It occurs to me…

C. S. Lewis reminds me today that “progress” is a tricky thing.

“We all want progress.  But progress means getting nearer to the place where we want to be.  And if you have taken a wrong turn, then to go forward does not get you any nearer.  If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; and in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man.”

It makes sense that sometimes I have to go backwards to go forward.  Having “zigged” when I should have “zagged,” more often than not the solution is not to wing it from where I am but to own up to the mistake, make my way back to the point of the error, and “zag” as I should have done earlier.  Or as Lewis puts it: “The sooner I admit this and go back and start again, the faster I shall get on.  There is nothing progressive about being pig headed and refusing to admit a mistake.”

That bears repeating: “There is nothing progressive about being pig headed and refusing to admit a mistake.”

I am not a big fan of life philosophies that fit into a sentence or a few rules.  Life generally seems messier than that, more complicated than that.  That said, when I run across sentences like this I entertain the thought that I just might be wrong about that (among other things):

“Believe there is a great power silently working in all things for good, behave yourself, and never mind the rest.”  Beatrix Potter.

Always, after attending a funeral (sometimes between) the Always Go To The Funeral segment from the NPR This I Believe series comes to mind – go figure!  This segment, by Diedre Sullivan, is one of my favorites.  I can’t say it any better than she did, so I set it out below here:

Always Go To The Funeral – Deidre Sullivan

“I believe in always going to the funeral. My father taught me that.

The first time he said it directly to me, I was 16 and trying to get out of going to calling hours for Miss Emerson, my old fifth grade math teacher. I did not want to go. My father was unequivocal. ‘Dee,’ he said, ‘you’re going. Always go to the funeral. Do it for the family.’

So my dad waited outside while I went in. It was worse than I thought it would be: I was the only kid there. When the condolence line deposited me in front of Miss Emerson’s shell-shocked parents, I stammered out, ‘Sorry about all this,’ and stalked away. But, for that deeply weird expression of sympathy delivered 20 years ago, Miss Emerson’s mother still remembers my name and always says hello with tearing eyes.

That was the first time I went un-chaperoned, but my parents had been taking us kids to funerals and calling hours as a matter of course for years. By the time I was 16, I had been to five or six funerals. I remember two things from the funeral circuit: bottomless dishes of free mints and my father saying on the ride home, ‘You can’t come in without going out, kids. Always go to the funeral.’

Sounds simple — when someone dies, get in your car and go to calling hours or the funeral. That, I can do. But I think a personal philosophy of going to funerals means more than that.

‘Always go to the funeral’ means that I have to do the right thing when I really, really don’t feel like it. I have to remind myself of it when I could make some small gesture, but I don’t really have to and I definitely don’t want to. I’m talking about those things that represent only inconvenience to me, but the world to the other guy. You know, the painfully under-attended birthday party. The hospital visit during happy hour. The Shiva call for one of my ex’s uncles. In my humdrum life, the daily battle hasn’t been good versus evil. It’s hardly so epic. Most days, my real battle is doing good versus doing nothing.

In going to funerals, I’ve come to believe that while I wait to make a grand heroic gesture, I should just stick to the small inconveniences that let me share in life’s inevitable, occasional calamity.

On a cold April night three years ago, my father died a quiet death from cancer. His funeral was on a Wednesday, middle of the workweek. I had been numb for days when, for some reason, during the funeral, I turned and looked back at the folks in the church. The memory of it still takes my breath away. The most human, powerful and humbling thing I’ve ever seen was a church at 3:00 on a Wednesday full of inconvenienced people who believe in going to the funeral.

There is much power in this essay, but none greater than the thought that “while I wait to make a grand heroic gesture” life presents me with many opportunities to make smaller, seemingly mundane ones.  That is: “In my humdrum life, the daily battle hasn’t been good versus evil. It’s hardly so epic. Most days, my real battle is doing good versus doing nothing.”

Indeed, it occurs to me that that those small gestures are the front on which the battle is typically waged.  There is often uncertainty, grey area between right and wrong, good and evil, and that often results in inaction due to the uncertainty.  Understandably, we all want to be at the right place and do or say the right thing at the right time.  Still, showing up and saying “Sorry about all this” is something, and it beats nothing every time.

I went to a funeral yesterday.  I am a slow learner.  I am pretty sure that if I attended a funeral a day for a full year, on attending and leaving the next funeral after that run I would still be surprised by the same two thoughts: 1) life is uncertain, and 2) life is for living – NOW!

It did not escape me as I looked around the room that each time I attend a funeral I am a bit older.  Now what were those two things again?

Note to self, intended to lower my frustration level (or at least help me understand it):

“A remarkable feature of virtues is that you cannot argue people into having them when they do not.”  Paul Woodruff from Reverence

Leonard Pitts, Jr. is one of my favorite columnists, and to that end I commend to you his most recent column, Living In A Time of Hatred, We Are All Called To Witness, which promoted my thoughts put to words here.

As long as I live and breathe, I am, like it or not, a witness. Particularly in this day and age of connectivity, where I  can stream live most anything anywhere in the world, the question is not whether I will see and experience things – I will witness.  No, as Pitts writes, the question is not whether I will see and experience things, but a different question —  “What kind of witnesses shall [I] be?”

The image that comes to mind is that of walking along a shore and finding a bottle, then finding the bottle has a message in it.  That is kind of cool, and I could simply take it home, clean the bottle up, and put the bottle on the shelf, message still intact, unread.  Every time someone visited I could show off the bottle with the message in it.  Or, I could….

I am coming off a bout with the flu (yes, I had a flu shot) that lasted the better part of a week.  During that time, it may have been “well with my soul,” but the rest of me, the physical part, would have begged to differ.  All of this served as a reminder (read “slap in the face”) as to how much I take wellness for granted. It occurred to me often over the past six days that failing to thank God each day for wellness, for the ability to get up out of bed and carry on with the day, no matter now “normal” and “uneventful” that day might be is…, well, is not good.

C. S. Lewis from Mere Christianity:

“I am only trying to call attention to the fact that this year, or this month, or, more likely, this very day, we have failed to practice ourselves the kind of behavior we expect from others.  There may be all sorts of excuses for us.  That time you were so unfair to ___ was when you were very tired.  That slightly shady business about the money – the one you have almost forgotten – came when you were very hard up.  And what you promised to do for ___ and have never done – well, you would never have promised if you had known how frightfully busy you were going to be.  And as for your behavior to ___ or ___ if I knew how irritating they could be….  For you notice that it is only for our bad behavior that we find all these explanations.  It is only our bad temper that we put down to being tired or worried or hungry; we put out good temper down to ourselves.”

A twist on the Golden Rule, a painful one – practice myself the kind of behavior I expect from others; accept their excuses as readily as I proffer and accept my own.  Wait, it occurs to me that practice sounds suspiciously like “forgive us our sins as we forgive those who have sinned against us.”

“’Will you give me a drink?’….  ‘Sir’, the woman said, ‘you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep.”  John 4:11

This is such a simple exchange that it is easy to pass over as we read of Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well.  It occurs to me that the woman has apparently realized that she holds all the cards here.  The scene occurs at a well.  Jesus wants a drink.  He can’t get a drink without a bucket.  The woman has the bucket.  So, he starts a conversation and asks, recognizing he needs her help.

It occurs to me that this scene of course plays out daily in life.  When I need the bucket, how willing am I to ask for help from the one who had the bucket?  What holds me back from starting the conversation and asking?  When I hold the bucket, what is my reaction when someone asks for it?

“The moment you have a self at all there is the possibility of putting yourself first – wanting to be the center – wanting to be God.”  C. S. Lewis Mere Christianity

Hmm.  Lewis is, true to form, understating the issue.  I think I would replace “possibility” with (at least at times) “certainty” or, on my better days, “likelihood.”   In any event, the quote from today’s Lewis reading stuck out to me because it coincided with a reading last night from Paul Woodruff’s book – Reverence.  In it, Woodruff writes:

“Reverence begins with a deep understanding of human limitations; from this grows the capacity to be in awe of whatever we believe lies outside our control – God, truth, justice, nature, even death.  The capacity for awe, as it grows, brings with it the capacity for respecting fellow human beings, flaws and all….  Simply put, reverence is the virtue that keeps human beings from trying to act like gods.”

Lewis and Woodruff are on to something (duh!)  It occurs to me that what troubles us now, self included, is that we are putting ourselves at the center, wanting to be God.  We lack reverence.  Not only do we lack “awe of whatever we believe lies outside our control,” we simply deny anything lies out of our control.

Granted, it was a different time in 1965 when the song came out, but It occurs to me that Burt Bacharach was close, so close.

“What the world needs now, is [reverence] sweet [reverence].  It’s the only thing that there’s just too little of.”

Of course, “reverence” has too many syllables, and it may not be “the only thing that there’s just too little of,” but it is one of them.