2nd Half

Fillmore

by
Because you read The Life of Andrew Jackson, you might be interested in this biography of . . . 
 

Millard Fillmore

 
I did read a biography of Andrew Jackson about four years ago. I’ve read several presidential biographies. There have been 44 presidents other than Jackson. Why would Goodreads recommend a biography of Millard Fillmore? 
 
I know the reason and it makes the small hairs rise on the back of my neck.
 
In most rankings of U.S. Presidents, Millard Fillmore is almost always near the bottom. Never at the bottom. That place is reserved for Pierce, or Buchanan, or Andrew Johnson, or Harding. Even on a list of the worst, Fillmore is never the first.
 
Fillmore was never actually elected to the Presidency. Zachary Taylor died 15 months into his presidency. Fillmore, his much-ignored Vice President, served out the rest of Taylor’s term. Fillmore’s own party, the Whigs, then refused to nominate him for a second term. Fillmore was the last Whig President.
 
More than one writer has said that “his very name connotes mediocrity.”
 
And that is my problem. His very name connotes mediocrity.
 
My hometown is named after Millard Fillmore. It’s not a secret. My Facebook profile lists my hometown. I hooked Goodreads to Facebook years ago. Apparently, Goodreads’ algorithm looks like this:
Reads Presidential biographies
+
From Fillmore, NY
=
Wants to read about the 13th President of the United States.
 
Well, I did click on a description of the book. It was the first biography about Millard Fillmore. It was published in the 1950’s, over 80 years after he died. The Buffalo Historical Society had to pay a history professor to write about Fillmore. Their interest? Fillmore also was the first president of the Buffalo Historical Society. Wikipedia lists only three other Millard Fillmore biographies. Compare that to the number of Lincoln biographies.
 
Since I have lived in another state for half my life, I can usually answer the question, “Where are you from?” with a vague reference to a small town south of Buffalo and Rochester.
 
When pressed for the name of the town, I tell them, but almost always follow up with this story:
“In 1850, the town was a collection of stores and houses known as “Mouth of the Creek.” They wanted a post office. They had the bright idea to name the town after the current President. They got their post office.”
 
I don’t know how many times I’ve told that story. How often have you explained how your hometown got its name? When Lancaster, Nebraska, became “Lincoln” in 1867, it was an act of admiration. I want people to know that Fillmore, NY, got its name from political expediency. I explain the origin of the name because the name Fillmore connotes mediocrity.
 
But, the name “Fillmore” is on my birth certificate. The name “Fillmore” is on my high school diploma. When my hometown comes up in conversation,  I handle it the way I handle being hard-of-hearing. I joke about it.
 
Making jokes about President Fillmore’s famous mediocrity isn’t hard. It’s in his biography.
 
Did you know that he began his political life as a leader of the Anti-Masonic Party? The name is self explanatory and, believe it or not, it was the first viable third party in America. Fillmore ended his career as the Presidential candidate of the Know Nothing Party. They got their name because members told people that they “Know Nothing” about what the party stands for. What did they stand for? They hated immigrants and people of other religions. Ireland and Germany were sending their criminals to us. Criminals who went to mass every Sunday. They believed the Pope was plotting to turn America into a Catholic nation. Sound familiar? Somehow, the name still fits. 
 
I handle the name of my hometown the same way that I handle being hard of hearing. If I joke about it, no one else can make fun of me.
 
I learned to use humor that way from Fillmore, my hometown. In 1950, the people of Fillmore* planned their Centennial. Other towns could celebrate their growth, important events that took place there, or important people who came from there. But not much ever happened in Fillmore. So the people of Fillmore chose this as their motto:
 
100 Years of Rigor Mortis
 
True story. You could look it up. Time Magazine reported it.
 
The only other time Fillmore got into the national news was back in the 80’s. The town offered a complete medical office free to any physician who would come there. A doctor took them up on it. People loved the way he talked like ordinary people. After a few months, other physicians in the county began looking into his credentials. They learned that, the week before he came to Fillmore, he was driving a fork-lift in a factory in Rochester.
 
I tell that story a lot, too.
 
Why? What’s the problem? Jacquie’s birth certificate says, “Fillmore”, too.  Most of the people I love best in the world were born there or lived there all their lives. I still have relatives and old friends there. They are good people. The surrounding area is beautiful.
 
Does where you come from matter? I suppose not, But, for some reason, where we come from follows us around. That’s why we often ask each other, “Where are you from?” Sure, not all the stereotypes we carry about people who grew up in the country or the city are true. Not all the assumptions we make about people who grew up in the East or the West or the South are true. Yet, it is true that our place of origin shapes us. And, for better or worse, it becomes part of our identity. One of the tasks of life is to come to terms with that aspect of our identity. Some people run away from where they came from. Others embrace it. Some disparage it. One of the tasks of the second half of life is to come to terms with our origins, because it truly is a part of our identity. 
Before there were last names, many people carried the name of their hometown, Joan of Arc, is one example. Jesus of Nazareth is another. 
 
Jesus may have been born in “The City of David”. King David had also been born in Bethlehem. But Jesus grew up in Nazareth in Galilee, a rural, hilly region, like the area around Fillmore. Nazareth in Jesus’ time may have been about the size of Fillmore. A few hundred people.
 
The gospels refer to Jesus as “Jesus of Nazareth” sixteen times. In the first chapter of John’s gospel, Philip invites Nathanael to meet “Jesus of Nazareth.” Nathanael responds: “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”
 
We don’t know why Nathanael looked down on Nazareth. He came from Bethsaida, a town near Nazareth that experienced fast growth in Jesus’ time. So maybe that was the reason. We only know that the place Jesus came from was a problem for him. It was something he needed to get past with some people. 
 
I don’t know what that means except, if you come from a place like Fillmore,  you are not alone.
 
 
* We reject the term “Fillmorons.”

The Friends Who Helped Me Become More Human

by

By Roger Talbott

Two of my teachers died this past month. Orlando was a cat with less than half a tail. Henry was a delightful dog. *
 
Orlando, a yellow cat, belonged to Doug and MaryAnn Kerr, who live across the street from us. “Belonged” means Orlando granted them the privilege of feeding and housing him. He let them pay his veterinary bills when he got into fights.  But he roamed the neighborhood like he owned all our yards. Age finally caught up with him a few weeks ago. We are already seeing an uptick in the number of squirrels and chipmunks since he died.
 
Henry was a golden retriever. Henry lived up to that breed’s reputation for being friendly and playful . There was no question that Henry loved Jim and Cathy Stentzel more than anything in the world. We met Henry about a year after Cathy and Jim brought him home  as a very young dog.
 
Orlando seemed much the same right up until the end. We did not see much change in the 15 years we lived across the street.
 
We saw Henry only once or twice each year, so we noticed how he grew and changed and, eventually, aged. As a young dog, he ran circles around the slower humans who took him for walks. His size and stubbornness made him hard to resist when he wanted to go one way and you wanted to go another. His good-natured enthusiasm for his quest was even harder to resist. Over the past couple of years, we saw Henry slow down, take shorter walks and longer naps. But he never stopped beating his tail on the floor with joy when Jim and Cathy would arrive home.
 
It is only when Henry and Orlando died that I realized what they had taught me. When I learned of their deaths, I felt sad. That feeling of sadness amazed me. It told me something deep inside of me had changed. 
 

Learning to Be Tough

I grew up on a dairy farm surrounded by animals. We had a dairy barn full of Holsteins. We also raised chickens and hogs. We always had a cow dog that helped us move the cows from the pasture to the barn. We had cats running around the barn to keep the mouse population under control. The dog had a name, Queenie. My sisters gave some of the cats names. I did not learn to love animals on that farm.
 
I learned to take care of the animals because our living depended on them. I tossed bales of hay down a chute from the mow to the barn below. I climbed a silo in the dead of winter and forked chopped corn into a feed cart three stories below. I shoveled manure into a manure spreader. So, I cared for their needs. I also learned how to milk the cows, gather the hen’s eggs, feed the hogs, and how to help butcher cows and hogs and chickens so we could eat them.
 
I know people who grew up on farms and people who live on farms who love animals. I do not think farming is completely incompatible with compassion. But, I never learned how to love animals and kill them.   I chose to think of animals as commodities. I measured their value in dollars and cents per pound, like milk and eggs and oats and hay. I was like the kids who have spent two years raising a steer that wins the Grand Champion ribbon at the fair. As a reward, they get a big check from the owner of a local restaurant. Some city-bred reporter will ask them if they are sad that their steer will be turned into steaks. The kids usually say, “Are you kidding? Why do you think I went to all that trouble in the first place?” I was tough and realistic.
 

How What We Believe Hardens Our Hearts

My mother’s theology further justified my attitude toward animals. When, as a little boy, I asked her if animals went to heaven, she explained that they do not because they do not have souls. She taught me to read the Creation story as a story about how human beings are special and different. We have souls. Animals do not. We commune with the Lord. Animals do not. We go to church and to heaven. Animals do not. She was in line with traditional Christian theology. I did not know it then, but those teachings hardened my heart.
 
When I was a pastor, parishioners would tell me about losing their beloved pets. I sensed that they were grieving, and I hope that I said appropriate things, but I admit that, inside, I did not get it. I empathized when they grieved for a relative or a friend. I did not understand the grief they felt for a pet they had recently put down.
 

Finding the Center

In my two years of retirement I have been practicing meditation. I supplement my life-long practice of prayer centered on Jesus with Yoga classes. I read books on Jewish spirituality recommended by my daughter-in-law, a Rabbi. I read books on Buddhist meditation recommended by Henry’s owner, Cathy.
 
I see a common thread running through these writings. I have learned what several wise observers mean when they say, “The theologians all argue. The mystics all agree.”
 
These books and practices lead me to a warm place in my heart. I believe that place is in every heart and at the heart of the universe. In that place is profound stillness and immense power. It is the Truth. It is Love. The New Testament calls it “God.”   
 
People of all faiths and no faith encounter this Truth and Love.  They may meet Love in deep meditation. They may meet Love when they hold a newborn baby. They may meet Love when they connect with a friend. They may meet Love when a slender ray of hope penetrates despair. When they speak of it, I recognize the same Love Christians meet in Jesus. 
 
We also call this Love, “Truth,” because Love shows us that all our reasons for not loving are based on lies. I can see how the “terrorists” and “bigots” twist their religious beliefs to justify not loving. A hard heart can turn any scripture into a lie that explains why it is OK to kill some people, or animals, and not others. It is harder for me to see how I do the same thing with my hard heart. 

Getting Past the Hard Heart 

Hard hearts even argue with the Bible. Yes, the Creation Story says humans and animals are all made from the same dust on the same day. But, said my hard heart, look at how much longer the author lingers over the creation of people.
 
I know the breath that God breathes into humans making them “souls” is callednephesh in Hebrew. I know that the same nephesh gives all beings life. But, said my hard heart, “nephesh” means “soul” in some places and “breath” in others.
 
Arguments did not work. It was Orlando and Henry who wore me down. Henry did it as he danced around Jim’s legs.  Orlando did it when I caught sight of him silently hunting in our hostas. I did not know that I learned to love them until after they died. Orlando and Henry changed me in the way Carl Jung said happens to us in the second half of life.
Before I retired, I did a series of sermons on the Beatitudes.  “Beatitude” means “happiness”. So, the second Beatitude always stumped me, “blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.”  How can grief be happiness? We only grieve those we love. Now I understand. I mourn Orlando’s and Henry’s deaths. I am comforted by feeling that sadness, because it means that I am in touch with Truth and Love.

And, in the Real World

Yesterday, my sister told me that her son and his wife had their first baby, a little boy. Mom is the daughter of Filipino immigrants.
As I got this news, news about how our country is separating the children of illegal immigrant children from their parents at our borders was playing in the background.
I was reminded of a story Christians tell each other every December. You may have heard it. It is about a baby born into a world in which there was no room for him. The story tells how his parents, like so many people in Central America today, feared for their child’s life. They, too, headed for the border and they somehow got across without losing their baby.
Jeff Sessions is a devout and faithful member of same denomination that I served as pastor. He hears the Christmas story every year. That story is in the same Bible that he quotes to justify his draconian policy of tearing children from their parents. After all, he and millions of Americans agree that we have no more room for such people. I drove across Wyoming, Idaho, and Eastern Oregon two weeks ago, and I think we could squeeze in a few more people. But if you agree with Jeff Sessions, you have already come up with good reasons why I am full of B.S.
The Christmas story does not argue with you or Jeff Sessions. The babies that God keeps sending us do not argue either. The merciful God will not beat you or me into becoming the full image of Love and Truth. But sooner or later, I pray that Love will appear to you and me and Jeff Sessions and Donald Trump. I pray that we may be worn down by Love when it appears in a new baby, a golden retriever, or a cat with less than half a tail. Then we will stop being “tough” and start being as human as Jesus.
*This is an update of an earlier version published on June 12.

How a Cat and a Dog Taught Me to Be Human

by

Two of my teachers died this past month. Orlando was a cat with less than half a tail. Henry was a delightful dog. 
 
Orlando, a yellow cat, belonged to Doug and MaryAnn Kerr, who live across the street from us. “Belonged” means Orlando granted them the privilege of feeding and housing him. He let them pay his veterinary bills when he got into fights.  But he roamed the neighborhood like he owned all our yards. Age finally caught up with him a few weeks ago. We are already seeing an uptick in the number of squirrels and chipmunks since he died.
 
Henry was a golden retriever. Henry lived up to that breed’s reputation for being friendly and playful . There was no question that Henry loved Jim and Cathy Stentzel more than anything in the world. We met Henry about a year after Cathy and Jim brought him home  as a very young dog.
 
Orlando seemed much the same right up until the end. We did not see much change in the 15 years we lived across the street.
 
We saw Henry only once or twice each year, so we noticed how he grew and changed and, eventually, aged. As a young dog, he ran circles around the slower humans who took him for walks. His size and stubbornness made him hard to resist when he wanted to go one way and you wanted to go another. His good-natured enthusiasm for his quest was even harder to resist. Over the past couple of years, we saw Henry slow down, take shorter walks and longer naps. But he never stopped beating his tail on the floor with joy when Jim and Cathy would arrive home.
 
It is only when Henry and Orlando died that I realized what they had taught me. When I learned of their deaths, I felt sad. That feeling of sadness amazed me. It told me something deep inside of me had changed. 
 
I grew up on a dairy farm surrounded by animals. We had a dairy barn full of Holsteins. We also raised chickens and hogs. We always had a cow dog that helped us move the cows from the pasture to the barn. We had cats running around the barn to keep the mouse population under control. The dog had a name, Queenie. My sisters gave some of the cats names. I did not learn to love animals on that farm.
 
I learned to take care of the animals because our living depended on them. I tossed bales of hay down a chute from the mow to the barn below. I climbed a silo in the dead of winter and forked chopped corn into a feed cart three stories below. I shoveled manure into a manure spreader. So, I cared for their needs. I also learned how to milk the cows, gather the hen’s eggs, feed the hogs, and how to help butcher cows and hogs and chickens so we could eat them.
 
I know people who grew up on farms and people who live on farms who love animals. I do not think farming is completely incompatible with compassion. But, I never learned how to love animals and kill them.   I chose to think of animals as commodities. I measured their value in dollars and cents per pound, like milk and eggs and oats and hay. I was like the kids who have spent two years raising a steer that wins the Grand Champion ribbon at the fair. As a reward, they get a big check from the owner of a local restaurant. Some city-bred reporter will ask them if they are sad that their steer will be turned into steaks. The kids usually say, “Are you kidding? Why do you think I went to all that trouble in the first place?” I was tough and realistic.
 
My mother’s theology further justified my attitude toward animals. When, as a little boy, I asked her if animals went to heaven, she explained that they do not because they do not have souls. She taught me to read the Creation story as a story about how human beings are special and different. We have souls. Animals do not. We commune with the Lord. Animals do not. We go to church and to heaven. Animals do not. She was in line with traditional Christian theology. I did not know it then, but those teachings hardened my heart.
 
When I was a pastor, parishioners would tell me about losing their beloved pets. I sensed that they were grieving, and I hope that I said appropriate things, but I admit that, inside, I did not get it. I understood when they grieved for a relative or a friend. I did not understand the grief they felt for a pet they had recently put down.
 
In my two years of retirement I have been practicing meditation. I supplement my life-long practice of prayer centered on Jesus with Yoga classes. I read books on Jewish spirituality recommended by my daughter-in-law, a Rabbi. I read books on Buddhist meditation recommended by Henry’s owner, Cathy.
 
I see a common thread running through these writings. I have learned what several wise observers mean when they say, “The theologians all argue. The mystics all agree.”
 
These books and practices lead me to a warm place in my heart. I believe that place is in every heart and at the heart of the universe. In that place is profound stillness and immense power. It is the Truth. It is Love. The New Testament calls it “God.”   
 
People of all faiths and no faith encounter this Truth and Love.  They may meet Love in deep meditation. They may meet Love when they hold a newborn baby. They may meet Love when they connect with a friend. They may meet Love when a slender ray of hope penetrates despair. When they speak of it, I recognize the same Love Christians meet in Jesus. 
 
We also call this Love, “Truth,” because Love shows us that all our reasons for not loving are based on lies. I can see how the “terrorists” and “bigots” twist their religious beliefs to justify not loving. A hard heart can turn any scripture into a lie that explains why it is OK to kill some people, or animals, and not others. It is harder for me to see how I do the same thing with my hard heart. 
 
Hard hearts even argue with the Bible. Yes, the Creation Story says humans and animals are all made from the same dust on the same day. But, said my hard heart, look at how much longer the author lingers over the creation of people.
 
I know the breath that God breathes into humans making them “souls” is callednephesh in Hebrew. I know that the same nephesh gives all beings life. But, said my hard heart, “nephesh” means “soul” in some places and “breath” in others.
 
Arguments did not work. It was Orlando and Henry who wore me down. Henry did it as he danced around Jim’s legs.  Orlando did it when I caught sight of him silently hunting in our hostas. I did not know that I learned to love them until after they died. Orlando and Henry changed me in the way Carl Jung said happens to us in the second half of life.
Before I retired, I did a series of sermons on the Beatitudes.  “Beatitude” means “happiness”. So, the second Beatitude always stumped me, “blessed are those who mourn, for they shallbe comforted.”  How can grief be happiness? We only grieve those we love. Now I understand. I mourn Orlando’s and Henry’s deaths. I am comforted by feeling that sadness, because it means that I am in touch with Truth and Love.

Practice Dying Every Day

by

We are Moving

We are moving from Cleveland to New York City to be closer to family. That involves a lot of letting go. Letting go makes us grieve. That grief feels like dying. Moving on means heading into an unknown future with hope. That feels like dying, too.


Letting Go

We have to let go of our house. That will be tough. Henri Nouwen said giving people room to be themselves is the essence of hospitality. Jacquie built that philosophy into the floor plan of this house. This house makes it easy to be ourselves and to enjoy others being themselves.

We will be letting go of our home’s location. We are a seven-minute walk from a five-star library. We are a twenty-minute walk from a theater that shows films you cannot find at the multiplex. That walk takes longer if you stop to look in the window of the Heights Arts store next door. Our community is full of glassblowers, painters, weavers, photographers, jewelers, and other artists. Their work is on display there.

We will be letting go of our physicians at the Cleveland Clinic. It takes longer to walk from our car to the doctor’s office than it takes to drive from our house to the parking garage. My hearing loss has kept us from enjoying America’s best orchestra. But we do spend a day or two each month at the nation’s second-best art museum. (Free admission, by the way). Both world-class institutions are ten minutes away. We live next door to the world’s largest supply of fresh water. Cleveland, unlike New York,  is completely insulated from rising sea levels.

Our home equity will only cover the down payment on a place in Queens with one-third of the floor space we now have. So, we are letting go of books, tools, small appliances, closets full of extra clothes, a table saw (want to buy a table saw?).

Most of all, we will miss our wonderful neighbors. Some of our closest friends live within walking distance.

It is hard to let go of home and our stuff, our neighborhood and friends. But it is even harder to let go of my old self.

A few days ago, I pulled out file boxes that contained sermons and notes from forty-five years of ministry. I have other boxes of mementos from each of the six churches that I served. What to do? This is where I spent my life. It was my purpose, my calling. How could I throw me away?

Actually, if I can throw “me” away, it cannot be me. Who, after all, is deciding to throw it away? If I am the one making that decision, then how can I be throwing myself away?

I may be throwing away what I used to do. I may be throwing away a lot of stuff that I thought was “me” at the time. But I am in charge and I am the one deciding that I will not be moving a lot of this stuff into my new future.


Throwing Away the Old Future

The truth is, I am not throwing away the past. The past is past. I had those experiences, I did those things, I related to those people. I cannot change that past even if I wanted to.

I am throwing away my future, or the future I thought I would have before we decided to move.

One of those futures was based on the irrational belief that the old days would come back again. My father and grandfather sold our workhorses before I started school, but they kept the sleigh and most of the horse-drawn farm implements. I suppose there was not much of a market since all their neighbors were moving to tractors, too. But I also suspect that they wanted to be ready just in case tractors did not live up to the salesman’s promises.

I realize that I had an irrational belief that those sermons would be part of that future. Suppose retirement did not work out for me and I had to go back to preaching every Sunday? Just bringing that thought to the front of my mind helped me see how crazy it was.

We will be giving up another kind of future, however, that was reasonable and probable. For example:

  • In July, we almost always camped at a campsite called “Heart’s Content” in the Allegheny National Forest. If we were not moving, I would be looking forward to camping there this year.
  • Every August, I celebrated my birthday with friends across the street and from the next block. One of them also has an August birthday. If we weren’t moving I would be doing that again.
  • Every Labor Day weekend, our neighborhood holds the world’s best block party. If we weren’t moving I would be looking forward to that party.

Practice Dying

This is where our move becomes a way to practice dying. When we die, we not only have to let go of all our relationships and our stuff, we let go of our future, too.  That’s why letting go of such a large part of my future now feels like dying.

But, I have done this before.

Two years ago, I decided to retire. For forty-five years, I knew where I would be and what I would be doing on Christmas Eve and Easter morning. I also knew where I would be and what I would be doing every Sunday morning. Every week, every month, and every year had a predictable rhythm.

Then I retired. I not only did not know what I would be doing on Sunday morning, I was also asking, what will I do this week? Today? Right now? That change felt like death.

So how did I find the courage to retire? It was because I had practiced other small deaths.

In those forty-five years, I moved from one church to another five times. Five times, I was pastor of one church one Sunday and then became pastor of a new church on the next Sunday. One Sunday, I had looked out on a congregation in which I knew everyone’s name and everyone knew me. A fair number of them even liked me. The next Sunday, I looked out on a congregation in which I knew no one’s name. They did not know me and the jury was definitely out on whether or not they would like me.

I could go through those small “deaths” because I had “died” over and over again as I grew up.

  • My preschool-self died when I attended my first day of Kindergarten.
  • My preadolescent-self died as those hormones began to kick in.
  • My teenage-self died the night of my high school graduation.

Whoever “I ” am made it through those changes to my body, environment, and identity, even when those changes felt like death.

But looking back, they all felt like rising to a new life, as well.

These experiences, I now realize, were a way to practice dying. I was letting go of past routines and relationships, and of the future I thought I was going to have. That is what my final death will be like.

On the other side of those “deaths”, I always found new places, new relationships, and new routines.  This person that I continue to call “me” always found a new future on the other side of all those losses. I hope death will be like that, too.

Trusting the Future

In the end, faith is about trusting the new future enough to let go of the old future. We do not have to let go of our memories.  But we do have to let go of the old future.

This is not optional. Even if we stay put, our bodies change, our relationships change. The world changes and we have to adjust to what we often call the “New Normal”.

I have no idea what the new normal will be for us six months from now. I do not know who Jacquie and I will hang out with, where we will go to church, where we will buy groceries. I only believe that it will be OK.

So also, I have no idea what lies on the other side of the end of my life. I only believe it will be OK.

 

 

Retirement Grief

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Reading Time: 1 minute

I found this journal entry that I wrote on April 19, 2016, ten months after I retired. I’ve edited it for readability, but I offer it hoping it may help someone else. It is, after all, part of living the Second Half.

Grief at Loss of Profession

I realized this morning that I am feeling grief. I suspect that I am like a spouse who has nursed their beloved through a long last illness. At first, I felt only relief. but as time goes on, I have more and more good memories and just as the widow or widower feels the loss of their “other half,” so I feel the loss of the job that meant so much to me.

Just writing this allows the feelings to flow.

The widower who has watched his beloved suffer says, “I would not wish her back”.

No, nor would I ever want to go back to the stress I felt trying to care for a church that was undergoing so much change, and they felt with me. But I loved my job. I loved being a pastor, preaching, caring about people, thinking about the big issues in life, starting things that would continue without me. I loved the Church.

This is a good discovery.

A year later, I can say that the grief is much less, although not gone entirely. Grief is, after all, a measure of how much someone or something has meant to us

No Good Will Intended

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Most of the homes in our neighborhood were built between the World Wars. They are mostly colonials separated from each other by the width of a driveway. The people on our block work at being good neighbors. Recently, one resident developed an email list. We can use it to plan block parties or to check how many other people had a wet basement after the last downpour.
After last week’s snowstorm, MaryAnne sent an email asking, “Who cleared our sidewalk this morning? Doug and I would like to thank him.”
A couple of her neighbors chimed in. They too wanted to thank the mystery snowblower.
Finally, someone said, “I think it was David C.”
David, who remained anonymous up to this point, finally confessed. He said that Maryanne and Doug’s neighbor on the east side of their house hired him to clear their driveway. David lives a few doors to the west of MaryAnne and Doug.
He said he started his big, self-propelled snow blower in his driveway. He “drove” it up one side of the sidewalk to his client’s home. He cleared their drive, and then he “drove” his snowblower back home. He cleared the other side of the sidewalk as he went, he said. “No good will intended.”
I laughed. I had never heard anyone say that before.
How many times have I apologized by saying, “I didn’t mean it?”
“I did not mean to hurt your feelings with that joke. I was trying to cheer you up.”
“I was trying to help clear the table, I did not mean to chip that dish.”
“I did not intend to hurt you. I could not get out of work in time.”
Judging by the number of apologies that I have heard that ended with, “I did not intend to hurt you,” I am not alone. This is the first time I have ever heard someone say, “I did not intend to do anything good for you.”
All my life, I have wondered about something Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount.
“When you give to the poor, do not let your right hand know what your left hand is doing.”*
How do you pull that off? How do I unconsciously, unintentionally, perhapsinadvertently, do good for people?
Have I ever seen anyone unintentionally do good for others?
The answer is “yes”.
This happens most often when people delight in what they are doing, or they delight in whom they are doing it for.
For example, some of my neighbors love to take care of their lawns and shrubs and flowers. They not only delight the rest of us, but also raise our property values. Someone who likes computers created that email list.
Some people love to cook and to eat good things. If, like me, you are lucky enough to marry someone like that, every meal is a gift.
The artist who creates music, words, or images with no eye on the market, but from sheer delight, benefits us all. Thank you, Emily Dickinson, Jackson Pollack, and Pete Seeger.
There are parents who delight in watching their children unfold in their own unique ways. They nurture that uniqueness instead of hammering their kids into images of themselves. My grandchildren have parents like that.
There are people who who get their priorities straight when they listen to the hungry over a meal.
There are people who see our deep connections to each other when they work with the homeless.
There are people who discover the preciousness of life when they work with the dying in a hospice.
They do good, but what they do is different from being “well-intended”. As Frederick Buechner wrote, ““The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”
Do that, and you will do a lot of good without knowing it.
Also, a lot of people may benefit, if you just do your job, like David did.
 
 
 
*Matthew 6:3 ESV

Writing in the Window

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I am writing this in a store window.

The store is Appletree Books in the Cedar Fairmount district of Cleveland Heights, OH. It’s NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month and Appletree invites writers to sit at a little table in their window and write.

It is also a metaphor for writing. Writing in a window means that I am putting into words how I see the world through a particular frame. It also means that I am on display. And that is what writing is.  Writers share the world they see through the particular frame of their own life. Writers also put themselves on display. As my friend and neighbor, Stephen Calhoun says, it is “performance art.”

So, I’m going to put myself on display by writing about why I write.

A year or so before I retired, Jacquie and I attended the Key West Literary Seminar. A lot of the people who go are also writers, so a way to make small talk with strangers during breaks is to ask, “Are you a writer?”

When someone asked me that the first day, I said, “no”.

The second day I said, “Well, I write a lot in my work, but I’m not a ‘writer’”.

The third day I said, “Yes, I’m a writer.”

As I listened to the speakers, all of them people whose books sit in big displays in bookstores, I thought at first that I am not one of them. But then, as they talked about getting themselves to sit down with a pen and a notebook, or a keyboard and a screen day-after-day, trying to hammer out some words that will mean something important to someone else, trying to write something clearly and truthfully, I thought, “I’ve been doing that for over forty years.”

My sermons averaged about five pages long. I wrote a minimum of fifty per year. So I was knocking out the equivalent of a 250-page book every year. And I was doing it in between hospital calls, meetings, funerals, wedding planning, and figuring out how to pay for a new church roof. I was a writer even if I did not write best-sellers.

That realization made it possible for me to retire. As I look back, I was hanging on to my job because it was satisfying something important in me. I knew it was not the meetings, the fund-raising, or handling the complaints about last week’s choice of hymns. When I admitted to myself that I was a writer, I knew I could let go.

After my retirement, I tried to set up a new normal with a blog, an outline for a book, and a schedule of writing almost everyday. I kept to it for a few months. But then I realized that I was hanging on to what was important to me in the morning of life that was no longer important in the afternoon.

It was not the writing. That was still what I wanted to do. I think it was the window. It was the frame through which I saw the world. I was still looking through the pastor-window. And, the person I revealed in my writing was still the pastor. Everything I wrote sounded like a sermon – a sermon that I might have preached 25 years ago.

I preached fine sermons 25 years ago, so why should that be a problem?

In his novel, Jean Christopf, Romain Rolland wrote: “Most men die between the ages of 20 and 30 and then they go on saying and doing the things they said and did when they were alive.”

I do not know if that is true of “most men”, but as I tried to write I could see that it was true for me. When I was young, I wrote about what I knew – I conveyed information about the religious tradition in which I had been raised and in which I still believe. I think that what I did then was important. I think my religious tradition is rich and speaks to the deepest needs of human beings.

But my window frame has changed. It is weathered and carries the patina of age. I have seen so many changes through this window that it has changed my perspective on what I see right now.

if I am to be alive and write, not out of what I used to be, but out of who I am now, I will write, not about what I know, but what I don’t know. I will write out of wonder instead of certainty. I will write leading with my heart rather than my head. Instead of solving problems, like I did when I was young, I will write about how facing and even accepting problems can lead us to wholeness.

And, as you look back at me through the window of my writing, I hope you see a man who is coming to terms with the realities of aging as well as enjoying the afternoon of life. It is either that, or dye my hair a strange shade of orange, comb it over my bald spot, and walk around with a woman half my age saying and doing the things I said when I was alive. Given those alternatives, there is no contest.

How to Read the Eternities: The End of a Series

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I learned about “forest bathing” while hiking the other day. Since it was 37 degrees F. with a sharp wind, I can assure you that it did not involve removing my clothes.

Jacquie used the term as we hiked in the North Chagrin Reservation of the Cleveland Metroparks. There is growing scientific evidence that walking through natural areas — especially a forest — is good for you.

Well, duh!

Henry David Thoreau could have told us that in the 1840’s. He may not have been able to compare blood pressure readings or count white cells, but for two years he lived by himself in the woods near Walden Pond in order to face life.

In his essay, “A Life Without Principle”, Thoreau described how to live in the “Post-Truth” era. He told us that to find the truth in such times we need to

Read not the Times. Read the Eternities.

This is not an easy thing to do in an age when the Times, or the Post, or the Plain Dealer feel like Medieval texts compared to Twitter or the news crawl at the bottom of the 24-hour news channel screen. To get at the truth these days we need to learn to slow down the newsfeed, take time to listen to ourselves, and seek the wisdom of the ages in the holy writings, like the Bible or the Bhagavad Gita.

To read the Eternities themselves, we need to turn to what some Christian theologians call “The First Testament” — Creation.

The Bible tells us that Creation points to God:

The heavens declare the glory of God, and the skies announce what God’s hands have made.
Day after day they tell the story; night after night they tell it again.
They have no speech or words; they have no voice to be heard.
But their message goes out through all the world; their words go everywhere on earth.
Psalm 19:1-4

Looking at a starry sky or a mountain or an ocean helps us get a better perspective on ourselves, our successes and our failures.

When I look at the night sky and see the work of your fingers—the moon and the stars you set in place— what are mere mortals that you should think about them, human beings that you should care for them? Psalm 8:3-4

This is what Thoreau did. He looked at the sky, listened to the wind, followed rivers, and took note of birds and insects. He heard the Truth in the wind and the bird songs. He saw the sun rise and set. He felt the change in the seasons.

Here are some of the things he learned:

The universe is wider than our views of it.

Things do not change. We change.

Every creature is better alive than dead, men and moose and pine trees, and he who understands it aright will rather preserve its life than destroy it.

What has the Creation taught you that is the opposite of what the Tweets, the Times and human “wisdom” tries to sell you?

Read The Scriptures: Reading the Eternities Part 3

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Our life is frittered away by detail… simplify, simplify.

Things do not change; we change.

Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.

These words were written over 150 years ago. They still strike us as true. How did Henry David Thoreau do it, when neither the latest advertisement nor political speech can convince us that it is anything but B.S.?

He followed his own advice:

Read not the Times. Read the Eternities.

How do we do that?

First, we slow down the news cycle. Instead of Tweets, wait a day and read the Times or some other newspaper. Wait a week, and read a magazine. Wait a year and read a book.

Second, we dig into our life’s experience. Where are the gold nuggets of truth that we live by?

A third step is to read scripture.

But which one?

Some say that the very fact we have to ask that question is the reason why there isn’t any truth these days.

I grew up in a world where THE scripture was the Protestant Christian Bible. Everyone either read it, or thought they should. Today, I live in a city where thousands read the Torah, the Koran, or the Vedas. And hundreds read lesser known sacred texts — and seek to live by them. Who knows what is true?

Things were simpler in Thoreau’s day before cultural and religious pluralism called the old truths into question.  Except they weren’t simpler.

Yes, he was  brought up in church and attended Sabbath School as a child and his writing shows he is more familiar with the Christian Bible than most of today’s public intellectuals. But when he spent two years in a cabin on Walden Pond, he took with him a book he called the “Bhagvat-Geeta.”

The closest thing Hinduism has to a Bible is the Bhagavad Gita, which was first translated from Sanskrit into English about a generation before Thoreau was born.

The book was a sensation in Thoreau’s circles in New England. His friend, Emerson, loaned him a copy. From his reading, Thoreau appeared not to simply admire the spiritual and psychological insights of Hinduism, but also came back to the Bible, especially the New Testament, with eyes that no longer saw it as a “yellowed document”, but as superior to all other writings for it ethical teachings.

That can happen to people who may have deep commitments to one spiritual tradition but who also become familiar with another.

It works like this:

Do you remember the first time you stayed overnight with a friend when you were a kid?

Your first impression probably was, “Everything my friend’s family does is wrong.”

That was because the way they talked to each other (or not), the way they ate their meals, and the way they went to bed was different from the way your family did those things.

Perhaps, if you visited your friend on a regular basis, or you visited other friends, you came to appreciate some of the things that they did.

Jacquie and I started dating in high school. One of the things she says she liked about my family is that my parents saw to it that we did things together. My Mom and Dad worked really hard to run a dairy farm and raise five kids, but they were both youngest children and they knew how to have a good time.

What I liked about Jacquie’s house was the food! Her Mom was a fabulous cook and she liked to feed people. As a 17-year-old farm boy who was burning about 4,000 calories a day, I loved eating at their house.

I learned a lot from visiting in my friends’ homes. I also went back to my own home with a deeper appreciation for what I received there. I saw things that I wouldn’t have seen if I didn’t ever go anywhere else.

It happens that I was introduced to the Bhagavad Gita by a gifted teacher a few years ago. I’ve been slowly plowing my way through a Christian commentary on the book.

Reading that book, I have the same experience Thoreau described:

“I bathe my intellect in the stupendous and cosmogonal philosophy of the Bhagvat Geeta, since whose composition years of the gods have elapsed, and in comparison with which our modern world and its literature seem puny and trivial.” 

Yes, the writings of the Bible or the Bhagavad Gita, or the Tao Te Ching  make the Op Ed pieces in the newspaper seem trivial — to say nothing of the observations of cable news commentators. That is a good reason to read them. For they have inspired people, as Thoreau said, since long before our current cultural gods were born and they will do so long after those gods are dead. 

Immersing yourself in any of them will make you wiser. I admit to being biased in favor of the Christian Bible. That’s my family home. Visiting the Gita, however, has taught me even deeper truths about the spiritual life, just as visiting the homes of friends taught me deeper truths about family life.

Families may eat different foods at different times, but everybody eats. Families may go to bed in different ways, but everyone sleeps.

What Thoreau discovered from both the Bhagavad Gita and the New Testament, is that both believe the spiritual life is lived out, not in holy isolation in a cave or on a mountaintop, but in the ordinary actions of life. In the Gita, we learn to do our work by letting go of our ego’s need for recognition and success. In the New Testament, we learn serve each other in love. They aren’t so different.

And both change us and our world for the better.