote for a solid take on reality is the narrative found in the bible. I've written before about the book of Job. The book of Job is the best condensed expression of human state and of man's relationship to God I know of. Here's the short version of what God says there: "To understand reality, you must accept that I am who I say I am. You must accept that you are who I spoke you to be. Physical reality is the product of my creation and your broken choices."
That perspective is the yardstick by which all shadows should be measured. And in fact, shadows of proper proportion may be ignored completely because all we ever cared about was the object anyway.
I'll end this with a writer's confession. I find myself wanting to say more here, to address again the reflexive, "But you don't understand how tragic and scary my situation is." Any such reflex on my part is bound to fail. We must each find our own perspective and with God's help, force our shadows to submit. As we move between our vanishing points, we need, deeply need, to accept who and what God is, who we are and where we live. Everything else is distortion, darkness and shadow.
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
How Much More
It's a wonder to me that any of us survive to adulthood. When you consider the entire catalog of accidents, coincidences and sibling conspiracies, it starts to seem like Shakespeare understated the case by quite a bit in Hamlet's "To Be, or Not To Be" speech when he summed it as, "the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to." Really, only a thousand?
The only things I remember from my own childhood had to do with me provoking a cat when I was 3 or so and driving my tricycle into a rose bush. Well, now that I'm writing this, I remember crashing my bike and smashing my mouth on a street curb; my front tooth is still broken off at the bottom...and oh yeah, I had a couple of my baby teeth knocked out...and then there was the time... You know, I think I'll stop now.
I pinned all of our children to the emergency room table at one time or another. Our oldest nearly died on a mountain in Wyoming. He was run over by a log that was being dragged behind a truck . For reasons to do with remoteness and terrain, it took us a couple hours to get him to the nearest doctor. Turned out that in addition to the couple of broken bones we were pretty sure he had, he also had a major laceration. It had severed an artery near the back of his knee. That particular artery did not bleed until the doctor touched it with a pair of forceps. At that point, in the doctor's office something like two and a half hours after the accident, it began pulsing blood. I know that happened because I was there and saw the artery clearly as well as the blood. It is an image that remains very clear in my mind.
Our son begged me to just please not let the doctor give him a shot and stitch him. The doctor offered to have one of his staff pin our son down so that he would not thrash while he was repairing the wound. I declined. I was not going to abandon the little one to his wounds and his fear. I laid across him gently to hold him still, and told him quietly that he would be alright over and over. It was very difficult not to cry at that point but to do so would not have been helpful.
When we finally got back to the cabin that night, my mother-in-law met me with a question. She said, "Would you like ice in it?" She was referring to the quite stiff drink she was going to pour me. This was the moment in our relationship when she liberated herself from all mother-in-law jokes ever after as far as I was concerned.
As traumatic as that day was, it wasn't the only such time. There was another morning that probably served as training for the event above, when our other son managed to pull a chair over to a counter, climb up on the counter, find the children's vitamins (with iron) hidden at the back, open the child proof lid and consume the entire bottle minus 2 pills. We presume he left the two pills there to throw us off track. He probably wasn't aware of all the purply goo surrounding his mouth.
After some quality phone time with poison control, we hurried off to the emergency room. There it was determined that stomach pumping was required. That was the first time I was offered a ticket out of the emergency room. The nurse who was to perform the operation was visibly shaken at the prospect of having to perform the rather traumatic procedure on a 2.5 year old and assumed that I'd be even worse off. I assured him that I would in fact be much worse off. However, that would come later after we were done with what needed doing.
I also laid gently across this boy, pinning his arms as gently as circumstances allowed to keep him from hurting himself still more. I carried him out after the procedure and held him the rest of that morning while he slept. I remember very much not wanting to put him down.
Our daughter was not quite as rambunctious as her brothers. Of course, she didn't have to be because she had them. One of them, who shall remain unidentified here, introduced her to the concept of broken bones. Another time though and all on her own, she managed to fall and open a cut nearly all the way down to her cheek bone, just below her eye.
By this time, we pretty much had our own express line at the local medical clinic, so we were taken in immediately. It was determined that several stitches about 3/8 of an inch under her eye would be required. I pinned this little bug as well. The doctor knew all our family and he wasn't just shaken, he was actually shaking a bit himself. I trusted him though as he'd stitched me up a bit a couple times...Of course one time, by the time he got around to the stitches the anesthetic had worn off. He joked that he could give me another shot but that he'd have to charge me double. I actually remember thinking that was pretty funny at the time.
This time though, he wasn't joking. There were a couple slight complications with the procedure due to the proximity to the girl's eye. That further upset the doctor and he steadied himself a couple times during the work. (He was a good doc, heading a short list I have of lifetime favorites.) Historically, our daughter has passed out at the sight of blood and/or mayhem. This time however, she remained fully conscious and screamed at the top of her lungs for the entire event. While we did eventually finish, I think the girl quit crying about 3 days later.
As a result of the slight scar (practically speaking, invisible now), we called her Franken Baby for quite awhile.
I started down this path after hearing someone quote one of Jesus' multiple statements of the form "...how much more does your heavenly father..." You likely have a response to that phrase that calls up a particular verse and context. If that's the case, consider looking again. Jesus actually uses it multiple times, applying it to different contexts. It seems that God and his love are much too big to be limited by a single "how much more."
Of course, the broken reality of where we live invites us to believe that God's waiting outside with our family and friends, or maybe even that he didn't come at all. On really really bad days, we might even think that he doesn't even know where we are.
The truth is though that he always knows, always cares and always loves. And that makes the fact that he's always present the most important thing in our lives.
He doesn't get us to the emergency room and then leave us. He takes us there, stays with us, comforts us. He even holds us gently in place while difficult and perhaps painful things necessary to cure and complete us are performed. All the time, his voice whispers, "It's okay child. It's going to fine." He knows we're already saved but he also knows that we don't quite believe it. That's okay too though because he's there to remind us and reassure us. "It's okay child. It really is going to be fine."
Of course, we cry out "Please daddy, don't let him give me a shot. Please dad, I'm just asking for this one thing." But still he won't let go. He won't leave us to our broken wounds or let us be crippled because of our fear. And in the end, when he carries us out and everyone goes out to eat to celebrate it all being over, he holds us all through the meal so we never forget how real he his and how much he loves us.
The only things I remember from my own childhood had to do with me provoking a cat when I was 3 or so and driving my tricycle into a rose bush. Well, now that I'm writing this, I remember crashing my bike and smashing my mouth on a street curb; my front tooth is still broken off at the bottom...and oh yeah, I had a couple of my baby teeth knocked out...and then there was the time... You know, I think I'll stop now.
I pinned all of our children to the emergency room table at one time or another. Our oldest nearly died on a mountain in Wyoming. He was run over by a log that was being dragged behind a truck . For reasons to do with remoteness and terrain, it took us a couple hours to get him to the nearest doctor. Turned out that in addition to the couple of broken bones we were pretty sure he had, he also had a major laceration. It had severed an artery near the back of his knee. That particular artery did not bleed until the doctor touched it with a pair of forceps. At that point, in the doctor's office something like two and a half hours after the accident, it began pulsing blood. I know that happened because I was there and saw the artery clearly as well as the blood. It is an image that remains very clear in my mind.
Our son begged me to just please not let the doctor give him a shot and stitch him. The doctor offered to have one of his staff pin our son down so that he would not thrash while he was repairing the wound. I declined. I was not going to abandon the little one to his wounds and his fear. I laid across him gently to hold him still, and told him quietly that he would be alright over and over. It was very difficult not to cry at that point but to do so would not have been helpful.
When we finally got back to the cabin that night, my mother-in-law met me with a question. She said, "Would you like ice in it?" She was referring to the quite stiff drink she was going to pour me. This was the moment in our relationship when she liberated herself from all mother-in-law jokes ever after as far as I was concerned.
As traumatic as that day was, it wasn't the only such time. There was another morning that probably served as training for the event above, when our other son managed to pull a chair over to a counter, climb up on the counter, find the children's vitamins (with iron) hidden at the back, open the child proof lid and consume the entire bottle minus 2 pills. We presume he left the two pills there to throw us off track. He probably wasn't aware of all the purply goo surrounding his mouth.
After some quality phone time with poison control, we hurried off to the emergency room. There it was determined that stomach pumping was required. That was the first time I was offered a ticket out of the emergency room. The nurse who was to perform the operation was visibly shaken at the prospect of having to perform the rather traumatic procedure on a 2.5 year old and assumed that I'd be even worse off. I assured him that I would in fact be much worse off. However, that would come later after we were done with what needed doing.
I also laid gently across this boy, pinning his arms as gently as circumstances allowed to keep him from hurting himself still more. I carried him out after the procedure and held him the rest of that morning while he slept. I remember very much not wanting to put him down.
Our daughter was not quite as rambunctious as her brothers. Of course, she didn't have to be because she had them. One of them, who shall remain unidentified here, introduced her to the concept of broken bones. Another time though and all on her own, she managed to fall and open a cut nearly all the way down to her cheek bone, just below her eye.
By this time, we pretty much had our own express line at the local medical clinic, so we were taken in immediately. It was determined that several stitches about 3/8 of an inch under her eye would be required. I pinned this little bug as well. The doctor knew all our family and he wasn't just shaken, he was actually shaking a bit himself. I trusted him though as he'd stitched me up a bit a couple times...Of course one time, by the time he got around to the stitches the anesthetic had worn off. He joked that he could give me another shot but that he'd have to charge me double. I actually remember thinking that was pretty funny at the time.
This time though, he wasn't joking. There were a couple slight complications with the procedure due to the proximity to the girl's eye. That further upset the doctor and he steadied himself a couple times during the work. (He was a good doc, heading a short list I have of lifetime favorites.) Historically, our daughter has passed out at the sight of blood and/or mayhem. This time however, she remained fully conscious and screamed at the top of her lungs for the entire event. While we did eventually finish, I think the girl quit crying about 3 days later.
As a result of the slight scar (practically speaking, invisible now), we called her Franken Baby for quite awhile.
I started down this path after hearing someone quote one of Jesus' multiple statements of the form "...how much more does your heavenly father..." You likely have a response to that phrase that calls up a particular verse and context. If that's the case, consider looking again. Jesus actually uses it multiple times, applying it to different contexts. It seems that God and his love are much too big to be limited by a single "how much more."
Of course, the broken reality of where we live invites us to believe that God's waiting outside with our family and friends, or maybe even that he didn't come at all. On really really bad days, we might even think that he doesn't even know where we are.
The truth is though that he always knows, always cares and always loves. And that makes the fact that he's always present the most important thing in our lives.
He doesn't get us to the emergency room and then leave us. He takes us there, stays with us, comforts us. He even holds us gently in place while difficult and perhaps painful things necessary to cure and complete us are performed. All the time, his voice whispers, "It's okay child. It's going to fine." He knows we're already saved but he also knows that we don't quite believe it. That's okay too though because he's there to remind us and reassure us. "It's okay child. It really is going to be fine."
Of course, we cry out "Please daddy, don't let him give me a shot. Please dad, I'm just asking for this one thing." But still he won't let go. He won't leave us to our broken wounds or let us be crippled because of our fear. And in the end, when he carries us out and everyone goes out to eat to celebrate it all being over, he holds us all through the meal so we never forget how real he his and how much he loves us.
Friday, March 16, 2012
Dog Years
I had a parakeet when I was little. We couldn't have a dog or a cat so my mom defaulted to a bird. I can't remember it's name anymore. I do remember though that it was the green variety of Budgee. And I remember that it was a female.
I know that last bit because among the few things I learned as a six year old from the process of owning that bird was that parakeets can be sexed by examining the color of their noses about 6 month after they're born. Alternatively, a great deal of determination and parakeet screaming is required. It turns out that males of the species are actually the most likely to bond with humans, to talk and to generally do the things that have caused humans to adopt parakeets as a domesticated pet. Unfortunately for the aspiring pet owner, the nose/beak does not assume the appropriate sex color until the animal is around six months old. That's typically much older than you want to start with a bird.
That bird lasted only about four years in our house. Ten years plus is more common for parakeets. That was another thing I learned from that bird's presence in my life. I learned how it feels to lose something you care about, even if you aren't really that involved with it. It's a life; and then it's gone. I cried over that bird's passing in a way that I never would have thought I could have. I think it was because I expected it to be around, vaguely annoying me with the ongoing revelation of my neglect forever. And of course, some day I'd do better and pay attention to it the way I thought I should. With the permission and help of landlords, we buried the girl on the property where we lived.
A few years went by and I started bothering my mom for another bird. This time, we'd get a male and I'd take absolutely excellent care of it. After all, I was older now. We went to the pet store, asked for a male and naturally received another female. This one had all of the first bird's interpersonal "challenges" but also was quite possibly the nastiest, meanest animal I'd ever encountered. That estimation includes a couple junk yards I used to walk by from time to time that had wicked nasty guard dogs.
Fritz (I remember the gender inappropriate name I gave to this creature) would literally hiss at you if you stopped in the vicinity of her cage. She was not shy and retiring. You could count on being attacked for doing her the favor of changing her food, water and grit. (Parakeets need sand-like grit to aid their digestion.) And let me tell you, that little...girl could bite.
It looked for a couple years like that miscreant feathered beast, all 30 grams of her, would overwhelm my good intentions. Or at least give me an excuse to return to form.
Then one day, I decided that her nasty attitude would not stop me from showing her affection. I can't remember exactly why this became important to me but it surely did.
I was in high school by this time. Killing two birds with one stone (and in my heart, that was only partially metaphor), I would put a chair next to her cage, endure a bit of hissing and then read my homework out loud to her. Eventually I read other things as well, including Copleston's "History of Philosophy" (11 volumes) and Theodore Roethke's "My Papa's Waltz" (a rather brief poem). She might hold the record for being the best read parakeet in the history of time.
She settled down some after hearing the drone of my voice for awhile. God bless Copleston. What he lacks in brevity, he make up for in excruciating detail. People who know me well gently suggest (well, usually gently), that the ongoing, pounding, relentless sound of my voice would beat anyone into submission, let alone a parakeet with gender identity issues.
I noticed that Fritz eventually started moving herself on her favorite perch so as to be closer to me. I experimented with this a little and pretty soon I noticed that her favorite perch became the one nearest me. Eventually, this led me to what had to this point been the unthinkable. I opened her cage door.
At first, she hesitantly came out and stood on her on her door which was a drawbridge like affair. And then she flew. She took enough laps around that small apartment to kill a migrating falcon, eventually crash landing into the drapes, panting like she'd cough up her heart and lungs. Seizing my opportunity and the bird at the same time, I caged her with my hands very gently as you do with birds and returned her to her cage.
I won't repeat my probably incorrect memories of the rest of her training but eventually she came around completely. My favorite remembrance of her redemption was her habit of sitting on my cereal bowl, eating my cereal with me. Answering the unspeakable, she never pooed in my food. She knew better.
Fritz spanned the time between childhood and my becoming an adult. My wife met the bird. Sadly, the bird loathed my then girl friend, soon to be fiance with all the well documented vile passion she was capable of. I do think she was jealous.
In my life since then, my wife and I have had three dogs. They are now gone.
My wife brought the first one home as a puppy from a supermarket box, given away by children with puppies from an accidental litter, a practice now illegal where we live. She surprised me with it. She knew full well her man could not resist both her and the ridiculously cute puppy. That is one scary woman I married.
That dog, Bleu (short for Bleu Cheese) was a much better pet than I was an owner. The way I taught her to not dig in the back yard was to point at a hole she made and, well, essentially lecture her. Somehow she understood, even though she couldn't possibly understand, that she had to help me. Every now and then she'd apparently think something like, "But he didn't say don't dig over here" and she'd try the other side of the yard. That happened about three times before she figured out that I meant "Don't dig holes anywhere in the universe."
She had a couple litters and for logistic reasons we kept one of her puppies. Sadly, it was the stupidest creature I've ever encountered. Bleu seemed to realize it too. When Doby would be scolded, Bleu would often hang her head and skulk away. Even though Bleu got it, I don't think Doby ever understood that she was being scolded.
Doby lived almost ten years and Bleu lived to be 17, so Bleu enjoyed her last years without the distractions and challenges of a wayward child.
We purchased Lady at the same time our son and his wife bought their dog, both of us taking puppies from the same litter. These were purebred Queensland Heelers. Lady was wound a bit tight but she loved people. She would bark like death at visitors but was always very friendly. She came along at a time when I'd begun spending more time hiking and she usually accompanied me. I took her on a leash a couple times but eventually gave up on it. It was completely superfluous, even in the regular presence of horses and other dogs. I'd just tell her to sit and she did, one hundred percent of the time. Of such are Queenslands.
I won't tell the whole, quite sad story here but when she passed she very much needed permission to leave the rest of us behind. She was a beautiful creature.
Our son who lives with us recently acquired a Siberian Husky. This is a different animal with a different life mission. Any Husky's life aspirations can be summed in two desperately important (to them) values: 1) Running 2) Hunting. Everything else is subservient. I will say the exception to this is that they do bond quite strongly to people if you're willing to make a herculean effort in that regard. In that case you as their human, become nearly as important as those other two things.
All these animals have taught me more about myself than I ever dreamed possible or in some cases, ever wanted to know. They have endured my inattention, silliness and wrong headedness with near stoic endurance and persistence. I've learned that if I'm just a bit persistent with them, they will be unyieldingly loyal and loving to me...even unto death.
Pet friendly literature defines cat and dog years as so many animal years to one human year. That is the math of the calendar, not of the heart. The time that animals spend with us, offering themselves to us and loving us eventually achieve their own definition. Those days, months and years mark themselves on us with their own pens, sometimes with the point pushing deep into our souls.
Our pets offer back to us the love we give them with grace well beyond what we offer. They are four legged (or maybe two legs with feathers) versions of love we don't deserve. They are a great help in understanding the overflowing rush of love that spoke us.
I remember now. That first parakeet's name was Tweety, like the cartoon.
I know that last bit because among the few things I learned as a six year old from the process of owning that bird was that parakeets can be sexed by examining the color of their noses about 6 month after they're born. Alternatively, a great deal of determination and parakeet screaming is required. It turns out that males of the species are actually the most likely to bond with humans, to talk and to generally do the things that have caused humans to adopt parakeets as a domesticated pet. Unfortunately for the aspiring pet owner, the nose/beak does not assume the appropriate sex color until the animal is around six months old. That's typically much older than you want to start with a bird.
That bird lasted only about four years in our house. Ten years plus is more common for parakeets. That was another thing I learned from that bird's presence in my life. I learned how it feels to lose something you care about, even if you aren't really that involved with it. It's a life; and then it's gone. I cried over that bird's passing in a way that I never would have thought I could have. I think it was because I expected it to be around, vaguely annoying me with the ongoing revelation of my neglect forever. And of course, some day I'd do better and pay attention to it the way I thought I should. With the permission and help of landlords, we buried the girl on the property where we lived.
A few years went by and I started bothering my mom for another bird. This time, we'd get a male and I'd take absolutely excellent care of it. After all, I was older now. We went to the pet store, asked for a male and naturally received another female. This one had all of the first bird's interpersonal "challenges" but also was quite possibly the nastiest, meanest animal I'd ever encountered. That estimation includes a couple junk yards I used to walk by from time to time that had wicked nasty guard dogs.
Fritz (I remember the gender inappropriate name I gave to this creature) would literally hiss at you if you stopped in the vicinity of her cage. She was not shy and retiring. You could count on being attacked for doing her the favor of changing her food, water and grit. (Parakeets need sand-like grit to aid their digestion.) And let me tell you, that little...girl could bite.
It looked for a couple years like that miscreant feathered beast, all 30 grams of her, would overwhelm my good intentions. Or at least give me an excuse to return to form.
Then one day, I decided that her nasty attitude would not stop me from showing her affection. I can't remember exactly why this became important to me but it surely did.
I was in high school by this time. Killing two birds with one stone (and in my heart, that was only partially metaphor), I would put a chair next to her cage, endure a bit of hissing and then read my homework out loud to her. Eventually I read other things as well, including Copleston's "History of Philosophy" (11 volumes) and Theodore Roethke's "My Papa's Waltz" (a rather brief poem). She might hold the record for being the best read parakeet in the history of time.
She settled down some after hearing the drone of my voice for awhile. God bless Copleston. What he lacks in brevity, he make up for in excruciating detail. People who know me well gently suggest (well, usually gently), that the ongoing, pounding, relentless sound of my voice would beat anyone into submission, let alone a parakeet with gender identity issues.
I noticed that Fritz eventually started moving herself on her favorite perch so as to be closer to me. I experimented with this a little and pretty soon I noticed that her favorite perch became the one nearest me. Eventually, this led me to what had to this point been the unthinkable. I opened her cage door.
At first, she hesitantly came out and stood on her on her door which was a drawbridge like affair. And then she flew. She took enough laps around that small apartment to kill a migrating falcon, eventually crash landing into the drapes, panting like she'd cough up her heart and lungs. Seizing my opportunity and the bird at the same time, I caged her with my hands very gently as you do with birds and returned her to her cage.
I won't repeat my probably incorrect memories of the rest of her training but eventually she came around completely. My favorite remembrance of her redemption was her habit of sitting on my cereal bowl, eating my cereal with me. Answering the unspeakable, she never pooed in my food. She knew better.
Fritz spanned the time between childhood and my becoming an adult. My wife met the bird. Sadly, the bird loathed my then girl friend, soon to be fiance with all the well documented vile passion she was capable of. I do think she was jealous.
In my life since then, my wife and I have had three dogs. They are now gone.
My wife brought the first one home as a puppy from a supermarket box, given away by children with puppies from an accidental litter, a practice now illegal where we live. She surprised me with it. She knew full well her man could not resist both her and the ridiculously cute puppy. That is one scary woman I married.
That dog, Bleu (short for Bleu Cheese) was a much better pet than I was an owner. The way I taught her to not dig in the back yard was to point at a hole she made and, well, essentially lecture her. Somehow she understood, even though she couldn't possibly understand, that she had to help me. Every now and then she'd apparently think something like, "But he didn't say don't dig over here" and she'd try the other side of the yard. That happened about three times before she figured out that I meant "Don't dig holes anywhere in the universe."
She had a couple litters and for logistic reasons we kept one of her puppies. Sadly, it was the stupidest creature I've ever encountered. Bleu seemed to realize it too. When Doby would be scolded, Bleu would often hang her head and skulk away. Even though Bleu got it, I don't think Doby ever understood that she was being scolded.
Doby lived almost ten years and Bleu lived to be 17, so Bleu enjoyed her last years without the distractions and challenges of a wayward child.
We purchased Lady at the same time our son and his wife bought their dog, both of us taking puppies from the same litter. These were purebred Queensland Heelers. Lady was wound a bit tight but she loved people. She would bark like death at visitors but was always very friendly. She came along at a time when I'd begun spending more time hiking and she usually accompanied me. I took her on a leash a couple times but eventually gave up on it. It was completely superfluous, even in the regular presence of horses and other dogs. I'd just tell her to sit and she did, one hundred percent of the time. Of such are Queenslands.
I won't tell the whole, quite sad story here but when she passed she very much needed permission to leave the rest of us behind. She was a beautiful creature.
Our son who lives with us recently acquired a Siberian Husky. This is a different animal with a different life mission. Any Husky's life aspirations can be summed in two desperately important (to them) values: 1) Running 2) Hunting. Everything else is subservient. I will say the exception to this is that they do bond quite strongly to people if you're willing to make a herculean effort in that regard. In that case you as their human, become nearly as important as those other two things.
All these animals have taught me more about myself than I ever dreamed possible or in some cases, ever wanted to know. They have endured my inattention, silliness and wrong headedness with near stoic endurance and persistence. I've learned that if I'm just a bit persistent with them, they will be unyieldingly loyal and loving to me...even unto death.
Pet friendly literature defines cat and dog years as so many animal years to one human year. That is the math of the calendar, not of the heart. The time that animals spend with us, offering themselves to us and loving us eventually achieve their own definition. Those days, months and years mark themselves on us with their own pens, sometimes with the point pushing deep into our souls.
Our pets offer back to us the love we give them with grace well beyond what we offer. They are four legged (or maybe two legs with feathers) versions of love we don't deserve. They are a great help in understanding the overflowing rush of love that spoke us.
I remember now. That first parakeet's name was Tweety, like the cartoon.
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