Deeper Thoughts

Longer posts

From Tourist to Pilgrim

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Photo: Roger Talbott

In the late 90’s, I visited our son, Matt, in Poland where he was working on a short-term mission for the World Student Christian Federation. During those ten days, we ate gelato in Warsaw’s Old Town, visited Białowieża National Park where the last of Europe’s elk and bison still play, and went to Auschwitz. When I returned, I had lunch with my friend, Ken. I described what a wrenching experience it was to see Auschwitz — especially to walk into the ovens.

Ken then said that he and his wife had a similar experience visiting Buchenwald. He said as they were leaving, feeling emotionally drained, he heard a man behind him speaking English with an American accent saying, “I thought it would be better than that.”

I often think about this story when I ask myself what kind of traveler I want to be — and don’t want to be. It’s a question I’ve had time to think about as Jacquie and I are stuck in a motel in Abilene, TX on our way to Tucson, AZ.

Modern spiritual writers tend to make a sharp distinction between tourists and pilgrims.

The stereotypical tourist is like the guy who thought a death camp tour should have been “better.” The tourist sees London on Monday, Paris on Tuesday, Rome on Wednesday. He checks Big Ben, the Eiffel tower, and St. Peter’s Basilica off his list — taking a selfie in front of each one. He goes home with T-shirts that say, “Been there. Done that.” But he is unchanged by the journey.

The pilgrim is someone seeking something (like a holy grail) or looking for a place (like Jerusalem) where, in some mysterious way, their love of God will meet the God of love. They may not put the journey in exactly those terms. I know people who have walked the Camino de Santiago in Spain. They were not devout Catholics who would thrill at finally arriving at the cathedral at Santiago de Compostela where the Apostle James is said to be buried. But, they were spiritual seekers looking for something beyond themselves. Pilgrims come home changed.

During this three-day ice storm, I have concluded that I am a combination of the shallow tourist and the devoted pilgrim.

Driving a Prius from New York City across the mid-South and Southwest to finally arrive at Tucson, AZ is closer to a whirlwind tour — six states in one day! Tucson is not exactly Jerusalem. Ostensibly, we are going there to spend February in sunshine — like all those folks I used to call “snowbirds.” I don’t think the grail is located in Tucson.

But, as I ponder this, I remember a story Milton Erickson tells in the book, My Voice Will Go With You. Erickson was an unconventional psychotherapist who often used hypnotism in his work. He said that when a patient was “stuck,” he often recommended a kind of pilgrimage. He told them to take the highway to a specific side road. After that, they should turn left and follow a dirt road the end and see if they can’t see something that tells them how to move on. The place he directed them to was an old gravel pit. There was nothing there but a pile of stones and a leaking, rusted water pipe. Yet, he said, clients almost always came back having found an answer that helped them change their lives.

The pilgrim is open to being changed by the unexpected. The tourist goes with an agenda, a checklist of sights to see and wines to taste. If the experience doesn’t meet his expectations, he judges that “it could have been better.”

A tour can sometimes become a pilgrimage in retrospect. As I look back on that trip to Poland, my most important memories are of Matt. One morning he bought a toothbrush and a mailer. We went to a post office. He paid hundreds of zlotys (the price of a loaf of bread) to have the toothbrush mailed to a young man in Romania who had helped him during the months he spent there. Matt had asked his benefactor if there was anything Matt could do for him in return. The friend asked if Matt would send him a toothbrush — unavailable in Romania at the time. Matt was keeping his promise. Since Matt died last summer, that part of my journey to Poland matters far more than having heard the bugler of Krakow end in mid-tune.

T. S. Eliot summarized what it means to be a pilgrim best in the poem he wrote about his own pilgrimage to a tiny village in England called Little Gidding:

“You are not here to verify,
Instruct yourself, or inform curiosity,
Or carry report.
You are here to kneel . . .’

In Tucson, I may take a selfie in front of a saguaro cactus. I will try to keep from judging whether it is a “good” saguaro cactus. Instead, I hope I’ll feel some awe before a plant tough enough to live a hundred years in the desert. I hope I will come home changed.

It Begins with a Hush: The 23rd Psalm 1

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The LORD is my shepherd . . .

Created with Dall-E by author

How do we live life well?

Many years ago, I committed the 23rd Psalm to memory. I repeat it to myself almost every day. Like any work of great art, its meaning deepens the more I look at it.

Recently, Life with a capital “L” has taught me the meaning of the first word in the Psalm.

Most of the old farmers in the rural neighborhood where I lived did not go to church like my family did. They did not talk about God like my family did. But, sometimes they would, with a kind of hush in their voices, say something about “the Man Upstairs.”

Back then, I thought that it was too bad people didn’t know God like I did.

In my old age, I am less comfortable slinging the word “God” around. It should be said, if it is said at all, with a hush in the voice. Even a circumlocution like “the Man Upstairs,” should be said like those old farmers said it — like you don’t quite know what you are dealing with when you refer to You-know-Who.

In Hebrew,The 23rd Psalm begins with a hush. It begins with YHWH — the name of God that Orthodox Jews never pronounce. Indeed, they will write the English translation, “G_d,” as way to create a hush on paper.

Another way to do that is use the word we translate as “Lord.” In Hebrew, “Lord” is “Adonai,” which is what pious Jews say when they read the letters YHWH aloud. If you take the vowels of Adonai and put them with the consonants, YHWH, and make the “Y” a “J” and the “W” a “V”, you get “Jehovah.” Not the word “YHWH” but a word that refers to YHWH because YHWH is too holy to say.

In a previous post, I wrote disparagingly about “spiritual speakeasies” — people who know all about heaven and the afterlife. But, as one of the pastors of my youth used to say, “When you point your finger at someone else, three are pointing back at you.”

No one talks about G_d and makes more pronouncements about G_d than a preacher. I cringe to remember all the things I used to “know” about G_d that I felt free to yammer about in front of a congregation.

This sad summer taught me to be a lot less certain about those pronouncements I made. Those old farmers knew more about G_d than I did because they knew that they knew a whole lot less than I thought I did.

My Dad sold our farm the year I graduated from high school and went off to college. I did a lot of farm work before that: milking cows, feeding chickens, tossing bales of hay on to a wagon, cleaning calf pens, tossing frozen chopped corn out of a silo at 5:30 AM on a January morning. But, that’s only half the job. The other half was worry. I heard my Dad, my grandfather, my uncle, older cousins, all talking about it. Spring came too soon this year, or too late. There was too much rain in May and June, or not enough. Something was eating the corn. That hailstorm flattened the oats. The price of milk is falling.

They weren’t superstitious. Some of them had ideas about phases of the moon that were good for plowing – stuff like that. We are learning that some of that folk wisdom is not completely crazy. Most of them were like my Dad. They read Successful Farming magazine. They talked to the county extension agent about how to rotate their crops. They weren’t stupid, by any means.

Like all of us, those guys were hard-wired to see trouble coming before it arrived. That’s how they and our ancestors survived the randomness of life’s threats. Your tractor could roll over or your barn could catch fire — death or bankruptcy could arrive any day. They certainly didn’t control the wind and the rain.

When these guys talked about “the Man Upstairs” they kept their voices hushed partly because . . . well, you weren’t sure, exactly, what was next.

Obviously, they didn’t think life was all random. They sowed oats and corn in the spring because the summer sun and rains would produce a harvest in the fall. How big a harvest depended partly on them and a lot on . . . You-Know-Who. When the harvest came, they knew it was a gift as well as the result of hard work.

The 23rd Psalm is attributed to King David, who famously started out as a shepherd boy. He knew what those old farmers knew about the mystery represented by those letters, YHWH.

In its first sentence, the Psalm makes an assertion about this mystery. It asserts that those four letters point to a mysterious reality that cares about us and cares for us — like a shepherd.

Maybe.

I hope so. But, right now, I’m still standing in front of that first word. I don’t want to limit it, trivialize it, or pretend that I can define it. To do any of those things is to break the second commandment: “You shall not take my name lightly.”

Keep Coming Back

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Two of the churches I served hosted 12-Step groups: AA, NA, and OA.

Sometimes, I would run into stranger in the community who would say, “Oh, I go to your church!”

When I looked puzzled, he would say, “I go on Wednesday nights.” The guy might have been wearing a suit and tie, but the lines on his face told me that he had walked some hard roads. And the tone of his voice told me that “going to my church” had saved his life.

I sometimes wondered if anyone who came to church on Sunday mornings would feel that “going to my church” had saved their life? It recalled something I had heard more than once at their meetings:

“Religion is for people who are afraid of hell. Spirituality is for those who have been there.”

I sometimes came to work the on Thursday morning after one of their meetings and, although they were good at cleaning up, they sometimes left up a sign or two. These had slogans that sound like cliches, until you need them to save your life.

  • Let go and let God.
  • Nothing changes if nothing changes.
  • One day at a time.
  • Easy does it.

Sometimes they left a sign hanging on the inside of the front door. It would be the last thing the members saw when they left the meeting.

“Keep coming back.”

The older I get, the more I think that this is THE fundamental spiritual practice: keep coming back.

Like in meditation, for example.

Many people say they can’t meditate. “My mind wanders.”

I meditate almost every day. My mind wanders. I need something for my mind to come back to when it wanders: counting my breaths or a mental image of a candle flame, for example.

The Bible I read suggests many objects to focus on in meditation: new born babies and the stars above (Psalm 8), or anything good, beautiful, and true (Phil. 4:8), to name just a few.

Whatever you choose will be something you can come back to when your mind wanders.

“Wander” is not quite the right word. When my mind “wanders” it gets trapped in addictive thoughts: my worries, my fears, my resentments, my to-do list.

I think I am meditating when I am watching my breath or focusing on a Bible verse. But, I’m not meditating when my mind is captured by one of my addictive thoughts. The first is a “spiritual practice.” The second means I’m not “spiritual” enough.

In fact, the real spiritual practice is when I recognize that my mind has wandered into addiction and I bring myself back to my focus. “Coming back” is the center of the practice.

Coming back is the fundamental practice of a life worth living.

It is no accident that the first word Jesus says in the gospels is “T’shuvah.” It is usually translated as “repent,” a word that is covered with almost as many barnacles as the word “God.” At heart, T’shuvah means “turn around.”

He illustrates the meaning of this word with one of his most famous stories:

A young man can’t wait for his father to die. So he demands his share of the inheritance and gets as far away from home as he can. He spends all his money. He winds up living in a pigpen. It is there that he, first of all, “comes to himself.” Second, he decides to return to his father’s house.

Just as my mind wanders when I am meditating, so my life wanders away from its true center.

This “true center” is where we can be our truest selves: Home.

We may run as far away from home as we can — and stay there for years. Some of us have never felt at home, anywhere. But, sooner or later, most of us will feel so uncomfortable in the place we are in or the skin we are in, that we will long to find that place that feels like Home. We may remember it — or not. But we will know it when we arrive.

In his story, Jesus doesn’t tell us how the Prodigal got home. I think the road is different for everyone. Finding that road is where Jesus’ advice to “ask, seek, and knock” comes in. You can try this door or that road. Keep looking until you find it.

You could do worse than just turn around. After all, if the road you are on carried you away from Home, why wouldn’t turning around take you back?

Or, you could ask for directions. AA began when one drunk asked another if he knew how to get sober.

Maybe the best road Home is to treat someone else the way you need and want to be treated. (Note that the “Ask, Seek, Knock” passage ends with the Golden Rule.)

You may not be as far away from Home as you think. That is what a lot of people find when they pray or meditate. When we quit running away into our addictive thoughts and actions and just watch the miracle of our next breath, or call out the name of Someone we believe will save us, we often find that our True Self was right there waiting for us all along.

Wandering — even getting lost — is a big part of life. Everybody does it again and again.

Just remember the sign on the door:

Keep Coming Back.

The One Question To Ask When Reviewing Your Life

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I sometimes think that we waste our lives looking for answers, when we should be looking for good questions.

A few days ago, I was part of an online presentation to some people who were considering a cochlear implant. One of them said he was afraid to undergo the surgery. “What if it fails?” he asked.

A surgeon who does cochlear implants responded, “It never fails.”

That’s what my surgeon told me when I expressed the same fear.

The surgeon went on. “Some people think that they will immediately go from hearing at thirty percent to hearing one hundred percent. Even if they eventually get up to ninety percent, they think it was a failure. People who were hearing at thirty percent and hoped the implant would raise it to fifty percent — and wound up hearing at seventy percent, think their surgeries were wildly successful. It all comes down to what you expect”

That’s the question I’ve been looking for.

I have been looking back at my life. Was it a good life? Or was it a failure? Was I blessed? Or cursed? Did my life have any meaning or purpose? Did I make any difference in this world?

Before I answer any of those questions, I need to ask another.

“What did I expect?”

I realize that most of my expectations were set by a 27-year-old who thought pretty highly of himself.

  • He got good grades (if he cared about the subject).
  • He married the love of his life (out of his league, frankly).
  • He got a lot of affirmation in his early years as a preacher and pastor.
  • He had two sons who were scarily smart and blessedly healthy.

Why wouldn’t he expect to live a life he could be proud of? Do great things? Be loved and admired?

Didn’t happen. Certainly not on the scale he expected.

Part of my job in the last few years is to teach that young man some compassion.

Compassion basically means accepting people’s frailties, their weaknesses, not expecting them to behave like gods. That expectation is cruelty, because they will not be able to behave like gods and then they will fall in your estimation and will also fall in their own self-respect.

Osho

This question, “What did I expect?” leads to compassion.

Compassion is not cheap grace. I made some major choices that were cowardly or selfish. They led to real failures. I own that. One reason I made some of those choices is that the 27-year-old inside of me did not think I could fail.

Ask the owners of the Titanic how that works out.

“What did I expect?” leads to humble realism about myself and other people. I learn to accept my failures and I am kinder to others.

This question, “What did I expect?” also leads to gratitude. It pushes me to ask, “What did I have a right to expect?”

The answer, of course, is, “nothing.”

As someone who has buried lots of people who are younger than I am now, including parents of teenagers, teenagers, children, and even newborns, I know that none of us has a “right” to life. Even being born exceeds what we can expect.

Starting with no expectations at all, I see that . . .

  • Spending my days with the wisest, most open-hearted (and attractive) woman I know
  • Being able to breathe and walk on my own
  • Having four of the people I love the most call me “Grandpa”
  • Feeling the sun on my face

All of these are blessings beyond compare.

What do you think of your own life?

It’s a good question. A necessary question.

But first, ask yourself:

What did you expect?

The Duty and the Burden of Solemnity

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There is no good verb for what clergy do in a wedding ceremony.


We don’t “marry” the couple. They marry each other.
“Preside” implies that you are in charge of the wedding. I know that some clergy insist upon this role. They lock themselves into a battle of wills with the bride’s mother, the hotel/restaurant events manager, or the bride herself. Worst case scenario, the photographer wants to preside. In 45 years, I can only remember two weddings in which the groom took charge. Not a good sign, either time. On some simple, lovely occasions, I did “preside.” I would count the one couple who asked if they could be married in our living room with Jacquie as their witness as one of those. But presiding at most weddings means you are in charge of the choreography, the placement of the flowers, rolling out the white carpet, training the ushers, making sure the bridesmaids are zipped. That is beyond my competence.

The verb that works best, I think, is “solemnize.”


It’s harder work than you may think to solemnize a wedding. Weddings are, by definition, joyous. They symbolize peace and love and good will. They should be celebrated with good food and drink and music and dancing — and they usually are, after the ceremony. Weddings lead (snicker) to wedding nights and all that implies. It’s tough to be the one who tamps down that hilarity for an hour.


Yet, I always thought it was necessary. It is necessary for the community, represented by family and friends — or the pastor’s wife, to witness the couple making their solemn vows to each other. It is necessary for the couple to feel the enormity of the promises they are making. (Although only the widowed and the more-than-once divorced ever come close to understanding.)

It is necessary to place this very human and natural event into a larger context. The very fact that this couple has come together and chosen each other is a kind of miracle. Their love and faithfulness to each other, especially over the long haul, will be a sign and symbol of the Love that is at the heart of the universe.
That demands solemnity. It requires seriousness.


But, it can take a toll on the person who has to do the solemnizing.


Do you remember, when you were a little kid and made a face, your mother would tell you to be careful because your face might get stuck in that position?


She was right.


It has taken almost five years for my face to come unstuck. Like a lot of things in this Third Half of Life, I am reassessing what used to seem so important. I am not knocking ritual and tradition. I am not minimizing the enormity of the wedding vows. I am reassessing how and why it seemed so necessary for me to be so serious so often. Maybe it was necessary. Carl Jung believed that the clergy carry a necessary psychic burden within the community that no one else carries. He often treated clergy for free.


But I wonder if it would have helped if I had trusted Life provide the solemnity? After all, every couple faces days ahead where the vows they make on their wedding day will take on real seriousness. They will need to choose to love each other for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health. Why not let them have one happy, light-hearted day to love each other and laugh with their friends and bask in their families’ pride?


Days like that are few and short. Why rob them of even one hour?


I have seen clergy, not in my tradition, I’m afraid, who seem to know how to put the joy and the seriousness together. I’m formulating a theory about why that is not common in mainline Protestant churches, but it’s not completely clear, yet.


All I know is that, as a Christian, I’m supposed to look to Jesus as my example. I see him at only one wedding. And for that, he brought the wine.

Guest Blog: Everything I Needed to Know for the Pandemic I Learned in Kindergarten — Creativity

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As I ask friends how they are getting through this strange time, a lot of them talk about going back to things we did in Kindergarten: drawing, painting, making things out of clay or wood — the stuff we often call “art.” (Soon, I’ll share something for those of you who, like me, don’t turn to these practices.)

Recently the Rev. Nancy Talbott wrote a letter to her congregation about how to take these practices deeper.

Nancy is pastor of The Congregational Church of North Barnstead in New Hampshire. She is also my sister. (Yes, it’s probably genetic.) Nancy not only writes, she makes music, draws, bakes, and builds congregations. She and her husband, Steve, have put two families together to create an amazing three-generational tribe. 

Nancy gave me permission to republish her letter here: 

Dear Friends,
The other day I was in a conversation with friends about how they are using their time during this Covid-19 summer.

One shared she was crafting and the other shared they have been doodling and coloring as a way to relieve stress and anxiety.

The coloring craze has been around for a number years now, and we can find adult coloring books everywhere, however, this conversation reminded me of a prayer practice I took on a number of years ago, after reading a book called, Praying in Color: Drawing a New Pathway to God, by Sybill Macbeth.


This practice is meditative, creative, and opens our communication with God. You can practice this anytime, however, it is an intentional practice, so turn off the 24-hour news cycle and find a comfortable, quiet place, a cup of tea or coffee, and begin!


All you need is a pencil or pen, and piece of paper. You can get fancy and pick up some colored pencils and a special pad of paper or a journal, however, the point is not to do too much planning…just begin.

Start with a name of someone you want to include in prayer, or maybe your own name. Draw a shape in the middle of the page, and write the name inside it, then draw another shape, and connect the two with a line. Or place God, Jesus, or Christ in the center and expand out with names or feelings, from there. There are no rules, the point is to relax with yourself and God for whatever time you want to spend.


You can also do this with a short piece of scripture as a Lectio Divina meditation. Here is a link for instructions on how to do this: Praying Scripture – click here


I have included some images at the end of this reflection for ideas. I have also included a link where you can find templates to print, however, I think the circles and curly-q’s you draw yourself will be better than any template.


This Covid-19 world is stressful and brings on so much fear and worry about things we cannot control. Praying in color, or just in black and white, can activate our right brains where compassion and creativity wait for us to participate, relax and grow.


When our hearts and minds are praying about ourselves and others, the perfect love of God enters our space and casts out our anxiety and our fear.
See you in worship!

Your pastor,
Rev. Nancy
Praying in color templates click here

The Year of the Rat

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Year of the Rat 2020

I like Chinese food. I hate the placemats in Chinese restaurants. No matter how many times I study them, they always tell me that I am a rat.

The placemats show the 12 years of the Chinese Zodiac.

I look at all the other years and wish I could be a Tiger or a Rabbit.

Dragon would be cool!

I’d settle for Pig.

Snake is a toss-up with Rat. Although I can think of more positive things about snakes.

No matter how many times I eat Chinese, the news is always the same. I am a Rat. To me the Rat represents all that is unlovely, unloving and unlovable in me.

Astrology may be bunk, but it points to the truth that life has certain “givens.” The Native American poet, Joy Harjo, now the U.S. Poet Laureate, wrote, “Remember the sky that you were born under.” People who live close to nature notice the way the stars shine the night a baby is born. Two billion Christians remember a star shining over Bethlehem one night long ago.

If I count the year I was born, the Year of the Rat has come around for the seventh time. If I look at myself at 12, 24, 36, 48, 60, and now, I see so many changes in those 12 year cycles, for example:

  • At 12, I was a farm boy.
  • At 24, I was young man with a wife, a baby, and a church.
  • In the past 12 years, both my parents died. For the first time, I left a church smaller than it was when I arrived. I retired. We moved to New York City.

I look in the mirror and compare what I see with snapshots taken from those other cycles of the Zodiac. Where did the hair go? How did what hair I have left turn so white when it started so black? Where did the wrinkles come from?

In some ways, what remains the same is more mysterious than what has changed.

How can I be the same person now that I was at 12? What is this mystery that I call my “self?”

I still read and then pontificate about what I’ve learned. I still laugh out loud at jokes other people don’t seem to get. But there are other things that also persist. All of them are part of the rat.

The Rat represents all those parts of me that I have tried to shut out, poison, or trap. I can’t kill it. Most of the time the Rat just hides in the shadows. But he is there. He is always there.

In this 7th Year of the Rat, I look back and see that there is not much I can do about my past failures and limitations. The rat-like genes that gnawed away the cilia inside my cochlea now may be gnawing at my bones and my lungs.

My life is my life. It is a combination of the choices I made and things that were built in to my life from conception. But oddly, that empowers me to make the best of what my life is, Rat and all.

Accepting the unlovely Rat in me also helps me see that the Rat can be “quick-witted, resourceful, and versatile” at times.

Maybe that’s why the Chinese astrologers also say that the Rat is kind. Once a Rat accepts and feels compassion for himself, he can care for other fallible human beings.

After all, if you can love a Rat, you can love anybody.

What I have Learned from My Father Since He Died

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“When is Dad’s birthday?”
 
I’m embarrassed that I just sent a text to my brother and three sisters asking that question.
 
His birthday always fell near Father’s Day. We combined the celebrations. So, the exact date never stuck with me.
 
We celebrated Mom’s birthday in February and Mother’s Day in May. He never complained that we did not do for him what we did for Mom.
 
Why? I wondered.
 
Thinking about that question helped me learn  from my Father since he died.
 
I learned a lot from my father when he was alive, of course. I learned how to hit a nail with a hammer.  I learned to drive a tractor. I learned to work hard.
 
All of those were important. But the things I have learned from him since he died may be more important.
 
How can we learn from people after they die? What can they teach us?
 

  We learn about the art of living by reflecting on our parent’s lives.

 
You can look at your own image reflected in a mirror and ask, “who are you?”
 
 You can also see your parents’ lives reflected in the mirror of your memory and ask, “Who are you?” If you do that, you will learn more about the art of living.
 
Looking at ourselves in a mirror, we may lean in to shave or apply makeup. We may stand back to see if we are dressed properly.
 
What I learned from my father from the way he handled his birthday and Father’s Day comes from leaning in to look at that one detail. When I step back I see it as part of a pattern. It was one example of a man who accepted life as it was. He accepted the responsibility of supporting five children. He accepted the long hours of running a dairy farm. He accepted the fact that a June 18th birthday means it always lands close to Father’s Day.

I learned that being religious can be more important than being “spiritual.”

 
My Dad was religious in all the ways that people now say they are not. He went to church. He read his Bible. He wore his suit and tie to church and made sure his shoes were shined. When I was a kid, he was not tolerant of people who did not do those things.
 
Some would say that’s not very “spiritual.”
 
But he was also religious in the way Rabbi Abraham Heschel used the word. He wrote:
“A man becomes religious when he stops asking, ‘What do I want from Life?’
A man becomes religious when he starts asking, ‘What does Life want from me?'”

Seminary didn’t teach me about that kind of religion. My father taught me by milking the cows every day. I just never realized it until he had been dead for ten years.

 

I learned what to keep and what to throw away.

 
In some ways, our parents deal us the cards that we play in life’s poker game. The trick is to figure out which cards to keep and which to throw away.
 
I see now that my Dad taught me that I could throw some cards away.
 
My grandfather was a smart man and a good leader. He, too, was a dairy farmer. But, he took on leadership roles that meant days away from the farm. He did many good things for his larger community that my Dad was proud of. But my grandfather often left milking the cows to his wife and son.
 
My grandfather passed the leadership card to his son. Dad was active in his church. He served on the Town Board. But, one day the local Republican leaders walked back to where we were working in a field. They asked him to run for Supervisor. No one else would oppose him. The job was his if he wanted it.
 
He turned them down precisely because he did not want to be away from his family that much.
 
Years later, Jacquie said to me, “You are teaching your son to drive like your father taught you.”
 
“Ouch!”
 
I wish I were more like my father in some ways, but both Matt and I were happier when I decided to teach him to drive my way.
I only realize now that my Dad taught me to throw away some of the cards he dealt me.  

We can learn some things only after someone has died.

 
Neighbors paid my Dad to build kitchen cabinets and weld their broken farm implements. When I was growing up, he spent his winters remodeling our old farmhouse. I watched and later helped him with carpentry and electrical wiring.
 
You would think I would have grown up with a lot of skills.
 
When I caught on quickly, my Dad was a great teacher  My head was fast. He taught me how to use Ohm’s law long before I took Algebra.
 
But, my hands were slow. You won’t believe how long it took me to learn to hit a nail with a hammer. That tried his patience. My head and body had no connection.
 
He said, “You can remember anything you read in a book, but you can’t remember to turn a screw left to loosen it.”
 
As an adult, I felt anxious when faced with simple household repairs. I felt my father looking over my shoulder, exasperated by how long it was taking me.
 
But, after he died, I’ve been able to look at how things go together.  I can figure out how to install a ceiling fan or repair a lawnmower. I am able to relax when I ask, “How would my Dad do this?”
 

We learn things that cannot be put into words.

 
I can’t tell you everything I learn when I reflect on his life.
 
I see him in my memory’s mirror . . .
 
. . . getting up before dawn and going to the barn when I know he has the flu.
 
. . . putting my young mother and  two little kids on the back of a tractor and taking us for a ride through the woods just for fun.
 
. . . spending Saturday morning fixing the neighbors’ freezer so they don’t lose everything in it.  A loss they can’t afford. Then waving off their offer to pay.
 
I am at a loss for words when I reflect on the most important things I have learned from my father since he died.
 
The most important things we learn from our parents cannot be put into words.  Although the poet, Robert Hayden, may come close when he says his father taught him about  “love’s austere and lonely offices.”
 

I learned to honor my father and my mother.

 
There are only two of the Ten Commandments that say “Thou shalt” rather than “Thou shalt not.”
 
One is “Keep the Sabbath.”
 
The other is “Honor your mother and your father.”
 
“To honor,” does not mean “admire.”
 
It means much the same as what I mean when I say, “I’ve learned a lot from my father since he died.”
 
By reflecting on our parent’s lives, we see the cards they dealt us through their genes and their examples. We learn which cards we want to keep, and which to throw away.
 
We also see the mystery of our own existence.
That may be the primary thing I am learning from both my parents in this Third Half of Life.
 
When I was young, I needed the kinds of things that they could teach me when they were still alive. How to walk and talk. How to use a knife and fork. How to get up in the morning and when to go to bed at night.
 
Now that I am old and they are gone, I am learning wonder.
 
I remember walking with my Dad from the barn to the house on a cold winter’s night. He pointed at the stars spangled across the dark sky. Millions of them. He talked about how the light we see started hundreds, thousands of years ago. I remember the wonder in his voice.
 
This memory and so many others teaches me reverence for the Mystery behind the existence of the universe, and my own life.

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.