It occurs to me…

From Rachel Remen’s My Grandfather’s Blessings, the phrase that grabbed my attention today is a simple one – “The web of blessings.”  Sure, there are things in life that suck, and “suck” is not an adequate word for some things experienced enough in life.  Still, if I step outside from my pity party for a breath of fresh air I can see that I am and have been sustained through life by an intricate “web of blessings,” held up firmly much like a rope hammock holds one up off the ground.

Well beyond the basics in Maslow’s hierarchy, I am blessed, sustained, enriched by good friends, a timely smile, an encouraging spoken or read word, a fond memory, a warm meal, a good story, a timely laugh….  Most of all, I am blessed by others, some I know well, others that I connect with only briefly, perhaps only for one short moment in a long life.  As Remen puts it, “real teachers are everywhere.  The life in us will be blessed by others over and over again until finally we have remembered how to bless it ourselves.”

It occurs to me in all this that the more I come to trust that the sufficiency of that “web of blessings” and their ability to sustain me, the closer I come to being who/what God intended for me to be – the more I become a blessing to myself, and to others.

It is a subtle, easy to miss point in the parable of the Prodigal Son, Luke 15:11-35.  Having left home, the son, having lost it all, decides to “arise and go to my father.”  No doubt, practicing his speech along the way — “Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in thy sight, and am no longer worthy to be called thy son.”  The father sees him when he was “a great way off” and has every right to sit and wait right where he is and practice his own speech, the “you really screwed up” or “I told you so” speech – yet he does not.  Instead he runs out to meet his son.

Pride often invites us to stand firm, smugly, in self-righteousness.  Sometimes, often, that is exactly the right time to extend a hand toward or even move a step or two toward the other.

As winter seemingly fades away my thoughts turn to baseball, which today brought me to Lou Gherig’s July 4, 1939 farewell speech, given a few weeks after he was diagnosed with the disease (ALS) that would later end his life and bear his name.  I guess I didn’t realize all these years that what I had heard since I was a kid was an edited speech.  You know the one: “… bad break I got.  Yet today (today, today, today) I consider myself (myself, myself, myself) the luckiest (luckiest, luckiest, luckiest) man (man, man, man) alive (alive, alive, alive).”  Only today did I hear/read the full transcript, and it is worth sharing, because it deals not jjust with baseball, but with life.

“Fans, for the past two weeks you have been reading about the bad break I got. Yet today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of this earth. I have been in ballparks for 17 years and have never received anything but kindness and encouragement from you fans.

Look at these grand men. Which of you wouldn’t consider it the highlight of his career just to associate with them for even one day? Sure, I’m lucky. Who wouldn’t consider it an honor to have known Jacob Ruppert? Also, the builder of baseball’s greatest empire, Ed Barrow? To have spent six years with that wonderful little fellow, Miller Huggins? Then to have spent the next nine years with that outstanding leader, that smart student of psychology, the best manager in baseball today, Joe McCarthy? Sure, I’m lucky.

When the New York Giants, a team you would give your right arm to beat, and vice versa, sends you a gift – that’s something. When everybody down to the groundskeepers and those boys in white coats remember you with trophies – that’s something. When you have a wonderful mother-in-law who takes sides with you in squabbles with her own daughter – that’s something. When you have a father and a mother who work all their lives so you can have an education and build your body – it’s a blessing. When you have a wife who has been a tower of strength and shown more courage than you dreamed existed – that’s the finest I know.

So I close in saying that I may have had a tough break, but I have an awful lot to live for.”

Revisiting Max Ehrmann’s Desiderata, I am reminded of the wisdom of this passage:

“Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.  But do not distress yourself with imaginings.  Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.  Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself.”

There is such a “yin and yang” in this.  Toughen yourself to deal with misfortune, but don’t worry too much.  Be disciplined , but be gentle with yourself.

It occurs to me that this is classic “in the world but not of the world” thinking which, as most things seemingly do, leads me back to Paul and Romans 12:2 – “do not confirm any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”

Back to this Epicurus quote from a few weeks back:

 “Nothing is enough for the man to whom enough is too little.”

The modern day version from Skidelsky’s How Much Is Enough?:

“And of course, if enough means merely ‘enough to satisfy wants,’ there can be no such thing as wanting more than enough.  Avarice as a vice disappears from view.”

It occurs to me that “enough to satisfy wants” indeed puts us on a never-ending quest, one that not only tires us out but puts others at risk – think hamster wheel!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fd8vl5LJoM8

 

I have been reading How Much Is Enough?, which is a wonkish analysis of that age-old question.  Bemoaning the death of the concept of  the Aristotelian “good life” the authors write:

“For all its vestigial resonance, the idea of the good life no longer forms part of public discussion in the Western world.  Politicians argue their case in terms of choice, efficiency or the protection of firhgs.  They do not say, “I think this policy will help people lead fruitful, civilized lives….  If there is no such thing as the good life, then acquisition has no absolute goal, only the relative one of “as much as” or “more than” the others’ a goal that, since it is shared by those others, must recede forever into the distance.”

Okay, I noted it was “wonkish,” but their analogy is what caught me:

“Imagine, by way of analogy, two men walking to a certain town.  One their way they get lost, yet keep walking, now with the sole aim of staying ahead of their fellow walker.  Here is an image of our situation.  The vanishing of all intrinsic ends leaves us with only two options: to be ahead or to be behind.  Positional struggle is our fate.  If there is no right place to be, it is best to be ahead.”

It is, indeed, alarmingly easy to forget the “intrinsic ends” and lapse into “positional struggle.”  We can argue at length about the meaning of life, but it seems pretty clear that the answer is not schadenfreude.

Today has me thinking about belonging, which not coincidentally is the title of the Rachel Remen essay I read this morning.

“Not only have we disconnected from life, but many of us have disconnected from each other as well.  Such qualities as self-reliance, self-determination, and self-sufficiency are so deeply admired among us that needing someone is often seen as a personal failing.  A hundred years after the end of the frontier we still inhabit its culture.  Self-sufficiency was critically important where you lived a hundred hostile miles from your nearest neighbor.  We live in this way still, three thousand to a city block.  Needing others has come to require ann act of courage.  Is it surprising that so many people are secretly afraid to grow old?”

Perhaps nowhere is the “hundred years after” described better than in John Prine’s “Hello In There,” a song (like “Sam Stone”) that is such a downer so as to make it nearly impossible to listen to – like listening to a train wreck from a distance.

“You know that old trees just grow sronger

And old rivers grow wilder every day

Old people just grow lonesome

Waiting for someone to say, “hello in there, hello.”

So if you’re walking down a street sometime

And spot some ancient hollow eyes

Please don’t just pass ‘em by and stare

As if you didn’t care

Say “hello in there, hello.”

Photo taken recently at the grocery store.