Psalm 131

I recently experimented, quite briefly, with what could be said in 100 words that might be worth reading. Of course countless intellects are capable of that. Whether I am is another matter. This morning, with limited time and grace for knowing I mustn't linger, I thought to myself, "What could be said in 10 minutes that might be worth reading?

Perhaps this is a new high, or low, for ephemerality. The absolute avalanche of words unleashed every day has little worth, mostly due to the impossible volume. How can one possibly sort out what is worth reading, and not?

Perhaps this Psalm helps, my daily reading:

Psalm 131 Lord, my heart is not haughty, nor mine eyes lofty: neither do I exercise myself in great matters, or in things too high for me. Surely I have behaved and quieted myself, as a child that is weaned of his mother: my soul is even as a weaned child. Let Israel hope in the Lord from henceforth and for ever.

The pronouncement of self is either hubris or humility or, likely, something in between. I'm afraid I can't pray the Psalm without repentance; without asking, "Lord, make it so of me, deliver me from haughtiness, of thinking the words I have to say are the last word, have any true freight at all."

And then I am mercifully brought back to two things:

    1. The unabashed, innocent attitude of a child. the daring to be as we are with a miraculous lack of self-awareness that says, "I can trust God to do with me as he will and that He will do good." So maybe all the self-worry and over-seriousness can dissolve in a childlike trust of my heavenly Father.

    2. "Let Israel hope in the Lord." Which is to say in another way what #1 already said. At the end of the day, at our last breath, at the end of ourselves in any fashion -- the happiest of places to be -- we find our only hope really ever was and is in God.

That is enough -- 10 minutes with a bit allowed for editing.

Love to all, and to all a good morning!

 

Saturday Shabbat: Note to Self on Pride

I thought this may be an apt day for meditation, quiet, preparation. The musing below came a few years ago after I had nearly complicated a project way beyond necessary. Why had this happened? Because I did not want to ask for help. The man behind the counter knew the exact answer, and turned an $80 project into $20. Why don't we ask for help? Many reasons I suppose, but when I received help I stopped and wrote down the effect on my soul, heart and mind.

Note to Self on Pride

Pride likes to masquerade as independence, even resourcefulness.
Be humble, ask for help, for information. Allow yourself to imagine you may not know the
answer. At all.

Allow the other person to help you. Maybe, just maybe, they know something you don't. Let them
share your life by making it better, more rounded, happier, freer, because better informed and
more connected.

Some lessons, through dint of repetition, finally sink in. The soul-tears are real, but happy.

Fun Friday

 The world of ideas is infinite -- enjoy the journey!

I am often saying, with a smile, "We'll see how this writing thing goes." The week between Christmas and New Years is often slow, a very welcome slow. And so one imagines doing things not considered in normal days. Every year I imagine the summer will be different, more will get done, normal routines will continue, and especially it will not be so hectic!! Again, warm smile of realization. The most difficult is the loss of routine. Somewhere in April the season begins to take charge and by June you just hang on. Maybe it will be different this year. Best to sort of go with it, insist on a few fixed things, and enjoy the magic of summer in the land of the midnight sun! All to say, if I am able to maintain this routine in any suitable fashion it will be nigh unto a miracle.

But that is not the subject for these notes. Travel is. Today our younger son and I will go on a road trip beyond the Arctic Circle. I have made this trip three times, once going all the way to Prudhoe Bay during the peak of Fall. That was spectacular! 

If you know much about Alaska you remember the oil pipeline built in the mid-70's, one of the greatest engineering feats in the world, traveling near 900 miles through extreme climates, over rivers, underground, and scaling three mountain ranges. The road to the Arctic Circle and beyond to the oil fields of Prudhoe Bay was established so the pipeline could be be built, and it included the first and only bridge over the Yukon River. 

From our house the Arctic Circle is a little over 200 miles. From there we will likely go to Coldfoot, a truckstop with cafe near Wiseman

and then, depending, may go on to Atigun Pass before returning home. If we go the farthest it will be about 700 miles round trip.

What is the Arctic Circle? Some may wonder if it is a physical marking of some kind. No, it is not visible and in fact they say it moves slightly each year. The Arctic Circle is the line above which Winter Solstice sees the sun fail to crest the horizon and Summer Solstice sees it fail to dip below the horizon. One day the sun never rises, one day the sun never sets: that tells us where the circle is. I'm glad we don't have to figure out where that happens. There's a sign, a small park, even a camping area.

Since we are only one week past the Winter Solstice, the days are still quite dark. We will be strategic about travel so we have optimal light for various locations. We'd like some light when we cross the bridge, for example. Atigun is far enough north the sun will not rise tomorrow, but it is scheduled to rise for the first time in one week on January 5th. The days get longer by a shocking 30 minutes each day, but it can't keep that pace. Some times of the year days gain or lose only one minute change and we are told the average is about 7 minutes. 

Weather is supposed to be a manageable - 9 F, and the skies are supposed to be clear. For this we are glad. The moon will be a few days off full, but it sets for a few hours in the afternoon, giving us black skies for star gazing and potential Northern Lights.

That's all for now. We've done our due diligence and look forward to leaving at a very early hour. Maybe I'll share some pictures next week. Prayers appreciated!

[Below is a chart for sunrise/sunset at Atigun Pass for December 2023.]

Theology Thursday

 Always in theology "our reach exceeds our grasp," but what we gain in the reaching is worth it!

The biggest problem of unity and diversity is relational – how do we get along with all of our differences?

As he that denies [the Trinity] may lose his soul so he that tries to understand it may lose his wits.

Everyone is a theologian because theology most basically is simply thinking about what matters most, what is ultimate. Or as the philosophers have it, the summum bonum: “greatest good.” Everyone deals with this concern. Another way to put it is from the late Methodist theologian, Dennis Kinlaw, who said, “Consider an idea long enough and you push it to philosophy; keep at it and you wind up in theology.”

As I think on theology I readily acknowledge my lack. I am happy and joyful to delve in and continue to learn, and those who have pursued years of rigorous study have my utmost respect.

Among the various theologians I read in Seminary was one Colin Gunton, a noted British scholar who died in 2003 at the age of 62. I understood he was a specialist in Trinitarian theology – that particular area of thought that is impossibly difficult while being deeply significant because dealing with the intrinsic nature of God. Our teacher, the much-loved and deeply-learned Dr. Bill Ury, shared with us from his own work a line by a 17^th century divine: “As he that denies [the Trinity] may lose his soul so he that tries to understand it may lose his wits.” Indeed.

I enjoyed reading Gunton. He wrote with clarity, and he was not stuffy with terms and jargon. The title that caught my mind the most was from the 1992 Bampton Lectures entitled The One, the Three and the Many, which I will briefly peruse for this Theology Thursday.

But first, my own sense of things regarding Trinitarian thought is most helped by thinking on a fundamental problem of life: finding unity in diversity. This is a problem in civic life – striking an ideal and leading in a way that all can follow. It is illustrated in education by the very name “University.” How does one tie all the fields of study together? How do they relate? In other words, How do we unify this diversity? Ironically (or not) the classical answer gave theology itself as the queen, the unifying point. And that makes perfect sense if theology is understood to be the highest possible study.

But the main display of the problem of unity and diversity is relational – how on earth do we get along with all of our differences dividing us? And this very real problem finds its most basic ground of understanding in the way the Church has tried to understand God as Trinity: “Being in Communion." This means the very being of God is defined in terms of the relations among the persons of the Trinity. Each is distinct, and each distinct person is understood or defined in terms of relationship to the others. This is community at the most fundamental level and because it is the very nature of God by which our own natures are indelibly stamped.

Is there time to look at Gunton? A bit. One of the things I loved about Dr. Ury was his use of selected portions of texts or articles, refusing to assign the whole book if a chapter here or there was most helpful to the issue at hand. With this text of Gunton's the table of contents was choice. I am not an academic theologian so if this kind of order is normal I am unaware. I just loved it for the descriptive layout of what was at hand. So helpful, so delicious. Have a look:

Tying in Havel, for example, drew me in. I didn't know about Heraclitus but would find out.

“Disappearing other” and “loss of the particular” seemed exactly right and ripe for discussion. I was hooked. What must he mean by all of this – a total of eight chapters progressing through? It must be a feast of inquiry and meaning.

For now, one subheading will do “Gnosticism renewed,” beginning in page 94 in my edition.

In reading this portion I renew my love for the writer and learn what I can. Among others, he cites Polanyi's seminal work Personal Knowledge, and makes the case that modernity is giving us a new gnosticism: it denies intrinsic goodness in the spatio-temporal order and overplays confidence in the “possibilities of free human action towards it.”

Further he says modernity “equates temporality with meaninglessness,” an idea that seems to echo the central complaint of the Preacher in Ecclesiastes. The answer of modern ideologies, Gunton says, has been to elevate rationality and human freedom as actual or tantamount creators of reality.

A split arises something like this: rationality cannot avoid connection to the body, unless we imagine ourselves as essentially minds propped up by bodies. But a dualism is required and the bodily reality of human persons is, in effect, blanched out or denied. This is per se gnosticm.

Can any of this make sense to real life for people? 

Of course it can and does, for it deals with reality. Do our bodies matter, or don't they? If they do, what intrinsic nature do they have? Does the obvious delineation of male human bodies and female human bodies have real bearing in reality, or is it subject to the mind alone? Making it subject to science alone is no complete answer because in Polanyi we see the central role of intellectual tradition in reaching and maintaining sound understanding.

Tradition, in that brief portion of the chapter, is thus a hedge against error. The too-easy disdain of tradition as being anti-freedom is a folly oft repeated.

Gnosticism will always tempt us with its elixir which, when drunk, makes us know we have the answers in our head, forgetting such heads have a history and present reality rooted in that which we are, and what we are must have a voice necessarily intrinsic to reason and thus impossible to be denied.

Happily considered. That is all.

Word of a Friend

 Word of a Friend

The word of a friend can salve a soul;
binding, minding, showing, knowing.
The hours and life and years make possible 
in ways mysterious and real. The words tinged, countless, 
in discourse tumbled: soft and hard, 
fine and plain, sweet and strained by turns.

“Who you are and what you mean” --
a spoken gratitude with clasped hand.
And, “Your life shows Heaven's grace,” he said,
not knowing, perhaps, how needed, healing, sating.
For persons feel poverty, induced by self and 
circumstance: by sin, to be short.

But friends can heal and words borne of love
in craft and timing go to ground of being,
rearrange, call to account, give wind to vapid lies, 
restore, make known, embolden, birth joy.

This my friend did for me a Sunday night past.
This verse says “Thank you.”

Greatest Spiritual Disease? Efficiency!

Yancey quotes Thomas Merton, who was asked to diagnose the leading spiritual disease of our time. Merton said, “Efficiency.” 

Huh?! 

“From the monastery to the Pentagon, the place has to run...and there is little time or energy left over after that to do anything.” We can't know how right Merton is because the affliction precludes finding a cure. Efficiency is its own god and justification. 

“What do you want?” we ask indignantly. “IN-efficiency.” 

No, of course not, but the question is asked rhetorically when it really begs for another, and that other question is this: “Efficiency in the service of what?” You may climb the ladder well and safely and quickly. But if the ladder is leaning against the wrong wall, you've lost efficiency and maybe everything else as well. 

Merton's point is that we always try to do something and do it well but we have no time for feeding the soul, for solitude, for real leisure, for deep friendship. Getting things done is the only goal. Because we can do more faster and better and at will we imagine we are in a good place. But any good that neglects the soul eventually leads to ruin. For man cannot live without God, and efficiency is a poorest of substitutes, not least because it masquerades so well.

We can, and do, pursue countless wrongs with great effort and efficiency. That is, we feed our spirit the pearls of efficiency. But our soul is not made for that. The pearls for the soul are goodness, understanding, God Himself, truth. The soul wants to know we are loving the goodl. Seeking the good may produce efficiency but it is secondary. When efficiency is imagined to be the cause of good, or worse, goodness itself, our soul will starve. 

When we neglect the god of efficiency, progress, success, and getting things done we take a painful path, full of misunderstandings and feelings of failure. But this is because we have the wrong goal in mind, the wrong god. Love God first, and efficiency will follow. Make efficiency the goal and lose all else along the way. It is more than I know, but I think it is right.

"Help, Lord. I cannot live without you."

So, Sew, Sow...

So when you write just to write the perils are a plenty. And when you begin a sentence with “so” you violate all the old rules. I especially noticed this about 10 years ago when I heard it in response to a question, almost like the person was just continuing the sentence.

“How many hours from Lexington to Chicago?”

“So,” came the reply, “hustle and you make it in 5 hours.”

“So...?” Yes, and so what. Language changes.

So I'm learning to play along. But I still refuse to begin an answer with “so.”

That makes 100!

One Hundred Words

I love to read and I know one hundred words is seldom the limit of any “piece” one can find. But I wonder if I might write better if I stopped at 100 words. Could I say anything worthwhile? Twitter has a limit, recently increased I'm told. I've never posted on Twitter and will not start. But would a 100 word limit engender more frequent writing? It would certainly engender brevity, that gift found in heeding Jesus' reminder that every jot and tittle will be judged. As Cicero put it, "Brevity is a great charm of eloquence." There's one hundred!

Ministry Remnants: Jonah in the Belly of the Whale

 After the awful news from Israel I felt I must spend time reminding us to "pray for the peace of Jerusalem" and so we did. But it seemed right to pick up Jonah and go into chapter two. Tying the two together is a challenge and I almost didn't try. It was appropriate to pray for Jerusalem, it was appropriate to pick up Jonah again. No explanation required.

But my mind wouldn't let it go so I offered observations tied to the idea that the chosen people are a gift to the world, though in ways ironic and difficult.

1. The Jewish people consider themselves a people offered up for the world, very much like a sacrifice. This seems in part a way to make sense of their painful history as the carriers of God's self-revealing, reaching its pinnacle (for Christians) in Christ. But it is most awful and ironic in the Nazi's attempt to exterminate them, itself a large scale iteration of what people have tried to do as long as the Jews have been a nation. 

Bottom line, holocaust means burnt offering. And in some sense Jews see that awful history as being offered up for the world, perhaps an expiation of sorts that can only be accomplished by them, God's chosen people. It is an echo of what Christians believe Christ did for the world.

2. Related closely to that theme is Jonah's call to Nineveh. Nineveh was full of not-nice people. God could have just wiped them out. Instead he sent Jonah to warn them of certain judgment. And then when they repented, He showed mercy. Jonah was angry about this this plan but God is better than all of us, his servants not excepted. 

Bottom line: God's plan for His people is to reveal Himself through them and He was doing so with Nineveh, reaching out to them with mercy before judgment. This is who God is, working in infinite ways seen and unseen to reconcile the world to Himself.

3. Jonah was offering himself for a task that would change life for a great many people in a city that was on its way to hell. 

- - - - -

The best point is likely something like this: God is always at work with His people, using them to get the world's attention. He even allows tragedy. To borrow the familiar idea from CS Lewis, these things are a megaphone to rouse a dull world. We are dull, we need waking up, and we need to pray for the peace of Jerusalem!

(I did go on to give reasons why Jonah found Himself in the belly of the whale, but I will leave off that for another day.)

Ministry Remnants: Jonah is Mercy on Repeat!

 Across the years I have grown to love Jonah, the story in the fifth book of the minor prophets, self-named after its famous main character. Of course the real main character is God.

I tried to think about it on a basic two-fold analysis: 

• the story teaches us about God, 
• the story teaches us about ourselves.

We dealt only with the seventeen verses of chapter one where in 5 verses Jonah goes from calling, to running, to sleeping in the hold of a storm-tossed ship. Then the remaining narrative finds him tossed into the sea so the storm will stop and the sailors be saved. And in the sea a great fish swallowed him. Amazing!

What do we learn about God? He calls: in particular, in seasons, for a lifetime.

What do we learn about ourselves? We can resist, we can run. We are not forced.

But the story teaches us more. Jonah's calling was to speak truth in a difficult context. Easy to shy away from that! Our calling always involves speaking truth with care and self-giving love in the day, season and life we are living.

If we run from our calling God may come after us -- He is good that way. And there will be turmoil and difficulty until we heed the call and follow. God will use all means at his disposal to help us come back. The storm, the sea-toss, and the great fish are this story's version of seeking the lamb lost from the fold.

There is much to consider about calling and I tried to go there, reminding us we all have a calling, it is good and fitted to who we are, and we need the help of others to discern and follow. But my main takeaway as I reflect now and look to the remainder of the book is the recurring mercy of God: mercy in calling Jonah to Nineveh, mercy in seeking the running Jonah, mercy in sending the great fish, mercy on repeat.

In Jonah we see ourselves, unwilling to follow God's way.  And we see God, unwilling to let us take our own poor way without pursuing us. God's mercy is in that pursuit, to be sure. And that's the happy remnant as I look forward to chapter two for next week.

Ministry Remnants: Miracles in Everyday Life

The fruit of the Spirit is enough everyday miracle to change the world.

Learning to serve the church as the preacher is a peculiar calling. Very earthy to be sure, for the preacher's humanity is on full display. And he dare not be self-conscious for then he merely adds to the cacophony of reasons to wonder about his calling and it's peculiar mode of being. But I digress.

This morning I tried to preach from the wonderful, brief story in II Kings 6. The school of prophets -- young men under Elisha's tutelage -- call for the building of a new ministry training center. Elisha approves and they begin felling trees and erecting a log structure. In the course of the work an axe head falls into the water. The worker is alarmed, especially because the axe head was borrowed. Elisha plunges a stick into the water, the axe head "swims" and is recovered.

Wow! I talked about the real down to earth nature of walking with God, and especially the neediness we always have. This is pretty plain and simple in the story. Then I troubled over how to handle the miracle. Even if I were able to challenge everyone to "Expect a miracle!!" or "Bring your lost axe heads to God and believe the iron will swim!" I wonder.... Would that be the right approach?

Careful exegetes and expositors will ask, as closely as one can with narrative, this simple question: "What is the intent or core meaning of the text?" To my mind the core meaning is as follows:

• We have real-life problems which we can bring to God.
• God sometimes does miraculous acts to aid our efforts.

That's all I have but as I tried to see the clear implications of the story I thought it made sense to deal with miracles more broadly. With that in mind I spoke of the everyday miracles we have in the ordinary of life: love of children, friendship, a sunrise, genuine love. I tried to think about it this way: "Sometimes we see the miracles already there; sometimes God's gives us miracles to help us see." If we open our eyes we will see the touch of eternity in all of life and be encouraged that God is at work all the time in countless ways.

This brings me to the reason for this "remnants." My main concern is that we not think God only does miracles in dramatic, clearly supernatural ways, like making iron swim. The signs and wonders He wants to make real in our lives are daily expressions of the Gospel at work. In a word, the fruit of the Spirit is enough everyday miracle to change the world. And it should be everyday -- the seed of the Gospel continually growing.

That's the remnant. Don't feel lesser-than if you have no dramatic miracle, and don't strive for one. Asking is ok of course and hoping is the human wont. But best to lean in to being transformed by the grace of Christ. This is active daily grace, the miracle in our everyday life. 

The Allure of 'You Too!:' Can we quell, or spell, tu quoque?

"Shut the door, Randy!" My older sister could be bossy sometimes and I could certainly be lazy. The sliding door on the VW van hung open and I wasn't about to leave my comfortable seat to close it. "You've left it open before!" I said, happy with my logic. Her retort was immediate, full of primal reason: "That makes no difference!"

Fast forward too many quick years and I am up late reading a fascinating story about chess grandmaster Magnus Carlsen. My wife, concerned my lack of sleep and absorbed psyche will ruin the day, sweetly and sleepily expresses concern. My inner response? "You do it, too!" I can't say what I think so I argue within: "She is up late from time to time doing what she enjoys!"

But there is a problem. That is entirely beside the point! Whether she does it once or a million times has nothing to do with whether I should do it or not. As the philosophers might say, "P is P, not something else." In common language, the door is the door and sleep is sleep. That is the only thing on the table, so deal with that, not perceived or real inconsistency with the challenger.

This fallacy is called "tu quoque" and means literally "you too." We see it all the time in political discourse. Perhaps it is easiest to see in the inverse: "Because Nixon lied (to borrow an ancient story) so can I." We know this is wrong on its face, but it's the same fallacy. We justify our behavior because someone else did it: "You too!"

Of course the normal pattern is when an opponent tries to make a charge stick, say in the morass of sex-related scandals in DC these days. The hue and cry is all over: "Bill did it, too. And you said nothing about it then." True enough but it only speaks to hypocrisy, not the issue at hand which is -- you-name-it -- let's say Roy Moore's alleged abuse of power. Is his in any way lessened because of the other party's easy treatment of Bill's behavior?

"You too" is tenacious as a carnival monkey except its head seldom gets wacked. Like too many fallacies it feels so right we just plunge on. But poor thinking is still poor and never leads to a good place.

How to fix it? Address the problem at hand and forget the rest. Refuse to press the argument beyond the terms. News flash: this makes arguments less fun, less frequent, and diminishes the thrill of moral indignation. And it means we all have to deal with our own front porch instead of someone else's. Man, that's hard! I'd much rather point out your problems. It is so much easier and fun to say "you too!"

But don't you see? When we say "you too" we catch the ricochet full in the face. If our opponent is in some measure wrong for doing it, saying "you too!" means we implicate ourselves as also wrong! Since I didn't want to do the right thing, I faulted my sister for having not done it. It is one of a thousand ways we shoulder off responsibility for moral misbehavior. If someone else didn't do it but somehow suggests we should, instead of dealing with the suggestion, we deal with them. We say "you, too", and we are still stuck in our bad behavior.

And that's why, much chagrined but rightly upbraided, I am laying this silly laptop aside and going back to bed. She's right. Whether she follows her own advice all the time is simply beside the point.

But I might check Facebook one last time. She would!

Ministry Remnants: You can Rely on God

The very gifted Malcolm Muggeridge said, "Writing isn't hard: you just sit down at the typewriter, slash your wrists, and bleed to death." A suitable metaphor no matter the particular difficulty one has with writing. Mine are multi-faceted, arising in too many ways to deter the simple lifelong love I have had for writing, coupled with the human wont of lack of discipline, motivation, ability. We are born with deficits and we feed them such that they make themselves known. And we have the soul-making task of overcoming, refusing to let various normal lacks dim our vision and drag us down. And so the best among us demonstrate that mettle by normal daily means and the worst sometimes are not so pronounced in their failings but are failing nonetheless. Someday the tide will go out and, as one Warren Buffet says, "We will then know who was swimming naked." Or to apply an apt western metaphor: "We will know who was 'big hat and no cattle.'"

All that to address the problem of writing, in a blog about ministry remnants? I suppose, because it is always easier to think about writing and see where that goes than to actually write about the matter at hand. Diversion is so much easier. Could we play a trick on ourselves so we allowed the diversion to be the thing we actually needed to produce? No doubt that is the sum total strategy of many a very successful person, and plumbing that strategy would be fascinating indeed, while very difficult. At base it seems the diversion, for some reason, is something more appealing. Maybe, then, my own writing, such as it is, should be all about the random diversions that come up when ever I sit down to write. I may be on to something there!

For now I will continue this path, itself a diversion from other necessary work, to muse on the Sunday message from a week ago. I described the largest of the enormous trucks used in strip mining: weighing over 600 tons empty, 25' to top of bed, 13' tall tires, 84 gallons of oil in the motor, able to haul payload of 366 tons. In a word, grande! My point was these trucks can be relied upon to carry a load. 

I used a bag of salt pellets to illustrate a burden and talked about what that burden is like for a truck of that size. The bag weighs maybe 40 pounds. The bed of the truck is about 1/3 the size of the congregation seating area. Setting the burden down in the bed of the truck would be like dropping a leaf in the back of my neighbor's F-150.

These trucks are large with a scale of capacity that boggles our mind. But compared to God's ability, they are child's play. Reckon God can handle our burdens? Reckon we can rely upon Him? Reckon when Jesus says "Lose your life for my sake and you will be OK" he meant what He said because He can handle anything that comes our way? Not only is He more capable than the truck, He made all things that go into that truck, including the ability of the geniuses that engineered it.

They say a sermon is supposed to have one main idea. The main idea I worked toward was this: God is reliable. He will not let you down. He can handle any burden you have. And I closed, as I began, with the incomparable piece from the oratorio Elijah, echoing several verses of Psalms:

Cast thy burden upon the Lord; and he shall sustain thee.
He never will suffer the righteous to fall:
He is at thy right hand.
Thy mercy Lord is great, and far above the heavens.
Let none be made ashamed, that put their trust in Thee.

It feeds me now as I remember it, and I pray it may do some good for someone reading from some distant place or time. 

Bring your burden to the Lord and leave it there.

A Poem for Father's Day

 

Those Winter Sundays

by Robert Hayden

Sundays too my father got up early

and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,

then with cracked hands that ached

from labor in the weekday weather made

banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.

When the rooms were warm, he’d call,

and slowly I would rise and dress,

fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,

who had driven out the cold

and polished my good shoes as well.

What did I know, what did I know

of love’s austere and lonely offices?

I Almost Died Today

 The Day I Almost Died

Reflections after a Near Drowning in February 2018

If you swim in the ocean you know the push of water. Water allures, and like all powerful things, deceives.

I was going far out forthefunofit. Overweight, I was still strong in mind if not body. I could touch bottom easily between swells and was not concerned. It was fun to go further a bit. I swam but grew tired quickly. I knew the current was pushing sideways but didn't worry as long as my toes could reach the sand.

Deciding to return to shore, I lay face down and swam for 15 strokes or so. I stopped and could not touch bottom. I dog-paddled for a minute or so, unaware I was going nowhere. Soon I realized my right leg was caught in a fisherman's line. He was waving his annoyance, about 80 feet away – no more than 100 feet away beyond pounding surf. I kick and paddled but could not loosen my leg, though the string was the least of my worries. After about 2 minutes' effort I was free of the string but moving sideways still, drifting beneath another fishing line as I paddled.

Unknowing, I was caught in a sideways rip-tide. I could not touch bottom and my paddling toward shore produced only exhaustion. I realized I may need to cry for help. “Surely I can make it!” I thought. My muscles ached and I tasted seawater. I thought of floating, but I have never been able to float. There was a most dim awareness I might die. My lungs burned as I treaded water.

Devin, my 12-year-old nephew, was 25 feet away on a boogie board. Dare I cry for help? Would I pull him down with me? I didn't want to be needlessly dramatic. But somehow I knew I must wave and cry for help.

The first time he didn't hear me. I waved with one hand and yelled weakly. From the shore no one could hear. I knew by the time I was truly desperate there would be little energy left for flailing and shouting. I struggled on, going nowhere. I learned later that drowning nearly always happens quietly. The fight exhausts the swimmer and all that remains is to sink beneath the waves. In a few minutes I would have done exactly that. By the time anyone noticed my absence it would have been too late.

Devin was still not far off and he was watching me. Devin is an unusual young man, one of those people who knows more than most, and knows it in ways unavailable to most. His care for people is plain and real and on the surface. He knows what matters without trying, and he is a gift to all who know him.

I think he knew I may need help and so he stayed nearby. He was looking at me intently as he drifted with a hand on the boogie board. I raised a hand and called for help. He heard me and called back, “Uncle Randy do you need help?”

“Yes. Please!”

He quickly pushed his board in my direction. We met in about 30 seconds and both held to the board. I was worried I might drag him down but the board did its job. After a minute or so of kicking I felt bottom and better, the push of a wave lifting me toward the beach and life. A minute later a crashing wave pushed me forward and I knelt in the rocky sand as the undertow returned without me. Barely able to stand, I shuffled toward the frustrated fishermen and tried to explain. Then I half stumbled, half walked the 200 feet to my wife, son, friends and family, sat down, still breathing heavily, and told them what happened.

What does this mean? I have spent the last many hours shuddering at what almost was. My wife and youngest son were there, as well as a niece, 3 nephews, and their friends. At minimum my drowning would have traumatized the afternoon and radically changed life for my wife and sons as well as my relatives; and in a much lesser sense, all who shared the beach that day. I almost died. It is certain I would have without help. It is unlikely I could have gotten anyone's attention; certainly in another minute I would have been unable to stay afloat to flail and cry for help. Pride – and a normal reluctance to cause undue drama – nearly cost me my life. And this is right enough. No one wants to cry out when it is not warranted. And we seldom encounter such near-death experiences – how would we know when to call for help? I certainly didn't. So I struggled, almost to my death.

Lack of knowledge, lack of awareness, lack of strength – all together these lacks would have cost me my life, except for the provision of Devin, my nephew. He knew without knowing that his Uncle needed help and he lingered near, saving my life.

I can barely process it. It is easy enough to speak the hubris: “I could have made it.” But that's false. And I ponder what my death would have meant. While I grieve deeply for what I would have missed in future years, I feel more the loss my loved ones would have felt. What is this gaping hole and emotional onslaught we call death. It rips loved ones from our hearts and crushes us with unalterable realness. And when I think how my untimely death would visit that upon them, I grieve.

No one wants to die, and somehow we make death distant and irrelevant, all the while knowing it comes to all. My great-grandfather drowned about 95 years ago. He was in his mid-20's with a wife and young daughter, my grandmother Freida. While his death was a great sadness to his family and close community, it is forgotten by most and will someday be gone even from the record books. Our lives are that way. The most important people die and are forgotten. Take a figure such as Alexander the Great – known of by countless millions over 2300 years of human history. Still his death remains unknown to most who ever lived.

So what matters – being known on a large scale? Nope. Being known at all? Yes – that matters a lot. I do not know what all of this means – I am pushing a rope, trying to understand. If I would have died today, the people I know would have suffered. I would have suffered for a short time, grieving, hopeless, muscles giving out, painful asphyxiation and death, drifting lifeless to sea or shore in time. I would have been no more for this world and those who remain would have been heart-broken. This is the weight of being, the weight of knowing, the truth of 'better to love and lose than never love at all.'

Why do we go on marrying and birthing, rearing and loving, building and caring and working and dying, only to do it again in the next generation? Are the endless waves a picture of this life, landing on shore with no end, no apparent reason except the cycle of being and life, water with mind-boggling volume and power and depth, yet able to sweep a simple human into its lapping arms and lull him to sleep?

Here is Ecclesiastes, of course, a wisdom one cannot know as well before near-death as after. It is easy to see how pointless life can be because, as the writer says, no matter what you do or what meaning you  contribute, it all goes down with you at death – you can't keep it or prolong it for yourself after you yourself are gone. And gone you will be.

I almost died today and I have no fancy words. I only have words struggling to find meaning. I believe in God, the One who made all things, who gives and takes away, who cares, who holds funerals for fallen sparrows. That God saw a man almost fall today and sent a nephew to rescue him. "Thanks be to God for His unspeakable gift!"

My Nephew Devin