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Back Room on Display

Sometimes there are no words. This is such a time. We are left aghast at humanity’s capacity to inflict new forms of evil, cruelty and hate.

The horror we are witnessing in Paris is, tragically, not a new or infrequent phenomenon. Each incident leaves us outraged, exasperated. Every recurrence holds the frightening potential to deaden our emotions, erect new walls around our self-enclosed enclaves, and pretend the violence is worlds away. This cycle must stop — both the death-dealing acts of terrorism as well as the head-in-the-sand retreat into denial and isolation.

Sometimes there should be no words! This is such a time. Rather, we must dig deeper and firmly resolve to discover a new capacity to inquire, comprehend and respond with the best in our human nature. This is a time for radical, un”reasonable” love.

Ironically, Hinduism — the most ancient of all the great world religions — is celebrating the feast of Diwali, the annual celebration of light, life and community. Perhaps this is sheer coincidence as the world convulses amid this latest act of death-dealing terror. Perhaps this year, especially this year, ours is a time to recall the teaching and nonviolence practiced by that most famous of Hindus, Mahatma Ghandi.

This is a time to be especially circumspect with our words and judgments. Coincidentally, I was reading about Christian d’Cherge and his fellow Trappist monks when I learned of the Paris massacres. You may recall that d’Cherge and fellow monks lived in solidarity with their Muslim neighbors in Algeria. Their’s was life of radical, un”reasonable” love in the image of Jesus Christ.

Christian d’Cherge grew up in Paris, served as a priest for six years at Sacre-Coeur atop Montmartre before joining the Trappist order. Early on the morning of March 27, 1996, he and six monks were kidnapped from their Algerian monastery, held for ransom and ultimately killed by terrorists in May of that year.

This is not a time for complex reprisal or threatening invectives. This is a time for honest inquiry, sincere efforts to comprehend and responses that spring from the best of our human nature.

Upon his January 1971 arrival amid Muslim neighbors whom he would befriend as an expression of his Christian faith, d’Cherge wrote in his journal these few but poignant words: “They are believers and respectful of all religious people, provided that what is in the back room corresponds with what is in the display windows.”

May all people of faith live with such correspondence, integrity and respect. Now, more than ever, may what we place on “display” through our words and actions manifest that which is best in the “back room” of whatever faith we allegedly profess.
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The quote of Christian d’Cherge is in translation from his native French: The Monks of Tibhirine: Faith, Love and Terror in Algeria by John W. Kizer. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2002. p. 39.

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November’s Singuilar Brilliance

The Burr Oaks are bare now. A solitary hackberry, much like a petulant younger sibling, vies for our attention from the kitchen window. It is no match for the sentinel oaks’ black knurled limbs cutting sharp furrows across November’s grisaille sky. Long winter looms though our larder is full.

Life is no less rich but registers differently, satisfactions more somnolent, gratitude more easily recognized as gratuitous. Example? On Wednesday we celebrated a dinner marking a young friend’s birthday. Five of us filled the table: our host, the 23 y/o honoree, her boyfriend, my husband and me.

Now well into our maturity we reveled in Grace’s vitality, potential and dreams. Yet, they are not ours. We vicariously share her eager enthusiasm for all that will open before her and everything which awaits her savoring and creativity.  Still, we will never witness Grace in her full stature as the woman of consequence she will certainly become.

When fickle November sun, filtered by the looming oak, pierces our kitchen window we feel only its light — bright, blinding luminance. Summer’s radiant warmth is now gone. We grow content with singular brilliance penetrating our shuttered eyes. Like barren branches that have yielded their fruit, color and sheltering foliage we stand exposed without shame, in our nakedness.

No longer do we ask Grace’s question: “Where am I called to go?” Rather, in full stature of our knurled maturity, our question becomes: “Where am I called to let go?”

With the brilliance only November yields, we take stock of an abundant harvest. All that remains is gratitude for everything that has been given. Yes, everything!

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Celebrating An End to War

Times sure have changed. Time was when someone went into “the service.” Now, they are “in the military.” From my way of seeing things we need to rekindle some of those old values. Veterans Day is a good time to start.

Dad was nine years old on the first Armistice Day. He never tired of telling the story of pride, patriotism and jubilation that accompanied the end of World War I. What the farms of Cedar County Nebraska lacked in population and national prominence yields not an inch to the celebrations caught on news reels and now iconic photos.

So, what’s changed? Much, indeed. Too much to chronicle here or to bemoan on what is a national holiday. Rather, we would do better to focus on what we can restore, what in our national character we can rekindle, how might we restore honor to our tarnished national self-esteem. That would be a realistic response to a genuine need.

Here’s a few thoughts:

  • Rekindle a sense of service to our nation. Nothing grandiose today! What if we were to start simple and keep it local? What can we do today, this week, this month to strengthen the social fabric of our neighborhoods, communities, civic organizations? Do something, do it more than once so it becomes a habit.
  • Say thanks to someone serving in the military. Set aside the politics for a moment. Deal with how and when we should use military force in foreign affairs vigorously but on a case by case basis. Don’t take it out on individual service personnel. Today I resolve to call my 83 y/o brother to say thanks for his 30-year military career and to write a letter to my grand-nephew, Isaac currently serving in South Korea.
  • Work for peace! No one hates war more than those who have known war. War is hell — the end of war is our cause for celebration. Veterans I know are the last to aggrandize their experience — many keep silent about their actual experience because they never want their loved ones to know what they have known. We honor them best by reverencing the full truth of their sacrifice.

Today we commemorate the end of a horrific war. We recognize the sacrifice and loss of family and neighbors in all war. We honor those who serve today. With those who have known the ultimate cost first hand we pray, “Never again! Never again, war!”

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Guilty As Charged

Ever been called a heretic? “Them’s fightin’ words” where I come from. Well, something just said wasn’t a direct accusation of me but struck enough of a cord to make me squirm.

Of course, the heresy to which many of us are prone is as old as Christianity. Variations are so endemic to our human psyche they undoubtedly pre-date Christianity and exist in all great world religions.

An especially virulent outbreak is chronicled in the fourth century fights between the monk, Pelagius and St. Augustine, bishop of Hippo. It flared to epidemic proportions again in the “works righteousness” controversy of the Protestant Reformation. We haven’t resolved it and it hasn’t gone away.

Truly, it’s not about ancient history or abstract theology. I recognize the perversion inside me. It resides in each of us and in our faith communities, even if dormant.

“Pelagianism” distorts our sense of right and wrong.  It distracts us from what really matters, leads us to be judgmental of others, and disguises a self-righteous attitude. Yes, indeed, “them’s fightin’ words!”

Today Pope Francis admonished the bishops of Italy against a temptation to Pelagianism. As will any authentic proclamation of the Gospel it applies to all of us, not just to bishops:

Pelagianism brings us to have faith in structures, organisations, and plans that are perfect because [they are] abstract. Sometimes it even leads us to adopt a controlling, tough and prescriptive attitude. The law gives the Pelagian a certain sense of superiority… And it makes its seem as though [the Christian] is doing a good deed.

Francis’ morning admonition, directed to all of us, conveys a sense of urgency in light of the pressing challenges and urgent needs facing our world today:

[I]t is no good seeking solutions in conservative or fundamentalist attitudes, in the revival of types of conduct and forms that are dated and that lack a capacity to be significant even culturally. Christian doctrine is not a closed doctrine that is incapable of generating questions, doubts, queries but it is alive and able to unsettle and enliven people. It has a face that is not rigid, a body that moves and grows and a tender flesh: it is called Jesus Christ.

His is the way of humility, selflessness, the Beatitudes. This makes me squirm. I have to confess that it’s a whole lot easier living within the comfort and certainty of my self-righteous heresy.
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My source is the news service, Vatican Voices. The report is available [here].  The bold print in the final quote is mine for emphasis.

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Outrage Displaced

A self-righteous moral crusade has pretty well preoccupied my past week. I’ve been outraged by the state of our health care system — its expense, inefficiency, bureaucracy, mediocrity, self-indulgence. All the while, some corporate and elected officials do everything in their power to scuttle needed reforms and deny access and affordable care to the most needy.

Trust me, if you’ve not seen me on my soapbox spouting harsh invectives and blistering assessments you should count your blessings. Obviously, I like words and take pleasure in their use. Rile my sense of moral indignation and I easily let loose with condemnations and anathamas for whatever the situation may be.

Case in point: today I am having laparoscopic surgery to repair a hernia. Really, no big deal. The actual procedure takes about 15 minutes. You’d never guess that by the bureaucratic hoops and all the medical professionals who find a way to get a cut of the action (i.e., the bill). Don’t get me started!

Nevertheless I’ve learned something important during this unplanned engagement with the health care system I still believe is objectively broken. I’ve learned how much I project and how I’d be better off attending to the stuff I can influence and for which I am directly responsible. Case in point: I need the hernia repair. I am not going to reform the health care system in the process.

Maybe there will be more to learn.  But, two realizations occur to me in this process. First, get clean and clear about my emotions. In this case I recognize that my repressed fear and submerged anxiety is spurting out sideways.  Expressing indignation about a bureaucracy I reluctantly must engage is easier than admitting that I’m more scared than I want to admit.

It’s really more about me than I want to acknowledge. I would do better admitting my feelings of vulnerability and loss of control than stoke the moral indignation I might muster on behalf of the faceless “vulnerable” and “powerless” in our midst. Yes, we must address access to good health care for those on the peripheries or those without access. However, I need to come clean about the source of my outrage and soapbox rants.

Second thing that has surfaced is a way to test whether my self-righteous indignation is just that — a slightly veiled case of self-interest and an external projection of my internal anxiety. It seems so simple… It would be more honest to ask, “Will I be as outraged and committed to reforming the health care system and getting access for the poor and vulnerable next week as I’ve spouted from atop my soapbox this week?”

Honestly, will I really care a week from now? I hope I will. Still, I probably will be focused on simple gratitude that my hernia surgery is poast and be off on my next “crusade.” Guaranteeing access to care for the needy or reform a broken health care system will be a cause set aside for whatever captures my immediate interst.

The need I should focus on and something broken I can more immediately change is much more personal. That requires more than a 15 minute procedure.

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What Would Mom Say?

When I’d be moping around in my adolescent funk or otherwise being disappointed with what life was — or wasn’t — sending my way Mom would often say, “Y’know, life is pretty much what you make of it!” Then she’d keep silent, letting reality sink in. She said a lot of wise stuff about life! This is just one that’s popping up a lot these days.

Earlier this week I was speaking with a dear, dear friend. She, too, is a Mom. In fact, she’s a Grandma seven times over. One of her children is considering a job transfer to a different city. This is really a painful decision for everyone involved. No more having just the grandkids for an overnight. No more spontaneous visits to the Children Museum. No more school productions or soccer games to applaud. Yes, life sends plenty of disappointment our way.

But what really took me off guard was Sarah’s response. Ever the “Mom” with wisdom aplenty she said to her son: “Yes, I would be very sad. I would really miss you. But you need to know this… You are not responsible for my happiness — I am!” Talk about profound, honest, empowering wisdom from a mother!

Yesterday was a day filled with many frustrations… a home repair project for a friend took twice as long as it should have, the caulk-gun didn’t work when I wanted to seal cracks in the driveway, insulation we had installed the day before wasn’t sticking to the window as it should, battle was waged with a health care system more focused on profits than on people, my 16 y/o car has developed a metallic clatter that I can no longer ignore.

No wonder the wisdom of these wise Moms resurfaced from the recesses of my consciousness. What am I to make of this litany of frustrations? Do I really want to concede my emotional wellbeing to the power of caulk-guns, window insulation, and the clatter of a car engine?  I guess the choice is mine!

We still depend on our mothers’ wisdom to navigate life’s disappointments, salvaging happiness from a litany of frustrations.  We might say of our mothers what I imagine Sarah would say about her grandkids, “They may be gone, but they never leave us.  And that’s a good thing!”

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Beyond Our Imagining

“The truly wise understand what they don’t know!” Somewhere along the line someone said that at a time when I was developmentally ready to hear it. Somehow it seems to encapsulate what education is all about. It’s probably a pretty decent summation of what makes for a full and contented life.

It’s when I’ve been pushed outside the comfort of the nest — as an eagle does for her young — that I have learned to fly.  Remember swimming lessons? … how hard it was to just jump in?  My “personal best” encounter with terror was sky-diving from 15,000 feet.

All such experiences shape us to be the people we eventually become.  Surely one of the most profound influences upon my character development and core values was my involvement with an inner-city youth group during my early teens.  Otherwise my youth looked pretty much like episodes from Father Knows Best, Leave It to Beaver or The Donna Reed Show.

My present life in a “desirable” south Minneapolis neighborhood is still pretty much a promo for white, middle class 1950s values. I need to intentionally shake things up from time to keep a grip on reality.

I’m reminded of this necessity every time we take the bus/light-rail to and from the airport rather than a taxi or the airport shuttle. Such forays outside of our comfort zone repeatedly show us a city, even a neighborhood, significantly different from the one that lives in our imagination.

All this came flashing back while reading David Brooks. Here’s what triggered my curiosity about what really made a difference in my education, what’s truly made a difference in my life:

Montaigne once wrote, “We can be knowledgeable with other men’s knowledge, but we can’t be wise with other men’s wisdom.” That’s because wisdom isn’t a body of information. It’s the moral quality of knowing what you don’t know and figuring out a way to handle your ignorance, uncertainty, and limitation.

So how do we get to be wise? By getting outside of our social enclaves of folks just like us. By riding the bus and seeing people who do not aspire to be our clones and whose pursuit of the American Dream is other than our personal narrative. By deliberately entering that “no man’s land” where we feel some cultural turbulence and our preconceived ideas can get shaken-up.  It’s when we have our eyes, ears and hearts wide open that we know we are fully alive.

This is hard, even risky. We don’t want to go anywhere or do anything that will challenge our “security”, threaten our “truth”. But a clutched fist cannot receive what others have to give. We squander life’s invitation to understand what we truly don’t know!

We end up worshipping a God of our own creation rather than a God whose creation is beyond our imagining.

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The quote is from The Road to Character by David Brooks.  New York: Random House. 2015. Kindle edition at #295.

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A Bizarre Juxtaposition

Strange how our brains work! This morning my nephew’s six kids, ages 4 to 14, came to mind as I was reading about second century Egyptian hermits. Truly, such an improbable connection surprised even me.

Yes, the kids are pretty typical in every way with their child-like antics and periodic meltdowns. Though we love them, the general chaos of the household leads us to stay with their grandparents when we are in Omaha. Add our niece’s three kids who are regularly part of the mix and you have quite a catalytic explosion on your hands.

But as we have visited or hosted the families and viewed photos on Facebook, we’ve noticed something exceptional. They really get along! They are a cohesive unit. Yes, they fight and sometimes throw fits if they don’t get their way. But the care and bond each has for the other is palpable. Every child should be so lucky to grow up in families with siblings and cousins like these children.

So, here’s the piece from the second century desert hermits that worked its strange alchemy on me this morning. The bizarre juxtaposition still brings a quizzical smile to my face:

Abba Pambo, one of the early monks of Nitria, received a visit from four monks of Scetis. As each one talked to Pambo, he spoke of the others’ virtues. One had fasted, another had lived in poverty, the third was known for charity. The fourth monk, who “had lived for twenty-two years in obedience to another man,” was praised as the greatest. Pambo said, “Each of the others has obtained the virtue he wished to acquire; but the last one, restraining his own will, does the will of another. Now it is of such men that the martyrs are made, if they persevere to the end.”

What we have noticed about our nephew and niece’s kids goes beyond the fact they get along and like each other. They truly care for each other — they watch out for each other and have each other’s back. They have learned how to share — perhaps the proximity of so many others has something to do with making this a necessity. Yes, each is right on schedule with the normal stages of strong ego development! But they have a quality of self-giving within a web of community that is remarkable in 21st century America.

We can spout all sorts of platitudes about family values and how parents are our first and best teachers. All this is true. Though my nephew, my niece, and their spouses would absolutely deny it and call me deluded and uninformed; they and their kids come about as close to the ideal as is humanly possible.

Yes, their kids are still children! However, from my vantage of 65 years I see them ideally positioned to one day comprehend the fullness of the Christian proclamation…

Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:
Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
but made himself nothing,
taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man,
He humbled himself
and became obedient to death–
even death on a cross. (Phil 2:5-8)

In another place Scripture says, “…and a little child shall guide them.” Today my grandnieces and grandnephews have much to teach this old man.

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The story about Abba Pambo is originally from The Sayings of the Desert Fathers: The Alphabetical Collection. Translated by Benedicta Ward. Rev. ed CS 59. Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1984. #196 (Pambo 3).  I read the account in Reclaiming Humility: Four Studies in the Monastic Tradition by Jane Foulcher. Cistercian Publications. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press. 2015. pp 75-76.

Family Matters
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Family Matters

Among countless pleasures of our 16-day European honeymoon we remember gracious hospitality, spectacular sites, pristine Autumn weather and reunions with cherished friends. And these do not include our delight upon hearing that a friend had upgraded us to First Class for our 8-hour return flight from Amsterdam to Minneapolis. Ours was truly the honeymoon of our dreams… a dream we will long remember.

One extraordinary gift was the opportunity to visit the small rural hamlets from which my German ancestry emigrated. My paternal great-great grandparents came from Ellsdorf-Esch, near Cologne, in 1850. My mother’s German ancestry (she’s half Irish) left Weiberg/Hegensdorf near Kassel in 1856 for America.

Wanting to symbolically mark the occasion, we gathered dirt from fields near both sites. On our next visit to the cemeteries in NE Nebraska where these forebears are buried we will sprinkle earth from their homeland upon their graves. We will do this in their honor, in gratitude and in testimony to the enduring family bond they established.

We will not perform this simple ritual with naive sentimentality. The strength of family bonds we so easily take for granted required that they cut the bonds that linked them to family, culture and homeland. Their sacrifice was immense and should never be romanticized nor underestimated.

They left everything they possessed and all they knew out of necessity — families from the Rhineland were reeling from intractable poverty, lack of opportunity and political repression following the failed social revolution of 1848.

Virtually all German emigrants to America were desperate refugees fleeing intolerable conditions for a better life. Surely they could never have fathomed the good fortune of their children, not to mention the extravagances and indulgences of our honeymoon.

All this came rushing forth as I read a news report on my iPad from the comfort of our Minneapolis home. John Allen, a reporter for the Boston Globe, wrote about taking an old friend out to lunch in one of his favorite restaurants in Rome. The friend is Bishop Borys Gudziak, leader of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church in Paris and president of the prestigious Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv.

Toward the end of lunch, Gudziak looked at Allen and said something like: “This has been a great meal, and I thank you for it. Let’s not forget, however, that millions of people in this world live in extreme poverty, and could never dream of affording something like this.” Allen’s unspoken reaction was, “You’re a great guy, Borys, but you can be a real downer sometimes.”

Bishop Gudziak wasn’t finished. “Almost half of the world lives with less than what a cappuccino costs in this neighborhood, less than two euros a day, and 80 percent of the world lives on less than $10 a day,” he said, with rising intensity in his voice. “There’s 150 million homeless people, 100 million orphans, 60 million refugees.”

Yes, I too easily accept — even with sincere gratitude — the unfathomable opportunities and unmerited comforts of my life. I can easily sentimentalize our family heritage, minimizing the sacrifice, romanticizing the true story. I can claim it as a unique family saga when it is in fact a universal human search for freedom, dignity and a better life for our children.

The dirt we scooped from the fields of Ellsdorf-Esch and Weiberg/Hegensborf sits in a plastic container not far from my recliner, current book selections and flat screen television. Until we have the opportunity to sprinkle it upon the graves of our forebears in sacred testimony to their courage and sacrifice, I will remember that my story is not something out of the 19th century but is more accurately “our” story today.

I will remember with this photo of a migrant praying in a field near the border between Serbia and Croatia about 100 km (62 miles) west of Belgrade, Serbia on Oct. 18, 2015.   It is a family photo for truly this man is more than a neighbor, he is our brother:

image

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The inspirational article by John Allen about his lunch with Bishop Borys Gudziak is from the October 18 online edition of Crux [link].  The photo is from the Associated Press: (AP Photo/Darko Vojinovic).

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Unrelentingly True to Life

2015 will be remembered for its unrelenting display of October splendor, truly spectacular! Bright blue skies consistently frame brilliant yellows and blazing red landscapes. This morning softens the exuberance with an array of gray which Hopkins so aptly dubs “all a world of wet.”

Yes, October is the most honest month, the one most true to life. We are given the opportunity to rehearse and prepare for what lies ahead with vigor, gratitude and prudence — the wisdom garnered from all that’s gone before.

Our annual harvest is not limited to earth’s bounty. We are nudged by this seasonal reminder to embrace the fullness of our nature. A poem recently discovered expresses why October has become my favorite time of year…

If we could,
like the trees,
practice dying,
do it every year
just as something we do—
like going on vacation
or celebrating birthdays,
it would become
as easy a part of us
as our hair or clothing.

Someone would show us how
to lie down and fade away
as if in deepest meditation,
and we would learn
about the fine dark emptiness,
both knowing it and not knowing it,
and coming back would be irrelevant.

Whatever it is the trees know
when they stand undone,
surprisingly intricate,
we need to know also
so we can allow
that last thing
to happen to us
as if it were only
any ordinary thing,

leaves and lives
falling away,
the spirit, complex,
waiting in the fine darkness
to learn which way
it will go.

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“Learning from Trees” by Grace Butcher. Text as published in Child, House, World (Hiram Poetry Review Supplement No. 12, Hiram College, 1991). I am grateful to Parker Palmer for introducing me to this poem.