Advent Day 23

You can’t get here from there           

We used to use the term “paradigm shift” a good bit to describe dramatic changes in the way one would see the world.  I also remember the term “watershed”, and in that image I picture a dam that is holding back water that suddenly bursts, and the water crashes out.  That is close to describing what I think and experience in the way ideas take a hold of a person…and to somehow explaining how I suddenly find myself in such a different place than I inhabited just a few years ago.

I heard Amy Grant (of all people) once say that she had a jar of ocean water in her room as a child.  And she imagined what the ocean was like and could probably describe something of it.  But then in her late teens, she went to the beach for the first time.  She was awestruck.  It was nothing that she had imagined…it was so much more.  It’s not that the jar of water wasn’t some fragment of what “ocean” is, it’s just that it doesn’t begin to encompass it.   The moment she steps from the car, sinks her feet in the sand, runs to the water’s edge, feels the iciness of the waves, or just simply sees it, breathes it…it’s a watershed.

One of my favorite thoughts about truth was the Hebrew idea that if something were true, it would hold water.  It wouldn’t collapse or burst when you put pressure on it.  In fact, it would expand when it was filled.  If it eventually burst, then it wasn’t true.

I have previously described my thoughts and beliefs like horses at the starting gate.  Imagine that I had built a horse track. And the gate was a framework for all that I believed- sort of a systematic way of organizing my thoughts-and restraining them.  It’s sturdy and it’s locked.  But then, these wild and powerful horses are led into each stall.  They snort and kick and butt the gates.  They are contained until someone rings the bell and opens the doors.  Then “they’re off!!!”  Once they run, there is no stuffing them back in, and that gate no longer holds them.  You just have to ride it out, see which horses carry you to the finish, or see which ones might even break out of the track and run away (or which horse will just stop short and start eating the grass).  You don’t know until they are free.

I recently heard in interview on NPR with the author of the book “Shop Class as Soulcraft”.  I’m fuzzy on detail, but he said he finished a PHD in philosophy and went to work at a think tank in Washington, believing that he would get to pursue ideas and logic- sort of a free for all of thinking.  But instead, he found that the organization had already established an acceptable set of conclusions, and his job was to reason backwards to find suitable premises that would always lead back to those conclusions.  In other words, there was a set framework, and they used all their powers of reason to make sure that the framework stayed in tact.  He quit and opened a motorcycle repair shop. 

Charlotte Mason said that when we only deal in “fact” and not living ideas, that we are not even really dealing in those facts.  We will stop short of them for fear of going beyond them.  Living ideas will burst through “facts” all the time as new exploration and discovery change the way we see, and constantly bring forth new connections.

In my old denomination, we had a framework for describing the world.  It was contained in several documents, primarily the Westminster Confession of Faith.  We said our primary source of belief was the Bible, but it was really only seen through the Confession and the other documents.  I, through regular and long study of these documents, found many beautiful things…ideas that were planted in my mind like seeds.  But with each idea came many questions as well.  These questions begin to paw at the gate.  For a very long time, a strong gate can contain all the ruckus, but at some point, you have to ring the bell.  Horses were made to run. 

A glass of water, a starting gate, systematics- they all contain something of what is true, but they are static and they are dead.  I suppose you could put the jar of ocean water in the fridge, then pour it over your head to get something of the experience, but it can never replace that first running dive into the icy surf.  It’s one thing to bring someone ocean water and then say, “let’s go to the beach”.  It’s another to hand them a jar and say, “this is the ocean.  Don’t ask questions.” 

All this to say, I had a framework that I studied, taught, defended, and reasoned backwards from.  But more and more, it could not contain either my questions or my experiences.  Finally the gates opened and all Hell broke loose.  To be fair, I didn’t just calmly ring the bell.  I brought about my own demise as a pastor, and I can hear people saying (because I have said this about others myself), that I have changed my views on things as a convenient way to rationalize my own sin.  “He is deceived”.  That may be true (if one were deceived, how would one know?).  Nevertheless, I have had a watershed, and there is no going back.  There is no stuffing where I have come experientially and theologically back into the PCA jar.  I make no claim to being wiser.  I’m just on this wild horse and I can’t stop it.

Advent Day 22

I keep finding a few places in Steve’s journals/files where he will have added some paragraphs to  the story of our story that he had hidden in his ‘novella.’   This gives me a window into the way he saw our love and also the ways he loved others.   

The day she appeared at St. George’s, everything began to change.

It is hard to put an experience into words when you are in the middle of that experience.  There are these eternal moments where timelessness enters into chronological time and change us forever.  And their meaning takes time to unfold and describe.

He would say that he was aware of her from the first time that she walked into the room.  He was in love with her from the first time he heard her voice.  “Deep called to deep,” he said.  At the time, he held it as a secret, even from himself.   Years would pass before he would give voice to the desire and affections that grew steadily in him.   Her presence in the world made it hard for him to be completely present anywhere ever again, since from their first encounters and conversations on, she was never far from his mind.             

And yet…

And yet, there was work and there was family.  His and hers. 

And people really don’t like their priests to fall in love, not like this anyway.

When he first arrived at St. George’s, Sam spent the majority of his time, to the dismay of some, in local haunts and houses.  He was as much at home in the tavern as in his study.  Because he now had his collar back on, it didn’t take long for people to know who he was. 

            There was a period of time in his work, early in his career, that was marked by zeal, when he worked feverishly for the advancement of the church.  When he was like a man with a cause, a mission.  The great discovery of this period was that zeal tended to attract zealots (and those who liked to ride on zealous coattails.)  The more passionate, confident he became, the more impatient he became.  And the more he noticed people quietly slinking away to nurse hurts and fears alone, in hiding.  Zealots make for dull company, while those who have tasted a little heartbreak have a capacity to both laugh and cry. By the time he came to St. George’s, the zeal had given way to a quiet hope that love would encompass the things that drive us into exile, and could find us in our pain. Hope had to be big enough for his own inner turbulence too- desire, fear, loneliness.

Sam was no fiery preacher.  People would say that his sermons were like having a conversation between “Me, and Sam, and God”.  And people began to come to enter this conversation.  For some of the long standing members in the church, this was what they had hoped for.  For others, well, not so much.

Tommy looked like a drunk.  He approached Sam along 20^th Street one day and asked for some money, with what became a very familiar “Can you help me out for the holidays?”  It was a funny way to start a friendship, but a day didn’t go buy when Sam and Tommy didn’t speak.  Sam learned Tommy’s story a sentence at a time, since the man couldn’t hold still long enough to link two sentences together. 

It wasn’t the bottle.  It was his nerves.  At sixteen, in a strict catholic high school, Tommy was teased so hard that his young nerves gave way.  He landed in the state asylum for the first time.  Who knows what horrors went on there in the 1950’s?  His family made sure he kept an apartment, but they kept him at arms length.  And now, at 57, he made the rounds of about four blocks of the neighborhood from around 4 a.m. until night. 

For some reason, Tommy thought that Sam was as crazy as he was.  So he started confiding in him.  At first he didn’t make much sense, but then in lucid snatches he would talk about his life, being lonely, not sleeping, and especially the girls he liked.  Actually, Tommy liked all the girls.  He tried to kiss each woman that came around.  The ones who knew who he was might let him get away with it now and again, but he got slapped a lot.

There was quite a stir when Tommy first strolled into St. George’s during the Eucharist.  Sam was just beginning with the preparatory words, when the man walked straight to the front and asked for the cup.  “Kneel right there Tommy.  I’ve got to say the magic words first.”  So he did.  Sam gave the congregants a “deal with it!” glare, and Tommy was a fixture from then on.  Even when he worked the pews looking for a kiss.

Advent Day 21

One of my unexpected comforts comes to me as I reread books that Steve and I read together.  I often come across passages that he underlined or thoughts he wrote in the margins. .  His scribblings are in his favorite kind of pen – the uniball roller in blue or black/blue ink.

Evelyn Underhill is an author that I return to and one that Steve found compelling.  In her Memoir’s Steve has marked these quotes:

“When she writes of the Father’s business being the only business of man “and not very spectacular” at that she is unwittingly, describing her own life.  “Ordinary life, love, devotedness,” she says, “will do very well for the revealing action of God.”     . 

Advent Day 20

       

Although Steve and I read parallel for hours during our courtship and marriage and would often read passages aloud to each other, it was not unitl Steve had cancer that I began to read whole books to him.  It became a regular practice pretty early in and by the last days, and especially the last nights I read aloud to Steve for hours.  Steve said that the most disturbing part about the demise was that anxiety would creep in because he could not remember who he was, or even what he held dear.  And that as soon as I would start reading, it would all come back to him, he would remember and would feel sustained.

Each year at our little school we read one of George Macdonald’s fairy tales together during our ‘Morning Time.’   Steve’s first favorite was The Golden Key.  His last favorite was At the Back of the North Wind.  What was intriguing to me about reading At the Back of the North Wind was how much more Steve resonated with it than I did .   He would ask for me to reread portions and would laugh knowingly and say things like, “Yes, that is so true,” or “Yes, that is how it is.”    

                                                                      

Quotes from our favorite George Macdonald books:

“I’ve been thinking about it a great deal, and it seems to me that although one sixpence is as good as another sixpence, not twenty lambs would do instead of one sheep whose face you knew. Somehow, when once you’ve looked into anybody’s eyes, right deep down into them, I mean, nobody will do for that one anymore. Nobody, ever so beautiful or so good, will make up for that one going out of sight.” 

From At the Back of the North Wind

“...though I cannot promise to take you home," said North Wind, as she sank nearer and nearer to the tops of the houses, "I can promise you it will be all right in the end. You will get home somehow.” 

At the Back of the North Wind

“Only he knew that to be left alone is not always to be forsaken.” 

At the Back of the North Wind

“Then the Old Man of the Earth stooped over the floor of the cave, raised a huge stone from it, and left it leaning. It disclosed a great hole that went plumb-down.                                                                     “That is the way," he said.

  "But there are no stairs."

“You must throw yourself in. There is no other way.”  The Golden Key

“You have tasted of death now,” said the old man. “Is it good?”

“It is good,” said Mossy. “It is better than life.”

“No,” said the old man: “it is only more life.”  The Golden Key

Advent Day 19

teenage eternal moments

Frozen in my tracks

in the grocery store parking lot

(Why was I there? What do you shop for at 16?)

your absent presence pinned my feet to the asphalt,

just for a second,

and without knowing I knew everything.

Much later, in a different city altogether,

fiddling with the stubby pencil and welcome card

from the back of the pew I hid behind,

writing some joke to disrupt my brother's similar inattention,

I caught the glare from the smug, shriveled matron in the choir,

and felt her judgment on my smirks and claustrophobia

(and most likely on my haircut).

My eye caught hers and didn't shrink back because out of nowhere

I knew without knowing that you laughed at my joke.

Advent Day 18

“I have just come through a time where I have come to see that I am not the man I was.  And I am attempting to remember parts of myself, in order to find a way ahead.  I do think that I have come to see that I have two strong parts to my personality.  One side, which I will talk about now, is less dominant- my second nature, but I think I have lived out of it more in my adult life.  The words I associate with it are vision and leading, and it is faster and accomplished.  And dangerous.

I think my truer self, my first nature, is reflective, introverted and slow- more poetic.  I’m sure they are connected, and I would hope that the second would find it’s source in the first, but I think I have lived without much real awareness of how I operate. 

           

I have been thinking about leading.  I remember someone saying about me, “he’s not really a strong leader, is he?”  This perplexed me.  Certainly I am not of a choleric temperament, and that is a type of leader, a strong leader.  But, my whole life, whenever I have turned around, people have been following me. 

But I have often lead reluctantly.  Especially at first, it was not something I sought out.  But somehow, in every group or organization I was a part of, I ended up leading.  Often it came because of a vacuum.  And it has a lot to do with taking responsibility.  When we moved to Foley, there was no soccer.  Frank and I helped form and start little league soccer, and then started the High School Soccer team (all of which are huge now).

I think my leading is directly related to turf and responsibility.  If I feel ownership and responsibility, and that I am on my own turf, I have no problem taking charge.  If I am unsure about my position, I am reluctant- not wanting to usurp someone else. 

I never had any qualms about setting direction and fighting for RMC. 

I see the strength in leading, but I am now seeing that something dark has attached to its underside.  I’m sure it is the source of competitiveness, rivalry, and also managing people.  Moving too fast to understand what was going on with people.  It’s almost like I move too fast or too slow.  No even pace.  I remember going from a staff meeting where we were planning the next year, to a meeting with a couple who lost a baby.  It is/was hard to shift between what was needed for both meetings.  I wonder if I was present with that couple, when my mind was alive with the swirling ideas of leading RMC?

And feeling responsibility for everything, not wanting to disappoint, and thinking I could handle everything, led to managing everything.  And led to me promising more than I was able to deliver. 

Advent Day 17

Day 17

When Steve was teaching ‘Spiritual Formation’ to our older daughters and a few of their friends, he read to them from a book we love called, Prayers from the Ark by Carmen Bernos De Gasztold. It is a collection of prayers/poems written with the voice of the particular animal.  It is not a sentimental book, but insightful and beautiful.  Carmen was a Benedictine nun in France during WWII.  She wrote these poems as prayers after difficult work days. The poems were written in French and later translated by Rumer Godden, a British novelist who spent time with Carmen as she translated. 

We read from this collection over and over.  I have added some more prayers that the children have identified with at one time or another.

The Prayer of the Ox

Dear God, give me time.

Men are always so driven!

Make them understand I can never hurry.

Give me time to eat.

Give me time to plod.

Give me time to sleep.

Give me time to think.

Amen.

Prayer of the Donkey

O God, who made me to

Trudge along the road

Always,

To carry heavy loads always

And to be beaten

always!

Give me great courage and gentleness.

One day let somebody understand me –

that I may no longer want to weep

because I can never say what

I mean

And they make fun of me.

Let me find a juicy thistle –

And make them give me time to pick it.

And Lord, one day, let me find again

My little brother at the Christmas crib.

Amen

The Prayer of the Elephant

Dear God,

It is I, the elephant.

Your creature,

Who is talking to you.

I am so embarrassed by my great self,

And truly it is not my fault

If I spoil your jungle with my big feet,

Let me be careful and behave wisely,

Always keeping my dignity and poise;

Give me such philosophic thoughts

That I can rejoice everywhere I go

In the lovable oddity of things.

Amen.

The Prayer of the Lark

I am here!  O my God.

I am here, I am here!

You draw me away from earth,

And I climb to You

In a passion of shrilling,

To the dot in heaven

Where for an instant, You crucify me.

When will You keep me forever?

Must You always let me fall

Back to the furrow’s dip,

A poor bird of clay?

Oh, at least

Let my exultant nothingness

Soar to the glory of Your mercy,

In the same hope,

Until death.

Amen.