Probably everyone recalls a time from childhood when they were picked last for a game. Maybe when the teacher wasn't looking there was even a round of "Who's going to have to take Johnny?" If that's not the case, then certainly there was a time when everyone was picked far beneath what they'd expected or hoped. I think it's a pretty universal and unpleasant childhood surprise.
I still remember a choose off for a P.E. basketball game in junior high. I was a seventh grader in a mixed grade P.E. class (that was the lowest grade in our junior high system). Even though I was at least slightly taller than everyone else in my class, I was picked last. Partly I remember this because at that time, even well before my growth I could shoot, put the ball on the ground and pass. It hit me as unfair. Happily, I did pretty well in the game. When the bell rang, the captain who'd not wanted to take me said, "You're pretty good." The funny thing is, I remember the first part of that story more easily than the last bit.
Very few of us have greater personal vulnerability than we have with our children. One of our children was a pretty serious basketball player through most of school. He'd been wildly good in middle school, to the point that he was casually invited (the only kind of invite even remotely allowed by league rules) to attend one of the local high schools thought to be a sports powerhouse at the time. We went in a different school direction, believing that there were much more important things than sports. In any case, he (and his parents) expected that he'd play the Freshman Team, JV and then Varsity, maybe even skipping a step in there someplace. We had to buy him a good bit of his equipment, including $150 shoes stipulated by the coach. That's the sort of thing you put up with of course when you join a team, and our son was very appreciative so that made the whole thing go down a lot easier.
The first game was a blowout with us on the losing side. The starting point guard (our son's position) would bring the ball up and pass to his right one hundred percent of the time. As a result, the other team would intercept the pass about ninety percent of the time. After the first quarter or so, it being a developmental league and all, you'd normally expect to start some swaps. The point would be to instruct the player going in what to change and have the player coming out watch the new guy attempt the changes. That never happened. That first game, our son never stepped on the court. After the game, he had tears in his eyes as he walked up to me and said, "I'm sorry you wasted your money on my shoes."
I have stories like that about each of our children. I chose that one because that particular boy was handy and I could easily ask him permission to retell it. Sadly, it is a common experience.
I don't remember what my wife and I were talking about the other night. We both consider ourselves fairly blessed and sometimes a little challenged by the fact that we don't usually have conversations of any length on trivial subjects. Ranging anywhere from politics to history to art history to theology, we usually haul everything out and shake it around. Someplace in one of those conversations a few weeks ago my wife said, "Imagine Jesus in the garden praying about what was coming and saying, 'But daddy, what if no one chooses me?'" In context, there wasn't a big set up for her statement and the jarring suddenness of that avalanche of a thought smashed anything else going on in my mind. I very nearly burst out sobbing.
At some point (something theologians argue about), Jesus had put the pieces together (something theologians don't argue about much). He knew that what waited for him on the cross went beyond the pain and even the dying. Jesus understood the full cost and ultimate benefit of the cross. The bible says he was afraid and even reluctant. What son of man wouldn't be?
As the fog started to clear from the smash mouth event that my wife's statement had been to me, a flood of things rushed to my mind. Mankind in general as well as many individual men had rejected God a good many times before Jesus came along. There's the time in Eden of course. Also, in Noah's time it was down to one family accepting God as both good and present. When God called Moses, Moses initially responded with, "I'd really rather just take care of my sheep." Also, God's chosen people had rejected God repeatedly and were about to crucify Jesus. The disciples, in spite of 3 years of quality face time with Jesus, with repeated and documented instructions still missed the point completely. Jesus wouldn't be out of line I think to consider along with his other doubts, the possibility that in the end he could do everything right and still not have anyone pick him.
Everyone deals with the fear and reality of rejection at some point. It might happen early with one or both of our parents. It might happen when we're dating. It might come from a sibling or a even a spouse. It might be the end point of a journey filled with dread or an unexpected shock and surprise. Someone else has felt both the fear and the reality of rejection as well. Someone else hungered to be accepted, both for our sakes and for his. Someone else's dad saw his son rejected as well. Past the rejection, the inventor of the acceptance we crave is always waiting. We shouldn't fail to choose him.
Monday, February 13, 2012
Thursday, February 9, 2012
Off Walden Pond
I was a Henry David Thoreau fan through high school and most of college. I think it was a law that you had to read "Walden; or, Life in the Woods" at some point...at least if you wanted a date in the 1970's. On toward graduation though I started to accumulate doubts. By the time we had a couple kids and I was working, I decided Henry David was little unrealistic, to say the least.
Many things are appealing about Thoreau. Probably the most popular is his admonishment to "Simplify! Simplify!" What's usually missed by people reading that phrase is that Henry was free to come to that conclusion because someone had provided property, tools and food so that he could spend his days "simplifying." In order to achieve an ideal of simplicity, he leveraged someone else's complications. That's OK, because that's what we tend to do when there's more than one of us gathered together in one place. It's just that the realities of life make the imperative "simplify" a little more complicated and messy than is the case when someone has the spare time to sit on a rock and proclaim it.
Another Thoreau-ism that gets tossed about is "Most men live lives of quiet desperation." I spent a lot of years believing that or something close to it. I eventually abandoned it for a carefully reasoned alternative: No they don't. Most people have a fairly standard compliment of pluses and minuses, ups and downs, good and bad. All lives contain their own values, lessons and drama even if the people living them happen to miss it.
I think not just "most," but all of us represent the broadest imaginable spectrum ranging from contentedness to something on the unfortunate side of quiet desperation. To group us into "most" or other bucket, or to exclude us from same, creates categories in our minds that don't really contribute to our understanding of the next person we run into...which I guess isn't a problem if you live by yourself in the woods. It might be a problem though if you try to use that knowledge in a relationship.
To bring myself clarity on this subject, I long ago imagined my wife scrubbing the bathroom sink. In I walk with Walden in my hand. I tap her thoughtfully on the shoulder and say, "I think you live a life of quiet desperation." Now while it is entirely possible that the next few moments of this conversation might bump up against desperate, I doubt that quiet would be anywhere to be found. Here's what I'd say if I wanted to be helpful in the situation: "Let me do that." Henry is not too often helpful with real people. He just sounds nice sometimes when we're by ourselves.
There's a phrase from Socrates (via Plato) that is parallel in meaning when quoted out of context, as it usually is. It says, "...the unexamined life is not worth living." It's easy to see how this dove tails with Henry's pronouncement about quiet desperation. Of course, what Socrates actually said was much more like: "What shall we say then, that the unexamined life is not worth living? Absolutely not!" That's a little different when taken in context. It's an interesting contrast I think because Socrates was very full of himself on many levels. Still, he never seemed to elevate himself above being a common man. He never separated himself from the great unenlightened masses.
I do think Henry unintentionally supplies a good starting place for identifying a good many problems we're surrounded with today. He says at one point words to the effect that "If I had enough will I could sit on a rock and will myself to live forever." That might be the Mt. Everest of narcissism; the air's thin up there of course and apparently so is logic and the powers of observation.
In any case, I think what Henry David passes off as quiet desperation is really pretty exciting stuff. If you give your heart to someone, have children together, grow old together and eventually encounter the challenges common to the winding down of life; if you are born into strife and live in suffering, if your life is torn by betrayal, if you are born with an entire silver place setting in your mouth, or even if you accept the challenges of facing life alone with only you and God to understand your heart, do you not have the essential foundation of a life that is a redeemed triumph over all circumstance and against all odds? And the grace of it is that most of us wind up with the realization of this singular reality without ever having gone looking for it. Circumstance eventually hunts us all down. We crumble in the face of a cruel prop. And then we realize that our broken need was the only thing that could reveal to us what we left in the garden and how to get it back with more than we ever could imagine.
In a half century of living, I've learned that life eventually finds all of us. Thank God.
Many things are appealing about Thoreau. Probably the most popular is his admonishment to "Simplify! Simplify!" What's usually missed by people reading that phrase is that Henry was free to come to that conclusion because someone had provided property, tools and food so that he could spend his days "simplifying." In order to achieve an ideal of simplicity, he leveraged someone else's complications. That's OK, because that's what we tend to do when there's more than one of us gathered together in one place. It's just that the realities of life make the imperative "simplify" a little more complicated and messy than is the case when someone has the spare time to sit on a rock and proclaim it.
Another Thoreau-ism that gets tossed about is "Most men live lives of quiet desperation." I spent a lot of years believing that or something close to it. I eventually abandoned it for a carefully reasoned alternative: No they don't. Most people have a fairly standard compliment of pluses and minuses, ups and downs, good and bad. All lives contain their own values, lessons and drama even if the people living them happen to miss it.
I think not just "most," but all of us represent the broadest imaginable spectrum ranging from contentedness to something on the unfortunate side of quiet desperation. To group us into "most" or other bucket, or to exclude us from same, creates categories in our minds that don't really contribute to our understanding of the next person we run into...which I guess isn't a problem if you live by yourself in the woods. It might be a problem though if you try to use that knowledge in a relationship.
To bring myself clarity on this subject, I long ago imagined my wife scrubbing the bathroom sink. In I walk with Walden in my hand. I tap her thoughtfully on the shoulder and say, "I think you live a life of quiet desperation." Now while it is entirely possible that the next few moments of this conversation might bump up against desperate, I doubt that quiet would be anywhere to be found. Here's what I'd say if I wanted to be helpful in the situation: "Let me do that." Henry is not too often helpful with real people. He just sounds nice sometimes when we're by ourselves.
There's a phrase from Socrates (via Plato) that is parallel in meaning when quoted out of context, as it usually is. It says, "...the unexamined life is not worth living." It's easy to see how this dove tails with Henry's pronouncement about quiet desperation. Of course, what Socrates actually said was much more like: "What shall we say then, that the unexamined life is not worth living? Absolutely not!" That's a little different when taken in context. It's an interesting contrast I think because Socrates was very full of himself on many levels. Still, he never seemed to elevate himself above being a common man. He never separated himself from the great unenlightened masses.
I do think Henry unintentionally supplies a good starting place for identifying a good many problems we're surrounded with today. He says at one point words to the effect that "If I had enough will I could sit on a rock and will myself to live forever." That might be the Mt. Everest of narcissism; the air's thin up there of course and apparently so is logic and the powers of observation.
In any case, I think what Henry David passes off as quiet desperation is really pretty exciting stuff. If you give your heart to someone, have children together, grow old together and eventually encounter the challenges common to the winding down of life; if you are born into strife and live in suffering, if your life is torn by betrayal, if you are born with an entire silver place setting in your mouth, or even if you accept the challenges of facing life alone with only you and God to understand your heart, do you not have the essential foundation of a life that is a redeemed triumph over all circumstance and against all odds? And the grace of it is that most of us wind up with the realization of this singular reality without ever having gone looking for it. Circumstance eventually hunts us all down. We crumble in the face of a cruel prop. And then we realize that our broken need was the only thing that could reveal to us what we left in the garden and how to get it back with more than we ever could imagine.
In a half century of living, I've learned that life eventually finds all of us. Thank God.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)