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The Final Word

People tell me I like to talk. Sometimes I talk too much. One of my core faults is always wanting to have the last word. Hidden in here may be one of the reasons I enjoy writing this blog.

Yes, I do like shake-’em-up conversations, especially with people who are more curious about next questions than needing to have pat answers. Sometimes I toss out strong opinions hoping to elicit an equally strong response.

Nothing is more disappointing than to have someone back-off. Well, actually, there is something more disheartening — that is to have someone recite pious palliatives, hide behind doctrinaire opinions or bolster their closed-mindedness by only getting their information from like-minded ideologues.

My ideal dinner party would be a table with Krista Tippet surrounded by five guests of her choosing from her Public Radio program, On Being. In a setting like that I would never have the last word. I would be more than satisfied if I could leave with a whole new set of provocative questions. But I digress.

The primary inspiration for this post was happening upon a sermon recently preached by a minister of the Uniting Church (Methodist/Reformed) in Swansea, Australia. His Scripture reference is the Beatitudes.

The very same text are the Gospel verses Russ and I have coincidentally chosen for our wedding service. As an exercise in not needing to have the last word, here is a link to a marvelous sermon preached by a Reformed minister half a world away… [link]

We would be honored to have his be the final Word preached at our marriage ceremony.

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Failing Forgiveness

Recently, I deeply hurt a dear family member. My well rehearsed self-defensiveness easily shifts into excuses and rationalization: “I didn’t mean to hurt you.” A reflexive, limp, “I’m sorry!” “Here’s what I really meant…” In the back of my mind I also sprinkle in a good dose of “Oh, get over it!” “You’re too thin-skinned.” “You misinterpreted what I meant.”

I easily nurse grudges or smugly assert my innocence, all with a heavy dose of moral superiority. “Me? Why I would never willingly hurt anyone!” This has been my default position for most of my 65 years.

And, it doesn’t work! In fact, it isolates and hardens us. Ultimately, it turns us bitter — the sort of arrogant curmudgeons no one wants to be around. Even we discover we are not in very good company when we increasingly find ourselves alone.

Coincidental to my recent family incident the University of Minnesota was going through a major publicity nightmare and scandal. The Athletic Director had been forced to resign after sexually harassing two colleagues at a mid-summer gathering of top university administrators. Yes, alcohol was involved. Yes, his “excuse” was inept. Yes his “apology” was predictably lame.

Apologies must be about the person who has been hurt, not about protecting our backsides or rehabilitating our reputations! We concoct an amazing assortment of avoidance strategies which are really more about self-forgiveness. According to a really fine op-ed in the Star Tribune about the dismal response by Mr Teague and University leadership, such self-defensiveness sabotages any hope for recovery or rehabilitation.

James E. Lukaszewski’s op-ed convincingly describes the essential pieces of an effective apology:

  • Regret — an explicit acknowledgment that my behavior caused unnecessary pain, suffering and hurt that identifies, specifically, what action or behavior is responsible for the pain.
  • Responsibility — an unconditional declarative acceptance and recognition that my wrongful behavior and acknowledgment that there is no excuse for it.
  • Restitution — an offer of help or assistance to the person I have hurt, followed up by action beyond “I’m sorry,” and conduct that takes responsibility to make the situation right.
  • Repentance — explicit acknowledgment that my behavior caused pain and suffering for which I am genuinely sorry; language that recognizes that I cause serious, unnecessary harm and emotional damage.
  • Direct request for forgiveness — “I was wrong, I hurt you and I ask you to forgive me.”

Reading these words admonishing the Athletic Director and University felt like red-hot coals being heaped on my head. Despite my self-righteous efforts to keep the need for an effective apology theoretical and about others, I felt exposed and incriminated.

My gut was confirming what Lukaszewski claimed.  Admitting that I have done something hurtful and requesting forgiveness is damn hard! Maybe that’s why it is so rarely done, at least with sincerity and effectiveness. Though 65 years of moral evasiveness have taught me the same truth, the hottest coal of all was his final admonition: “Skip even one step, and you simply fail.”

You fail! Not just in this instance. Not just with this family member, neighbor, colleague. We fail — as human beings, the kind of people others want to be around, the sort of person I’d want to be with when I’m all alone!

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The August 10, 2015 op-ed in the Star Tribune is available [here]. In his essay, James E. Lukaszewski credits his source as The Five Languages of Apology, by Gary Chapman and Jennifer Thomas.

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Judge Not

I’d like to say I’ve given up, but I haven’t. I’d like to say I’ve stopped trying to figure out what makes people tick — why they act the way they do, say what they say (or not!), believe what they believe. But, I can’t!

People continue to baffle me, confound me, sometimes disappointment me. There is some truth in the adage: “Do as I say not as I do!” But that isn’t even always true. People disappoint, act poorly, sometimes their words — or their silence — is deeply hurtful.

Mr Hall, my senior English teacher at Creighton Prep, would be shocked to hear me say this but good literature, novels and short stories help us wrestle with the bumps and bruises of living in families, neighborhoods and with colleagues. What Thomas Merton had to say about famed Southern novelist Flannery O’Connor is a case in point:

The first thing that anyone notices in reading Flannery O’Connor is that her moral evaluations seem to be strangely scrambled. The good people are bad and the bad people tend to be less bad than they seem. … Her crazy people , while remaining as crazy as they can possibly be, turn out to be governed by a strange kind of sanity. In the end, it is the sane ones who are incurable lunatics. The “good,” the “right,” the “kind” do all the harm. “Love” is a force for destruction, and “truth” is the best way to tell a lie.

That’s my read of our current situation — and I don’t just mean Presidential politics! O’Connor was getting at something much deeper, persistent and endemic in the human character. Merton goes on to observe that O’Connor’s true-to-life characters place us…

on the side of the fanatic and the mad boy, and we are against the reasonable zombie. We are against everything he stands for. We find ourselves nauseated by the reasonable, objective, ‘scientific’ answers he has for everything. In him, science is so right that it is a disaster.

Isn’t that all too true? My resounding YES! to O’Connor and Merton’s experience had me inserting “morals” for the word scientific and “morality” for science. Some of the most confounding and disappointing people are those who are so certain of their “moral” answers that their “morality” is a disaster.

Right and wrong — judging others — is perilous terrane. Yet, some of us persist in shining bright lights on others’ lives and behaviors. Jesus warned against such Pharisaic preoccupation calling the best of the lot “whitened sepulchers.” Psychologists have long correlated this propensity with a terrific fear of shining that same light on our own lives.

I try not to judge lest I be judged. But sometimes we are judged anyway — and by people who say they care about us. Sometimes other people’s words, actions, even their silence communicate a heavy moralistic judgment. The wisdom of the ages, the wisdom of the world’s great religious traditions, the teaching of Jesus Christ all shed important light on this persistent human propensity — unanimous in its condemnation.

More and more, experience is teaching me the wisdom and urgency of Jesus’ confounding warning about the Last Judgment. How sad it will be for those so certain about what was right and good for others to hear the Judge say, “I do not know you!”

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The first quote by Thomas Merton about Flannery O’Connor is from his book, Mystics and Zen Masters, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1967, # 259.  The second Merton quote is from #260 of the same work.

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Tubs, Tissue Paper and Umbrellas

The clerk at CVS had just spoken of his fear that the roof was going to blow off during the storm front that had just passed. Now we navigated some of Minnesota’s 10,000 lakes consolidated in the Target parking lot. Though unspoken we both tried to dismiss concern about the weather for our outdoor wedding three weeks to the day.

Antique baskets for the table and altar flowers need to be packed carefully. We were in search of tissue paper and solid plastic tubs. The price of plain white tissue paper — neatly folded and encased in crystal clear cellophane — could rattle the rafters!

“Do we have paper towels at home? We could use paper towels and they’d be right there ready to go at the wedding.” Once again, the ingenuity of the man I love shone forth.  We moved on from paper to plastic.

Who knew storage tubs came in so many sizes and could be marketed for so many distinct purposes? The price caused us to ask if cardboard boxes might serve as well. We even considered emptying tubs we already have tucked away in the basement for this one-time wedding use. In the end we bought two more imagining additional uses, protestations that we already have too much stuff not withstanding!

Target’s automated doors swung open to a world awash in infinite shades of gray. Thankfully the rain had stopped, the wind had subsided. Remnants of a white and green umbrella obstinately poked from the trash bin near the exit, certainly a casualty of the recent rattling storm. Being the unabashed dumpster-diver that I am, of course it required my inspection.

“Honey, you are not taking stuff home from the Target trash bin!” Mortification washed across his face as he distanced himself from me.

“But, look, it’s perfectly good… three of the pins just need to be reattached”, proudly claiming new-found treasure, feeling satisfied in my ability to repair and reuse. Besides, at 65 I am long past caring what others think of me retrieving what someone else too quickly trashes.

One thing I am not so good at is keeping my spirituality firmly grounded in the stuff of life. For example, last week regulars here read this only slightly veiled self-revelation of my own conviction:

The monk … feels in a confused way that he must live within a certain ill-defined ecclesiological space, at a point where the partitions erected by the separation have not prevailed and where already those walls are yielding which, as Metropolitan Platon of Kiev said one day, certainly do not rise all the way to heaven.

I can hear my bother-in-law John saying, “What the hell does that mean!?!”

So, my apologies for the many times I get too heavenly minded to be any earthly good. Yet, never will I apologize for reveling in such wisdom. It’s the way I’m wired. Besides, the intellectual and mystical tradition of the church is also a place to find God and to be pursued as well as cherished.

But my personal need for spiritual growth is to keep myself grounded in the equal wisdom of spiritual giants like Wendell Berry. Regular readers will recall that I quoted the Kentucky farmer two weeks ago:

No use talking about getting enlightened or saving your soul if you can’t keep the topsoil from washing away.

My brother-in-law would say, “Amen to that, brother!”

Tubs, tissue paper and umbrellas are more than utilitarian. They reveal values, priorities, how connected we are with the physical world, revealing our true spirituality! Preparing for a marriage has a way of bringing this to the forefront — perhaps we all need to renew our covenant of love with the creation that makes it all possible.

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The reference to “the monk” recalls my August 20 post and is from In the School of Contemplation by Andre Louf, p. 128.  The Wendell Berry quote was first cited here in an August 12 post.

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Put On Your Chicken Wire

A good friend knew our conversation would not be easy. The topic she wanted to discuss was difficult, potentially painful. She did not want to be confrontational — rather, she intended to play fair!

She said, “Time to put on you chicken wire.”

“What?” I said, not having a clue what she meant.

“Put on your chicken wire! You have a right to feel safe, protected and maintain your integrity. But you need to hear what I have to say. Most of us throw up our defenses, walling off any meaningful dialogue. Putting on your chicken wire allows you to feel safe — it will also help you take in what I have to say.”

Ironically, Jane’s approach actually made me eager to engage a tough conversation about difficult stuff. Right from the get-go I felt respected, empowered and willing to look at my culpability without reacting defensively. We both began porous rather than hardened.

The conversation that ensued was animated, emotional and true testimony to an enduring friendship. It concluded with an honest embrace and a commitment to touch base again in a couple of weeks.

Now, days later, I still walk around with my chicken wire in tact. It may just stay as part of my permanent attire. It’s a great way to engage others from a position of safety, integrity. Yesterday — with chicken wire securely in place — I negotiated the always challenging (for me, at least) weekend checkout lines a Costco. Chicken wire has become my new necessity for negotiating life’s inevitable conflicts.

First of all, Jane’s approach was strong, appropriate and inspired. The part of her approach which only became apparent in the conversation is that chicken wire required Jane to “give” what she had to say in pieces that would fit through my open spaces. It had to come in sizes I could take in. Same from my side. I had to say what I had to give in pieces that fit her capacity to receive as well.

Who knew!?! Chicken wire! Solution to innumerable human challenges. One of life’s enduring necessities.

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No Longer Any Need of Comment

Coincidentally, two things arose today pointing me in the same direction. When things like this converge I’ve learned to pay attention. I don’t have it figured out — at least cognitively. What I have is an intuitive sense that simply suggests wisdom resides somewhere in it all. Both came from Trappist monks — can this be mere coincidence? Does this not suggest more than happenstance.

From In the School of Contemplation by Andre Louf:

The monk has received a certain experience of God and a taste of God that go far beyond the formulas that try to circumvent them. He also possesses, through prayer, a sense of the universal communion in Christ that exceeds the visible borders of the Churches such as they have become fixed after the wounds of the great schisms. He feels in a confused way that he must live within a certain ill-defined ecclesiological space, at a point where the partitions erected by the separation have not prevailed and where already those walls are yielding which, as Metropolitan Platon of Kiev said one day, certainly do not rise all the way to heaven.

Again, I do not have any of this figured out. Something tells me I don’t need to, nor should I try.

The second thing to arise was a poem by Thomas Merton. Again, I am not prepared to offer commentary. Simply the poem:

When in the soul of the serene disciple
With no more Fathers to imitate
Poverty is a success,
It is a small thing to say the roof is gone:
He has not even a house.

Stars, as well as friends,
Are angry with the noble ruin.
Saints depart in several directions.

Be still:
There is no longer any need of comment.
It was a lucky wind
That blew away his halo with his cares,
A lucky sea that drowned his reputation.

Here you will find
Neither a proverb nor a memorandum.
There are no ways,
No methods to admire
Where poverty is no achievement.
His God lives in his emptiness like an affliction.

What choice remains?
Well, to be ordinary is not a choice:
It is the usual freedom
Of men without visions.

There is nothing more I care to say. I simply offer these words to you, trusting Wisdom will speak whatever needs to be said to your heart.
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The quote by Andre Louf is from p. 128 of In the School of Contemplation, Liturgical Press, Collegeville, MN, 2015.

The poem by Thomas Merton was brought to my attention by Richard Rohr’s Meditation: First and Second Halves of Life, Part I for August 20, 2015 offered by The Center for Action and Contemplation.

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An Audacious Wish for an Auspicious Occasion

Turning 65 is an auspicious occasion. Forty-four years ago I celebrated my 21st birthday on the Jersey shore eating seafood with my sister and her husband. Karen died ten years ago but I am again celebrating with Denny. This time in Omaha with his wife of eight years, Roseanne whom I have come to love.

Today, I will take the man I love — and will marry on September 12 — to Lincoln. We will reminisce as I share where I lived and worked right out of college. Haven’t been back in decades — much has changed, of this I am sure. Yet, much remains the same! Seems like the perfect way to spend the day leading up to an auspicious birthday.

Lloyd Stone (1912 – 1993) was born in California and attended the University of Southern California as a music major. He intended to become a teacher. Life often gets in the way of plans —  he joined a circus bound for Hawaii and remained there for the rest of his life, writing poems and songs. This is his best known work — written when Lloyd was 22 years old. It has become the heartfelt prayer of this 65 y/o man:

This is my song, O God of all the nations,
a song of peace for lands afar and mine;
this is my home, the country where my heart is;
here are my hopes, my dreams, my holy shrine:
but other hearts in other lands are beating
with hopes and dreams as true and high as mine.

My country’s skies are bluer than the ocean,
and sunlight beams on cloverleaf and pine;
but other lands have sunlight too, and clover,
and skies are everywhere as blue as mine:
O hear my song, thou God of all the nations,
a song of peace for their land and for mine.

The poem is typically sung to the tune Finlandia, composed by Jean Sibelius. Churches wanting to include it in their hymnals “christianized” the lyrics by adding additional verses. I believe the original poem by Lloyd Stone is plenty Christian as written and needs no further embellishment.

A favorite rendition is sung by Minnesota-based Cantus [link]. At this point in my life it says more to me than any birthday song, expresses a wish greater than any gift I could desire.

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Homeland

Tomorrow we head off to Omaha. That’s where I want to be to celebrate my 65th birthday on Sunday — with people I love and in the place that will always be home. What can be a six-hour drive will be one of indeterminate length because of Jeb the Dog. He’s family and I cannot imagine a birthday without him.

Stopping every 100 miles or so is not a burden — we use Jeb’s need for “exercise” as our excuse. Truth is, we’ve plotted a pretty handy course which correlates Jeb’s needs with antique malls, casinos, candy stores and Made-Rite hamburger restaurants. Without frequent stops, how else would we have discovered that the highest point in Iowa — we’re talking altitude — is on a farm-place just across the state-line from Worthington, MN?

Driving through farm country Monday evening after attending the wake of a 63 y/o man in Northfield — something we are also doing more and more these days — heightened our anticipation for our trip to Omaha. Timely rains have yielded beautiful landscapes and the promise of an abundant harvest. The elongated shadows cast by the 6 pm sunlight remind all who are lucky enough to see just what inspired Claude Monet’s obsession with haystacks!

For this nostalgic occasion I will try to quiet anxious voices reminding all who will look or listen that we have created a perilous ecological crisis. This Earth — who ancient peoples reverenced as mother, the “home” we all hold in sacred trust — labors under the weight of our blissful ignorance.  Dare we acknowledge this as the consequence of our collective greed?

Returning home through farm-country I will take along two poignant assertions by Kentucky farmer-writer Wendell Berry: “I’m not interested in spirituality that is dependent on cheap fossil fuel, soil erosion, and air pollution.” Or even more to the point, “No use talking about getting enlightened or saving your soul if you can’t keep the topsoil from washing away.”

Milestones increasingly recognized as a gift — like turning 65 — are not times for rancor or remorse. So, I will hold as bedrock and birthright an even more foundational quote: “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning — the sixth day.” (Genesis 1:31)
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This reflection was inspired by Eric Anglada’s review of Distant Neighbors: The Selected Letters of Wendell Berry and Gary Snyder, edited by Chad Wriglesworth in the current issue of the National Catholic Reporter [http://ncronline.org/authors/eric-anglada]

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Right Here in the Neighborhood

The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood! This contemporary rendering of John 1:14 posted by a friend on Facebook really caught my attention.

Words can express beauty, possibility, purpose. They can just as well be used to stone others, too often judge or even demean. When someone moves into the neighborhood we spontaneously want to know what we have in common — how are they just like us? Will they “fit in” to become good neighbors. Would we want our children playing with theirs?

What if they are not just like us? What if they speak English as a second language? …with an accent? What if their food comes from a different store because my supermarket carries only a small selection of what they prefer? Am I in any way put off by a neighbor wearing a burka? Do I recognize this reaction as my issue, not theirs?

We who call ourselves Christian would do well to come up with a contemporary rendering of the Good Samaritan story. How do I live with people who are not like me? People who may not even share my Sacred Scriptures or who understand them differently?  How does my faith instruct, prepare and dispose me to “be neighbor” to those different from myself?

Just like the Word of God our words can easily, and too frequently, be used as a weapon rather than a welcome. The sacred Word and our words are too often used to build walls and close doors. They can also be used as God intends — to open minds, give direction, share wisdom.

Church of Sweden Bishop Krister Stendahl (1921 – 2008) suggested three brilliant guidelines for being a better neighbor, using words to build community rather than barriers or walls:

  • When trying to understand another, ask those who love and adhere to this way of life rather than to their critics.
  • Don’t compare your “best” to another’s “worst.”
  • Leave room for “holy envy” — something beautiful about that person’s religious practice they have and we don’t.

Too often we Christians use our sacred words to compete or convert one another to our way of thinking. Did not the Word become human to confirm and complete God’s way of loving?

Rather than looking upon others as potential converts to our narrow way of seeing the world, are we not to receive the “other” as neighbor — welcome and needed companions bearing unique and precious gifts along the Way?

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My source for Krister Stendahl’s “rules” is Barbara Brown Taylor who spoke of them in a retreat presentation on August 3 in Minneapolis.

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Absence Explained

Absence makes the heart grow fonder! Does it? I often just forget whatever is absent. The absence of something annoying might be a long-awaited relief! We might even learn that we live perfectly well without something and no longer care about whatever it provided.

My hope after being absent from these posts for more than a week is that you will welcome the return. It may be asking too much to presume the absence was even noted. Noted or not, I’m back and trust these ruminations are received with continuing interest.

An explanation is in order. Barbara Brown Taylor and John Philip Newell were in town leading a retreat from Sunday, August 2 thru Wednesday, August 5. Either would have had me beating a path to their door. Having both co-facilitate was a feast beyond imagining. My absence from these pages is due largely to the fact that my time and spirit were preoccupied and engaged.

Dubbed Seeking the Sacred Thread, the retreat more than fulfilled its promise to illuminate with clarity and grace the questions and hopes we carry, weaving together sacred threads of the Christian household with other wisdom traditions, focusing on the healing of God’s people and all creation. I’m still ruminating over its richness.

Rather than attempting an impossible “grand synthesis” or over-verbalizing what was often experienced as sheer grace, I will keep it simple. Here are five “sacred threads” which I am still holding, hoping they take deeper hold of me:

  • Seek the light at the farthest edge of darkness — deepest night holds the fullest promise of dawn.
  • “There are seeds in the rottenest of apples!” -Bede Griffiths
  • “Only when we are playful can Divinity get serious with us.” Elizabeth Gilbert
  • Our deepest longing is for belonging… BE longing!
  • There is no room for two — die to yourself in Love’s presence or Love will die in your presence.