New Years Walk....Really?

At the beginning of my sixty ninth year I realize the world is full of beginnings and endings.  A few days ago, my good friend and neighbor’s life ended.  Immediately, I began walking without his voice, presence and relationship.  More Interesting I am caught by the fact there will not ever be an end for him again.  He is beginning the beginning of what I call eternal beginning. I begin a new year with a certain hope—another year, another chance, a new day.  But I will carry with me some of the same fears, the same longings, the same resolutions.  And I ask myself; is there ever really anything new about a new year? 

I remember a particular time in the past feeling so broken that its shards seemed to reach well into my future.  I saw the end of a difficult situation, but I could not see a beginning unmarred by the residue of the past.  "Is there really such a thing as a new day?" was the question I held in total dejection.  A friend gave me the following scripture and asked me to hold it instead:

"But this I call to mind,
       and therefore I have hope:
    The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases,
       his mercies never come to an end;
    they are new every morning;
       great is your faithfulness.
    'The LORD is my portion,' says my soul,
       'therefore I will hope in him'" (Lamentations
3:21-24).

Spoken in a time of exile, I imagine these words were as pungent for Israel as they were for me.  The writer of Lamentations held fast to the assurance of things new, even in the midst of a situation that blinded him from what that could even mean.  In all of the sin and sorrow surrounding him, it would not have been unreasonable for him to admit that he saw no way out.  With all the damage that had been done, with the uncertainty of exile, and the finality of a destroyed Jerusalem, I can’t believe anyone would have blamed him for seeing new mornings as nothing but a promise of more of the same. 

But this was not the lament on his lips.  Written in the style of an ancient funeral song, the writer's words, though consumed with death, call to the Lord by name:  The steadfast love of Yahweh never ceases, his mercies never come to an end.  Another translation reads, “Because of Yahweh's great love we are not consumed; his mercies are new every morning.  I imagine in my mind, what the writer saw in the midst of his own lamentation is that only God can truly make a beginning.  I haven’t given very much thought to this but the new mornings, new years, in and of themselves, are useless and worse than useless if they are not seen as belonging to the one who makes all things new.

And often, it is in the midst of a definitive ending that God brings new beginnings to life.  In a poem called "Ash Wednesday," T.S. Eliot describes redemption as a figure moving about ashes and endings.

The new years walk, restoring
Through a bright cloud of tears, the years, restoring
With a new verse the ancient rhyme.  Redeem
The time.  Redeem
The unread vision in the higher dream.

I’ve experienced a restoration before in a new years walk, something hopeful in a new day, precisely because there is a coming new day.  Perhaps the hope promised in new mornings, the assurance of new mercies and new beginnings, is only a hint of the promise of a new earth.  In this higher dream, God is the dreamer, redeeming worlds, redeeming time; God’s redemption is the great love that prevents me from being consumed.  

I think it no coincidence that the ending chapters of Scripture are aimed at describing the beginning of something more.  Depicting the vision of "a new heaven and a new earth," John reports a voice crying out from the throne saying, "See, the home of God is among mortals.  He will dwell with them as their God; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe every tear from their eyes.  Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away" (Revelation 21:3-4).   

I remember a phrase you used, quit often dad:  “This is the day that the Lord hath made.”  I want to acknowledge and respond in ways that this day is new because it is a day made by the God of new beginnings, the God who came to live with me and everyone else.  Christ is the portion that God extends every morning.  I implore my spiritual eyes to behold Him come, for He will make all things new.

Tidings of Comfort and Joy

God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen is one of my favorite carols of the Advent season. 

God rest ye merry gentlemen
Let nothing you dismay,
For Jesus Christ our Saviour
Was born upon this day,
To save us all from Satan's power
When we were gone astray:
O tidings of comfort and joy,
comfort and joy,
O tidings of comfort and joy.

The carol reminds Christian pilgrims that we need not dismay since Jesus Christ has delivered us from the "domain of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of light" (Colossians 1:13).  And yet, the tune is sung in a minor key.  Now, I'm no expert in music, but I enjoy the oposits of a minor key with uplifting lyrics.  The minor key reminds me that joy is mingled with sorrow during the Advent season. 

Last Sunday which was the third Sunday of Advent ( the church I regularly attend, sadly for me, did not celebrate) is called Gaudete Sunday, which in Latin means "rejoice."  The longing and expectation that begins the season, now turns to joy as the arrival of the Christ child approaches. With Gaudete Sunday, many Christians rejoice for the tiny baby who will be King; here is joy enfleshed, and our lives belong to his rule and reign.  And yet, I sense remorse, for there are so many who are familiar with this carol, even those who sing its verses, may still feel the power of evil over them, or feel that they have yet to find their way to the manger of Jesus.  Some find it difficult to enter into the victory that comes on Christmas morning.

Everywhere I went this past week and most media I viewed exemplified the fact, that it is difficult to rejoice when all that is experienced is a world in crisis.  Many desperately long to enter into the joy promised long ago to humble shepherds: "Behold, I bring you good news of a great joy which shall be for all the people; for today in the city of David there has been born for you a Savior, who is Messiah, the Lord" (Luke 2:10-11). 

Those who heard the announcement of the birth of the Messiah knew it signaled the end of exile and darkness, for the coming of the Messiah meant a new age for the people of Israel.  We  hear this promise sung in psalms: "When the Lord brought back the captive ones of Zion, we were like those who dream.  Then our mouth was filled with laughter, and our tongue with joyful shouting; Then they said among the nations, 'The Lord has done great things for them'" (Psalm 126:1-2).  Great things will be accomplished for the people as a result of the Messiah's advent.

Yet, these great things were not accomplished without tears of sorrow and mourning.  For, as the psalmist suggests, joy and sorrow are inextricably linked.  "Those who sow in tears shall reap with joyful shouting.  He who goes to and fro weeping, carrying his bag of seed, shall indeed come again with a shout of joy, bringing his sheaves with him" (Psalm 126:5-6).  Indeed, the sowing and the seed are the tears of the exiles, tears that bear the fruit of joy.  Talitha Arnold, in  “Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary” reflects on the mystery of suffering turned to joy when he writes: "The natural power of God to turn seeds into grain would be miracle enough.  But Psalm 126 makes an even greater statement.  The seeds are not ordinary, but seeds of sorrow.  The fruit they bear is not grain or wheat, but shouts of joy."

In spite of a world easily consumed by sorrow and sadness this season, those who anticipate the arrival of the source of all joy recognize that the harvest of joy is sown in tears—tears that are redeemed by the one who "for the joy set before him endured the cross and suffered its shame" (Hebrews 12:2).  Jesus, the joy of the world, was not immune to tears.  The "tidings of comfort and joy" would be that God enters our suffering, and is not removed from it.  God enters our exile, and offers deliverance and salvation.

I admit that over the years I have to often sought joy in this season, but was looking in the wrong places and in the wrong ways: "This is no jingle-bells joy brought with a swipe of a credit card," Arnold continues.  "The seeds of this joy have been planted in sadness and watered with tears.  This is the honest joy that often comes only after weeping has tarried the night."  Tidings of comfort and joy come to us in a person, a person who sowed both tears of joy and sadness himself.  Jesus brings joy from tears and fills hearts with gladness at his coming.  Weeping may last through the night, but joy indeed comes in the morning.

Breaking News (End of the World As We Know It) December 21, 2012

Five years before my birth, on October 30, 1938, a national radio program playing dance music was interrupted with a special news bulletin.  The announcer heralded news of a massive meteor, which had crashed near Princeton, New Jersey.  The reporter urged evacuation of the city as he anxiously described the unfolding scene: Strange creatures were emerging from the meteor armed with deadly rays and poisonous gases.  

The infamous broadcast, which caused panic throughout the country and mayhem all over New York and New Jersey, was made by Orson Welles, a 23-year old actor giving a dramatic presentation of the H.G. Wells novel The War of the Worlds.  His compelling performance created traffic jams and tied up phone lines, interrupted religious services and altered bus routes.  Several times in the program a statement was made regarding the broadcast's fictional nature.  Still, many Americans were convinced that Martians had landed.  One man insisted he had heard President Roosevelt's voice over the radio advising all citizens to leave their cities. The October 31^st, New York Times Article, Radio Listeners in Panic, Taking War Drama as Fact, records a person on the phone with a patrolman, cried in alarm, "I heard it on the radio.  Then I went to the roof and I could see the smoke from the bombs, drifting over toward New York.  What shall I do?"

The War of the Worlds broadcast will perhaps forever remain one of the most telling examples of the power of context, and in more ways than one.  Whether listeners tuned in after the introduction or happened to miss the declaimers, the convincing portrayal was enough to send waves of fear across the country.  In the context of breaking news, fiction appeared alarmingly factual. 

But also, I think it is fair to ask whether such a reaction could have even taken place outside of the context in which this "breaking news" was heard.  In 1938, the global situation was such that an unfolding crisis, and subsequent radio interruption, was not altogether implausible.  Furthermore, radio was at that time the primary source for news and information.  Nowadays, if I hear troubling news on the radio, the first thing I do is check it out further on the Internet or television.  I am much to cynical to be taken in by this Mayan calendar forecast  that this world will be dramatically changed seven days from now. 

But herein lies an interesting attitude.  When thinking about such an incredible example of hoax and gullibility, I realize I have a similar outlook:  I am much less vulnerable to fallacy masquerading itself as truth in today's day and age.  But could this not also be a false and dangerous assumption?  The War of the Worlds broadcast might no longer fool me, but am I really so much closer to recognizing fact from fallacy? 

Just because I reject stories, suspect history, and am well aware that reality television is not reality hardly means that I am less susceptible to deception.  When I live cynically yet choose my beliefs by preference, there is deception in my approach to truth itself, which is just as hazardous as believing in Martians, aliens, or prognostications of the end of a civilization’s calendar, because I heard the broadcast over the radio or television and/or print.     

In the words of the prophet Amos, we have fled from a lion only to meet a bear. 

From context to context, the tests of truth do not change and must be employed.  For regardless of context, the effects of believing a lie are always injurious to life.  I heard Ravi Zacharias say, a few days ago, "To be handcuffed by a lie is the worst of all imprisonments."  Whether I am claiming Martians landed in 1938 or making the truth claim that the earth will never be the same after the 21^st of this month, reason leads me to check the correspondence of a claim with reality, and the coherence of the assertions.  My truth claims must be tested before they are believed—and subsequently, they must be lived out.

Jesus, whom I prepare to meet again this Advent as one who came down from heaven, made some tremendous claims about himself.  The reassuring thing is that he also asked me to test these claims personally: "Who do you say that I am?"  In claiming an answer, I must not abandon fundamental tests of truth—tests that are inherent in the questions Jesus is asking.  In the breaking news of the church this Advent season, God help me approach the Child willing to respond fairly, knowing there are certain responses that are just not left open to me, and ready to fully live the truth I proclaim. 

My Advent Homesickness

The attendance at a Memorial Service for a precious ninety five year old lady, today was instructive for me.  I heard the stories of testimonies from her sons and a couple of her grandchildren.  I was impressed and convicted with the phrase; “faith, family and memories was what her life consisted of.”  Also, that she most loved the holidays, like Christmas; when the entire family gathered together.  Someone said although she would not be here for this Christmas, she was in her home eternal.

In his poem Journey of the Magi, T.S. Eliot imagines the reminiscent thoughts of one of the Magi who journeyed from afar to witness the birth of Christ.  Using the voice of a pagan king, Elliot portrays the weight in the soul of a man who has truly confronted the uniqueness of Christ, the king.  The poem powerfully concludes:

"Birth or Death? There was a birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt I had seen birth and death.
But had thought they were different, this Birth was
hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our palaces, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
with an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death."

Coming in contact with the Christ, proclaims Eliot, setting one's eyes on the child who was born to die is in a very real sense like dying ourselves.  To me, the poem seems to strike a somber note.  That to the chagrin of Bettyann and my daughters, although, I also realize it is the proclamation echoed triumphantly
throughout New Testament Scripture.  For example, The apostle Paul spoke readily of life in Christ using the words and imagery of death.  "I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me" (Galatians 2:20).  Jesus uttered similarly, "Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it" (Matthew 10:39). 

In this season of Advent, I am walking with fellow believers of various persuasions of the Christian faith, professing to be watching and waiting, remembering and anticipating with those who first watched God step into the world through the means of a dirty stable.  I remember those who first set their eyes on the child who was born to die, becoming, in a sense, as Christ was on that first night, homeless and out of place.  I remember, too, that I am far from home, longing for the kingdom I know in part.  For having embraced the person of Christ, I proclaim the reality of his kingdom and find myself as Eliot describes, "no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation, with an alien people clutching their gods."  The message of Advent awakens my sense of homelessness, stirs my longing for home, and reminds me that I am waiting for the return of the king. 

In one of the most comforting conversations between Jesus and the disciples, Jesus gives a description of home and the certainty of my place in it.  "In my Father's house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you.  And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.  You know the way to the place where I am going" (John 14:2-4).  Compounding this hope, his words are followed by one of his most quoted promises.  As Thomas replied, "But Lord, we don't know where you are going, so how can we know the way?"  Jesus answered: "I am the way, and the truth, and the life.  No one comes to the Father except through me."

Christ is the herald of my homelessness and the harbinger of my home, even as he proclaims the kingdom among us and himself the way.  As G.K. Chesterton once penned,                                                                                      
"For men are homesick in their homes,
and strangers under the sun...
but our homes are under miraculous skies
where the Yule tale was begun."

The message of Christ's birth is a certain message of hope and home.  He who took on the fullness of humanity became homeless that I might come home.  He proclaims a kingdom about me and prepares me a place within it.  Today, I say, I WILL LET MY HEART PREPARE HIM ROOM.

Awaiting Rescue!

An Australian mining town will always remember the year 2006 of the dramatic rescue. News of the mining tragedy shook the small town after an earthquake killed one miner and trapped two others 3000 feet under the ground. For days that would turn into weeks, teams of miners bore through tons of rock; rescuers could only work one at a time on their backs in a cramped rescue tunnel, using hand-held tools to avoid caving. Meanwhile, the two trapped miners huddled into a four foot-tall cage and could only wait for rescuers to break through rock they knew was five times harder than concrete. Five days after the accident, the trapped miners began to hear the sounds of their rescuers. Six days later, the miners were located, contact was made, and hands passed food and hope through a crack in the walls that held them. Fourteen days after the accident, over 300 hours of waiting for rescue, the two miners were freed. "This is the great escape," said Bill Shorten, national secretary of the Australian Workers Union. "This is the biggest escape from the biggest prison."

As I was reading the story it filled my emotions with anxiety as I imagine it (its dramatic ending all the more vivid with mining stories in mind that did not end the same. I cannot begin to imagine what it would be like to be freed after such an ordeal).

Over seventy years ago from a pulpit in London, Dietrich Bonhoeffer described the image of a man trapped after a mining disaster in his book Christmas Sermons: Deep in the earth, dark as night, the man is cut off and alone. The supply of oxygen is limited. Food, water, and options are scarce; silence and fear are not. He knows his situation, and he can do nothing but wait. "He knows that up there, the people are moving about, the women and children are crying—but the way to them is blocked. There is no hope." But what if just then, in the distance, the sounds of tapping are heard—the sound of knocking, the sound of friends, the sound of deliverance?

This, said Bonhoeffer in December of 1933, is the hope of Advent: the coming of a deliverer, the drawing near of God to humankind, the arrival of Christ our rescuer. Those who are caught in darkness will see a great light. Those struggling in silence will stand up and hear the knocking. A voice is crying out of the wilderness: Who will have ears to hear it?

Advent teaches us how to wait. Bonhoeffer asks, "Can and should there be anything else more important for us than the hammers and blows of Jesus Christ coming into our lives?" In our waiting, should we not cry out as the first believers did, Come, Lord Jesus! This is the ancient cry of palpable hope—Maranatha!—Lord, come quickly! Advent teaches me to wait and watch, and to live expectantly, though I sit in the dark, though I find myselfs impatient. "When these things begin to take place," instructs Christ, "stand up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near" (Luke 21:28).

In the days of Mary and Joseph, Elizabeth and Zechariah, the people of Israel were living in a period of silence. It had been over 400 years since God had spoken of a coming Redeemer and his forerunner through the prophet Malachi. Malachi called the people again to anticipate and to be prepared for the day that was coming. Of course, in the quiet nights of 400 years even faithful men stumble and doubt.

But when I purposefully and intentionally listen, settling myself in soul silence that

in the distance there is knocking. There is the sound of hope drawing near, the sounds of God's reign in unexpected places. There are the sounds of saints who have gone before me and who proclaim their rescuer even in death. There is the sound of a promise: "Because I live, you shall live also" (John 14:19).

The world is still dark and lonely. I can not refute the fact. But every day a quiet voice calls out, "I stand at the door and knock." Christ has come. Christ is here. Christ will come again. My moment of rescue draws near.

After Black Friday............

Black Friday is the name our present has given the day after Thanksgiving. I discovered it is called "black" because retailers know it as the time of year when it is hoped that sales move from the margins of red or gray into the black and farther into profit margins. Evoking both buyer and seller competition, steep sales and loud advertisements make for a frenzied scene and the need for stamina. Now, I for one prefer to watch from home but still sense the fervor that begins on Black Friday and continues in a hectic race until Christmas. I noticed, that while I was not officially participating this past in the buying frenzy, I found myself analyzing how many customers were in the six check-out lines, how many items each were purchasing, as well as, which clerk seemed to be at the top of their game. In the moment, I said to myself, “Bill, just relax, be still and don’t get excited. It’s not going to be worth it.”


Yes, the commencement of the Christmas shopping season overshadows the commencement of a far quieter season. This coming Sunday; the season of Advent signals the coming of Christmas, in the Church world, though not in the way that Black Friday signals the coming of the same. "Advent is about the spirituality of emptiness," writes Joan Chittister, "of enough-ness, of stripped-down fullness of soul." It is a far cry from the hustle of the holidays that is a race for storing things up. Speed-hoarding through the days of Christmas preparation, Christmas itself even becomes anticlimactic. "Long before December 25th everyone is worn out," notes C.S. Lewis, in God In The Dock, "—physically worn out by weeks of daily struggle in overcrowded shops, mentally worn out by the effort to remember all the right recipients and to think out suitable gifts for them. They are in no trim for merry-making... They look far more as if there had been a long illness in the house." But, you know, the opposite is true. I believe Advent is a season meant to slow me down, to open windows of awareness, to trigger consciousness. It is about finding the kind of quiet and the sort of emptiness that can hold the fullness of God as an infant in my awareness.

Of course, for even the quietest of hearts, this God who becomes human, the incarnate Christ, is still a mystery. But mystery, like beauty and truth, is well worth stillness, wonder, and contemplation. And this mystery—the gift of a God who steps into the world he created—is rich enough to make the most distracted souls bow. "Let anyone with ears listen!" said Jesus repeatedly throughout his life on earth. "But to what will I compare this generation?" he added. "It is like children sitting in the market-places and calling to one another, 'We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we wailed, and you did not mourn'" (Matthew 11:15-17). I can open my mind to hear the great and unsearchable things I do not know, things like the Incarnation that I may never fully understand but am always invited to know further. Or I can look for all of Christmas to correspond with societal whims and unconscious distractions.

Christ will come regardless. The hope of Advent is that it is always possible to make room for him. I am reminded of a marvelous book, entitled: An interrupted Life: The Diaries 1941-1943, the writings by Etty Hillesum, a young Jewish woman who composed a remarkable series of journals in the darkest years of Nazi occupation before being sent to Auschwitz, where she died in 1943. In one of her entries, Etty wrote, "sometimes the most important thing in a whole day is the rest we take between two deep breaths, or the turning inwards in prayer for five short minutes." I am aware, when I think about it; Advent can be this simple; the invitation of Christ is this simple. Let anyone with ears listen! Contemplating Christmas need not mean aggressive lists and budgets, endless labor, and fretful commotion.

I ask myself isn't Advent, after all, about the riches of being empty-handed; empty-handed, so that I can fully hold the mystery before me and nothing less; empty-handed, like the God who came down from heaven without riches or power, but meek and small—and full of everything I need.

A Look in the Mirror

I ran across the 2006 story of Joyce Urch last week during a brief study of modern day miracles. Blinded by a hereditary illness 26 years previously, Joyce had lived amongst 5 kids, 12 grandkids, and 3 great-grandkids, some of whom she had known only by sound or touch. Rushed to the hospital with tremendous pain on an early January day in 2006, she was afraid she was about to lose not only all whom she loved but even her life. A few days after her admittance, Mrs. Urch suffered a serious heart attack and was nearing kidney failure; doctors did not expect her to live. It was only after a lifesaving operation and an unlikely recovery that Joyce was able to open her eyes again, a feat that shocked the entire family—herself included. Mrs. Urch woke up seeing.

Her husband describes the stunned reactions of a family indelibly marked by blindness suddenly given the gift of sight. At first he didn't believe her frenetic bedside declarations—"I can see! I can see!" He immediately asked her what color sweater he was wearing. "She leaned forward," said Mr. Urch, "and she just looked at me and said, 'Haven't you got old.' And I said, 'Wait 'til you have a look in the mirror.'"

In a Clinical Pastoral unit of pastoral counseling, we were required to examine the stages of human development and the principle crises each stage begets in the life of an individual. For many of us, understanding particular life events in the context of the stage of development in which they occurred compelled new depths for self-reflection. The loss of a parent, for instance, during the critical stage when trust or mistrust is developed suggests that trust may be an area of impact and concern. As I peered reflectively and retrospectively at each of these stages in my own life, I found myself startled at the clearer images in front of myself. Yet, looking closely in these mirrors, the images were not always immediately recognizable.

I cannot imagine what it would be like to look in a mirror after fifty years of knowing my face by touch and imagination alone. Just as I would be startled by my own likeness after an absence of self-reflection, Joyce Urch notes the difficulty of learning to recognize the stranger in the mirror. She said she is learning to see herself and the world around her—again.

In the striving of self-reflection and in the wake of existential wrestling, I similarly learn to see again and again. Arguably, like Joyce, I am learning to see myself again for the first time. In many ways, each developmental stage in my life places the same task before me all over again, though perhaps in new light: Who am I? Where did I come from? Where am I going? Why am I here?

Seldom do I fail to recall a time marked by restlessness in the stages of human development, a yearning for answers amidst turmoil or confusion. For many, it is the tender age of adolescence; for others it is the inquisitive years of college, the emptiness of a midlife crisis, the vulnerability of life in the aging lane. Though looking back at these formative events from infancy to adulthood is like looking at a picture I don't want to recognize, upon opening my ever drooping eye lids, I discover that I now am able to see what was there all along: another figure in the reflection standing beside me, the God who was there even when I was sure I was alone. J.R.R. Tolkien's words offer a telling picture for those convinced at what they do not see: "The world outside has not become less real because the prisoner cannot see it."

The stages and crises of development that most transform me are stages that inherently seem to bid me to ask the existential questions I was somehow meant to ask all along. To understand why a particular trauma of adolescence or lesson of young adulthood shaped me the way it did may be wearisome or frustrating, but in my attempts to revisit the formative nature of these years, I just may find myself treading on holy ground.

As Joseph learned on his way from the pit to the throne, the God who startles me is Lord even over the process.

An Ode to Sewer Pipes

Wow, what a let down yesterday! Here is a phrase I use when allowing myself to become emotionally low and dispirited: I feel like I want to commit “sewer pipes.” What added a deeper demintion, and always does, to my low ebb, is conversing with a couple dozen acquaintances, friends and family members who were having the same feelings. Then this morning, early into my devotional period, I was reminded, as a young boy, one of my favorite bible stories of the epic encounter between the prophet Elijah and the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel. Elijah faces off against 450 prophets of Baal in a contest pitting the God of Israel against the Canaanite god Baal. Which deity would answer the prayers of the respective prophets to consume the altar sacrifice?

This is an incident filled with dramatic tension and awesome displays of power. The Lord answers Elijah with fire from heaven that not only consumes the sacrifice, but also licks up every last drop of water poured out from not one, but four pitchers of water. The story ends with the destruction of the prophets of Baal and the peoples' declaration that the Lord is God.

Now, writing this later chapter of my life, I still love this story of Elijah and the prophets of Baal, but not for the reasons I loved it as a young boy. Instead, I love what seems to be an anti-climactic postscript to the story. Despite seeing the glory and power of God on display in such dramatic fashion, and winning a great victory, Elijah falls into what could likely be called depression. Threatened by Queen Jezebel, he runs for his life into the wilderness. There, under a lone broom tree, he prays to God to take his life, not once but two times. Commentator, Bill Long, in his piece of "Man on the Run," says "Those who have suffered mental anguish in their lives know all too well the depths to which Elijah has descended. He (and they) has entered the deep spots in the psychological ocean, and then has found a narrow slit in the ocean floor, a Marianas Trench of the soul, where he descends further still into the inky abyss. All he can think of is his desire to die." In my case, committing sewer pipes.

As one reading this story, this is a surprising turn of events. How could Elijah feel this way? After all, didn't he just see God mightily answer his prayer? One might expect a God who would reproach Elijah for feeling so badly, for his lack of faith, for his despair. And yet, the narrative offers no exhortation or chastening. Instead, an angelic messenger is touching Elijah, urging him to eat bread and water prepared for him by a heavenly servant. Then the angel comes again and feeds Elijah a second time urging him to "Arise, eat for the journey is too great for you."

Given God's firey display from heaven in the encounter with the prophets of Baal, truthfully, I expect another dramatic display from God. And indeed, as Elijah waits on Mount Horeb, the Mountain of God, he experiences a strong wind, and a mighty earthquake, and then a consuming fire; but with each of these cataclysms the story writer repeats a refrain: The Lord was not in the wind, or the earthquake or the fire. Instead, the Lord comes to Elijah in a gentle blowing. God meets Elijah at the very place of his despair, not with correction or reprimand, not with a "buck up and get going" or a "keep your chin up" but with a grace as gentle as a soft breeze.

Like Elijah, there are days when I feel at the height of heights, assured of all answers, victorious in my daily battles, maybe even confident of God's saving activity all around. But yesterday, like other days when I need permission to feel badly. Despair is my only friend and the obstacles and challenges of life conspire against faith, hope, and love. It is deeply encouraging to see that even in this place, God draws near to me this morning with gentleness.

The gentleness of God on display in Elijah's dark depression is the same God sung about in one of Israel's ancient psalms:

"Where can I go from your Spirit?

Or where can I flee from your presence?

If I make my bed in the nether world, behold you are there.

If I take the wings of the dawn, if I dwell in the remotest part of the sea,

even there your hand will lead me and your right hand will lay hold of me.

If I say, 'surely the darkness will overwhelm me, and the light around me will be night'

Even the darkness is not dark to you, and the night is as bright as the day.

Darkness and light are alike to you."

The experience I have had in throughout my faith history has been comforting news that God is not only available to me when I feel good, but makes his dwelling with me even in the darkness of despair. I often feel in my later years of distress that I simply have to avoid the problem, to "get out" of feeling badly. But, in fact, what is happening is that even in sorrow, even in my despair I have the hope that I am still being drawn by the gracious arms of God into closer communion. Bill Long notes, "What God wants is not so much our victories, but our life in the wilderness." As the story of Elijah bears witness, even in my LONG/LIFE wilderness God will prepare a meal, provide shelter, and speak gently into my fears.

I Seem To Have Selective Hearing

Matt Miller, an editorialist in the New York Times, in a piece entitled: "Is Persuasion Dead?" admits he feels the signs are not good. And though his own editorializing is itself an attempt to persuade, he brings up a subject often recognized but unquestioned; namely, our capacity for selective hearing is gigantic. "Best-selling books reinforce what folks thought when they bought them. Talk radio and opinion journals preach to the converted... Politicos huddle with like-minded souls in opinion cocoons that seem impervious to facts." Persuasion seems to have been replaced with preaching to the choir, for example; I only get telephone surveys and funding requests from the Republican party lately and I am particular about the choirs to which I want to listen. I try not to miss the Russ radio show.

When it comes to listening, Bettyann will tell you, I am quick to listen to the things I want to hear. My closest friends will tell you that I am also quick to listen to the things I think other people need to hear. Some years ago, in a book study with several couples on the subject of marriage, several of us mentioned the struggle to actually read the book for ourselves and not for our spouses. I found myself carefully reading the sections I hoped my other half would most carefully notice; another admitted circling and highlighting and handing it over. I'm not sure you can call our attempts half-hearted or good-hearted; for our hearts were not the ones we were putting on the line. Undoubtedly, we missed things that would have been good for us to hear ourselves. Though reading with our own eyes, we were listening for someone else.

Expanding on G.K. Chesterton's clever proverb that between one and two there is often a difference of millions, F.W. Boreham notes the massive difference between a congregation of one and a congregation of two: "A congregation of one takes every word in a direct and personal sense; but, in a congregation of two, each listener takes it for granted that the preacher is referring to the other."

Long after Jacob had tricked Esau out of his birthright, Jacob stood at a dead end. His brother was approaching and there was nowhere else to run. Fearful and distressed, he sent his family and a peace offering ahead of him. And Jacob was left alone. Yet, the text is sort of unclear about this. Immediately after Jacob is reported to be alone, it seems to tell me he is not: "And Jacob was left alone; and a man wrestled with him until daybreak" (Genesis 32:24).

At this time in life when it seems God is speaking most clearly to me is often the least pleasant. Yet perhaps it is in tears and distress that I stop listening for others, and find myself most desperate to hear God myself. Jacob was alone in the sense that there was finally no one else to manipulate, no one else to listen for, no brother or father to trick or blame. He was a congregation of one, wrestling with the beloved enemy who demands everything. When the stranger asked Jacob the very question he had once answered deceptively, there was no one to help twist words for him, no one to answer but him.

"What is your name?" the stranger asked.

"Jacob," he replied.

And the man said, "You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, because you have striven with God and with humans, and have prevailed."

Yes, while attending church and worshiping, with a like minded body of believers, is spiritually healthy, I also am invited to participate in a congregation of one. It is an invitation to wrestle, to lay down pretenses, and to peer at the face of God for myself.

On his way to see Esau the following morning, Jacob watched a new sun rise upon him as he left the place where he wrestled with God. Jacob walked away limping, but with the memory of seeing God face to face. He had heard for himself the voice of God. May I stay tuned this sixty ninth year of my life!

The Opposite of a Sense of Self-awareness – some extended thoughts of my last posting

I remember reading a story some years ago, learning that legal proceedings are not always exact pictures of justice.  On a man's first trip in his new motor home, he, while driving, left the wheel, stepped to where he had the coffee pot, to pour a cup.  Of course, I was aghast at the verdict when he took action against the motor home company for the carnage the wreck caused.  He was awarded a victory in the case for the simple reason; no place in the motor home operation manual did it give an instruction: “Do not leave the wheel while the motor home is in motion.”
A similarly troubling picture of justice arises when a person is trying to help a victim, but ends up becoming the victim herself—such as when a passerby stops to administer CPR and winds up, for whatever reason, with a lawsuit on her hands. A newspaper column by Abigail Van Buren, known to her readers as "Dear Abby," lamented the increasing need for Good Samaritans to stop and consider the risk before providing assistance. While Abby herself noted there was no excuse to withhold help, one reader was insistent. In places without a "Good Samaritan law," which removes the liability of the one providing assistance, "people who offer a helping hand place themselves potentially at financial and emotional risk." She continued, "I only hope that I have the presence of mind in the future to withhold assistance in a state that has no Good Samaritan law." While the law of human nature seems to assure the majority of people will pass by an accident assuming that someone else will help out, the laws of litigation seem to warn Good Samaritans to watch their backs altogether. Consequently, in many cases, no one does anything. The victim remains the victim; the Samaritan remains unscathed.

I suppose it should not come as a surprise that we have hyper-individualized one of the most non-individualistic characters in all of storytelling. The very point of the parable of the Good Samaritan is to teach that I cannot hold these hierarchical distinctions, whether thinking in terms of race, religion, or personal liability. By the very definition Jesus offered, the Samaritan's presence of mind is the exact opposite of self-awareness. He places himself in the center of harm's way (not knowing if the thieves are still nearby), not to mention the tremendous disdain for showing disregard to cultural norms (he was a Samaritan who should have been keeping to himself). The assurance of coming out unscathed could hardly be the Samaritan's motive for reaching out. On the contrary, the Samaritan places himself in a position where he is certain to bear the cost.

While it is indeed regrettable that the current state of the world seems to necessitate self-consciousness in dealing with our neighbors, it is both appalling and unreasonable that I might assume this was not the same scenario for the crowd who first heard the story. It might seem to reason that the Good Samaritan only helped because it was not a liability for him, giving myself a rational exemption: "If it weren't for the law, I would be more than willing to see that person as my neighbor." In fact, the one who first asked the question that merited Jesus's telling of the parable was thinking quite similarly. His very question, "Who is my neighbor?" betrays his philosophy that the world can be classified in terms of commodities: "There are those I am responsible to help, and there are those I am not responsible to help." And he bases these distinctions on his reading of the law. Albeit a different kind of law than the laws that discourage from helping today, it is a similar use of legalism all the same.

Yet Jesus calls the questioner away from his legalistic mindset with a story that turns these categories into smoke and mirrors. Instead of the stance of self-awareness that asks "What will happen to me if I stop and help this man?" a far better question is posed on these lips of mine who has much to lose: "What will happen to this man if I don't stop?" Setting aside the categories that could easily hold him back, the Good Samaritan has room to hold the very commandment on which all the law and the prophets hang: You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and your neighbor as yourself. With this wisdom in hand, the Good Samaritan, me and every other person that carries his presence of mind today, is not far from the kingdom of God.

Wrong Answer For A Long Time

There is no telling how many times, "love your neighbor as yourself," has been at the forefront of my thinking and no telling how long I have misinterpreted "who my neighbor is. I have often responded to the “who is my neighbor” question by answering; everybody and anybody on earth. Closer – the folks next door. Professionally and pastorally, those who are sick, dying, and all who are associated in grief.


This morning, I realize how faulty my thinking has been! As a friend of mine once said to me, Bill, you are in the right church, but the wrong pew.  I was reading the story of the good Samaritan and heard what Jesus said was the answer to the question of, Who is my neighbor? In the story He is telling (see Luke 10:29-37) he ends by asking, Which do you think, proved himself a neighbor to the man who fell into the bandits' hands?" The neighbor, Jesus makes clear, is not the poor many laying on the side of the road, stripped, beaten, and half dead, but the Samaritan who crossed the road, "bandaged his wounds, poring oil and wine on them, . . .lifted him onto his own mount and took him to an inn and looked after him." My neighbor is the one who crosses the road for me!

Sadly, I'm Good at Distraction

Me thinks, Blaise Pascal captured the spirit of our present age prophetically and profoundly, hundreds of years ago, when he wrote these words: "Being unable to cure death, wretchedness, and ignorance men have decided, in order to be happy, not to think about such things."

It was on this past week’s fabulous vacation where I experienced “not thinking about such things.” What a joy to explore, the reality of changes occurring over the past fifty years since my boyhood’s, “Western stomping grounds.” Of mountainous landscapes, large and tiny communities, flows of creeks and rivers, bettle kills, and travel routes. With utter amazement, I experienced facinating changes in distant relatives, life-time friends, and acquaintances. It was in the visiting, and sharing life’s twists and turns that inevitably we came face to face, time and time again with the reality of suffering and the specter of death. We just could not leave those events from our stories.  Yet, I noticed how quickly the conversations of such subjects, albeit unconscious, changed, by what I define as distractions. Sometimes it was scenery, wildlife, a picture album, a pet, television program, political conversation, physical ailments, recipes and a marinade of other things. Now, I confess, I am guilty of using the distractions technique as well. At times, I have used the technique through juggling of priorities, the relentless busyness of my age, study or just noise. My life is so full that I rarely give myself space or time to reflect. Maybe recognition of the distraction in others, this past week, is the reason I have become more aware and realize how I fill my life with mindless consumption that numbs me to the eventuality of my mortal condition and my finitude.

The advertising industry is not unaware of American’s propensity to consumptive distraction. I read that marketers spent over 295 billion dollars in total media advertising in 2007. I can’t imagine how much in 2012! I’m sure it would boggle the mind. Do you think that perhaps it might be that we mistakenly assume that our vitality is inextricably bound up in our ability to consume?

My experience as a professional chaplain makes it seems easy to understand how fear of death and suffering would compel people to live lives of distraction. Yet, the cost of that distraction is a pervasive and deadening apathy—apathy not simply as the inability to care about anything deeply, but the diminishment for engagement that comes from caring about the wrong things. Kathleen Norris laments in Acedia and Me: A Marriage, Monks, and A Writer's Life: "It is indeed apathy's world when we have so many choices that we grow indifferent to them even as we hunger for still more novelty. We discard real relationships in favor of virtual ones and scarcely notice that being overly concerned with the thread count of cotton sheets and the exotic ingredients of gourmet meals can render us less able to care about those who scrounge for food and have no bed but the streets."

I become sad when thinking that my inability to recognize my own mortality and to live my life in light of the fact that I will die leads to the diminishment of my ability to genuinely care for others—because my care, by its very nature, will demand my willingness to suffer, and to lose my life for someone else. The more I love, the more I open myself up to vulnerability and the possibility of pain. And yet, if I choose against loving engagement, I am left with a diminished and distracted life.

The ancient Hebrew poets, while meditating on the brevity of life, prayed, "So teach us to number our days that we may present to you a heart of wisdom" (Psalm 90:12). It was the inevitability of death that motivated this prayer for wisdom for living. This was a wisdom that didn't try to hide from the realities of life—be they joys or sorrows—but rather sought to keep finitude ever before it. Indeed the poem ends with a cry for God to "confirm the work of our hands." Numbering life's days led to meaningful engagement in work—and this was the mark of wisdom.

Jesus, himself, faced his own death with intention and purpose as he walked the way of the cross, not only up the hill to Golgotha, but also as he offered his life in loving service to those around him. "I am the Good Shepherd...and I lay down my life for the sheep....No one has taken it away from me, but I lay it down on my own initiative" (John 10:14a-18). The way of wisdom demonstrated by the life of Jesus calls me to engage my mortality as a catalyst for purposeful living. While following Jesus insists on my laying down my life in his service, it can be done in the hope that abundant life is truly possible even in the darkest of places. For the one who laid his life down is the one who was raised. He is the one who declared, "I am the resurrection and the life; the one who believes in me will live even though he dies."

Sadly, being mindful of my own death sometimes leads to distraction, yet, if I choose, it can lead me to wise engagement.

I'M GOING TO REBEL

Within the episodic four days of reunion with my friend of 44 years ( I alluded to him in my last post) the subject of prayer arose. He made the statement that when something is "wrong," he prays that God makes it "right." At the moment, the statement made absolutely no impression on me. But some days later, listening to a radio talk show, the host said, "most people in our country are satisfied with the status quo and until there is rebellion against the status quo, there will be absolutely no change." I was so stricken, convicted and quickened that I stopped what I was doing. No doubt it is the feisty in me that caused my heart to beat faster and my eyes light up at the thought. To rebel against the status quo in this light is to challenge life where it has resigned itself to something less. Rebellion is for bring about rebirth and reformation where life and/or faith is stale. Immediately, I took up a note pad and carpenters pencil, making note of what my friend believed and practiced; fueled by the comments of the talk show host. So in a few short paragraphs, I attempt to explain my idea of praying, at times, with an element of rebellion.

Candidly, it is a sorely honest but sad response that I have had of the world today: “it is what it is.” And it won't change anything to worry about it. Prayer in this sense is useless. The here and now of suffering is untouchable.

From headline to headline, channel to channel, conversation to conversation, I find the weariness of life and the problem of a dark world screaming at me, and in many ways have grown to see it as an unchangeable reality. Particularly, in the political maze. I realize I have come to terms with the world as it is, it is only because I have come to refuse thinking about how it could be, or how it was supposed to be, or how I could even have an idea that something is wrong in the first place. It is not that I am unconscious of the injustice, suffering, and even evil around me, but most times, I feel utterly powerless to do anything about it.

It is to this soul of mine that Christianity speaks. Every prophet, every action of Jesus, and movement of God, holds forth the declaration: This is not the way it's supposed to be!

Prayer, in this sense, is rebelling against the status quo of a world going wrong. It is refusing to come to terms with an unjust, dark and evil world. Prayer remembers not only that the world as I find it can be changed, but that it should be changed, and that there is one who can change it. It is at his feet, even in my weariness, I want to sit.

As the psalmist has prayed,

Hear my voice when I call, O LORD;
be merciful to me and answer me.
My heart says of you, 'Seek his face!'
Your face, LORD, I will seek.

Jesus instructed his followers to pray, "Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven" (Matthew 6:9,10). In prayer I can stand in rebellion against a world that is not hallowing the name of God, a world not looking for signs of the kingdom, a world wholly uninterested in doing the will of anyone but self. Where did I get off track? I know that the nature of prayer, as Christ taught, is a persistent posture toward God as sovereign, an undeterred vision of what the kingdom is, can, and ought to be, a vision of what God intended. Cognitive Dissidence? Maybe, but then again, have I just become sick and tired of being sick and tired of it all; hunkering and bunkering down?

As a professed Christian, I am convinced that I need to seek the face of God not to escape reality but to find reality! I need to stand before the sovereign in His kingdom with all that is here and now—with pain and sickness, with goodness and mercy, with all that is unjust and corrupt, and all that is right and beautiful. As a strong believer, stand with confidence in Christ that I shall see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. For His is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever.

 

COGNITIVE DISSONANCE

Cognitive dissonance, in the study of psychology, is the internal tension that results when our experience doesn't match our beliefs and values. It is a sense of unease when I encounter something that contradicts what I have held to be true. The older I get the more often I experience this tension in the course of learning new ideas. But perhaps dissonance is felt most acutely when it occurs in the realm of faith commitments. A good example of this came about the other day when a friend (whom I have not seen in 44 years) and I were conversing about the aspects of temptation and how we have a propensity to follow our base instincts, after sixty years of Christian discipleship. We contemplated such questions as: How could dear friends even consider a divorce if marriage is God's ideal? How is it that my prayers go unanswered if I have been so faithful to pray? How do I reconcile my personal or the global experience of suffering with a view of a good and loving God?

Now, those who have never experienced (or noticed) cognitive dissonance as a reality in their own lives might be quick to offer all kinds of explanations for me, who doesn't find it quite as easy to reconcile the spaces between beliefs and experience. They might advise and explain with something like: you have drifted away from our moral center. Or that I have not studied the Scripture enough, or prayed enough. Maybe, that I have not understood right doctrine, or that I must confess. And there is no doubt, in my mind, that surely there are times when all of these explanations may be true.

Yet I am often unsettled from my own tendency to explain dissonance away, when I look at the doubts of John the Baptist. The gospels portray John with the intensity of moral outrage, zeal and tenacity. The courageous cousin of Jesus preached repentance resolutely. In preparation for Jesus's earthly ministry, he baptized Jesus in the Jordan River. He stood against the immorality and hypocrisy of those who were religious and political leaders. John was resolute in his ministry as the forerunner to the Messiah. Even as his own disciples came undone and complained that the crowds who once clamored to see him were now flocking to Jesus, John stood clear in his calling:

"You yourselves bear me witness, that I have said, 'I am not the Messiah,' but 'I have been sent before him'" (John 3:26-28).

Yet all of this background creates a dramatic contrast once John was imprisoned. His resolve was shaken. Both Matthew and Luke's gospels record his dissonance: "Now when John in prison heard of the works of Jesus, he sent word by his disciples, and said to him, 'Are you the expected one, or shall we look for someone else?'" (Matthew 11:3; Luke 7:20) Here was John experiencing a void between what he believed about Jesus and his own life's reality. If Jesus is the Messiah, John must have wondered, why am I sitting in this jail? The Messiah John proclaimed would "thoroughly clear his threshing floor" and "burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire" (Matthew 3:12). The Messiah was coming to rid Israel—and indeed the world—of evil. Yet in John's day to day existence in his cold prison cell, evil had won the day. "Are you the expected one, or shall we look for someone else?"

John's dissonance is not unlike my own voids between what I believe and what I experience. Yet the suffering that results from the gaps, according to author Scott Cairns, writes in THE END OF SUFFERING, "[These also] can become illuminating moments in which we see our lives in the context of a terrifying, abysmal emptiness, moments when all of our comfortable assumptions are shown to be false, or misleading, or at least incomplete." The gap between what I, like John, believe about the nature and ministry of the Messiah and the reality of a Jesus who is free from my comfortable assumptions often creates unbearable dissonance.

Jesus acknowledged that his ministry would be disruptive, and even be misunderstood. In responding to John's doubts, Jesus said, "Blessed is the one who keeps from stumbling over me" (Matthew 11:6). Surely, the space between what I believe and what I experience often cause me to stumble and fall. Yet, as Cairns suggests, might exploring those spaces also illuminate new paths of discovery from Jesus's own life and ministry? The spaces I research and experience often hold the treasure of new insight and the beauty of a more faithful devotion if I am willing to let go of my "comfortable assumptions" and dig deep, where what is precious and most valuable is often found in the deepest places of dissonance.

Crossing My Sea

The moment was filled with emotion.  Before this group of two to three million people lay the waters of the Red Sea. Behind them rose the dust from the hoofs and chariots of their former slave-masters, the Egyptians.  There was no way to go forward.  As they faced their moment of challenge, they discovered there was room to go in only one direction—backwards!

I have been tempted again, lately to go backwards?  Backward to the "good ole days" when the prices were lower, the journeys were shorter, the trousers were longer, the weather was better, the pressure was lesser, the currency was stronger, the youth were kinder, the music was softer, and the world was safer.  My mind has this amazing ability to forget what I am meant to remember and remember what I am meant to forget.  The Israelites were no exception.  They said to Moses, "Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you brought us to the desert to die?  What have you done to us by bringing us out of Egypt?  Didn't we say to you in Egypt, 'Leave us alone; let us serve the Egyptians?  It would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the desert!" (Exodus 14:11-12).  As someone rightly said, "It took one night for God to take Israel out of Egypt, but it took forty years to take Egypt out of Israel!"

Return.  Go back.  But "to whom or to what?" reads the telltale sign on that dead-end road! 

In fact, the key word in the book of Hosea is "return."  The prophet uses the word 22  times in his prophesy.  The people of Israel were to seriously consider the admonition, "Come let us return to the Lord" (Hosea 6:1).

Likewise, as the Israelites stood at the edge of the Red Sea I am reminded that they were a generation that had witnessed the ten powerful plagues that befell Egypt.  They were the very people to whom the Lord had spoken in the words of Moses:  "I am the Lord, and I will bring you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians.  I will free you from being slaves to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgment.  I will take you as my own people and I will be your God" (Exodus 6:6-7).  They were also the very people whose firstborns were spared on the night of the Passover and who were being led in the wilderness by the Lord himself who had revealed himself in a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night.

I think it strange how my mind works!  I face the waters of my Red Sea and the approaching army of present day issues, with so rich a faith experience, and yet concede that life of yesteryears was a better deal.

Yet by contrast, isn't it strange how God works?  God takes no offence.  God does not disappear.  God does not pour down his judgment.  Instead, God stands by me; ungrateful and lacking in memory.  All because it is not in God's nature to forget a promise! 

Did Moses know how God would deal with the laws of the physical world when he raised his staff over the sea?  Did Joshua know how God would work beyond the imaginings of architecture when they marched around Jericho?  Did Daniel know how God would deal with the natural instincts of lions as he was lowered into the den?  No they didn't.  All they knew was their God.  And today as well, I, Bill, who knows God, is determined to live not by explanations, but by promises.  As the old, old song goes, “I am determined; I’ve made up my mind.”  What am I waiting for?  I’m crossing my sea!

I’m Living a Terrific Existence

“I know what I’m going to do for the next year, and the next year, and the year after that...I’m going to shake the dust off of this crummy old town and I’m going to see the world, says George Bailey in Frank Capra’s “It’s a Wonderful Life.” For my youngest friends who follow my blog, you can goggle it if you have no idea of the film I’m referring too.

The film follows the life of a George Bailey in his small town and while the film has a happy ending, it exposes the creeping despair and bitterness that comes from the loss of George’s dreams. The film offers a powerful visual of the gap that forms between knowing what George will do “the next year and the year after that” and the reality of living that leaves him wondering whether his is a wonderful life.

Despite the film’s often saccharine sentimentality, (my thoughts, but not my wife’s), it nevertheless presents a realistic picture of lost or abandoned dreams. Like the film’s main character, George, in my sixty nine years of living, I have had dreams of “seeing the world” and “kicking the dust off” of my ordinary life and existence. My ideal plans and goals called me out into an ever-expanding future of possibility and adventure.

It is in this sense, viewing the film the other evening, for the umpteenth time, it offered me the opportunity to enter into its narrative a chance to look into the chasm between my many cherished ideals and the often sober reality of my life. The glimpse into what is often a gaping chasm of lost hopes and abandoned dreams a frightening opportunity to let go. Facing the death of my dreams head on forced a moment of decision. Will I become bitter by fixating on what has been lost, or will I walk forward in hope on a path of yet unseen possibility?

I am discovering, as I grow older, that when my hands grasped tightly and tenaciously around ideals, it is best that I give way to new realities. It is in M. Craig Barnes’ book, “When God Interrupts: Finding New Life Through Unwanted Change” that I caught hold of his suggestion that the journey away from my own sense of what makes for a terrific life is actually the process of conversion. He writes: “It is impossible to follow Jesus and not be led away from something. That journey away from the former places and toward the new place is what converts us. Conversion is not simply the acceptance of a theological formula for eternal salvation. Of course it is that, but it is so much more. It is the discovery of God’s painful, beautiful, ongoing creativity along the way in our lives.”

John 21:18 comes into focus a bit better for me, as well. “For whoever wishes to save his life shall lose it; but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s shall save it.” As Jesus prophesied to Peter, this invitation is to a place “where you do not wish to go” (John 21:18). The journey away from “the former place” is hard; because I kick at the idea and don’t want to abandon the places I think make for a great life.

Significantly, Barnes argues that a wonderful life on our own terms is not a realistic option. “In spite of all our carefulness and hard work, we probably will not achieve the life of our dreams. In fact, our dreams are precisely the things that have abandoned us. But it is then that we hear the invitation of Jesus Christ, ‘Now is the opportunity to step out, walk forward and give your life to God.’” It continues to be a frightening invitation, to be sure, but one indeed that offers the possibility of a terrific life.

Learning to Write My Biography

One of the most favorite and enjoyable categories of books that I read are biographical. Although Billy Graham’s last book: Nearing Home: Life, Faith, and Finishing Well is not a pure biography, I have reread it for the third time. I wound't say it is a great book, rather; written by a great man. Reading the book brought tears to my eyes, and prayer of confession, because I have been putting off or denying some of the areas Graham addresses. He doesn't water down the difficulties of aging, but he is helpful in showing practically what to focus on so that I can finish my life well and leave a positive legacy for those I leave behind. And that is, in large part, for my enjoyment of reading biographies.

Thomas Carlyle, the Scottish philosopher, wrote, “Biography is the most universally pleasant and profitable of all reading.” I think that is true because in reading the accounts of men and women of history, I find myself living in many places; and I hear fragments of my own story. The questions and thoughts I consider my own suddenly appear before me in the life of another, sometimes long before my existance. The struggle I find wearying is given meaning in the story of someone else who overcame much of the account of one who has lived beautifully in the midst of loss. It may be that I move toward biography because I seem to know that life is too short to learn only by my own experience.

My spiritual (Christian) worldview embraces a similar idea. The most direct attempt in scripture to define faith is done so by the writer of Hebrews. The eleventh chapter begins, “Now faith is being sure of what you hope for and certain of what you do not see.“ Perhaps recognizing the weight and mystery of faith and the difficulty of defining it, the writer of Hebrews immediately moves from this definition to descriptions of men and women who have lived "sure of hope" and "certain of the unseen." From Noah and Abraham, to Rahab and saints never named, I am given an image of faith moving across the pages of history, the gift of God in the strange stories of the faithful, the hope by which countless lives were guided. In this brief gathering of biographies, I glean that faith is understood functionally as much as philosophically, and that faith itself is more fully understood by looking at the lives of the faithful. For in between the lines that describe faithful men and women is the God who makes faith possible in the first place.

At the end of his compelling list, the writer of Hebrews concludes that since I am surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, I am likewise invited to run with the thought of God's enduring influence, confident that God is moving in my biography and yet beyond it. Amen

Observation of Dancing while Feeling Lonely

Today, June 7, 2012, Bettyann and I will have been married forty six years. During those years I can not count the times I have looked to her to take my loneliness away. At times, it has been, “please hold me, touch me, speak to me, pay attention to me, agree with me.” Frankly, it has taken too long for me to discover that the expectation of Bettyann taking my loneliness away doesn’t happen when I ask for it. In fact, she has often suffered feelings of inadequacy, to the point of oppression; by my demands and ran away, leaving me in despair.


My discovery: As long as I approach another person from my loneliness, no mature relationship can develop. Clinging to Bettyann, my children, grandchildren, most intimate friends, in loneliness, is suffocating and eventually becomes destructive. For love to be possible I need the courage to create space between myself and those closest to me and trust that the space will allow us to dance together.

Time Heals

It is impossible to count, over my lifetime, when wounded and bleeding, well meaning people, intent on encouraging me have said, "Bill, time is a healer.  They mean to say, "Bill, you will eventually forget the wounds inflicted on and you be able to live on as if nothing has ever happened."   In my personal experience, that has never happened.  I never received healing by waiting.  All that has really happend is that I simply ignored reality.  On the other hand, when I changed the meaning of the term "time heals," to that of being faithful in a difficult relationship that lead me to a deeper understanding the ways I had hurt other, then there is much truth in it for me.  Now, for me, "time heals" means not passively waiting but actively working with my pain and trusting in the possibility of forgiveness and reconciliation.  

I’m Going to Say and Ask It . . . Now!

It may be "just my age!"  I’m not sure, but I’ve been thinking that there are a few things that I wish I had said or asked before it’s too late.  This wishful thinking may have been introduced by a childhood friend, Donna, who is visiting as much of the world as possible, before she is physically unable to travel so far and long. For me it is not only what I wish I’d said, but also what I wish I’d asked.  My father had only a sister who was much older than him and died twenty-five years ago. He died seven years ago.  My mother is now plagued with dementia and two sisters living; none of which have a strong recollection of their family history. 

On the other hand, my interest has taken me to develop a genealogical map from securing birth/death documents, tombstone rubbings and genealogical information from the LDS archives in Utah.  When gathered and studied, my appetite was only increased, as questions, arose, like: why did my Protégée immigrant grandfather serve in the Canadian Armed Forces during WWI instead if the United States Armed Forces?  I have a whole list of questions I would give anything for the chance to ask – but it’s too late.  Then there is the issue of calling my mother everyday to tell her I love her. She no longer recognizes the ringing of the cell phone on a lanyard around her neck.  If only I lived closer.

I realize for some regrets, there are possibilities for do-overs and second chances.  Those goals like getting more education or traveling much more, for example, can still be redeemed in these years of my late sixties.  Leaving critical things unsaid or unasked, however, from begging forgiveness to saying, “I love you,” can’t be changed after the person is gone.  Here is where the simplest of actions – a conversation – will be a great regret preventer.

Leaving Is A Pain

She is close to thirteen, even closer to surpass her grandmother’s height, and described as, beautiful, and smart by her grandfather.  All this and much more characteristics rush through my thinking this past Sunday as we stood together for a picture after Easter brunch.  The thoughts about my eldest granddaughter continued as we hugged one another; Bettyann and I going our way and Grace and her parents going theirs.  I thought and expressed that we wouldn’t be experiencing her presence very much longer and noticed my emotive  response of pain.    

Every time I make the decision to love someone, I open myself to great suffering, because those I love most cause not only tremendous joy but also great pain.  And the greatest pain comes from leaving.  Looking back, it was when my girls left home, then when their husbands took them away.  Now, it’s when my granddaughters chose going to an overnights sleep with friends in place of spending the night with Papa and Meme.  It’s when Bettyann and I leave each other for a few weeks, when I say good-by to my mother who lives fifteen hundred miles away, when a beloved friend leaves to go back home for the season, or dies, the pain of leaving can tear me apart. 

I’m learning, if I want to avoid the suffering of leaving, I will never experience the joy of loving.  I am witness to the fact that love is stronger than fear, life stronger than death, hope stronger than despair.  God help me to trust that the risk of loving is always worth taking. 

The Very End

The hearse drove away, headed to some place in which I would never step foot.  Though her ashes would later be returned to us, it was the driver, unknown and anonymous, who accompanied her body to the last place on earth it would be.  At the sight of them driving away, I instinctively felt I was letting her down, falling somewhere short of my role as one left behind.  Shouldn't I have taken her all the way, accompanied her to the very end?

There is something about the human spirit that inherently understands the importance of caring for the dead, of moving them carefully from the place of death to a place of farewell.  What we have come to know commonly as the funeral is based on this fundamentally human behavior.  It is understood that the dead cannot remain among the living, and yet their removal from society is never a task met with levity.  Evidences of tender ceremony are noted in the oldest human burial sites ever found.(1)  This movement of the dead from the place of the living to a place of parting is full of tremendous symbolic meaning. 

For British statesman and avowed atheist Roy Hattersley, this meaning and symbolism has unavoidably been a complicated part of his worldview.  For years he has disapproved of the funeral service, finding it a paradoxical attempt to soften the blow of darkness, with clergy fulsome about the dead man's virtues and discreet about his vices, and congregations gathered more as a matter of form than feeling.  In the mind (or at the funeral) of one who remains stubbornly addicted to the unpleasant truth that life simply ends as haphazardly as it began, there is no room or reason for the promise of resurrection and the pomp of certain comfort.

And yet, Hattersley writes in The Guardian of an experience that almost converted him to the belief that funerals ought to be encouraged nonetheless.  His conclusion was forged as he sang the hymns and studied the proclamations of a crowd that seemed sincere: "[T]he church is so much better at staging farewells than non-believers could ever be," he writes.  "'Death where is thy sting, grave where is they victory?' are stupid questions.  But even those of us who do not expect salvation find a note of triumph in the burial service.  There could be a godless thanksgiving for and celebration of the life of [whomever].  The music might be much the same.  But it would not have the uplifting effect without the magnificent, meaningless words."(2)

Hattersley's attempt to remain logically consistent from his views of life to his experience of death is admirable.  For it is indeed peculiar that an uncompromising atheist can conclude there is something almost necessary in a distinctly Christian burial.  If what makes for human existence is, in essence, the material, bodies without any facet of the sacred, then the act of moving a body to the place of farewell is far more a matter of disposal than hallowed journey.  In other words, Hattersley's worldview leaves no room for a "decent send-off," a beautiful, last farewell.  And yet, he is far from alone in his need for it.  As Thomas Long notes in his study of funeral practice, "[D]eath and the sacred are inextricably entwined."(3)

The Christian burial is moved by this understanding.  Human beings are seen neither as "just" bodies nor as souls in temporary shells, but as dust (material) into which God has breathed life.  We are embodied within a story that the Christian funeral tells again and again: Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again.  Because Jesus traveled through death to God before us, Christians believe it possible to make the same journey.  Because Christ has journeyed from birth to tomb to the Father, we take this journey again and again with those we love and let go.  In this embodied gospel of death and resurrection, suffering and redemption, humanity's instinctive need to accompany a body from here to there is strikingly met with the particulars of "here" and "there"—namely, life here among the body of Christ to life resurrected in the presence of the Father.  And this is why we wont go the distance with the body, why we accompany them to the grave, weep at their tombs and follow them with singing: because it is a journey we don't want to miss.

At her request, I will, in a few short days, take her ashes out to sea.

(1) Thomas Long, Accompany Them with Singing: The Christian Funeral (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 3.

(2) Roy Hattersley, "A Decent Send-off," The Guardian, January 16, 2006, accessed March 20, 2010, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/jan/16/religion.uk2.

(3) Thomas Long, Accompany Them with Singing: The Christian Funeral (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 4.

Living True to Myself When Surrounded by Ambiguity

A dear friend is walking a tremendously crooked road without the advantage of being able to interpret signage. Now that's all I am going to say about it; except that in walking with him over two thousand miles by telephone, I began to discover that my mind and heart desires clarity.  I like to have a clear picture of any situation, a clear view of how things fit together, eyeballing with consecrated focus my personal and world's problems.  On the other hand, just like nature's colors and shapes mingle without dependable distinction, my life does not  give the clarity I am looking for. When giving closer attention and intentionally thinking about this, the boarders are mostly vague, ambiguous, and hard to discern, between evil and good, love and hate, care and neglect, guilt and blamelessness.

Even with the Word, as central to my walk, it is not easy to live faithfully in a world full of ambiguities.  I so envy those persons to whom God speaks to so clearly each step of life's journey.  For me, I think, I am going to try and make wise, godly choices without needing to be entirely sure.  Is that part of "keeping the faith?"   

Longing To Get Back

According to audio-ecologist’s “Searching for Silence”, Gordon Hempton, it's not easy to find silence in the modern world. "If a quiet place is one where you can listen


for 15 minutes in daylight hours without hearing a human-created sound, there are no quiet places left in Europe. There are none east of the Mississippi River. And in the American West? Maybe 12." We live in a noisy world.



Most people assume that silence is the absence of noise, but it is not. Hempton continues, "For true silence is not noiselessness... silence is the complete absence of all audible mechanical vibrations, leaving only the sounds of nature at her most natural. Silence is the presence of everything, undisturbed." I know of one of these silent places Hempton describes. Tucked in a “holler” on the north side of School house Mountain, just up the road from the sleepy village of Stechoa in western end of North Carolina. No human noise, only the chickadee and occasional Blue Jay or the chatter of a gray squirrel from its nest. And at times the gentle wind as it dances around me and the water spilling over from a small cistern.



Being able to hear the sounds of nature is an anticipated and far too often rare gift in my world. A world bombarded by artificial noise. Of course, it is often the case that I use noise as a distraction from truly listening. I often drown out the silence by my own busyness, filling my day with constant movement and activity, so that I rarely take the time to pay attention, and to tune my ears not only to the sound around me, but also to the stirrings of my own heart and mind. In all honesty, sometimes I am afraid of what I might hear if I do truly listen.





Of course, paying attention in silence is not always as benevolent or delightful as hearing the natural sounds around me. Keeping silence intentionally reminds me of my smallness in a vast universe, and brings to light many of my deepest and darkest thoughts and feelings. It’s when I clear my ears of external noise, I hear my own thoughts. Many thoughts that arise in silent spaces are ugly, distorted, and grave. Listening in silence exposes my pretense and self-righteousness, my falsehoods, hypocrisy and self-importance. There is little room to hide. At times I am left with myself in all my brokenness and I dislike the sense, intently.



And yet, listening to the thoughts of my darkened heart and mind gives the opportunity for a type of reorganization and evaluation, emotionally and spiritually. If you will; a renewal. There comes a new direction for living. More space to listen, not only to myself, but others, and most importantly, the still, small voice of God.



Author Alan Jones has written in “Soul Search,” that "silence, in the end, can become a healing and comforting experience." When I pay attention in the silence, a space opens up where I can meet with God. Unlike prayers where I do all the talking, Jones describes the listening posture of prayer as "a daily willingness to place ourselves on the threshold and wait there." Indeed, he goes on to suggest that cultivating quiet in our lives becomes the time when we move from the agitated periphery of our lives, identifying with our lives without qualification or added information to simply a silent interior space.



For me, paying attention in silence is not simply for the sake of listening to the often unheard sounds around me nor is it totally ascetically-motivated sensory deprivation. Instead, it is tuning my heart and mind to attend to sounds that truly matter. For me, as a Christian, prayerful listening is the opportunity to attune my heart to the voice of God. Experience has lead me to believe that my silenced heart is often the only fitting response to the overwhelming holiness of God's presence. As the ancient prophet wrote: But the Lord is in his holy temple. Let all the earth be silent before Him.



Yes, I need to quickly reclaim some days at Quite Rest. Where the silence is often lonely, as the gospel writers suggest. And yet, there, in my lonely, silent spaces of the hollers of Western North Carolina, the still, small voice of God can be heard.