Christmas Remembered

I assume most have treasured memories of childhood, of special days and seasons, of people – relatives, teachers, friends – whose lives and words weave among happy reminiscence. And of course there are many who remember little worth treasuring, for what might have been good and beautiful is blanched by too much of the awful. I grieve for those whose story is so up-side down. And I am grateful for all the good in my own story that managed, in the great line from St. Paul, to “overcome evil with good.”

The story is long and joyful to me, with a thousand points of light (for starters). It could be a book, and should be. Contrary the carmudgeons, I think that is true of everyone's life. Mix in some imagination and dare, a wide-eyed perspective that lets wonder find its breath; throw in bracing honesty and laugh-at-yourself humility and every story sees and emits light that shines through a window on reality.

And that's what we need, I propose. Reality. What other option do we have? Living by lies is no strategy for good living, nor is the pickled, jaundiced look or, for that matter, a foolish naivete. See life as it is, I maintain, and the good seeps out everywhere. I'll just leave that there, knowing all will never agree, including my lesser self on some days.

But I was talking about memories and, in particular, Christmas. Some of the best come from those days in our bungalow on North Glenn. The tree in the old paneled living room was magic. My younger sister and I would get up early and go sit on the floor and soak it in. I was 9, she was 6 and we couldn't wait to open the gifts and, on one or two occasions, we didn't.

There was always food and family. As memories sometimes lodge in the mind and settle in the soul, I once awoke at 2 AM or so on Christmas Day, sat up in bed, hearing voices. The light was on in the kitchen and I peered through the door. My Mom and Dad were together, making cookies, and I still see them smiling at me.

We lived in Ulysses, Kansas, a farming and light-industrial town in the southwest corner of the state. The winters were cold and windy but the main street stores shut it out as best they could. We lived one block off the North end of downtown, across the alley from the Ulysses News, and I could do my

Similar to this in my memory.

Christmas shopping within a few blocks' walk, especially at the Duckwall's store.

Duckwall's was the store that had everything. Baseball gloves that smelled of real leather because they were, arts and crafts, televisions which, if we were lucky, were showing the latest football game. They had an Atari game you could play until the next person indicated your turn was over. Of course there was candy and watches and clothing and who knows what else. It was Walmart lite. It was right.

I remember those low-light winter evenings -- storefronts all lit up, carols playing on the street loudspeakers -- whenever I hear Fogelberg's Same Old Lang Syne, though I'm no fan of the somber purview of that melancholy song. Snow does “turn into rain” as the song says, and there are plenty of sadnesses and “what-might-have-beens” in this life. But we can't live there.

Instead, I live with the happy, the muted wonder of the ordinary in those good days of growing up. Piling into the old white Mercury to go to church, wading through the snow to build a snowman, going back inside too soon to find a seat beside the floor register stove, looking through all the old World Book encyclopedias to learn more than we knew and wondering what life would bring. Whatever we dreamed for the future, it paled beside the wonder of the present.

That all seems true and right to me now. Life is a grand adventure, a gift we barely know how to receive, much less handle. If we let it, Christmas takes us there, past the sadnesses, for they are real indeed. Past even the memories, as much as they mean, to the daring possibility we face every moment, the haunting idea bigger than the world we know: my life matters, breath is a joy beyond knowing, giving and loving and caring make me real again at Christmas and everyday of my life.

I hope you and I can believe again that the sadnesses, whatever they are, do not blanch love and goodness. For in the end evil will lose and good will prevail. I'm all in on that bet. It is the only way to live. Happily, it is the bottom line in all my memories, and it is the life-changing story of Christmas.

A Beginning Verse [100WW]

We do too scarce, or so I'm told.
We should reach up and be more bold.
The soul knows more than it can tell
but laziness is easy sell.

 
And there is more than simple verse
that helps us learn the rhythm serve
But this feels right and so I stay
as if this path's the only way.

One hundred words to say a thing
that helps a soul or could we sing;
the words will rhyme – that's not enough
it needs so much of other stuff.

But if it needs a hundred words
it stops right now enough.

Back to Normal (sort of): [10'TU]

Well, this is the first ten minute Tuesday since my injury and I suppose I will treat it as a bit of reminiscence on the injury and the writing.

I ruptured the distal biceps tendon in my right arm on September 13th while trying to lift a washing machine out of a trailer into a dumpster. It is the kind of chore I have done many times, but this was a little heavier and my arm was slightly twisted as I lifted. I heard 3 pops and it was done. Some others came and helped finish the job. The pain was manageable, and I drove to an MD friend for advice. He said definitely worth an ER visit as it was nearing 7 PM and clinics would be closed.

On the 23rd, thanks to expedited process by local surgeon Mark Wade and one of his colleague helping behind the scenes, Dr. Jim Matai, I underwent surgery. He made a 3 inch incision longwise in the inside of my elbow through which he reached to pull the tendon down from where it attached to the bicep. The other incision, also about 3 inches, is on the right side of the forearm where the tendon, after passing along the elbow bones, attaches to the forearm bone so I have twisting strength in the arm. Here he found about 15% of the tendon still attached so he had to disconnect that, properly re-orient the tendon, and re-attach to the bone. 

I came-to around 4 PM or so and was home by about 5. The pain was manageable, not least because I had a complete block in the arm that didn't subside for 48 hours. After that I took the 800 mg Ibuprofen and the other pain med off and on for a week and then quit. Very grateful.

A thousand lessons in all of this, not least gratitude for the aptitude, skill, training, and love of the doctors, nurses, and various other attendants. They give such a vital service to the world and to each of us. It is no small thing, though we easily take it for granted.

Glad to be back in the loop, able to type almost normally. 

Thoughts on a Sunday Morning

I remember an anecdote from the inimitable Chesterton in which a given thought was compared to a cow suddenly speaking in a drawing room. Thus, I suppose, our best thoughts may only ever be best to us, if that, and one may dare believe they may surpass untranslated Bovine utterances.

Be that as it may, I wondered about this: Ontology and meaning go together so much so they are nearly indistinguishable. This is the relation between created and Creator, yet deeper. It is as if the Creator and created are one.

This being true, whenever our ontology is skewed, we are in trouble. Thus when families divide, thus when God is imagined expunged, thus when we consider ourselves self-caused. To have a false ontology is to implode.

Yet, there is mercy. The pain of false ontologies calls us Home and we begin to believe it is God alone we need. To deny Him is to deny our very being, and meaning in the process. It has been suggested that such a construct is not a life-enhancing strategy. I concur. But then again, if life has no meaning why would it matter?

Ontology and meaning cannot be separated. Pray for the wisdom to know to whom you pray. Dare to believe the infinite, personal God exists, and He may be known by the likes of you and me. That faith -- that reality -- is the only thing that will save us. And it lives within the wedding of ontology and meaning that simply is.

*The way of understanding God in the last paragraph is borrowed from Francis Schaeffer.

To be honest

To be honest when we really don't know, and say so; 

to acknowledge facts that seem to go against our treasured thoughts; 

to listen long and quietly with open heart to learn; 

to love the unknown ones whose thoughts we can't abide.

All too rare is such a thing for we are right, you see. And we may be, or me at least. And yet to stop and hear; to pray and dare believe the One who knows us best holds us to account and says, "The greatest of these is love."

"How do I work that out?" we ask, beloved, errant friends in mind. "Figure it out," comes the reply. "I will help you. But you'll have to listen."

Empty

“Empty is as empty does”
and people find their way -
through pitfalls here
and there to keep
the empty from display.

We are told what we are told
And often take as true -
the mantras that
remind us how
our weakness sees us through.

There is surely more to this
the half has not been told:
or if it has
the other half
is written large in bold.

This we know, oh sure we do,
it could not other be -
except the 'plomb
and certainty
will seldom let us see

Clearly what is missing there
is simple humble soul -
that with no pride
and prominence
with ease knows where to go.

Empty is, and quick I am
to wish it all away.
And then I learn
the empty soul
can only ever say

“Empty's me it is no lie
with open hands I reach -
believing One
will pity one
who finally can receive.”

Along the way...on time and space and God

The flattening of space and time is the defining action of our age.

I remember clearly my first “remote” event. My beloved Kansas home was several hundred miles away from the little Oklahoma Church where my friends were wed on a non-descript evening. Some months later a small box went in a larger box connected to a still larger box and I watched a fuzzy screen and heard a preacher's voice.

Years later, also in a church, I watched a man with a large machine on tripod video-record the preacher and I wondered how this makes any sense. It is enough to hear a good speech or sermon once, to savor the moment and hopefully gain lasting help. And it is valuable to have things for posterity.

But who has time to listen more than once?

The old cassette tapes bring the same question. I listened to some of them repeatedly as a young man, to much benefit. But most of the time when I thought I should get a tape I never did, and never would have listened again.

Yes, modern digital media has changed all of this and we can find most whatever we want whenever we want and we are better for it.

Better?

This is not the carmudgeon extreme, casting all new things as negative. New things are new and we adjust. Walking to horses to cars to airplanes: talking to telegraph to radio to television to sat-phones. Like all of us I love it. Like all of us I feel the loss and the grief.

I absorb my mind and fingers and eyes in a box putting shapes on screen, soon to be words of meaning, likely to be short-lived and barely noticed, certain to be a mere breath in a colossal storm of similar digital musings. What does it all mean?

I was trying to say the flattening – the death – of time and space is the defining reality of this era. I doubt I have the wisdom to understand this claim, much less prove it. I will only say it is real and I am sad for it.

Because I can always do it later, I often don't. Because no Sabbath is set, there never is one. Because I can always call Mom, I value it less, and because I can always fly to wherever my loved-ones live I have less – of seeing them and of loved-ones.

For love means more than seeing or talking. Face time or zoom or cell or text are all good and happy. I am thankful for them. But they never replace being-with, hearing the voice and knowing the person breathing, laughing, speaking is really there, right in the room. But because we don't have to be-with to have what we call relationship, we do it less and we lose.

It is the painful crux of life, the two-edged sword of relating, the loving and loathing we cannot escape and by which we are often bewildered. We want belonging with our independence; we want someone to care but leave us alone; we want control but despair for the wisdom only others can give us. It means in the end we choose death, for nothing is more real to life than the reality and necessity of relationships. Modern tech is just another way we cheapen or escape them.

Trying to explain it plays into the problem as much as anything I suppose, though awareness seems a good thing. The journey wearies us, the effort to evade the gnawing pain is exhausting. So we pick up the phone, but dare not call. Text will do. But it never does.

I find the answer in part when I invite my friend over and we chat about nothing, coffee and toast, chairs near, and life what it is: embodied, earthy, personal, present.

Later, my wife comes home and the day is real again if I will let it. A grandson visits and the pictures I love become nothing compared to his laugh. And I plan to write a poem for my sons and daughter-in-law, knowing that's as close as I can get for awhile.

Yes, time and space is flattened and we think we control it. But we are controlled in the end. Our need for closeness can never be undone by the fear that makes us run. And time is contrived master that only dies when we surrender to the moment and know it is bigger than the seconds that try to define it.

Perhaps the brilliant line from Scripture ties this together: “It is in God we live and move and have our being.” (Acts 17:28) That's time and space all wrapped up in an infinite, personal God who made the world, showed us how to live by giving Himself for it, and will some day make all things new. It ties time to the eternal, space to a Creator, and life itself to a God I dare to believe is good.

That's enough to give hope to the most entrenched carmudgeon, and make this child of God rejoice for the gift of another day!

Along the way...

Our passions, deeply felt (for that's what passions are)
shove us into corners (for that's what passions do)
of our own making.

But passions seldom think (that's not what passions do)
for there's no room for doubt (that's not what passions are)
on even one thing.

Passion speaks and patrons say “hurrah.”
Passion gives no quarter to the hurt, the wondering, the confused.
Ideas, the right ones -- mine, of course! –
are deep within, inarticulate until, laden with emotion
they come forth and wisdom suffers, as do friends who wish
to learn. The passion shuts them out.

Hyperbole is a thing, often wielded with skill to amuse, enlighten,
persuade, reveal.
When left to run wild, wild on wild, it inflates the wielder
with itself and lays thoughtless death blows on would-be interlocutors.
It should reveal the path, not trample those upon it.

“There is no peace on Earth,” a song soon to be heard with love.
The line hints the contrast coming, the sweet answer to the awful word. Those who speak of doom do well to dare, to believe; to let passion bow to persons, to love people more than their ideas, and know – yea create -- peace.

We can do it. I've seen it and, though poor in practice, I long to do it. Will you join me? The wrong can fail, the right prevail, but not without peace and goodwill that must be born and bourn in the hearts and loves and words of all of us so painfully divided.

Let there be peace, and let it begin with me.

Steady On [10'TU]

I settle in to type, attempting to be normal while my forearm still aches from the healing injury. As I mentioned earlier, some 6 weeks ago I ruptured the tendon connecting my right bicep to my forearm. Five weeks ago today I underwent surgery to reattach the tendon. For two more weeks I cannot pick up anything larger than a ballpoint pen.

The prohibition makes sense and is enforced by pain. I am unable to lift a coffee cup normally without pain, and do not try. Doctor's orders.

The pain is mostly the muscles recovering from atrophy, or so I imagine. I know the wound point heals slowly and needs the care of inaction. Yet I must try to touch my shoulder (very hard) and extend my arm fully while moving it from side to side (not so hard.)

This is ten minute Tuesday but I am stopping now. The pain settles in the side of my upper arm when I try to type. About a 6 and not worth it.

God is good. I am overjoyed at the goodness of life. Steady on.

Thanks Be To God

It is a difficult thing to be forced into slowness. Slowness is hard of itself, a discipline not easily embraced. Perhaps it is always forced on us.

After surgery September 23rd I was unable to type normally until the retaining cast came off October 15th. This is my first real foray into typing and it is ok. Still unable to use mouse in right hand. Left hand agility improves of necessity.

Healing is slow and painful. Things wrong must be set right and it always takes time, which takes patience. Patience, after all, is long suffering.

Who can think slow and act slowly? Yes, I know adverb is required and yet language changes, even makes a norm of transgressions. Grammarians would explain why adjectives forced into adverbs' clothing feels better sometimes. No doubt goes with our move from writ to spoken verbiage.

Speaking of, attempting to speak into text rather than typing has been that into which I have dabbled. (Avoiding the ending of sentences with prepositions is another dying practice, up with which I have learned to put, even enjoy.)

My arm hurts, I am almost done. There is so much to say, for life is rich and wonderful and infinitely layered.

Thanks be to God for His unspeakable gifts.

What is the Gospel?

What is the Gospel? Some say ragamuffin – good news for the down and out. Some say Creed, words ringing true to all that is. Many don’t know what the gospel is, a strange word seldom used in normal ways of life.

Gospel means simply “Good News” and for nearly 2,000 years references the story of Christ as we receive it in the New Testament books named after his followers.

What is the Gospel? My needy soul reaches up to God and hopes the Gospel is for the down and out, for those who have received the grace to know how lost they are and how much this world and every single one of us needs a Savior. But of course I also hope it is true, that it can be understood and accessed by normal processes of reason and curiosity and understanding. If the Gospel is true then it can weather the withering storms of centuries of doubt and attack. And so it has.

I hear myself say the Gospel is the Incarnation writ large, or perhaps most accurately the gospel IS the Incarnation. This feels closer to Creed than ragamuffin, but I want to linger here. The Incarnation tells us God is with us. There is no greater Good News. When we hear God is with us we know he did not just select the best and the brightest, the wisest and most erudite. No, he came to be with this world just as it is, full of sadness, darkness, death and loss, disappointment, addiction, broken hearts.

The Gospel is for everyone because the Incarnation is for the whole world: past, present, future. When God touches the world nothing remains as it was. When Joy Davidman Lewis surrendered her life to Christ, she used the expression “God came in” to describe the Wonder of what happened. This can happen in our individual lives because it happened in Bethlehem. If there’s a God, the one whom Christ reveals, this God doesn’t wait for us to seek him out. He seeks us out.

This is the Gospel, the Good News: God has come into the world and we need never be alone again.

Without Typing

I wonder if I can speak a poem, dictate a rhyme, write a verse without writing, only speaking. It is not my custom, this talking while electronic machine turns spoken word into type. For 2 weeks I have been unable to type or write. Hopefully by the weekend I will be able to type again, though my arm which endured surgery will take a while to be fully restored.

I am thankful for limits for I know they teach us. And yet this limit has been very hard. We get used to what we get used to, and the long arm of habit orders our life whether we like it or not. For most of history there was no typing as we know it now. I really don't know how to do this thing so I will stop.

[100WW] Left Hand Edition

On the 13th I injured my right arm when I strained overmuch lifting an appliance out of a trailer into a dumpster. There is a tendon coming from the bicep muscle, traveling through the elbow and attaching to a bone in the forearm. This tendon detached over 95% from the bone, rendering me virtually incapable of twisting my arm to the right. The doctor says roughly forty five percent of twist strength relies upon that tendon.

On Monday, the surgeon reattached it and I am slowly recovering, very thankful. Pain is managed with heavy pain killer and 800 mg Ibuprofen.

A Timeless Prayer from Solzhenitsyn

 (A prayer of faith for days like these and all the rest as well! Solzhenitsyn, Nobel laureate in literature in 1970 suffered imprisonment and other oppression in his native Russia on the "path through hopelessness".)

How easy it is for me to live with you, Lord!
How easy it is for me to believe in You!

When my mind is distraught
and my reason fails,
when the cleverest people do not see further
than this evening and do not know
what must be done tomorrow -
You grant me the clear confidence,
that You exist, and that You will take care
that not all the ways of goodness are stopped.

At the height of earthly fame I gaze
with wonder at that path
through hopelessness -
to this point, from which even I have been able to convey
to men some reflection of the light which comes from You.

And you will enable me to go on doing
as much as needs to be done.
And in so far as I do not manage it-
that means that You have allotted the task to others.

Of Words and Wonder -- an October Musing

Ever notice how the most valuable things in life, the most sacred and meaningful, are the hardest to talk about? It is almost like you are afraid that if you talk about it you will destroy it. The moment is too precious to ruin with words. The smile, the priceless hug, the return home of a long-lost child, a God encounter, a wedding, simple heart-songs, a gentle -- or passionate -- kiss. And how easily we do destroy things with words. Can't simple enjoyment and simple observation just be stored in memory and savored in the moment? No, we have to talk about it or type about it or take a picture or a video. Life is nothing if we don't apply technology or analysis, we think, but in the process we nearly destroy it.

Don't believe me? How many photos or video-hours sit on hard drives, never to be seen again. So often in the process of recording the moment for the future, the present joy is trudged upon, sullied, un-savored.

The ancients had it better. Even sports had it better before instant re-something. Life is most real when it is lived and left alone. The journey is not to be re-lived somehow; all efforts to do so are artificial, cheapening the real thing. Modern obsession with having has applied to time so that we morsel the moment to death, blanching taste and depleting value.

Such with a son and son going together across the street after long estrangement. No way to describe it or analyze it, unless I am the best poet. They do have that right, the best poets, a right earned through long and silent observation, tortuous struggle with life and meaning and words. They can convey precious moments in words ripe with treasured life. The rest of us are far better to enjoy, savor, and live with life real before our eyes, seeing enough to know there must be something Good behind, underneath and above all this wonder. 

Leave off the video, the photo, the words – it's time for simple rocking-chair rest, quiet sunsets filling the eyes and heart, words with family and friends, a game of kick-the-can if you wish; it's time for all that to be loved and enjoyed as so much more than the pseudo-gift of technology which promises more but leaves us more empty.

So I try to say in words what we all know in our bones. Analysis can help but often kills. Screens entrench inaction and fill the mind with...something. The vast bulk of photos has its allure in the suggestion that life is captured on paper; or worse, on a flickering screen. Life is something else – lived in the moment, lived on behalf of others, knowing only now really exists, investing in people not images, basking in the joys of life as they come, un-preserved, real, painful and poignant, but never really captured.

Did I just type all that for the internet? Technology is a mix of good with bad, that's for sure but I'm shutting this thing down and talking a nap. That's what the next moment is for. And it is good, I know it!

Where is Depth and Beauty?

A poem for Sunday gives the soul relief, letting speak what's deep within. What is there? Not much, the words reveal. Weary body falls to tender soul. I do not know what to say or if I should at all. Silence is salve for all things, though one needs to talk as well. I know little else in this halting verse, a free expression from a soul too thin with going, going.

A bitter wound afflicts my physique. I wonder what would happen but for modern medicine. Greater care to be sure, or not. We do things to get things done and sometimes we are done in. I'm done in, done for a time as my body will heal and re-learn movement in my dominant arm.

Words have morph of meaning and there is stretch in imagining this as a poem. I speak of which I know almost nothing, except, of course, of the pain. This, the philosophers say, is something I know incorrigibly. You can't talk me out of it. "No you don't hurt" would be a ridiculous reply, the true meaning of attempted gas-lighting.

Nothing to say? I speak anyway, sure that easy publishing is no friend of depth and beauty. 

Feelings

 "Feelings may come and go, change like the weather. 

Jesus is still the same, He changes never."

I remember this little chorus from my high school years. The memory of those years in church, in youth group, at camp is large, misty, too much forgotten, but deeply loved. Just thinking of the faces, places, and events this little song conjures up brings joy. But that is another story, a memoir which may never get written, but no less loved for that.

Feelings. If I could go all deep psychological, I don't think I would. But feelings are oh-so real, largely unpredictable, sometimes devastating. Real. And yet, "I am not my feelings," a wise man once said, echoed by my beloved Uncle to me during a time of duress. And some of us are, well, more feeling-oriented than others. I learned (almost) long ago to hold my tongue in certain contexts or with certain people. The pain that comes from sharing deeply-felt realities with others who couldn't possibly understand (for all the normal reasons) is just too much.

Feelings of despondency can come in waves, and often the reasons are obvious, though no more easier to talk about for that. But I will try. As I read a fascinating piece this morning I was reminded of my obscurity, the apparent pointlessness of my efforts to write. Is this from an over-sized self-conception about such things, the idea if I don't write like Shakespeare I should just give up the game? 

I don't know. It's an exaggerated idea but there's something to it. And it is embarrassing to acknowledge.

I tried to write briefly on this elsewhere. And I've wondered about greatness before. I remember, as a new freshman, telling the Dean of Students at my beloved Bible College, "I want to be great." He helped me morph the idea into a much more acceptable, "I want to do great things." For myself I have morphed it further by assuming anyone can do great things and anyone should try.

I confess to being at the end of myself on the question. I am not great, never will be. And if, for some inexplicable reason it were to happen, very little if any of it would have to do with conscious effort on my part.

This is embarrassing because, well, it is. But confession is good for the soul and as I said, I assume a feeling I have is more or less common to all human experience. So I should not berate myself overmuch.

Where does that leave this early-morning musing? The most central aspect of my life has been a desire and attempt to follow God, to let the words and life of Christ be central, the highest good, the "pearl of great price." So what does Jesus say about greatness? Something like this: "If you want to be great in God's eyes, learn to be the servant of all."

The way God sees things is what matters. Could it be that what matters most to Him is whether I am learning to serve?

I think so. And so, to echo an expression of my beloved late father, "delusions of grandeur" will only mislead and discourage. Best to lay them aside and do everything with an eye to serve. It takes honesty and sometimes painful action to lay aside all else. And sometimes what looks like "all-else" can be sanctified, as we say, to be of service. Otherwise it is all of self, which never portends true greatness.

Jesus says be a servant. I don't know much of what that means, but I want to listen and obey. Which means I will quit writing and pray.

Feelings come and go, but my life is not built there. Thanks be to God.

The Reason We Sing

Psalm 96:1 O sing unto the Lord a new song: sing unto the Lord, all the earth.

I've been in the habit of reading one verse of Psalms. Very often it is the common cry of the Psalmist, something like: "Hear me in my distress, O Lord." I can connect with this. I cry out to God often and the verses give voice to my prayers.

But I have noticed there is another emphasis. Balancing the cries for help are these frequent calls to sing, to be joyful, to give praise. I've tried to understand praise. The endeavor is embarrassing, like asking someone why they are so joyful. Must there always be analysis? Do we have to know? Why not just be? I give up the question, and find myself in something like worship. When we know we've reached the end of ourselves and there is only God, we kneel -- or we die the death of a thousand downward steppes.

It is ok, I hope, to try to understand. Praise suggests something about value. We praise that which we find deeply worthy. "Great job" is praise, as is the welling admiration we have for intrinsic beauty of all kinds: well-built homes, fine music, skillful play, clever dealing. The heart knows what is good and responds with praise, giving something like worship to the gifts which reflect the great Giver of all.

Praise is necessary, for it shapes our life like nothing else. At times it is a sheer discipline: we must recognize and acknowledge the good even when our lesser self wishes to look away. Budding envy takes us to these lesser ways, as does weariness, self-absorption, the innate fallenness of the human soul pressing through relentlessly.

But we can -- we must -- win the day, the moment, the life by giving song where it is right. This is liturgy, really, the 3-times-a-week singing I grew up with at country churches. We sang to God and about God. We reminded ourselves and shaped our life with singing. "Love lifted me" lauded the "amazing grace" of a God whose work for the world allowed us to sing "redeemed, how I love to proclaim it."

These somewhat lesser liturgies gave way to majestic assertions. "A mighty fortress is our God" expressed a faith that faces and overcomes the greatest obstacle. And Wesley's grand pen admonished, "Arise, my soul, arise, shake off thy guilty fears!" There was cause to sing and singing confirmed it in our soul and life, every song another layer of love and truth, habit and life-change.

Singing can be an end in itself, and there are another thousand things to say, I suppose, in the journey of understanding. Singing must have cause, that which engenders. Otherwise it is noise and pestilence, nihilism distilled. One could even say the worthiness of the cause tells us whether singing is good or deadly, a croak of death singing praises that excite the sense while starving the soul and leading to the pit.

Psalms give us the cause: God. Worship is the only sane response to God and praise in song is the highest form of that worship. It tells us what matters when we think nothing does. It carries us forward in the bleakest of days. Often quiet, it is the necessary habit of the soul for all who dare to believe there is a God who is good, and who makes Himself known to us everywhere in the awe-some gift of life.

"Sing to the Lord a new song." In the weariness of the daily grind it sounds wrong, but it is me that is wrong. And so I hear the exhortation, give thanks for its life-giving truth, and sing, glad that no one can hear me except God. This is all the better because it is only for Him, a happy gratitude for all the joys that color all the days and trials. Truly, He is the reason we sing.

Chesterton's Gate: Is Folly an Hereditary Disease?

The following is a somewhat famous commentary from GKC that points out the incipient potential value of tradition. At minimum, it tells us why destruction requires careful consideration. To use another analogy, everything we think is bathwater may not be, after all. What a person needs is wisdom. "Grant it, Lord."

Let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate [is] erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this, let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away.” Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it. This paradox rests on the most elementary common sense. The gate or fence did not grow there…. Some person had some reason for thinking it would be a good thing for somebody. And until we know what the reason was, we really cannot judge whether the reason was reasonable. It is extremely probable that we have overlooked some aspect of the question, if something set up by human beings such as ourselves seems to be entirely meaningless and mysterious. There are reformers who get over this difficulty by assuming all their fathers were fools; but if that be so, we can only say that folly appears to be a hereditary disease. 

G. K. Chesterton, The Thing (New York: Sheed & Ward, n.d.), 35.

What Needs To Be Said, Really? [100WW]

Are one hundred words enough? Always yes, maybe too much. For what needs to be said, really? 

Engines for saying more mean we say more. It is the human lot. A thousand stimuli engender talk. Explain, cajole, defend, wrangle, correct, admonish, complain, gossip. Myriad tech tools push further, deeper, wider, endless. What Guttenberg wrought has engorged and flooded the earth, making Noah's deluge a trickle of ink by comparison. We need an Ark. What can save us from the constant lure, the thing to which I succumb even now? Nothing but silence. 

One hundred words, sometimes, is 100 too many.

Lessons from Human Frailty [10'TU]

Ten minutes to reflect on bodily frailty.

I was lifting something heavy, a normal activity but well into the margin of difficulty. As I lifted, my dominant (right) arm was slightly twisted. Under the strain I heard 3 sudden pops, like bones rubbing hard in a twist. I dropped the load, safely, in real pain, though manageable. Nearby onlookers -- I was dumping a washing machine into the dumpster -- saw my situation and finished the job for me as I wondered what to do.

I went to an MD friend who recommended ER for an Xray. Broken bones ruled out, I await an MRI and visit with an Orthopedic doctor.

Another MD friend determined it is almost certainly the biceps tendon I discussed in Monday's post. 

Frailty. I remember the tears beneath the surface as I told my wife. We take mobility for granted and now my right arm is out, along with all the activities that demand its use. This is not easy. I find myself chafing. Where is peace, resignation? 

I long for the realization of helplessness and willingness to allow others to help. It is such a proper human thing, the oil of humility in the midst of thinking we can do anything and everything, no need to rely on others.

This is a bane. I have not been aware of it well, no doubt because that which is close goes unnoticed. Until. Until we are broken and helpless and see our frailty.

Of course this doesn't mean we neglect self-reliance. But we remember, in these times, how much we need others. And, how much others need to be needed. Nothing hurts worse than wanting to love and help and being rebuffed by the self-sufficient and self-reliant. We all need one another and something like inter-dependence is the best approach.

I pray for grace, with tenderness, tears, and gratitude for a torn biceps tendon.

Distal Biceps Tendon Tear

Well, these biped bodies in which our souls are housed are so one-and-same with the person that when we say "I" we always mean body as much as soul or consciousness. Philosophers call this mind-body problem or some such and dabble in various forms of dualism or non-dualism to understand and explain. Though I had the joy of trying to teach such things, it was never suitably clear to me, try as I might to imbibe the text. 

I did learn along the way that the Hebrew approach, revealed in the language and narrative of the Old Testament, is real. Deeply real. Earthy. Fancy divides of body and soul do not become it. A person knows he is embodied and that's that.

I must stop typing for the distal biceps tear is real in my dominant (right) arm. It happened 60 hours ago and I am scheduled for an MRI soon, then possible surgery. From what I read, sooner the better for the surgery. This tendon controls, I'm told, about 45% of arm strength needed for any twisting of the forearm.

I feel uncomfortable with typing so will leave be on this, my Monday Meander. Further posts forthcoming, perhaps. I did not think I would be able to type for awhile. I feel the pain on the inside of my right elbow. ER ruled out bone break, and pain has subsided by 50% or so. There appears to be no distortion or bruising, so it is hard to know extent and nature. But torn tendon is all but certain. I have the normal frustration with limited movement. 

Steady. On.

A complete tear of the distal biceps tendon. The tendon has pulled away from where it attached at the radial tuberosity.

Modified from Bernstein J (ed): Musculoskeletal Medicine. © American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons, 2003.

 

Preacher Shock

Preacher Shock

I saw a miracle today:
Water to wine, stone to bread.
The mind was helpless, mute; the spirit wan.
The need relentless, deep. No way out.
Capacity flat, weakness great, hope bare.
Someone prayed. God poured grace.
A listener wept. “Exactly what I needed.”

I saw a miracle today. 

A Rare Rumination on our National Need

“Make it your goal to live a quiet life, minding your own business and working with your hands.” 

(I Thess. 4:11)

I have often wondered who might be the Thomas Paine of our day, one who writes precient insights to sway a nation. Would it be someone with the wit of the late Christopher Hitchens, or a Sam Harris who gives voice to countless unbelievers? Is there a Mark Twain, a G. K. Chesterton, a George Orwell in Will, Krugman, Noonan, or (the lates) Wolfe or Krauthammer? Can any of our top-shelf writers – and the list is very long – change our thinking?

Perhaps the better question is, “What can do such a thing?” and the answer is, always and forever more, ideas. Ideas hold the power.

This is where writers do battle, assessing, insisting, construing, advocating. Trump won on an idea: “The political class is entrenched and self-serving. 'Drain the swamp!'” The other side was hapless against that idea: “All opposed, say 'No!'” And say “No!” they continue to do with inspired troopery.

But what idea has the power to hold us together? We are polarized so badly we decide national elections on a chad. When we finally have a winner the other side sees doomsday. I was shocked at the vulgar anti-Obama rhetoric in 2012. We are loosing common ground.  

Is there an idea with the power to capture us enough to lay aside polarizing bombs? Are we doomed to the hyper-political every two years so we seek solace anywhere – in political newcomers or billionaires who buy the election? Might we ever realize the dream of life free of crushing election cycles and endless ads?

Maybe Google will save us by deciding for us, our votes not so free after all.

I'm the arm-chair amateur with an idea about the Idea that held us together and could again if we would hear it. That idea is freedom: freedom to do as one should, not merely as one might wish to do.

Unconstrained freedom is a pipers' dream with followers, betimes, among all. Life has stubborn contraints, so we painfully learn. The protestor's sign, “Sworn to fun; loyal to none” leads nowhere fast.

Behind it all is the question of who guarantees such freedom. If we have rights, someone has to be responsible. Policemen must keep the beat, judges must act with integrity, our fellow citizens must have the strength of will to insist on things like free speech and “innocent until proven guilty.” And we have to defend ourselves against enemies “foreign and domestic.”

This idea of freedom, earned and maintained through responsible, vigilant living – is a treasure worth living and dying for. It is the founding idea of our nation, the jewel the constitution intends to protect.

But we have mission fatigue. We are losing the will to insist on freedom. This is demonstrated not least by our national debt, a mind-numbing amount of 25,000 billion dollars. If we had 2000 years to repay, interest free, the monthly payment would be over one billion dollars.

This is alarming in the extreme and undercuts freedom, because debt always does exactly that. Without financial strength and agility we are vulnerable. However, the lack of will that got us here is the deeper problem.

Can we endure through this difficulty? Will there emerge a unifying idea with the power to carry us? I think so, but it may not be freedom. The idea that unites a vulnerable nation may well be security. If our leaders – or God forbid – the leaders of an invading nation, can promise security we may take it, a bowl of poor porridge to replace the dying heritage of freedom.

I still believe in freedom – personal and national. But we will lose this treasure if we fail to pay its price in personal responsibility and determined fortitude. This means paying our bills, providing for our own, caring for our neighbor. And it means we lay aside our polarizing swords. This last is not entirely possible, for persons with opposing primary ideas can never be agreed: discussion only leads them further apart. But we have to try, for political rivals are people, too!

And so I ask, “What can hold us together?” It is not freedom alone, for there are a thousand attending ideas. But freedom seems to be at the core. I want that, but I feel the fatigue. Will you join me in doing the right thing: 

• Speak truth with humility, knowing you do not see all things clearly. 
• Refuse to see the world through a political grid, but have patience with those who do. 
• Strive for self-reliance, in part so you can help those who cannot help themselves.

In all this I find a landing point in the timeless edict of St. Paul in the New Testament: “Make it your goal to live a quiet life, minding your own business and working with your hands.” (I Thess. 4:11) That's a tall order, a simple way, hard for most of us to accept. But I want to learn it, for the good of my family and community, and for the hope of our nation. I hope you do, too.

On Subtlety, Eternity, and Wasting Time

The great and gifted writer, Malcolm Muggeridge, when asked why he didn't go hear Billy Graham, said: “I need subtlety.” Muggeridge, a life-time English journalist who lived in the Soviet Union in its ill-fated early days, titled his memoirs with the humbling reflection: “Chronicles of Wasted Time.”

I'm told there is a conception of time that redeems it from slavery to the clock. So much of “time-management” motivation teaches us how to wring another minute from the over-wrought day but never tells us why. I learned a casual proverb in High School, something like “you cannot waste time without injuring eternity.”

It seems dangerous to deny that proverb. What is worse than contemplating a wasted life, or wasted opportunity? Regret is so painful we dull it with busy-ness or worn excuses; or we simply bury it somewhere where we hope it will die. But if we had “used” time as we should, there would be no regret. The pain comes because there is no going back. Door closed.

This is where subtlety comes in, I suppose, for few things can mislead like singular ideas in an echo chamber. I've heard all my life of balance. We need various perspectives, a triangulation if you will, to find the path that best corresponds to “the way the truth and the life.”

But balance is folly if the various perspectives themselves are not true. Enter, again, subtlety. Billy Graham was a great and gifted preacher, and no doubt more subtle in his understanding of the Gospel than our friend Malcolm could grasp. And both would readily recognize what I wrestle with today: “Can one really waste time? And if so, is there any saving for it? Any redemption?”

A much older friend of mine once puzzled with me about the problem of wasting water. He said, “How is it really wasted? It goes in the ground, finds a water table, goes through the cycle and returns.” He was partly right, of course. But is it still flatly wrong to pour the leftover water down the drain? Is tossing left-over food in the trash all the worse because someone in a distant land is starving?

We all find manageable answers to this in the mix of life, but this matter of wasting time offers some subtle clues. Time is a gift we find in eternity. Eternity has no time, no beginning or end. A deadline is just that, a time when a given endeavor must stop. But life goes on, unbound. It is bigger than our so-called deadlines, bigger than the ticking monster on the wall.

Deadlines give the nod to time's ubiquitous presence without knowing why. We are carried along by something larger than us, and we define that something with minutes and seconds – the time-keeper that keeps us straight.

Balderdash.

Clock's are a great tool to help us measure our days but our life is not defined by them. Our life is defined by eternity, something before which minutes and days and hours pale and disappear, leaving us with the moment. It's like the boy riding his bike in one of countless obscure villages, knowing this is his whole world, oblivious to the galaxy in which the earth is but a speck, that galaxy itself a small one among billions. And that is how it should be, for the boy is in the moment, something bigger than the galaxy itself, the only thing that touches eternity.

Time is a gift to enjoy, for it is life itself. And life is good. The vastness of eternity is like the galaxies, shaping everything yet untouchable, certainly unknowable. So we should be at peace and receive time as a gift to be lived with boundless joy.
Managed? Yes, surely, for we desperately need resourcefulness and efficiency, those dreaded but necessary words.

But the necessary things, like the clock, are servants, not masters. They, like all things, serve a greater good. One might slip backwards in etymology and remember “greater good” can only mean God. And when we find our life in Him we are clothed in eternity – “the eternal kind of life” is how the Gospels put it.

We find ourselves in time, a speck in eternity. Only God can make full sense of it, though we try. That's more than enough subtlety for me and I'll not waste any more time trying to figure it out.

Limiting Words: Who Can Do It? [100WW]

Do we know how to limit words, to say what helps and leave unsaid what doesn't? How do we, in the midst of all we think and love, avoid draining the soul with too many words? I've seen it – alas I've done it. Perhaps the most taciturn know the flaw. Perhaps that's how they learned silence. 

We are so prone, on discovering some new vista, to tell the world. And since the world isn't listening, we tell our neighbor or spouse. Or, in the miracle of laptops and whatsapp and other countless tech enablements, we “tell” a thousand screens.

Calling [10'TU]

The callings of life are many and varied. I love the reminder my beloved teacher gave: "calling" really is that -- something we hear within and learn to follow. In the Christian world it is often assigned almost exclusively to ministry. If a person is "called" it means they have a special designation in God's kingdom.

I do believe clergy may have a distinctive calling, certainly peculiar. But surely it is also true that everyone has a calling. It is that inner voice that persists unless persistently ignored. And even then it may never die, but reach out forever until it comes forth in various ways long dormant.

This last we often see, I think, when a retired person who worked the factory or office to pay the bills and care for his family finds a role at age 67 that, as we say, "scratches the itch." We could say it "answers the call."

Often it takes a lifetime to learn to hear and answer. And working it out in the midst of life requires a wisdom few of us possess in great measure. Demands and various faults keep us from hearing, much less fulfilling, our calling.

What is your calling? What is mine? It is a still small voice, something we seldom hear well nor easily. It is a persistent voice that nudges: "This way, not that." It is the grace of God within, an expression of His image that says we -- each of us -- have unique purpose that calls us forth to be all we are to be.

That, and more, is calling and I pray you are hearing and living yours today.

Distraction, Creativity, and an Over-flowing Soul

"Writer's remorse beats writer's delay" or something like that. Annie Dillard's splendid writing advice speaks of something like an on-ramp for writing. "You often must throw away your openings" she says -- "they are only there to help you get going."

True enough I'm sure but I wonder what sorts of corollary routines make writing possible, delay it long enough so when one finally gets to the task something comes that is worth it. 

I have a friend who uses distraction as a routine of sorts to great benefit. He has made common habit of having three screens active: baseball highlights, ongoing conversations with a friend or some other intermittent reading, and working through class material or actual online teaching. And he gets more done than most people.

It's interesting to see where this distraction leads me. I use distraction of some sort to try to engender creativity. For me it is often reading at random, something I have done all my life. This seems generic, suggesting to me there should instead be purpose in the distraction itself. That is, if I am wanting to write a reflection on, say, baseball, I should do the 'random' reading on baseball. Maybe. But somehow we have to trick our minds into getting the thing done, and often the route is circuitous and inexplicable. Or so seems to me.

This brings procrastination to mind, such a difficult habit of human nature. There are analyses that help. For me it often happens because I lack the discipline or wisdom to use time in a measured way. That is, since I have never done well with limiting the scope of preparation or the job itself, I wait until an inner clock tells me I have just enough time to do a passable job. And then I do it.

I marvel at those who work otherwise, setting an afternoon for an essay or speech prep and plodding through until it is passable, even excellent. The thing may not be due for a week or a month, but it is done. Who does that?! One must trick the mind somehow and I would not argue with those who say it is simply a matter of discipline.

Except...art never is. It is more, but I have reached my depth. I would only add that there seems no substitute for well-ordered and determined work: staying with tasks and doing all one can to cultivate an inner life that feeds well all that rises from it. To the extent various creativity hacks fill the soul so something worthwhile spills out, we are on the right track. Or so seems true to me.

"Definitely Some Lack"

[For some reason I felt I should re-post this today. No, I have no complaints! :) We have a wonderful congregation. So here it is fwiw (free!)]                 

a musing on pastoral performance, and lack

“Yes, definitely some lack.”

I smiled and grimaced at once, the words painful and familiar. A childhood friend and I were renewing acquaintance and he was telling me of a former pastor: “He was an OK preacher I guess, but kinda distant at times. And when my dad lost his job it was like our pastor didn't even know. Definitely some lack.”

Now that I am a pastor, I feel the sting. As a former parishioner, I know the reality of seeing the lack.

All pastors lack because they are, like you, human.

But why are we so easily disgruntled, askance, disaffected? What makes it so easy and natural to see the faults of our pastor?

There are many reasons to be sure, but one is the age-old problem of hero-need. Pastors are supposed to fill that need. Most do for some; a few do for most; none do for all. Pastors lack. Definitely.

So what is the parishioner to do? Here is an idea or 2 -- ok, three:

• Pray for your pastor. I dare you: really pray. Daily. By name. Praying may change your pastor and it will definitely change you if you stay with it. The pastor's lack may remain but it won't be nearly so obvious.

• Do what you can, in cooperation and harmony. The mildest initiative and leadership in church life will give you a look through the pastor's lens on the world. You'll be the better for it, become a practical asset, and understand his lack. You may even discover the perceived lack has a good reason behind it. And, best of all, you may be able to alleviate that reason!

• Get to know your pastor. Yes, this can be hard. Pastors fill a role that is often relationally awkward. They are supposed to have the right word, correct conduct, and always be available. This creates unique psychological challenges and puzzling behavior. But stay with it. When you are with your pastor up close and personal you may learn to really love him – lack and all.

Yes, your pastor has lack. It pains him more than it pains you. You can't help seeing it, but what if...

        - complaints give way to prayer

        - “This should happen!” gives way to “I wonder if I could do it?”, and

        -  You (yes, YOU!) act first and often to get acquainted. You may find a real person emerges and lack fades into the background.

And after all, isn't that they way you hope your pastor will care for you?

Joyce School: Home Room, Band, and Mrs. Bitter

[I grew up in Ulysses and have a world of memories from those happy days. A recent online discussion brought to mind Joyce School and I wished to write about it a bit. The list of memories is long and happy, funny and real. We'll see how far along I will get.]

One hears much about "coming of age:" books and movies draw on this human reality ad infinitum and for good reason. I never really knew what it meant until I did, and now I know my "coming of age" happened from ages 11-16, though I suppose the smart people would tell me the season is shorter -- or longer -- than that.

Whatever the case, many vivid memories of that era come from a little school in Ulysses, Kansas named Joyce. I suppose, without research, the school received the moniker because an author named "Joyce" wrote a famous book named "Ulysses." Maybe the odds of such a highbrow genesis are slim. I don't know. [I'm told the name actually comes from early settlers of the area -- thanks to those who pointed that out!]

Joyce School in 1975-76 served as home office for the school district of the town, a district which comprised two elementary schools, a Junior High (7th and 8th grades) and a High School. Joyce, in addition to housing the district office, also had special education classes and, consigned to the upper floor, the sixth grade classes for the entire district.

This was the first year we had a home room and would go to other teachers for some subjects, getting us ready, I was told, for 7th grade when every subject would be taught by a different teacher. My home room teacher was Mrs. Twila Bitter. This was the first room on the right when you reach the top of the main entry stairs from the end of the building closest to the gym and across the street directly from the IGA.

Funny how this really was the beginning of growing up for me. At the end of the previous school year I had auditioned for band, French Horn in particular, and Joyce School would afford my first band experience. That happy adventure -- I really did love it -- gave fodder for a keen Joyce memory. But for now I wish to speak of home room and Mrs. Bitter.

Mrs. Bitter was distinctive, and even now I try to understand why. I liked her, even loved her, though she was no-nonsense and put up with zero disruption in class. I can still see her up front, holding forth on whatever math we needed that day. It's really amazing how almost no daily lessons come to mind yet the impact of her person will always remain with me.

I still remember her announcing -- or maybe the Principal came and did it -- she had completed her Masters degree at Hays State University. This was mysterious to my 11-year-old mind but I was still impressed that a woman her age had finished something that sounded really hard. And when she said she would transfer to Junior High the next year I was happy because I would be there, too, and she would give continuity.

It was in this home room my band experience came into full play after a typical afternoon concert in the gym. There were four players of French Horn, all variously assigned 4th chair depending on the grief we were giving the director, Mr. Wolf. In this particular concert some kind of distraction persisted and caught my attention fully. Whatever malady overtook my mind and actions, I was clueless. But, the record shows, I made all kinds of disruptions in between songs, chatting and laughing, jabbing friends in adjacent chairs, dropping books.

I was so oblivious that when I returned to home room for the last ten minutes before closing bell, I had no idea there was a problem. 

Enter Mrs. Bitter. 

I still feel the fear a little bit. She had seen everything. She was not happy, and proceeded to call me out before the whole class. I had been a constant distraction during the concert, she said, an affront to all that is right and holy. She did not hold back, and made clear this kind of behavior would not be tolerated and it better never happen again. There was no question in my mind -- it wouldn't!

I am sure I was ashamed. No doubt I felt the stinging pain of public humiliation. But I also knew Mrs. Bitter cared, and I knew she was right. I never did anything like that again.

I needed the correction, for there are countless problems with all of us in those crazy coming-of-age years. The next year Mrs. Bitter indeed moved to 7th grade and was home room for me again. When I finished High School, though we had moved across state, she sent me a graduation gift. Over twenty years later I included her in a family newsletter of sorts and she sent me a sweet reply letter.

I know she is gone now. Coming of age slips into all of life until age itself ends our days. But I will always be grateful for a woman like Mrs. Bitter. She was a solid point of reference in my life, someone who really cared and showed it in all the normal duties. Teaching must have been very hard -- who can do it? She could, and my life is much better because she did.

Joyce School

One Wonders -- A Brief Touch of Blank Verse

One wonders how the sky e'er came to be

Or how the fishes ever found their place

in creek and ocean numbered with no end.

One wonders at the why or how of all.

Of verses plain that lilt in normal mete'

Of would-be poets countless here and there.

Of verse that's blank as five feet wander through

though assonance two times plays twinning hue.

Obscurity is poets' saving grace

The license shown to placate oft critique

And when there's nothing else to put in place

of writing, minds are prone to fall in line.

Prosody [100WW]

I read a bit about poetry, prosody to be exact. A new word for me, it refers to all involved in versification. I learned a bit more about blank verse, and other far more obscure and less accessible forms. I learned one must not force form that belies the music coming forth in a poem, though I suppose the greatest is to wed the two in holy matrimony. I enjoyed the study of meter, and like the possibilities blank verse allows.

I wonder if there is a poetic form of 100 words? If so, must it rhyme in proper time?