I’m about to say something that will make some people angry.
Sometimes cops beat people for bad reasons or no reason. Then they arrest their victim. That’s because a victim convicted of a crime-against-a-peace-officer is unlikely to sue the officer for, say, crushing the victim’s eye socket, or giving the victim blood clots in his legs. The officer will have to lie to get the conviction. It happens.
If this makes some folks angry, fine. Let’s sit down with that anger and peer into it. They're angry for a reason that I think they don’t know. Their anger is like the anger of three men in the book of Job.
1. Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar.
Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar were good men. They were righteous. They were Job’s three friends in, well, the book of Job.
Job also was a righteous man. But God let Satan kill Job’s children, steal Job’s riches, and ruin Job’s health. Job was left in pain and sorrow. Denuded of wealth, health, and children, Job sat in ashes. He scraped his sores with potsherds.
And that’s where Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar come in. They sit with Job. They sit with him in silence for seven days. It takes a very good friend to sit with someone for seven days. Few of us are lucky enough to have one friend like that; Job had three. Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar were standup guys.
But in the book of Job this kind comfort of quiet companionship collapsed like an overloaded pack animal.
The collapse happened after Job defended himself. He told his three friends that he didn’t deserve what happened to him. He told them that his affliction was unjust.
Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar tried to beat down any talk of Job’s righteousness. They took turns defending God. They took turns telling Job that Job must have deserved the demolition of his happy life.
And every time they told him that, Job defended himself. And every time he defended himself, he stirred the fury of his friends. For 28 chapters, Job defends himself, and his friends accuse him; Job accuses God, and his friends defend God.
Bildad forgets to be kind:
How long will you say these things,
And the words of your mouth be a great wind? [Job 8:2 (NRSV).]
Zophar is harsh:
Should your babble put others to silence,
And when you mock, shall no one shame you? [Job 11:3 (NRSV).]
Eliphaz accuses Job of breaking the foundation of religion:
But you are doing away with the fear of God,
and hindering meditation before God. [Job 15:4 (NRSV).]
Bildad is insulted by Job’s wrong-headed arguments:
Why are we counted as cattle?
Why are we stupid in your sight? [Job 18:3 (NRSV).]
Zophar admits that Job agitates him. (Job 20:2.)
Eliphaz even catalogues Job’s specific sins, which he somehow knows about:
Is not your wickedness great?
There is no end to your iniquities.
For you have exacted pledges from you family for no reason,
and stripped the naked of their clothing.
You have given no water for the weary to drink,
and you have withheld bread from the hungry. [Job 22:5-7 (NRSV).]
But Job was righteous. The reader knows, but Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar don’t know, that Job’s righteousness was the reason that Job became the target of a bet between God and Satan. God bet that Job would stay faithful even after bone-crushing calamity; Satan bet that he wouldn’t.
2. The anger of Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar.
In chapter one, Satan accuses Job. In chapters three through twenty-eight, his three friend speak for Satan. Why?
If you cut the surface of anger, you find fear underneath. When an opposing lawyer yells at me, I often know then that my position is stronger than I knew before.
Job’s three friends are afraid.
They’re afraid because they’re righteous, and they count on their righteousness to protect them. They expect to prosper because they are good, and God rewards the good.
And Job is a threat to their happy hope of blessings that flow from their personal blamelessness. If Job is righteous and God flung him into the fire, then for all they know God could do the same thing to Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar. And to Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar, that idea is a demon howling in the wind at night.
The book of Job defies the idea that we can always make ourselves safe by doing right. That idea heartens us, and it’s perpetuated in our time by stories like the Three Little Pigs. Even if they didn’t know that story, Job’s friends embraced its theme. Their own goodness, their own personal righteousness, was their own house-built-of-bricks. They thought that, try as he might, the big bad wolf couldn’t huff and puff and blow it down.
But Job and his plight stand for the idea that bricks are weaker than Job’s friends thought, or that the Big Bad Wolf has breath like an angry god. So they stridently try to argue Job into accepting his own fault. But they really are trying to convince themselves.
3. Our own houses made out of bricks.
We moderns are like Job’s friends. We also expect that we can build a house of bricks that nothing can shake.
We think that if we eat right and exercise, we won’t get sick. But sometimes we get sick.
We think that if we work hard, we’ll succeed. But sometimes we work hard and fail.
We think that if we spend time and take trouble with our children, our children will grow up and be, well, righteous like Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar. But sometimes they don’t.
4. Beaten.
And we believe that if we don’t do anything wrong, we’ll never have trouble with the police.
But for about two decades, I’ve been a civil-rights lawyer. I’ve seen that that isn’t always so.
And one generation of injured clients after another has learned that blamelessness (or relative blamelessness) isn’t always a barrier against police abuse. Sometimes they are vindicated in court. Sometimes they aren’t. Sometimes they win money from a jury. Sometimes they don’t.
5. What it takes to win.
One reason that victims don’t always win is that a civil-rights lawyer has to do more than prove his case. He has to persuade jurors to give up a safety-blanket – the belief that they can protect themselves against police abuse by being good.
Before they can return a judgement in favor of a civil-rights plaintiff, jurors have to do what Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar couldn’t do. They have to throw away the comfortable idea that they are safe in their house of bricks with bricks made from their own blamelessness.
The same is true in a criminal trial where a victim is accused of a crime-against-a-peace-officer. It’s not just a matter of showing that the officer is lying. The jurors have to set aside a natural fear. Police officers have vast power; we trust them. It’s scary to think that they might abuse their power and violate that trust.
Every time that a civil-rights jury gives judgment to a plaintiff, every time that a criminal jury frees a victim of police abuse, the jury faces the fact that their blamelessness won’t always protect them. They face the fact that what happened to the victim could happen to them. It’s an unsettling thought.
6. Be Job.
The book of Job is about of Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar’s fear. But it’s also about Job’s courage.
Job’s friends came to him when he was weak. Job had been rich, well, and surrounded by his children. Now Job was poor, sick, and lonely. Job easily coul have let his friends overwhelm him. Crushed as he was, he might have gone along with the ideas that his good friends so violently argued.
But he didn’t. That took courage. That took wisdom.
The book of Job was written so that we can have Job’s wisdom and courage without suffering Job’s catastrophes.
7. A plea.
This is my plea: if you sit on a jury, know what Job knew. Know that fault does not always sit on the injured and afflicted. See the evidence with an open mind.
Thursday, January 31, 2013
Wednesday, January 23, 2013
A Stain on Souls
Many of my friends have a seething hatred of Barack Obama. And they have a seething hatred of his supporters. "Takers" they call us.
I believe that the devil delights in this hatred.
1. My own problem with hatred.
But let me track my own history of hatred before I talk much about others.
When I did not believe, I was a hater.
I judged. When I disapproved of someone, I seethed at them. I expressed my hatred to my circle of friends.
I try to remember the attractiveness of condemnation. I suppose that in scorning others, I felt, by comparison, virtuous. Making judgments on lesser mortals, I was a god in my own mind.
I look back with more years and maturity, and I know that I fooled myself. I was not virtuous because I judged others. In fact, I might have been, on balance, less virtuous than the ones I judged.
2. The problem of judging.
It was not a beautiful quality that I had. I remember realizing this when a younger friend of mine in college adopted my habit of harsh judgment. I realized that of all my qualities, I regretted that he had adopted that one.
I have not after many years completely freed myself of this habit. I still need to pray to God to help me not look down on others.
We are commanded not to judge – judge not, lest ye be judged. With an instruction so clear, it is a wonder that Christians don’t flee from condemning others.
Maybe I don’t understand. But it does seem that it’s important to judge ourselves against our understanding of what we ought to be. And it’s natural apply this knowledge of the difference between "is" and "ought" to others. The ability to tell the difference between "is" and "ought" is a quality that makes us better persons.
Maybe the difference between what we may and what we may not do is the step of lifting ourselves in our own minds above the person whom we judge. Or maybe it’s the step that judging goads us to take. That step is to forget that the person we judge is made in the image of God, and that, God having made them in his image, he also loves them. I could never love and judge a person at the same time.
I hope I don’t look down on those whom I now criticize. If I criticize, I need to recognize myself in my own criticism.
3. Freedom from fact.
It seems to me that this hatred of Barack Obama has a fact-free quality, like bread baked without flour.
The claim that Obama overreaches with executive orders fits well with the president-gone-wild meme; it is largely fact free. For example, people persist in claiming, in defiance of reported facts, that Obama is banning assault weapons by executive order.
My friend believes that Obama is a communist. I don’t know what his proof for this folderol is. I suspect that he’s looked at some minutiae in Obama’s background and, ignoring everything else, lets that tiny fact grow in his mind, like Jack’s magic beans, into a full-fledged stalk leading him up to the heights of Obama-hating.
The birther controversy is famously fact-free. It’s evident that to true believers, no evidence will ever convince them that Obama was born in Hawaii. Their flight from proof becomes ever more fantastical but no less cherished.
I’ve even seen Obama called a "dictator". Now, there are people who resemble dictators who lead nominally-democratic countries. Hugo Chavez so controlled mass media in his country and attacked so relentlessly the economic base of his enemies that elections really were a farce.
But that’s not America. We have a vigorous and squabbling media that feels free both to support and condemn Obama. Nobody who wants to hear hatred of the president ever has to wait longer than the end of a commercial break. So the defects of elections in, say, Venezuela or Russia simply do not exist here. The accusation that democratically-elected Obama is a dictator – the Obama who is subject to Congress and the Supreme Court – this accusation is just bizarre.
4. Fear.
I try to understand. I try to relate the attitudes of Obama-haters to my feeling about the last Bush in the presidency.
I did condemn him during the U.S. Attorney firing scandal. The evidence seemed to show that Bush’s Attorney General fired U.S. Attorneys who did not make criminal prosecutions political hammers. But the idea of using the criminal justice system to imprison political opponents is, to me, genuinely frightening. It was a direct threat to democracy.
So maybe, with Obama-haters, a little evidence bonds with a lot of fear – fear that somehow Obama is going to destroy the country. A perfectly rational friend of mine, a teacher, really does believe that Obama wants to turn America into a third-world country.
And maybe this fear has an avalanche quality. It picks up strength as it gathers momentum. New "facts", new accusations, get added to the deadly wall of roiling dread. The speed of this avalanche of dire fear does not allow each new fact to be carefully vetted, and every time a new fact is added to the avalanche, the avalanche picks up speed. This makes it increasingly doubtful that the next cluster of facts will be examined with any care. It becomes something like unstoppable.
5. Panic.
And if there was a time when rationality could be applied to the evidence, the growing power of the newly re-elected president makes his detractors panic and leads them to pull fire alarms rather that weigh their worry. They might not see smoke coming from under classroom doors, but they believe that it’s there, and the dread of the country disappearing in a sudden fireball puts them in full freak-out mode.
But, truthfully, "[W]e don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud" has logical appeal. It got us into Iraq. If the fear is great, the evidence is judged more leniently.
6. Stain.
And if they were right, then of course our circumstances would be grave.
But if they’re wrong, then this seething hatred is a stain on their souls.
Among Christians, their hatred leads them to hate a Christian brother. 1 John 2:9: "Whoever says, ‘I am in the light,’ while hating a brother or sister, is still in the darkness." (NRSV.)
Even were Obama not a Christian, his haters who are Christian would have no excuse for the kinds of things said about him. James 3:8-10: "[B]ut no one can tame the tongue—a restless evil, full of deadly poison. With it we bless the Lord and Father, and with it we curse those who are made in the likeness of God. From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this ought not to be so." (NRSV.)
7. Challenge to Obama-haters.
So a lot rides on Obama’s nature and our judgment on it.
Either the country is headed into hell, or hatred of the president is a stain on the souls of those who condemn him.
This calls for sober judgment. I invite my friends who are eager to hate our president to enter into conversation. I invite you to explore more than the sources of opinion that confirm what you already believe.
8. Challenge to liberals.
But here’s a challenge to my liberal friends: if we want our conservative friends to examine their beliefs, we must have the courage to examine ours. If we want conversation, it must be a real back-and-forth. We have to go into the woods with them to find together the way out.
Having said that, I also know that I won't necessarily do it. I have a friend who, I now believe, argues for the sake of provoking and angering. It's not my calling to put up with that.
9. Out of our hands.
And, just like I depend on God for my own sanctification, such as it is, in the end God will do his business with our freinds who cling to strange ideas about our president. Who knows what God plans; but in the end he is capable of doing more than we with our mortal arguments and internet fact-checks can.
I believe that the devil delights in this hatred.
1. My own problem with hatred.
But let me track my own history of hatred before I talk much about others.
When I did not believe, I was a hater.
I judged. When I disapproved of someone, I seethed at them. I expressed my hatred to my circle of friends.
I try to remember the attractiveness of condemnation. I suppose that in scorning others, I felt, by comparison, virtuous. Making judgments on lesser mortals, I was a god in my own mind.
I look back with more years and maturity, and I know that I fooled myself. I was not virtuous because I judged others. In fact, I might have been, on balance, less virtuous than the ones I judged.
2. The problem of judging.
It was not a beautiful quality that I had. I remember realizing this when a younger friend of mine in college adopted my habit of harsh judgment. I realized that of all my qualities, I regretted that he had adopted that one.
I have not after many years completely freed myself of this habit. I still need to pray to God to help me not look down on others.
We are commanded not to judge – judge not, lest ye be judged. With an instruction so clear, it is a wonder that Christians don’t flee from condemning others.
Maybe I don’t understand. But it does seem that it’s important to judge ourselves against our understanding of what we ought to be. And it’s natural apply this knowledge of the difference between "is" and "ought" to others. The ability to tell the difference between "is" and "ought" is a quality that makes us better persons.
Maybe the difference between what we may and what we may not do is the step of lifting ourselves in our own minds above the person whom we judge. Or maybe it’s the step that judging goads us to take. That step is to forget that the person we judge is made in the image of God, and that, God having made them in his image, he also loves them. I could never love and judge a person at the same time.
I hope I don’t look down on those whom I now criticize. If I criticize, I need to recognize myself in my own criticism.
3. Freedom from fact.
It seems to me that this hatred of Barack Obama has a fact-free quality, like bread baked without flour.
The claim that Obama overreaches with executive orders fits well with the president-gone-wild meme; it is largely fact free. For example, people persist in claiming, in defiance of reported facts, that Obama is banning assault weapons by executive order.
My friend believes that Obama is a communist. I don’t know what his proof for this folderol is. I suspect that he’s looked at some minutiae in Obama’s background and, ignoring everything else, lets that tiny fact grow in his mind, like Jack’s magic beans, into a full-fledged stalk leading him up to the heights of Obama-hating.
The birther controversy is famously fact-free. It’s evident that to true believers, no evidence will ever convince them that Obama was born in Hawaii. Their flight from proof becomes ever more fantastical but no less cherished.
I’ve even seen Obama called a "dictator". Now, there are people who resemble dictators who lead nominally-democratic countries. Hugo Chavez so controlled mass media in his country and attacked so relentlessly the economic base of his enemies that elections really were a farce.
But that’s not America. We have a vigorous and squabbling media that feels free both to support and condemn Obama. Nobody who wants to hear hatred of the president ever has to wait longer than the end of a commercial break. So the defects of elections in, say, Venezuela or Russia simply do not exist here. The accusation that democratically-elected Obama is a dictator – the Obama who is subject to Congress and the Supreme Court – this accusation is just bizarre.
4. Fear.
I try to understand. I try to relate the attitudes of Obama-haters to my feeling about the last Bush in the presidency.
I did condemn him during the U.S. Attorney firing scandal. The evidence seemed to show that Bush’s Attorney General fired U.S. Attorneys who did not make criminal prosecutions political hammers. But the idea of using the criminal justice system to imprison political opponents is, to me, genuinely frightening. It was a direct threat to democracy.
So maybe, with Obama-haters, a little evidence bonds with a lot of fear – fear that somehow Obama is going to destroy the country. A perfectly rational friend of mine, a teacher, really does believe that Obama wants to turn America into a third-world country.
And maybe this fear has an avalanche quality. It picks up strength as it gathers momentum. New "facts", new accusations, get added to the deadly wall of roiling dread. The speed of this avalanche of dire fear does not allow each new fact to be carefully vetted, and every time a new fact is added to the avalanche, the avalanche picks up speed. This makes it increasingly doubtful that the next cluster of facts will be examined with any care. It becomes something like unstoppable.
5. Panic.
And if there was a time when rationality could be applied to the evidence, the growing power of the newly re-elected president makes his detractors panic and leads them to pull fire alarms rather that weigh their worry. They might not see smoke coming from under classroom doors, but they believe that it’s there, and the dread of the country disappearing in a sudden fireball puts them in full freak-out mode.
But, truthfully, "[W]e don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud" has logical appeal. It got us into Iraq. If the fear is great, the evidence is judged more leniently.
6. Stain.
And if they were right, then of course our circumstances would be grave.
But if they’re wrong, then this seething hatred is a stain on their souls.
Among Christians, their hatred leads them to hate a Christian brother. 1 John 2:9: "Whoever says, ‘I am in the light,’ while hating a brother or sister, is still in the darkness." (NRSV.)
Even were Obama not a Christian, his haters who are Christian would have no excuse for the kinds of things said about him. James 3:8-10: "[B]ut no one can tame the tongue—a restless evil, full of deadly poison. With it we bless the Lord and Father, and with it we curse those who are made in the likeness of God. From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this ought not to be so." (NRSV.)
7. Challenge to Obama-haters.
So a lot rides on Obama’s nature and our judgment on it.
Either the country is headed into hell, or hatred of the president is a stain on the souls of those who condemn him.
This calls for sober judgment. I invite my friends who are eager to hate our president to enter into conversation. I invite you to explore more than the sources of opinion that confirm what you already believe.
8. Challenge to liberals.
But here’s a challenge to my liberal friends: if we want our conservative friends to examine their beliefs, we must have the courage to examine ours. If we want conversation, it must be a real back-and-forth. We have to go into the woods with them to find together the way out.
Having said that, I also know that I won't necessarily do it. I have a friend who, I now believe, argues for the sake of provoking and angering. It's not my calling to put up with that.
9. Out of our hands.
And, just like I depend on God for my own sanctification, such as it is, in the end God will do his business with our freinds who cling to strange ideas about our president. Who knows what God plans; but in the end he is capable of doing more than we with our mortal arguments and internet fact-checks can.
Saturday, January 19, 2013
Blessing the Dead
When I lived in China, I saw a man at night sitting cross-legged in the middle of a city street, in front of a pile of burning play-money. He head was bowed, his eyes were downcast. It was explained to me that Chinese people sometimes do this when they miss loved-ones who have died. They burn play-money in the hope that it will bring to the dead a measure of luxury in the world to which they have passed.
Maybe God blesses those actions like prayers, done with love and longing.
Because the Bible shows that ministry to the dead is possible. In 1 Corinthians 15:29, Paul talks about receiving baptism on behalf of the dead. In 1 Peter 3:18-20, Peter talks about Jesus preaching to the dead, to those who "in former times did not obey, when God waited patiently in the days of Noah." (NRSV.)
1. An overlooked ministry?
I wonder if ministry to the dead is an overlooked ministry. There might be a couple of reasons for this.
It might be because of a sense of helplessness after death: the dead are gone, beyond help. And, in fact, the story of poor Lazarus and the rich man adds to that sense of helplessness. The rich man enjoyed luxury while he lived. But after his death, in Hades, he pleads with Abraham to let blessed Lazarus to dip his fingers in water and put a few drops on the rich man’s tongue to help his suffering. Abraham says that it cannot be done, because they are separated by a chasm that cannot be crossed. (Luke 16:19-30.) Like many parts of the Bible, I don’t know how to reconcile the story of Lazarus and the rich man with 1 Corinthians and 1 Peter.
But more and more, I don’t try. 1 Corinthians and 1 Peter give me hope that when I pray for my parents twice a day, those prayers have an effect. And I hope that I have fruitful prayers for my grandparents, and for my Danish aunt, and for my Wisconsin aunt’s departed husband, and for others who have passed from life.
To some, ministry to the dead makes no sense because of the modern preaching about almost universal salvation, at least among Christians. The idea is that when someone dies, of course they are welcomed into heaven. It’s not that the dead are beyond help; it’s that they don’t need help.
2. A ministry of grace.
But I don’t subscribe to this recent trend in thinking about God. In my wiser moments, I have no sense of any guarantee of my spot in the New Jerusalem. I have a hope, not a irrevocable entry-visa into heaven. Likewise, I don’t take salvation for granted for those who have died.
I think that judgment will come; I hope in God’s grace for myself, which I will need if I am to live forever in the presence of God. Also, I knew my parents; I know something of their faults and of their need for grace. My parents and I are not unlike others.
I also have a dim understanding of the vastness of God’s grace. It may be that when I pray, I bring this grace to bear upon those whom I pray for. So when I pray for the dead, I participate in God’s mercy. It might be that my prayers for the dead are prayers to carry out God’s will. That’s a good thing.
If prayer itself, which we are directed to persist in, has any effect, I cannot see why this kind of prayer would not be pleasing to God. I cannot see why God would not want me to dedicate some daily time to help to bring about the salvation of those who no longer have the power to add to the story of their lives: my family, my friends, strangers, and enemies.
3. The rightness of this ministry.
With respect to my parents and my grandparents and my ancestors generally, it seems right for me to pray for them. I live and have a hope of eternal joy because of them. They gave me life, they and God. If my grandparents took care of my parents when my parents were helpless and could not care for themselves, and if my parents took care of me when I was helpless and could not care for myself, it’s right for me to minister to them now that they are beyond, it seems, helping themselves. It’s a way that I can return love for love, care for care, duty for duty.
Certainly, we serve God in our occupations and in our actions toward family and friends. And many have other ministries: ministries to the homeless; ministries of evangelism; infinite ministries to serve an infinite God.
But certainly ministry to the dead counts with God. And it gives us a sense of being able to help those who otherwise are beyond our love, those with whom we might in some way have had broken relationships, those whom we might have wounded in their time of life.
4. Prayers for the dead at Riverside National Cemetery.
I’ve felt moved to pray for the dead at the Riverside National Cemetery. I remember them, or I try to, like my parents, twice a day. It is not a long prayer.
Sometimes I’ve gone to the cemetery to pray.
It’s a new ministry. I find that my prayers evolve, so I don’t know the shape that my prayers will take in the future. Now, I pray for all of the dead at Riverside National Cemetery collectively. At one time I asked God to focus my prayers on those who had no-one else to pray for them; but I don’t do that any more.
I have wondered whether I should each week find a grave and pray particularly for that person. Or whether I should find one grave, and make it my ministry to pray for him or her long term. Like I say, my prayer ministry for the dead is evolving.
5. Feelings in common, common fates.
I wish comfort and peace on the Chinese who burn play-money for their departed loved-ones. We share in our common humanity a longing for the welfare of those we miss.
I hope in my salvation and in the salvation of those that I pray for. In this ministry, our salvations have become, or continue to be, bound together.
Maybe God blesses those actions like prayers, done with love and longing.
Because the Bible shows that ministry to the dead is possible. In 1 Corinthians 15:29, Paul talks about receiving baptism on behalf of the dead. In 1 Peter 3:18-20, Peter talks about Jesus preaching to the dead, to those who "in former times did not obey, when God waited patiently in the days of Noah." (NRSV.)
1. An overlooked ministry?
I wonder if ministry to the dead is an overlooked ministry. There might be a couple of reasons for this.
It might be because of a sense of helplessness after death: the dead are gone, beyond help. And, in fact, the story of poor Lazarus and the rich man adds to that sense of helplessness. The rich man enjoyed luxury while he lived. But after his death, in Hades, he pleads with Abraham to let blessed Lazarus to dip his fingers in water and put a few drops on the rich man’s tongue to help his suffering. Abraham says that it cannot be done, because they are separated by a chasm that cannot be crossed. (Luke 16:19-30.) Like many parts of the Bible, I don’t know how to reconcile the story of Lazarus and the rich man with 1 Corinthians and 1 Peter.
But more and more, I don’t try. 1 Corinthians and 1 Peter give me hope that when I pray for my parents twice a day, those prayers have an effect. And I hope that I have fruitful prayers for my grandparents, and for my Danish aunt, and for my Wisconsin aunt’s departed husband, and for others who have passed from life.
To some, ministry to the dead makes no sense because of the modern preaching about almost universal salvation, at least among Christians. The idea is that when someone dies, of course they are welcomed into heaven. It’s not that the dead are beyond help; it’s that they don’t need help.
2. A ministry of grace.
But I don’t subscribe to this recent trend in thinking about God. In my wiser moments, I have no sense of any guarantee of my spot in the New Jerusalem. I have a hope, not a irrevocable entry-visa into heaven. Likewise, I don’t take salvation for granted for those who have died.
I think that judgment will come; I hope in God’s grace for myself, which I will need if I am to live forever in the presence of God. Also, I knew my parents; I know something of their faults and of their need for grace. My parents and I are not unlike others.
I also have a dim understanding of the vastness of God’s grace. It may be that when I pray, I bring this grace to bear upon those whom I pray for. So when I pray for the dead, I participate in God’s mercy. It might be that my prayers for the dead are prayers to carry out God’s will. That’s a good thing.
If prayer itself, which we are directed to persist in, has any effect, I cannot see why this kind of prayer would not be pleasing to God. I cannot see why God would not want me to dedicate some daily time to help to bring about the salvation of those who no longer have the power to add to the story of their lives: my family, my friends, strangers, and enemies.
3. The rightness of this ministry.
With respect to my parents and my grandparents and my ancestors generally, it seems right for me to pray for them. I live and have a hope of eternal joy because of them. They gave me life, they and God. If my grandparents took care of my parents when my parents were helpless and could not care for themselves, and if my parents took care of me when I was helpless and could not care for myself, it’s right for me to minister to them now that they are beyond, it seems, helping themselves. It’s a way that I can return love for love, care for care, duty for duty.
Certainly, we serve God in our occupations and in our actions toward family and friends. And many have other ministries: ministries to the homeless; ministries of evangelism; infinite ministries to serve an infinite God.
But certainly ministry to the dead counts with God. And it gives us a sense of being able to help those who otherwise are beyond our love, those with whom we might in some way have had broken relationships, those whom we might have wounded in their time of life.
4. Prayers for the dead at Riverside National Cemetery.
I’ve felt moved to pray for the dead at the Riverside National Cemetery. I remember them, or I try to, like my parents, twice a day. It is not a long prayer.
Sometimes I’ve gone to the cemetery to pray.
It’s a new ministry. I find that my prayers evolve, so I don’t know the shape that my prayers will take in the future. Now, I pray for all of the dead at Riverside National Cemetery collectively. At one time I asked God to focus my prayers on those who had no-one else to pray for them; but I don’t do that any more.
I have wondered whether I should each week find a grave and pray particularly for that person. Or whether I should find one grave, and make it my ministry to pray for him or her long term. Like I say, my prayer ministry for the dead is evolving.
5. Feelings in common, common fates.
I wish comfort and peace on the Chinese who burn play-money for their departed loved-ones. We share in our common humanity a longing for the welfare of those we miss.
I hope in my salvation and in the salvation of those that I pray for. In this ministry, our salvations have become, or continue to be, bound together.
Wednesday, January 16, 2013
Tribute to Mom
1. Daughter of a high Danish official.
Mom was the daughter of the Auditor General of Denmark. While he worked to keep Denmark from imploding, she worked for the Danish underground, resisting the German occupation of her homeland. She was a courier, transporting secret messages.
2. Almost captured.
As a courier, she almost ended her life in a Nazi concentration camp. One rule of the occupation was that any Dane had to give up his or her seat on a train to any German soldier. One day, on a train, a German soldier demanded her seat. With more pluck than good sense, she refused. Outnumbered, he went for other soldiers to help him to arrest her.
She and her underground partner ran through the train in the opposite direction. They cried out as they ran that the Germans were after them. The crowd in the train opened up to let them through quickly, then closed behind them, becoming a human blockade to the Germans giving chase. She got off the train without getting arrested. And here I am to tell the tale.
3. The hardness of times.
Times were hard under occupation. Mom described getting an apple and eating it all, even the seeds.
4. A royal ball.
The war ended. Dad, the Army Air Corps hero, was part of a flying tour of Europe, an American goodwill team celebrating the Allied victory. Mom met Dad at a ball hosted by the King of Denmark.
It was a long-distance relationship. Dad would send her letters and gifts. Mom would write back. One day, a friend of hers mentioned how crazy boys were about her. Just at that time, an emissary that Dad had sent with a gift to her recognized her and approached. "What is your name?" he asked. She ignored him, determined to show her friend how little she cared that, after all, the boys were crazy about her. The man followed her as she walked away from him, still ignoring him. Then he touched her to get her attention. She elbowed him hard in the ribs. Finally, he pleaded, "Please, are you Dorit Valbjorn?" That got her attention. The episode probably got Dad’s attention, too.
They were married in Wisconsin. Dad’s father, a Lutheran minister, performed the ceremony.
5. Not designed for domestic science.
Mom, as I said, was the daughter of the Auditor General of Denmark. Her mother did not make her learned in cooking or housekeeping. Rather than cook, Mom and Dad ate at the base Officer’s Club. And that was how they exhausted Dad’s savings from World War II.
Then she learned to cook. She learned pretty well.
6. The doctor learns a lesson.
When it was time for Peter and me to be born, the hospital staff asked her if she would accept an African American doctor to deliver her baby. (This was before ultrasounds; until Peter came out and they heard a second baby’s heartbeat, they had no idea that she was pregnant with twins).. Apparently, the race of the doctor was an issue in those times. But not for Mom. She had no problem with an African American doctor delivering her baby.
Peter came out, a boy. The doctor, sensing that Mom might have wanted at least one daughter, told her "The next one will be a girl." When I came out, I urinated on his hand. Mom said, "That’s what you get for calling him a girl!"
7. Denmark.
When Erik was about three and Peter and I were around one-or-two, Dad was transferred to Greenland, and his family could not be with him. Mom spent the year alone with us.
Which after-the-fact seemed silly to her. In 1963, when Dad was transferred to Korea and we could not follow him, she packed us off to Denmark. We spent a year there. We children learned the Danish language, met our Danish relatives, went to a Danish school, ate Danish food, and found Danish friends.
8. Career.
In Oklahoma, where we landed around 1965-1966, Mom enjoyed life as an officer’s wife. She was a very good golfer.
But by the time the family arrived in San Bernardino, she decided that she needed to complete her education and get a job.
She wanted to be a lawyer, but she thought that being a teacher would be more practical. She worked hard. She studied into the early morning hours and got, I think, almost all As at UCR. Sometimes she studied so hard that she was not as available to me as I might have wanted as an young teenager. Not that it harmed me at all. She graduated with high grades and won entry into the honorable fraternity Phi Beta Kappa.
Mom got a job working for Dale Chilson at Grand Terrace Junior High, teaching English. She was an enthusiastic teacher, a hard worker. She would cut out – whatever – construction-paper leaves or whatnot, and she would post them on her classroom wall, each bearing a student’s name.
Later, she followed Dale Chilson to Colton Junior High.
She was overjoyed to teach, and she was overjoyed with her students. And she was overjoyed with her colleagues. She told cheerful stories to her family about work.
She learned to diagnose learning disabilities, especially dyslexia. Once dyslexia was diagnosed, it was often possible to advance a student many grade levels in a short time. This made many of these dyslexic students very glad. Suddenly they were doing what they thought they never could do, and they were doing it well. Mom was very pleased when she could improve a student’s life like that.
He last year of teaching was the hardest. Probably her brain cancer was interfering with her ability to teach, even before the symptoms became so obvious that she sought medical attention.
9. Communion.
When she was in the hospital, a minister gave her communion. The tiny amount of wine elated her. She thought that it was because of the alcohol; I think that it was something else. She asked for more alcohol, but apart from the sacrament, it only gave her pain in her wounded, post-surgery brain.
10. Death at home.
It became clear that the surgery would not save her. We brought her home to die in familiar surroundings. She could not speak, but her eyes showed her excitement to be home again.
Mom was the daughter of the Auditor General of Denmark. While he worked to keep Denmark from imploding, she worked for the Danish underground, resisting the German occupation of her homeland. She was a courier, transporting secret messages.
2. Almost captured.
As a courier, she almost ended her life in a Nazi concentration camp. One rule of the occupation was that any Dane had to give up his or her seat on a train to any German soldier. One day, on a train, a German soldier demanded her seat. With more pluck than good sense, she refused. Outnumbered, he went for other soldiers to help him to arrest her.
She and her underground partner ran through the train in the opposite direction. They cried out as they ran that the Germans were after them. The crowd in the train opened up to let them through quickly, then closed behind them, becoming a human blockade to the Germans giving chase. She got off the train without getting arrested. And here I am to tell the tale.
3. The hardness of times.
Times were hard under occupation. Mom described getting an apple and eating it all, even the seeds.
4. A royal ball.
The war ended. Dad, the Army Air Corps hero, was part of a flying tour of Europe, an American goodwill team celebrating the Allied victory. Mom met Dad at a ball hosted by the King of Denmark.
It was a long-distance relationship. Dad would send her letters and gifts. Mom would write back. One day, a friend of hers mentioned how crazy boys were about her. Just at that time, an emissary that Dad had sent with a gift to her recognized her and approached. "What is your name?" he asked. She ignored him, determined to show her friend how little she cared that, after all, the boys were crazy about her. The man followed her as she walked away from him, still ignoring him. Then he touched her to get her attention. She elbowed him hard in the ribs. Finally, he pleaded, "Please, are you Dorit Valbjorn?" That got her attention. The episode probably got Dad’s attention, too.
They were married in Wisconsin. Dad’s father, a Lutheran minister, performed the ceremony.
5. Not designed for domestic science.
Mom, as I said, was the daughter of the Auditor General of Denmark. Her mother did not make her learned in cooking or housekeeping. Rather than cook, Mom and Dad ate at the base Officer’s Club. And that was how they exhausted Dad’s savings from World War II.
Then she learned to cook. She learned pretty well.
6. The doctor learns a lesson.
When it was time for Peter and me to be born, the hospital staff asked her if she would accept an African American doctor to deliver her baby. (This was before ultrasounds; until Peter came out and they heard a second baby’s heartbeat, they had no idea that she was pregnant with twins).. Apparently, the race of the doctor was an issue in those times. But not for Mom. She had no problem with an African American doctor delivering her baby.
Peter came out, a boy. The doctor, sensing that Mom might have wanted at least one daughter, told her "The next one will be a girl." When I came out, I urinated on his hand. Mom said, "That’s what you get for calling him a girl!"
7. Denmark.
When Erik was about three and Peter and I were around one-or-two, Dad was transferred to Greenland, and his family could not be with him. Mom spent the year alone with us.
Which after-the-fact seemed silly to her. In 1963, when Dad was transferred to Korea and we could not follow him, she packed us off to Denmark. We spent a year there. We children learned the Danish language, met our Danish relatives, went to a Danish school, ate Danish food, and found Danish friends.
8. Career.
In Oklahoma, where we landed around 1965-1966, Mom enjoyed life as an officer’s wife. She was a very good golfer.
But by the time the family arrived in San Bernardino, she decided that she needed to complete her education and get a job.
She wanted to be a lawyer, but she thought that being a teacher would be more practical. She worked hard. She studied into the early morning hours and got, I think, almost all As at UCR. Sometimes she studied so hard that she was not as available to me as I might have wanted as an young teenager. Not that it harmed me at all. She graduated with high grades and won entry into the honorable fraternity Phi Beta Kappa.
Mom got a job working for Dale Chilson at Grand Terrace Junior High, teaching English. She was an enthusiastic teacher, a hard worker. She would cut out – whatever – construction-paper leaves or whatnot, and she would post them on her classroom wall, each bearing a student’s name.
Later, she followed Dale Chilson to Colton Junior High.
She was overjoyed to teach, and she was overjoyed with her students. And she was overjoyed with her colleagues. She told cheerful stories to her family about work.
She learned to diagnose learning disabilities, especially dyslexia. Once dyslexia was diagnosed, it was often possible to advance a student many grade levels in a short time. This made many of these dyslexic students very glad. Suddenly they were doing what they thought they never could do, and they were doing it well. Mom was very pleased when she could improve a student’s life like that.
He last year of teaching was the hardest. Probably her brain cancer was interfering with her ability to teach, even before the symptoms became so obvious that she sought medical attention.
9. Communion.
When she was in the hospital, a minister gave her communion. The tiny amount of wine elated her. She thought that it was because of the alcohol; I think that it was something else. She asked for more alcohol, but apart from the sacrament, it only gave her pain in her wounded, post-surgery brain.
10. Death at home.
It became clear that the surgery would not save her. We brought her home to die in familiar surroundings. She could not speak, but her eyes showed her excitement to be home again.
Thursday, January 10, 2013
God Talks to Whoever He Wants
Like my pastor said, Magi means magician. The Three Wise Men of nativity fame were astrologers and sorcerers.
They were from the East. They were not Jews. They were foreigners.
And God guided them from a far land to a manger in the town of Bethlehem. God chose them to be among the first to honor the Christ child.
It may be that the gold, frankincense, and myrrh that they brought paid for the holy family’s escape to Egypt, where they fled because Harod wanted to murder Jesus. They funded the escape, and they bought time for the holy family. God told them not to report to Herod where they found the messiah; they slipped away in a different direction to elude the murder-minded king.
To be clear: with all of the wealthy women and men in Judea, God gave to these foreign sorcerers the privilege of giving the resources to Joseph, Mary, and Jesus that they needed to escape Harod’s bloody hand. And God went to some trouble to do so.
1. Foreigners and the Bible.
According to the book of Matthew, it was after his resurrection that Jesus told his disciples to "make disciples of all nations". But outsiders had already played prominent roles in the history of salvation.
Abraham paid a tithe to King Melchizedek.
Upright, god-fearing Job was of the land of Uz.
A foreign pharaoh welcomed Joseph and his family to Egypt, saving them from the far-flung famine.
Moses’s father-in-law was a priest of Median. In Exodus 18, he brings Moses’s children and wife to Moses in the wilderness. Moses bowed down to him and kissed him. He brought to Moses a burnt offering and sacrifices to God. He told Moses to appoint judges under himself to hear disputes of the Israelites.
In the book of Nehemiah, we see the leader of the Jewish community taking strong actions against Jews who had taken non-Jewish wives. He forced them to reject them and their offspring. But a whole book of the Bible, Ruth, is about a Moabite woman who, because of her goodness, stood by her mother-in-law when they were both widows. She came to the attention of Boaz, married him, and was a grandmother of King David.
At the end of the age of Jewish kings in Judea and Israel, the Jews were conquered and taken from Judea and Israel as punishment for their apostasy. But after many decades, God charged King Cyrus of Persia to send such Jews as would to return to Jerusalem to rebuild the temple there.
In Jesus’s time on earth, a Roman centurion pleaded for Jesus to heal his sick daughter. But he said that Jesus need not come under his roof, for he was unworthy of that honor; Jesus had only to give the order, and his daughter would be well. Jesus said that even in Israel he had not found such faith.
Jesus had a long conversation with a Samaritan woman, about her and about salvation. His disciples wondered by he was talking to her, she being both a Samaritan and a woman.
2. Today.
I had a moment when I read an article about parents of a murdered daughter forgiving their daughter’s killer. It is a story of beautiful souls. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/06/magazine/can-forgiveness-play-a-role-in-criminal-justice.html?pagewanted=all
I was surprised by the part of the story about the counselor who mediated the meeting among the killer, his parents, the victim’s parents, and the prosecutor. Hers is a story of finding grace and the power of forgiveness among an exile community of Tibetans. Sujatha Baliga was counseled by the Dali Lama himself, and through meditation found the power to forgive the perpetrator of her own horrific past.
Baliga returned to the United States and signed up for an intensive 10-day meditation course. On the final day, she had a spontaneous experience, not unlike Andy Grosmaire’s at his daughter’s deathbed, of total forgiveness of her father. Sitting cross-legged on an easy chair in her home in Berkeley, Calif., last winter, she described the experience as a "complete relinquishment of anger, hatred and the desire for retribution and revenge."
I am now convinced that God moved Sujatha Baiga through the Dali Lama. It took a little time for my head to wrap around that.
But why shouldn’t God be present in the lives of un-believers today as he was with biblical figures such as Moses’s father-in-law, Ruth, Job, and King Cyrus? And those of us Christians, like me, who once were un-believers, are believers today because God moved us while we were un-believers.
God is the god not only of believers, but also of unbelievers. He is present in their lives, as he is in the lives of believers. Sometimes they break his heart, like the would-be murderers of Malala Yousufzai, the Pakistani teenager who advocated for the education of women. But we Christians also break the heart of our God.
3. What of unbelievers?
What of un-believers? I wish that they were believers. Unbelievers who are close to me are present in my prayers. But I do not dismiss that God is protective of them as he has been of me, even when I too did not believe.
They were from the East. They were not Jews. They were foreigners.
And God guided them from a far land to a manger in the town of Bethlehem. God chose them to be among the first to honor the Christ child.
It may be that the gold, frankincense, and myrrh that they brought paid for the holy family’s escape to Egypt, where they fled because Harod wanted to murder Jesus. They funded the escape, and they bought time for the holy family. God told them not to report to Herod where they found the messiah; they slipped away in a different direction to elude the murder-minded king.
To be clear: with all of the wealthy women and men in Judea, God gave to these foreign sorcerers the privilege of giving the resources to Joseph, Mary, and Jesus that they needed to escape Harod’s bloody hand. And God went to some trouble to do so.
1. Foreigners and the Bible.
According to the book of Matthew, it was after his resurrection that Jesus told his disciples to "make disciples of all nations". But outsiders had already played prominent roles in the history of salvation.
Abraham paid a tithe to King Melchizedek.
Upright, god-fearing Job was of the land of Uz.
A foreign pharaoh welcomed Joseph and his family to Egypt, saving them from the far-flung famine.
Moses’s father-in-law was a priest of Median. In Exodus 18, he brings Moses’s children and wife to Moses in the wilderness. Moses bowed down to him and kissed him. He brought to Moses a burnt offering and sacrifices to God. He told Moses to appoint judges under himself to hear disputes of the Israelites.
In the book of Nehemiah, we see the leader of the Jewish community taking strong actions against Jews who had taken non-Jewish wives. He forced them to reject them and their offspring. But a whole book of the Bible, Ruth, is about a Moabite woman who, because of her goodness, stood by her mother-in-law when they were both widows. She came to the attention of Boaz, married him, and was a grandmother of King David.
At the end of the age of Jewish kings in Judea and Israel, the Jews were conquered and taken from Judea and Israel as punishment for their apostasy. But after many decades, God charged King Cyrus of Persia to send such Jews as would to return to Jerusalem to rebuild the temple there.
In Jesus’s time on earth, a Roman centurion pleaded for Jesus to heal his sick daughter. But he said that Jesus need not come under his roof, for he was unworthy of that honor; Jesus had only to give the order, and his daughter would be well. Jesus said that even in Israel he had not found such faith.
Jesus had a long conversation with a Samaritan woman, about her and about salvation. His disciples wondered by he was talking to her, she being both a Samaritan and a woman.
2. Today.
I had a moment when I read an article about parents of a murdered daughter forgiving their daughter’s killer. It is a story of beautiful souls. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/06/magazine/can-forgiveness-play-a-role-in-criminal-justice.html?pagewanted=all
I was surprised by the part of the story about the counselor who mediated the meeting among the killer, his parents, the victim’s parents, and the prosecutor. Hers is a story of finding grace and the power of forgiveness among an exile community of Tibetans. Sujatha Baliga was counseled by the Dali Lama himself, and through meditation found the power to forgive the perpetrator of her own horrific past.
But why shouldn’t God be present in the lives of un-believers today as he was with biblical figures such as Moses’s father-in-law, Ruth, Job, and King Cyrus? And those of us Christians, like me, who once were un-believers, are believers today because God moved us while we were un-believers.
God is the god not only of believers, but also of unbelievers. He is present in their lives, as he is in the lives of believers. Sometimes they break his heart, like the would-be murderers of Malala Yousufzai, the Pakistani teenager who advocated for the education of women. But we Christians also break the heart of our God.
3. What of unbelievers?
What of un-believers? I wish that they were believers. Unbelievers who are close to me are present in my prayers. But I do not dismiss that God is protective of them as he has been of me, even when I too did not believe.
Thursday, January 3, 2013
Need
I couldn’t pay for my health insurance. I had already missed my payment for the month before. I would lose my health insurance, and with it I would lose access to the pills that make my mind work right.
It had been a bad two years financially. The law firm that my brother and I had started was struggling. I had blown through the small inheritance from my father. I probably hadn’t needed all of those vacations.
Clients were hard to come by. In San Bernardino, it seemed that anybody could get a free public defender. Few criminal defendants could hire a lawyer that they had to pay for or thought that it paid to hire one when they could get one for free. The prosecutor who did the misdemeanor plea-bargaining in the downtown courthouse said that even doctors were getting public defenders.
Maybe they had had a couple of years like I had had.
So I lay on my bed staring up at the ceiling in the dark. I could barely make out the contours of the ceiling from faint light coming though my window.
1. Remembering the past, fearing the future.
There had been a time when I deliberately had not taken the medicine prescribed for my mind. This was after many hospital commitments had taught me that my brain didn’t work well without chemical help. But I had decided that I didn’t need the pills. I don’t now remember why. Maybe I thought that I’d outgrown paranoid schizophrenia.
For a few months after I stopped taking the pills, everything was normal. But then it seemed to me that people were acting strangely. Then I deduced that they were accusing me of crimes that I hadn’t committed. My persecutors would be in one place; then I would drive somewhere else, and they would be there, too.
I was afraid in that time of renewed paranoia, but my memory worked fine. I knew that what I was then experiencing tracked my past experiences. I could trace the future through the past. First, there was a local conspiracy. Then it would become state-wide; it would become nation-wide; it would become world-wide.
As the supposed conspiracy grew outward, it would also draw close. At first, it would be driven by strangers. Then I would discover that people I knew were part of it – even friends, even family, finally everybody.
I would flee and find no place of safety. Then I would hear voices. I would see visions. They would seek to cut me with my own blade.
Even though the conspiracy seemed as real as anything I had known, I thought of the pills. There seemed to be no harm in going back to them. Maybe, I thought, they would help.
The pills ended the conspiracy like walking out of a theater leaves a frightening movie behind.
So in my right mind, on my bed looking at the ceiling, I dreaded the prospect of losing access to my medicine. It was like a death sentence. But I wouldn’t know ahead of time the day when the guards would come for me, and, unlike a prisoner, I could flee from them across the landscape – in my car until I could not get gas, and then on foot until the executioners caught up with me.
That was a time when I believed that God had rejected me and would not change his mind. I won’t go into detail about that. But in that state of mind, I didn’t have even a faint hope of heaven to cling to.
2. The solution.
In the morning, I did something that I didn’t want to do. I was helping a relative with his son’s legal problem. It had required hours of work and several trips to Los Angeles. He’d offered to pay me, but I don’t like charging relatives for legal work. But I decided that I had no choice. I e-mailed him and asked him for enough money to catch me up on my health-insurance premiums – two months worth. He quickly sent a check.
Problem solved.
Since then, finances have been up and down, but I’ve never since looked over the edge of the long drop like I did on that day. I hope that another day like that never comes.
3. What I learned.
I wish I could say that since then I’ve lived my life in a shrewdly frugal way, always in preparation for future money-droughts. I’m better than I was, but not as good as I need to be.
Over time, I’ve learned the virtue of a modest car and simple meals. I sometimes buy clothes at thrift stores. I bought a sports-coat at Goodwill. I wore it to a Christmas dinner, and my cousin’s husband complimented it by saying that he had one like it.
This learning continues. But disrupted cash-flow, when it comes, drives my thrift more effectively than habit. I suppose that this puts me out of the sympathy of the wise.
But my experience with need gives me more sympathy for those who struggle than I knew before my own hard times. And it makes me more grateful in good times. Remembering hard times makes me glad when I can contribute to the nation and the state. I’m proud to give money to my church.
Some time ago, I heard that a city was proposing to ban from their libraries people who smelled bad. They had the homeless in mind. Because of my past, I can relate to someone who stinks and seeks refuge from hardship in free literature. It could be me. Truth be told, nobody is further from that than from a catastrophe lying in wait. Nobody knows what illimitable mice might inexhaustibly nibble prosperity bare.
It had been a bad two years financially. The law firm that my brother and I had started was struggling. I had blown through the small inheritance from my father. I probably hadn’t needed all of those vacations.
Clients were hard to come by. In San Bernardino, it seemed that anybody could get a free public defender. Few criminal defendants could hire a lawyer that they had to pay for or thought that it paid to hire one when they could get one for free. The prosecutor who did the misdemeanor plea-bargaining in the downtown courthouse said that even doctors were getting public defenders.
Maybe they had had a couple of years like I had had.
So I lay on my bed staring up at the ceiling in the dark. I could barely make out the contours of the ceiling from faint light coming though my window.
1. Remembering the past, fearing the future.
There had been a time when I deliberately had not taken the medicine prescribed for my mind. This was after many hospital commitments had taught me that my brain didn’t work well without chemical help. But I had decided that I didn’t need the pills. I don’t now remember why. Maybe I thought that I’d outgrown paranoid schizophrenia.
For a few months after I stopped taking the pills, everything was normal. But then it seemed to me that people were acting strangely. Then I deduced that they were accusing me of crimes that I hadn’t committed. My persecutors would be in one place; then I would drive somewhere else, and they would be there, too.
I was afraid in that time of renewed paranoia, but my memory worked fine. I knew that what I was then experiencing tracked my past experiences. I could trace the future through the past. First, there was a local conspiracy. Then it would become state-wide; it would become nation-wide; it would become world-wide.
As the supposed conspiracy grew outward, it would also draw close. At first, it would be driven by strangers. Then I would discover that people I knew were part of it – even friends, even family, finally everybody.
I would flee and find no place of safety. Then I would hear voices. I would see visions. They would seek to cut me with my own blade.
Even though the conspiracy seemed as real as anything I had known, I thought of the pills. There seemed to be no harm in going back to them. Maybe, I thought, they would help.
The pills ended the conspiracy like walking out of a theater leaves a frightening movie behind.
So in my right mind, on my bed looking at the ceiling, I dreaded the prospect of losing access to my medicine. It was like a death sentence. But I wouldn’t know ahead of time the day when the guards would come for me, and, unlike a prisoner, I could flee from them across the landscape – in my car until I could not get gas, and then on foot until the executioners caught up with me.
That was a time when I believed that God had rejected me and would not change his mind. I won’t go into detail about that. But in that state of mind, I didn’t have even a faint hope of heaven to cling to.
2. The solution.
In the morning, I did something that I didn’t want to do. I was helping a relative with his son’s legal problem. It had required hours of work and several trips to Los Angeles. He’d offered to pay me, but I don’t like charging relatives for legal work. But I decided that I had no choice. I e-mailed him and asked him for enough money to catch me up on my health-insurance premiums – two months worth. He quickly sent a check.
Problem solved.
Since then, finances have been up and down, but I’ve never since looked over the edge of the long drop like I did on that day. I hope that another day like that never comes.
3. What I learned.
I wish I could say that since then I’ve lived my life in a shrewdly frugal way, always in preparation for future money-droughts. I’m better than I was, but not as good as I need to be.
Over time, I’ve learned the virtue of a modest car and simple meals. I sometimes buy clothes at thrift stores. I bought a sports-coat at Goodwill. I wore it to a Christmas dinner, and my cousin’s husband complimented it by saying that he had one like it.
This learning continues. But disrupted cash-flow, when it comes, drives my thrift more effectively than habit. I suppose that this puts me out of the sympathy of the wise.
But my experience with need gives me more sympathy for those who struggle than I knew before my own hard times. And it makes me more grateful in good times. Remembering hard times makes me glad when I can contribute to the nation and the state. I’m proud to give money to my church.
Some time ago, I heard that a city was proposing to ban from their libraries people who smelled bad. They had the homeless in mind. Because of my past, I can relate to someone who stinks and seeks refuge from hardship in free literature. It could be me. Truth be told, nobody is further from that than from a catastrophe lying in wait. Nobody knows what illimitable mice might inexhaustibly nibble prosperity bare.
Invisible Force
When you see a tree shaking in the wind, it seems to dance. It’s boughs do not move in stiff unity. They move as if the wind-sound were music that the tree enjoyed un-self-consciously. If we did not know the power of wind, the tree might seem to have thought and to move by its own strength. If we forget the wind, we might even imagine the tree uprooting itself and striding away like a giant in search of other joy.
We cannot see the wind, but we can hear it. When it blows over trees and houses at night, it can arrest our ears like a spirit of the darkness. I slept in a forest once, and the wind screeched over the trees like waves of angels or demons rushing overhead on their way to battle.
There is power in wind. A hurricane can trap a family in their home. A tornado can chase a family into their cellar. We have known the deadliness of these winds in recent times.
Wind is a portent. It carries the ocean to the traveler on land. It carries the land to the traveler on the ocean. It is the first native to greet a traveler to the tropics as she steps out through the portal of her airplane.
Wind is a destroyer. It carries fire from tree to tree across thousands of acres. At Mann Gulch, in Montana, it chased down thirteen young men who had parachuted in to fight a fire, and the fire it flung before it took them, all but one.
Wind is a life-giver. It shepherds rain-carrying clouds over needy earth.
Wind is freedom. Redtail hawks float upon it above fields. Decades ago, in England, I emerged past a cliff on the way to a township at the end of a day’s hike. A man hung below a rectangular parachute, riding the winds next to the cliff to it’s heights, up and down, while I passed from view.
The wind is a thing of pleasure to children. A noisy child might be still to enjoy the kiss of a soft, warm breeze. A child’s eyes might trace a long white string from his hand to a kite swinging in arcs, tethering him to the sky. A child might be mesmerized by chimes.
Wind is a boon. It has ground grain, carried ships, and powered city lights.
Our ancestors have always reckoned the wind.
"The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit." (John 3:8 (NRV).)
The Lord spoke to Job out of a whirlwind. (Job 8:1.)
"The answer my friend is blowin’ in the wind,
The answer is blowin’ in the wind." (Bob Dylan (1962).)
"Blow winds and crack your cheeks! Rage blow!
You cataracts and hurricanes, spout
Till you have drenched our steeples, drowned our cocks!
You sulphurous and thought-executing fires,
Vaunt-couriers of oak-cleaving thunderbolts,
Singe my white head!" (W. Shakespear, King Lear, act 3, sc. 2 (1605-1606).)
"Hush-a-bye, baby, on the tree top,
When the wind blows the cradle will rock;
When the bough breaks the cradle will fall,
Down will come baby, cradle, and all." (Nursery rhyme.)
Frank Swinnerton wrote of "A northeast wind that cut like a thousand razors."
Rebecca West compared a high wind to "invisible icicles".
Patricia Henley wrote of "Wind like a hungry coyote’s cry."
Scott Spencer wrote of wind that "screamed like a huge, injured thing."
Ellen Glasgow wrote of wind that "plunged like a hawk from the swollen clouds."
The wind preceded us. One day it might blow over our bones. In the meantime, it moves us, it terrorizes us, it loves us, it teaches us.
We cannot see the wind, but we can hear it. When it blows over trees and houses at night, it can arrest our ears like a spirit of the darkness. I slept in a forest once, and the wind screeched over the trees like waves of angels or demons rushing overhead on their way to battle.
There is power in wind. A hurricane can trap a family in their home. A tornado can chase a family into their cellar. We have known the deadliness of these winds in recent times.
Wind is a portent. It carries the ocean to the traveler on land. It carries the land to the traveler on the ocean. It is the first native to greet a traveler to the tropics as she steps out through the portal of her airplane.
Wind is a destroyer. It carries fire from tree to tree across thousands of acres. At Mann Gulch, in Montana, it chased down thirteen young men who had parachuted in to fight a fire, and the fire it flung before it took them, all but one.
Wind is a life-giver. It shepherds rain-carrying clouds over needy earth.
Wind is freedom. Redtail hawks float upon it above fields. Decades ago, in England, I emerged past a cliff on the way to a township at the end of a day’s hike. A man hung below a rectangular parachute, riding the winds next to the cliff to it’s heights, up and down, while I passed from view.
The wind is a thing of pleasure to children. A noisy child might be still to enjoy the kiss of a soft, warm breeze. A child’s eyes might trace a long white string from his hand to a kite swinging in arcs, tethering him to the sky. A child might be mesmerized by chimes.
Wind is a boon. It has ground grain, carried ships, and powered city lights.
Our ancestors have always reckoned the wind.
"The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit." (John 3:8 (NRV).)
The Lord spoke to Job out of a whirlwind. (Job 8:1.)
"The answer my friend is blowin’ in the wind,
The answer is blowin’ in the wind." (Bob Dylan (1962).)
"Blow winds and crack your cheeks! Rage blow!
You cataracts and hurricanes, spout
Till you have drenched our steeples, drowned our cocks!
You sulphurous and thought-executing fires,
Vaunt-couriers of oak-cleaving thunderbolts,
Singe my white head!" (W. Shakespear, King Lear, act 3, sc. 2 (1605-1606).)
"Hush-a-bye, baby, on the tree top,
When the wind blows the cradle will rock;
When the bough breaks the cradle will fall,
Down will come baby, cradle, and all." (Nursery rhyme.)
Frank Swinnerton wrote of "A northeast wind that cut like a thousand razors."
Rebecca West compared a high wind to "invisible icicles".
Patricia Henley wrote of "Wind like a hungry coyote’s cry."
Scott Spencer wrote of wind that "screamed like a huge, injured thing."
Ellen Glasgow wrote of wind that "plunged like a hawk from the swollen clouds."
The wind preceded us. One day it might blow over our bones. In the meantime, it moves us, it terrorizes us, it loves us, it teaches us.
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