It occurs to me…

Another of Lamott’s Twelve Truths I Have Learned From Life and Writing:

“Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes –including you.”

As contrary as this sounds, I know it to be true in the “reboot” computer era.  I can’t explain why powering down my computer for a few minutes (maybe even a few seconds) makes the damn thing work right again, and it frustrates me to be on a 1-800 HELL call and have the person on the other end tell me to do just that – but I’ll be damned, it usually works.  So it shouldn’t come as a surprise (or be a tactic of last resort) that taking a deep breath, closing my eyes, and opening them again somehow reprograms my internal computer, releases my anxieties, and allows me to see things in a different way, but it does.  I am convinced that Paul’s fall from his horse on the road to Damascus was nothing more than that – a reboot, or, as he describes in Romans 12:2 – a renewing of the mind.

Anne Lamott, one of my favorites, recently gave a TED talk in which she shared twelve truths she has learned in 61 years of living and writing.  She and I are about the same age, so we have, at least timewise, a similar pool from which to draw.  Some of her rules resonate with me, others not so much so, but in either event they get me to thinking – and we all know how much trouble that can start.

“Number one: the first and truest thing is that all truth is a paradox.  Life is both a precious, unfathomably beautiful gift, and it’s impossible here, on the incarnational side of things….  It’s so hard and weird that we sometimes wonder if we’re being punked.  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.”

Yep, she’s been living in the same time, on the same planet, as I have.

Here is a Link to the talk:

https://www.ted.com/talks/anne_lamott_12_truths_i_learned_from_life_and_writing

Walking to work yesterday I was standing at the intersection across from my office, waiting for the light to change so I could cross Congress Avenue.  Across the street I spotted a one-legged man in a wheelchair, moving along on the sidewalk using is one present leg.  As he approached the intersection across from me to cross 4^th Street, it occurred to me he needed someone to help him across so as to navigate the road crown and cars.  Ener a man coming the other way across 4^th Street, a younger man, a bit shabbily dressed, with arms full of tattoos.  He meets the wheelchaired man just as the latter starts across the street, turns around, and pushes the man across the street to the safety of the sidewalk.

Webster’s defines “miracle” as “an extraordinary event manifesting divine intervention in human affairs.”  I don’t know if what I saw was a miracle.  It occurs to me that one may have the same difficulty defining “miracle” as Justice Potter Stewart had defining “pornography,” and put “miracle” in the “I know it when I see it” category.  I know what I saw felt like a miracle to me, either because one human helped another unselfishly or because as I observed it I felt some bricks come tumbling down or, (in Grinch terms) my heart grow three sizes.  What I do know is that when the helping young man crossed 4^th Street again we met at the corner.  I told him “Way to go” and “high-fived” him before we both went along our ways.  And I know I walked away feeling a little better about the future of this clod of dirt and water spinning around in space.

“Because things are the way they are, they will not stay the way they are.”  Bertolt Brecht

“Every sinner has a past, and every saint a future.”  Oscar Wilde

I came across these two quotes recently and appreciated the way they coalesced, or at least seemed to at that moment.  Past (the way things were), present (the way things are) and future (the way things will be) are distinct moments in time, and that grace is, if you will, the string that holds the three beads in the same loop.  I can (if clear-minded) most easily see, identify the work of grace when looking back to the past and seeing the intricate way in which God has put the pieces put together — though I admit to thinking at times I might have done it differently!.  I can look forward and hope for the presence of grace to, as Wilde puts it, transition me from “sinner to saint.”  But I live in a state of grace, and it occurs to me that understanding the presence of grace in the present is the toughest nut to crack, yet the one that yields the sweetest fruit.

“In essentials unity, in nonessentials liberty, and in all things, charity.” *

This rings true.  The thought that we should “not sweat the small stuff” (the “nonessentials) is timeless.  The rub, of course, comes in who does the defining and how each defines “essentials” (the big stuff) and “nonessentials” (the small stuff).  A good rule of thumb, but still somewhat subjective, would seem to be that if I can’t immediately and reasonably classify it as “essential” then it isn’t.  But as I think on it, it occurs to me that the task of deciding what is “essential” and “nonessential” is a daunting one, one in which I am bound to get it wrong often because of the limited range of my brain and experiences.  That is, of course, the reason why the “in all things, charity” part is the critical one.

 *The book I read this quote in attributes it to Pope John Paul XX111, but looking into it a bit more, there is an entire scholarly debate as to its origin.  That debate includes attribution to almost every significant religious leader, including, in addition to Popes, St. Augustine and John Wesley.  It seems most of the heavy scholarly work attributes the quote to Rupertus Meldenius and dates it back to the 1600s.  But a good quote is a good quote, no matter the source.

“If you board the wrong train, it is no use running along the corridor in the other direction.”  Dietrich Bonhoffer

This crossed my screen in reading some things about change.  I know it to be correct, but still, I have spent a good deal of time “running along the corridor in the other direction” when the more productive thing to do would have been – well, the more productive thing would have been almost anything else.  In this I am reminded of a boat trip we took on the lake some years ago to celebrate a friend’s birthday.  The company ran several boats from a single dock, and shortly after we departed it became apparent that an Asian woman on our boat (who spoke limited English) had boarded the wrong boat.  At that point, there was little do about it as our boats were well apart.  I assume she weighed her options, recognized we had food and alcohol, and seemingly didn’t warrant her resorting to a life jacket.  In short, rather than run on the deck toward her boat (and lacking the ability to run on water) she simply partied with us for the next few hours.

Of course, I need not always resign myself to a “bad” situation, but once I find myself there, there are always other options beyond just pissing and moaning about it – the equivalent of “running along the corridor in the other direction.”

“Seekers, then, need to be aware of the variety of ways that God has of communicating with us, of making God’s presence known.  In other words, the beginning of the path to finding God is awareness.”  James Martin – The Jesuit Guide to Everything

In this I am reminded of a quote attributed to Einstein: “It’s not that I am smart, I’m merely inquisitive.”  It occurs to me that a corollary is or could be: “I am not that enlightened, I’m merely aware.”

Chambers comes out swinging in June:

“It is much easier to do something than to trust in God; we mistake panic for inspiration.  That is why there are so few fellow workers with God and so many workers for him.  We would far rather work for God than believe in Him.”

My friend Steve Kinney talks often of “partnering with God.”  When I first heard that said it seemed almost pretentious.  Who am I to “partner with God?”  That seems like me and Roger Federer being a doubles team, but I see talk of partnering throughout the Bible.  By way of example, the apostles talk often of being “fellow workers” with God (e.g2 Corinthians 6:1), and  in Luke 1:37, the angel tells Mary not that nothing is impossible for God but that nothing is impossible with God.  And I guess the most obvious reference here is in Matthew 19:26, the passage after the “camel through the eye of the needle” passage, where Jesus says: “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”   Again, not “for” but “with.”

Of course, and here’s the rub, as Chambers notes, to work with someone is different that working for them.  In the former I have to consider their thoughts and feelings and make an actual connection to learn them, then we have to work together, in the latter, I just gotta do what they tell me to do.

Today is one of those lessons in Oswald Chambers’ My Utmost for His Highest that I’d love to just rip out of the book.  But I haven’t, which is, I suppose, a good first step related to the lesson.

“I will follow you Lord, but first let me….”  Luke 9:61

I’ll get right to the punchline in Chambers’ commentary – “We act like pagans in a crisis, only one out of a crowd is daring enough to bank his faith on the character of God.”  Earlier, above that, he writes: “Again and again you will get up to what Jesus Christ wants, and every time you will turn back when it comes to the point, and you abandon resolutely.”

In the past, when thinking and writing on this passage I have referred to it as a practice in which I, like the man in the passage, “but” God.  That it, some option or opportunity reveals itself to me with clarity, I feel led to respond (that #!$& still, small voice) in this way or another, but talk myself out of it.  At times my refusal has some logic behind it, at other times it is more flippant, but of course the logic is of no interest to Chambers.  In his binary world, there is abandonment to God and rejection of God.

I have no solution here other than to note that at times I listen to that voice, and others I do not.  I’d like to think that the instances of listening are increasing, and the rejections decreasing, but as I think that it sounds a lot like rationalization, and a whole lot like keeping score.  Then it occurs to me that in both acceptance and rejection, I am listening – which at least sounds like a good start.

“He’d always assumed that people were good, that they worked hard for any number of things that required self-interest but that certain boundaries prevailed: decency, respect for others, truth.”  Ethan Canin – For Kings and Planets,

Sometimes, when I am reading something, a line jumps out of the page at me, as if it were there just for me.  When that occurs, the meaning may become immediately clear, or it may elude me as I repeatedly return back to it and the dog-eared page that text is on.  This falls into both categories.  I am still thinking on it, but am particularly drawn to the thought that no matter the uncertainties in life, certain boundaries prevail – and if I had to pick three, “decency, respect for others, truth” would be good choices.

It occurs to me that my angst arises when my assumption that people are good is eroded, when the prevalence of “decency, respect for others, truth” are somehow put in question.  And that explains a lot about my current angst.