Spiritual Practice

What I have Learned from My Father Since He Died

by
“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.

The Past is Ever Before Us

by

Recently, I learned that people in some cultures gesture before them when they speak of the past. When they talk about the future, they gesture behind them.

It makes sense. We can see the past as clearly as we see what is in front of us. We cannot see the future, just as we cannot see what is behind our backs. (Elementary schoolteachers are an exception, of course.)

It comforts me, as we leave a place and people we love, to think of the past as ever before me. I will always be able to see those people and places in a way I am not able to see my future. But how does one do that without living in the past? How does the past become a place of reference, not residence?

Our 49th anniversary was our next-to-last day in Cleveland. We spent part of it at one of our favorite places, the Cleveland Museum of Art. CMA contains one of the best and most balanced collections of art in America.

You can see many world-famous pieces of art for free. It does not have gates inside the door, with employees “suggesting” a $20 “donation.” CMA’s trustees follow the museum’s founders’ desire that it be free “for all the people forever.”

When our sons and then our grandchildren were small, they loved the armor court. There, knights wear truly shining armor. We also loved watching our grandchildren create art on giant, super-duper iPads in the Artlens Gallery. Those are some of our favorite memories.

At the museum, Jacquie and I, farm kids who grew up knowing nothing about art, learned how to “see” art. By looking at good art, we learned the simple method of distinguishing it from bad art. As one art critic says, “When you see bad art, you first go “Wow!” Then, after looking longer, you say, “huh?”, because there isn’t much there. When you see good art, you may say, “huh?” first. But then, if you look longer, you begin to say, “Wow!”

We sat for several minutes in front of “Lot’s Wife.”This monumental painting shows the bleakest landscape you can imagine. In the foreground, are railroad tracks like the ones that carried doomed passengers to the death camps. In the background, are the shadows of what appear to be ruined buildings obscured by smoke.

Yes, when I first saw it years ago, I said, “huh”. The longer I look at it, the more I say, “Wow!”

Going to the museum symbolizes what I mean about the past being ever before us. Our memory mounts moments on the walls of our hearts like paintings in a museum. We can see faces before us the way Rembrandt saw a kitchen maid.

We can see camping trips before us the way the Hudson River School artists painted the wilderness.

We can take our time as we look at those moments. We can step back and get perspective, or move in close to see the tiny details.

Chances are, the moments that made us say, “Wow!” at first, will remain in the warehouse. The ones that we hang in the galleries of the heart will be the moments that puzzled us, maybe even pained us, or have escaped our notice until now. What was that fight about? What about those meals we shared with others?

Stepping back, we can see deeper meaning in them. We may see grace strokes that we missed at first. We may see how those moments influence our choices now, the way artists today learn to draw from Michelangelo or learn to break the rules of drawing from Picasso.

We do not put the past and all the people we have loved and all the places we have been behind us. The past is ever before us. All we have to do is look.

Burden or Anchor?

by

When we were first married, we had nothing. One day, my Mom took Jacquie and me to yard sale. Mom spied an end table blackened with old varnish and asked how much it was. The person said, “five dollars.”

Mom said, “he’ll take it.”

I was a little taken aback by the way Mom was spending my money and started to object as the owner went to get her money box to receive my five dollars.

Mom said in a whisper, “It’s solid cherry.”

It was. She refinished it. It was beautiful. It became an anchor for us. It was one of the first things that Jacquie and I owned together. It was ours, instead of mine or hers. When we bought other furniture, it dictated our taste. Our first really big purchase was a cherry bedroom suite. Not many years ago, we bought a new dining room table and chairs, also cherry.

Mom refinished that end table half a century ago. It probably needs refinishing again.

Someone else can do that. It is not going with us. We are deeply grateful for my mother’s discerning eye and her hard work. We are also ready, as we approach our 50th anniversary next year, to ask ourselves what we like.

Things change in the second half of life.

What used to be an anchor can become a burden. As we let go of our old anchors, we gain the freedom to sail into whatever is next on life’s journey.

That’s the way Jacquie and I feel as we let go of so many things in order to move from our four-bedroom house in Cleveland Heights, Ohio to a small apartment in the Jackson Heights neighborhood of New York City. We would not be going on to this next chapter if we hung on to things that cost us a lot of money. or that have deep sentimental value, or just seem like the things that two people our age ought to have.

In some ways, my mother is my model for this. When my Dad died, she had a house jam-packed with so many things she had refinished. She had a barn full of things (especially chairs, for some reason) that she was going to refinish. She had never lived more than 15 miles from where she was born in Western New York. But she left almost all of it behind to move to a retirement community in New Hampshire, near my youngest sister. As the Alzheimer’s progressed, she moved from her large independent living apartment to a smaller assisted living apartment. She eventually shared a room with another patient in the memory unit and died owning a bed, a chair, a dresser, and a small bookshelf. One shelf was full of Agatha Christie mysteries. She said the great thing about Alzheimer’s was that she could read them again since she couldn’t remember how they came out.

Someday, even our old bodies that have anchored us to this earth for so many good years will become burdens that we will need to lay down, too.

I hope that when we do, we will be able to sail away to whatever is next.

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.

No Good Will Intended

by

 
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

Peace — the Gift We All Need this Christmas

by

Duane and Ida Miller have been close friends of ours for more than forty years. In addition to having both earned Ph.D.’s in Theology, the wisdom they have learned from seeking justice and loving mercy into their 80’s shows in the simply wise things they write. These three paragraphs from their annual Christmas letter need to be read by all of us. 

It seemed to us that Peace is the most precious gift that we could receive this Christmas and it is the gift that our communities, our nation and the world needs.  Recently we ran into this verse from Isaiah 55:12 –

For you shall go out in joy,

            and be led back in peace.

We certainly hope you experience great joy in this season whether it is from hearing familiar carols, a special gift, an important relationship or just because you are alive.  For then you go out in joy, go about your everyday lives without getting caught up in some conflict, and you come back in peace.

So often we hear something that we believe is wrong and we think we have to jump into the middle of it “to set them straight.” Too often such a response makes us feel immediately better but in the end we have helped make the situation a much bigger deal than it needs to be.  If we just quietly said: “I don’t see it the same way that you do” and not feel like we had to defeat the other, perhaps the volume of the conflict and the personal attacks could be lessened.  So we hope that you might go out each day with joy, not just in this season but throughout the coming year, and find a way to be led back home in peace!

Advent is Like a Missing Tooth

by
The Door of Humility leads into the Church of the Nativity (Basilica of the Nativitiy).*

When I had a molar removed a couple of years ago, I asked the dental surgeon what the Tooth Fairy would give me for it.

“She leaves stock certificates now,” he said.

I liked that guy.

Since I no longer believed in the Tooth Fairy, I  did not leave the molar under my pillow. (I hope that did not require a spoiler alert.)

However, my tongue kept touching the hole left behind for many weeks afterward.

 I am not as concerned about the historical accuracy of the story of Christ’s birth as I once was. What I do know is that the story and the traditions that have grown up around it point to a deep truth the way a probing tongue finds the spot where the tooth used to be. The Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem is a symbol of that tradition that draws thousands to it on Christmas Eve. The image above is of the Door of Humility in the basilica,  the entry to the cave where tradition says Christ was born to Mary among the animals that were stabled there. There is even a spot marking the manger where, according to the story, she laid him after wrapping him tightly in what most of us would call rags.

Apparently most people cannot enter through that door without bending over. For all the candles and symbols that are stuffed into that place, it is still, unmistakably, a cave — a hole in the earth. Whether or not you believe He was born there, this cave points to something important and hard to articulate, but Advent is  a time for probing the caves, the holey experiences, in our own lives.

My last two Advents have been a time for running my spiritual tongue around the holes in my life.

Last year was the first December in 45 years that I did not spend planning special services, attending Christmas potlucks, and going to concerts — to say nothing of trying to find something new to say about the Incarnation.

It felt odd, like a missing tooth.

This year, Jacquie left for India on Thanksgiving Day and won’t return until the 20th. On top of that, she is spending almost all of her time there in an ashram, a retreat center begun by the guru whose teachings form the philosophy that undergirds our local yoga center.  Visitors are not allowed to use electronic devices.

In other words, after half a century of communicating with each other every day, I have not heard from her since she messaged me that she had just seen the Taj Mahal and was on her way to the ashram. That message came in the day after Advent began.

I hasten to add that I am not spending this season shriveled into a fetal position. I have a dance card full of social connections with friends and neighbors, and a to do list that is astonishingly long. I am also a person who enjoys solitude.  But,  I will be glad when she returns.

In the meantime, this is an opportunity to explore the hole — not just the one that Jacquie fills in my life, but a deeper one.  One we all have.

I used to get in touch with it on that first Sunday in Advent when, attempting to put off singing Christmas carols at least one week, I would always choose “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel,” which I have heard more than one parishioner complain is not very “upbeat”.

Perhaps I was being selfish, but the minor key worked like that tongue exploring a hole in my soul. Singing about Israel, I could feel myself sitting in lonely exile here, until the Son of God appear. Then the music would end, I would pronounce the benediction and place myself next to the door to shake hands with the crowd that would swell through December’s Sundays until we were packed shoulder-to-shoulder on Christmas Eve.

This year, with time and opportunity to explore the hole, here is what I have found.

The hole is dark.

      The hole is cold.

             The hole is empty and lonely.

Why would anyone want to go there? Why would you want to explore it? Probe it? Feel your way through it over and over again, like a tongue probing a missing tooth?

Because:

It is only in the darkness that we can see the faint light of hope.

         It is only in the cold that we can feel the warmth of love.

                     It is only in the emptiness and loneliness that we can sense the companionship of Someone beyond ourselves.

Just as the stars fade in the sky over the big, bright, busy city, so the beauty of holiness is hard to see in the midst of the big, bright, busy “Christmas Season”.  But if your Advent contains some dark, empty, silent nights, you may come to Christmas Eve ready to experience a holy night that is calm in the presence of peace and bright with the light of love.

*

Image by Ian and Wendy Sewell (http://www.ianandwendy.com/Israel) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html), CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/) or CC BY-SA 2.5-2.0-1.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5-2.0-1.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

How to Read the Eternities: The End of a Series

by

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

by

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.