[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.