Author: itoccurstocp

From the Prodigal Son parable, Luke 15:14: “And when he had spent it all, there arose a mighty famine in that land; and he began to be in want.”

Today, the irony of the “and he began to be in want” hit me.  Hell, the younger son had been living in want.  He was living in want when he asked his father to “give me the portion of goods that falleth to me,” and certainly well before that.  Yet he remained in want even when he got what he wanted.  The fullness of the irony comes around when we realize that it was not until he had lost it all, come to his senses, swallowed his pride, and returned home to his father, that his want abated — which takes us back to Epicurus: “Nothing is enough for the man to whom enough is too little.

I became reacquainted recently with a song that rolled around on my playlist, and which I actually posted on a couple of years back.  The song was written by Ashley Gorley and Bryan Simpson.  Sammy Kershaw put it out in 2010, to no particular success/acclaim (though I prefer his version) and then a few months later Tim McGraw recorded it and it became a hit – go figure.  The first lines pulls you in – “I know how to hold a grudge.  I can burn a bridge up in smoke.”  It is all, of course, a set up for the simple tag line that strikes me as something that is a good reminder of my classification as a work in progress: “I ain’t as good as I’m gonna get, but I’m better than I used to be.”  Somehow, I can see Paul (Romans 12:2 Paul, post road-to-Corinth Paul) having this in regular rotation on his playlist.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPwAKwwu1m0

I confess to taking some enjoyment in observing a clash between two experts on the subject of our stuff, or perhaps better stated, our relationship to our stuff.  Today, I reread Heather Havrilesky’s essay, Stuff, in which she (at least partly) takes on Marie Kondo and Kondo’s wildly popular book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up.  In the essay, Havrilesky comments on the Kondo theme of getting rid of any of your stuff that doesn’t “spark joy:”

“The question isn’t whether or not your stuff sparks joy.  The question is: Can you spark joy all by yourself?  Do you remember how that feels?”  In making her point, Havrilesky relates the story of her deceased father’s wallet that sits in the top drawer of her desk.

“Every few months, I pull it out and look at his money: $26 – a twenty (dated 1990), a five (1993) and a one (1988).  When this cash was in my dad’s wallet, he was fifty-six years old.  Along with that $26, he had a retirement fund, several investment properties, a condo, a brand-new Lexus coupe, and a small piece of paper stuck to his dresser mirror on which he had scrawled a reminder, in black ballpoint pen: ‘All of heaven is within you.’”

…

“My father’s wallet reminds me that nothing lasts.  Just when you are starting to get comfortable, you disappear.   And maybe only one or two of your things will seem important enough to someone else when you’re gone.”

“That’s sad, but it’s also a reason to wake up to the enormity of the moment, to the unbelievable gift of being alive, right now.  You don’t need more than this.  All of heaven is within you.”

Indeed, all of heaven is within us – within all of us.  Granted, some days it takes much more effort than others to find it, but still, it is there, in me, in them – yes, even in THAT person.  Things come and go, but that heaven within us, thankfully, remains. Now THAT sparks joy!

Conundrum – (noun) an intricate and difficult problem.

“Do not judge, or you too will be judged.  For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.”  Matthew 7:1

Houston, we have a conundrum!

“Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God – this is your spiritual act of worship.  Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.  Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is – his good, pleasing, and perfect will.”

Romans 12:1-2.

‘Cause it just feels good to read and remember that from time to time, particularly the “renewing of the mind” part!

“More than anything else, we have to imagine a different kind of life, a different way of living.  We have to reject the shiny, shallow future that will never come, and locate ourselves in the current, flawed moment.”  Heather Havrilesky, What If This Were Enough

“Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”  Paul, Romans 12:2

Two similar admonitions, nearly 2,000 years apart.  It occurs to me that the “pattern of this world” had a significant head start on me.  To make matters worse, it seems unfair that I first had to acquire the “pattern of this world” only to then learn that I need to shed it.  I best get busy.

This bit of conversation from the Broken Record podcast involving to legendary music producers:

Rick Rubin: “There is something about people playing together [at the same time, as opposed to one recording over the recording of the other] that no amount of getting it right counters the energy of the interaction

T. Bone Burnett: Yeah, perfection is a second-rate idea. The computer is able to put out perfect music all day long but its not really as interesting.”

I so love that “perfection is a second-rate idea” comment.  I am not a musician or music producer so can’t comment intelligently on their observations beyond noting that live performances (even recordings of live performances) can have that “energy of the interaction” that makes the recording feel better in ways I can’t really explain.  Call me an old-fashioned Luddite, but it occurs to me, and what I can and will comment on, is that to me this same phenomenon seems to be true of digital/social media communication as compared to real live communications — as in people listening/talking TO one another and not AT one another through some electronic means.  Dare I say it – Facebook and Instagram are wildly successful second-rate ideas.

In one of my favorite writings of Oswald Chambers he writes of “the graciousness of uncertainty.”  This seems like an oxymoron.  As he notes: “Naturally, we are inclined to be so mathematical and calculating that we look upon uncertainty as a bad thing.  We imagine that we have to reach some end [an end, I might add, that WE have defined], but that is not the nature of spiritual life.  The nature of spiritual life is that we are certain in our uncertainty….”  That in and of itself seems like another oxymoron, but he explains later – “we are uncertain of the next step, but we are certain of God.”

In our faith, Chambers notes, we can easily become advocates of a creed, not of God.  That is, “we do not believe God, we only believe our belief about him – which of course leads us down a perilous path.  We can, in the name of God, become like the guy on the street corner selling “genuine” Rolox watches for $29 in that we start selling a “knock off God,” one we have created in our own image.

I have always liked the way Anne Lamott treats this – “you can tell you’ve created God in your own image when God hates all the same people you do.”

Congratulations to author and mentor from afar, Anne Lamott.  No, I have never met her, though we were once in the same building together when she was speaking.  I read this week that she married recently, for the first time, at age 65.  This caused me to revisit some of her work, including her TED talk from a few years back:

https://www.ted.com/talks/anne_lamott_12_truths_i_learned_from_life_and_writing?language=en

To celebrate her marriage, I thought I would go back over her twelve truths learned from life and writing.  I only take issue with 1, and it relates to chocolate, so probably doesn’t matter that much in the scheme of life.  In her introduction she notes that each of us is a “mixed grill of happy anticipation and dread” which I think pretty much hits the nail on the head.  Anyway, Lamott’s Truth #1:

“All truth is a paradox.  Life is both precious, unfathomably beautiful gift and, and it’s impossible here….  It’s filled simultaneously with heartbreaking sweetness and beauty, desperate poverty, floods and babies and acne and Mozart, all swirled together.  I don’t think it’s an ideal system.”

It occurs to me that perhaps the only thing we can all agree on is her last sentence, it’s not an ideal system.  But it is what we got, which leads to Lamott truth #2: “almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes – including you.”  Indeed, unplugging or rebooting, the “CTRL/ALT/DELETE” buttons of life (whatever they are for each person), come in quite handy.

The opening line from Max Ehrmann’s Desiderata: “Go placidly amongst the noise and haste and remember what peace there may be in silence.”

I have long admired that first line.  Ehrmann does not bemoan the “noise and haste,” doesn’t go on for lines thereafter about how awful noise is, how I need to slow down, or how in times past things were quieter and slower.  He doesn’t suggest that I find the source of and take it on myself to eradicate the noise, take something to lessen my anxiety, or fire up iTunes and overcome their noise with my own.  No, he instead invites me to remember, to “remember what peace there may be silence.”  This can, if I let it, instantly transport me from the “noise and haste” to a quiet moment under a canopy of trees in a still, sunlit forest, to a summer day sitting on a front porch swing with a good book in one hand and a glass of iced tea in the other.  Granted, when I return the “noise and haste” may still be there, probably is.  But somehow, they seem a bit less troublesome.