Measured by the number of times I have seen and referred to it, Groundhog Day is my favorite movie. I can’t help thinking about it on February 2nd. (Spoilers ahead).
Bill Murray plays Pittsburgh weatherman Phil Connors. He and his producer, played by Andie McDowell, and his cameraman, played by Chris Elliott, check into an inn in Punxsutawney, PA, on February 1 because the following day they have to report the annual ceremony in which a groundhog (also named Phil) will see his shadow at sunrise and predict six more weeks of winter — not a stretch because February 2nd is smack-dab between the winter solstice and the spring equinox.
Phil gives a lackluster description of the meaningless event and is eager to return to Pittsburgh. However, a blizzard forces him and his crew to stay an extra night. The following day, he is awakened by Sonny and Cher singing, “I’ve got you, Babe!” — the same song that woke him up the day before, and the announcer says that it is February 2nd. Phil lives Groundhog Day over and over again, and then again, and again.
I’m reminded of the movie, not just because today is February 2nd, but because, like Phil, I keep repeating something over and over again.
I am trying to write a book about the Beatitudes of Jesus — nine sayings that each begin with the word “Blessed.”
Blessed are the poor in spirit.
Blessed are those who mourn.
Blessed are the meek.
These first three, especially, make no sense. What is blessed about poverty, spiritual or otherwise?
Mourning isn’t exactly “happy” (another possible translation of the word “Blessed.”)
And who wants to be meek?
So, I sit down every morning and write a few hundred words. The next day, I write a few hundred more without making any discernible progress toward writing a book.
I’m taking today off to think about Bill Murray’s Phil and what happens to him in the movie.
When the movie begins, Phil is an unlikable, arrogant bastard. He dislikes and looks down on his producer, cameraman, and all the people in Punxsutawney.
What makes repeating Groundhog Day hell for him is that he is stuck in this hick town with these dumb people, repeatedly reporting on a meaningless event.
However, over time, Phil begins to see how spiritually impoverished his life is. He has no friends. He loves no one. No one loves him. He isn’t doing anything that matters to him. This depresses him. Slowly, he starts to make some changes in his daily routine. For example, he takes a piano lesson every afternoon from a teacher who thinks he is her new student each time he comes to her door. The daily routine doesn’t change, but Phil learns to play the piano.
By the end, Phil begins to appreciate Larry, the cameraman and falls in love with his producer. He starts living a meaningful life, not by spending hours meditating or studying any religion’s scriptures, but by simply facing the fact that his life isn’t worth living and meekly (the word in the Greek New Testament means “teachable”) learning how to live a better life step-by-step.
The working title for my book about the Beatitudes is A Life Worth Living Forever.
I think that is what the gospels mean by the phrase “eternal life.”
Jesus transitions from the Beatitudes to the rest of the Sermon on the Mount by declaring, “You are the light of the world. You are the salt of the earth.” He says keeping the light under a bushel basket or for salt to lose its flavor isn’t right.
In the movie, Phil eventually gets out of his own way. He creates a community of friends that resembles the Kingdom of Heaven on a small scale. He accepts and makes amends for how he has treated his co-workers and television audience. He eventually becomes the richest man in town, measured by how much he is loved. His light shines.
I can’t seem to explain the Beatitudes, but I can point to Bill Murray’s Phil and say, “That’s what they look like.”
Like Phil, we all have a light inside of us, and Life will teach us how to let it shine if we will let it.
And thank you, friends, for reading this. I’m trying to learn to write like Phil learned to play the piano.
Years ago, I was waiting tables for a spaghetti dinner — a fundraiser for the church put on by our men’s group. As I refilled water glasses, an older woman with lots of red lipstick and L’Oreal’s best black hair asked if she could talk with the pastor.
I wiped my hands on my apron and admitted that I was the pastor.
“Could I ask you a question?” She said timidly.
I suspected I was the first clergyperson she had ever spoken to, so I encouraged her to ask whatever she wanted.
She asked, “When we get to heaven, will we be able to go out to eat? I like going out to eat and hope I can still do it in heaven.”
I didn’t know what to say at first. When telling this story to friends, I ask, “Where were Paul Tillich and Karl Barth when I needed them?” And people who know who Paul Tillich and Karl Barth were laugh uproariously.
I’m proud to say that the earnestness in her voice kept me from laughing at her. Although I suppressed a grin when I pulled an old sermon illustration out of my brain’s back pocket:
“You know, the Bible doesn’t say a lot about heaven. It is kind of like trying to describe Florida to an Eskimo without the aid of pictures. You couldn’t convey palm trees and warm sunny beaches. You could only talk about what isn’t there: no ice and snow, no polar bears, or blizzards. Most of what the Bible says about heaven is what isn’t there: no pain, no mourning, no crying, or death. But, it does assure us that heaven is good.”
I was pretty proud of that.
I now know that I got things backward. She was teaching me. Not the other way around.
The woman’s question and my response illustrate a problem all religions have. The mystics, theologians, and religious professionals monopolize the faith. They have the visions, create the philosophical systems, and perform the rituals. They often give the impression that you have to be inclined to meditate and pray for hours. You have to have a vocabulary that includes words like “eschaton,” “numinous,” and “ontological.” And you need to be able to calculate the dates of Rosh Hashana, Easter, or Eid in your head to be religious.
So where does that leave the lady who wanted to go out to eat in heaven? It leaves her in a category we professionals call “the laity,” whom we “serve” if they are pious enough to sit at our feet and absorb our wisdom.
But this lady didn’t even come to church unless we were serving a delicious spaghetti dinner for even less money than Denny’s early-bird special. What about her?
Well, who do you think Hell is for?
I am ashamed to say that I used to think that this religious caste system was real. I, of course, was deeply concerned about those who were “lost.” I did everything I could to “save” them by getting them to come to church.
In reality, I was the one who was lost — lost in the clouds of theology, biblical studies, and religious ritual, stuff that can be helpful if, in the end, it comes down to earth where people really live.
Thank God that religion isn’t left only to us religious professionals. Occasionally, religions produce Great Souls who bypass the pros to bring faith down to earth.
One of those Great Souls was Francis of Assisi, who helped ordinary people in the 1200s CE understand the most difficult Christian doctrine, Incarnation: the claim that God became human in Jesus of Nazareth.
The theologians who are way higher up on the Christian caste system than I am have come up with ways that try to express what we mean by Incarnation:
We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father. Through him all things were made. For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven: by the power of the Holy Spirit he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary, and was made man.
Nicene Creed
Francis could recite these words in Latin and did so every time he went to Mass, and maybe he found them meaningful. But to most people, that theology is made from the same fabric as the Emperor’s new clothes.
Francis found another way to teach the Incarnation to ordinary people. He lived it. That means he lived, as much as possible, like Jesus. Like Jesus, he depended on the generosity of others to give him his daily bread, believing in a God who loved him as much as the birds of the air who neither sow nor reap. He did not have a closet full of clothes because he trusted a God who clothes the lilies of the field. Maybe he couldn’t heal lepers like Jesus, but he could embrace them.
When people saw Francis, they saw what Jesus looked like. When people saw Jesus, they saw what God looks like.
That is tough for us. Jesus lived in a world where people thought God was like Caesar.
Francis lived in a world where people thought God was like a King or the Pope, who was even more powerful than kings at that time.
Today, many people believe they see God in a billionaire who lives in Mar-a-Lago and is a once-and-future POTUS.
But God is like Jesus, and Jesus is like Francis, and Francis is like you or me when we are most open-hearted and vulnerable.
Every year, when Christmas comes around, we have a chance to understand Incarnation again. We can see God when we look in the manger.
We don’t put up a tree at our house. We hang a quilted one on our dining room wall thanks to Jacquie’s sister, Joanne. And on the sideboard beneath it, we arrange a motley manger scene. Most of the characters were carved from thorns by an artist in Nigeria, where my aunt served as a missionary. But there is also a silver elephant from India.
When our boys were small, we had wooden figures created by Fisher-Price. They spent the month of December rearranging them every day. As soon as they grow to be too big to fit in a manger themselves, kids understand, as they look down on the scene like angels, what the scene is telling us:
God is here In the messiness of birth. In the love of the two people who gave him life. With the cow, sheep, donkey, camels, (and elephant.) And we take our cues from the shepherds and kings who bow down before him in love and wonder — the same love and wonder we feel in the presence of every new baby.
If I had been looking in the manger instead of up at the heavens that evening when the lady asked me if we would be able to go out to eat in heaven, I would have remembered a story that begins: “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding feast for his son.” It goes on to say the people you would imagine a king would invite to the feast were all too busy to come. So, the king had his servants go out and pull people off the highways and byways to join the feast.
In other words, the answer to the woman’s question was right in front of her — and right in front of me — in that plate of spaghetti set on a paper-covered folding table where she sat with her friends on each side of her and had a lively conversation with people sitting across from her whom she just met. That’s heaven. In fact, it’s where people who never darkened the door of a church get waited on by pastors who fill their water glasses and take their orders (meat sauce or mushroom?) — and the creators of the Nicene Creed wash the dishes.
When we look in the manger and see God wrapped in swaddling clothes, we begin to see God in the birds of the air and the lilies of the field, in animals, in young lovers and old ones, too. We are in heaven when we share our deepest hurts and greatest joys with a friend or vice versa. Even a small piece of bread and a sip of wine can tell us who God is, why we are here, and where we are going better than all the theologians in the world.
So, Merry Christmas.
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My most recent post received some comments that helped me rethink what I wrote. I see now that I fell into the preacher’s besetting sin of alliteration. Trying to help us to not despair about the diminishment that takes place in aging, I urged us to discern what we can change and what we can’t. To do that, we need to resist denial.
That last word, denial, is not helpful. I wish I had not used it.
Denial is a guilt word. If you are in denial, you are bad. Even therapists pronounce the word “denial” with disapproval.
I fear that my post added more shame and guilt on to people who are already beating themselves up. We can’t beat ourselves into facing the truth. We can’t beat ourselves into discernment.
I learned this a little over a year ago. I consulted a therapist who has developed an expertise in neuroscience.
My issue was how I could take more responsibility for my health. I always seemed to sleepwalk through doctors’ appointments. I wouldn’t think about them beforehand. I wouldn’t ask questions during the visit. I wouldn’t remember what the doctor said after I left.
Jacquie is understandably annoyed when she remembers things about my health history that I have completely forgotten.
When I explained this problem to the therapist, she asked me how I felt about telling her that.
I said that I was ashamed. I felt like I was being childish.
She shook her head. She said:
“No, there is a breakdown between your lizard brain and your wizard brain.”
“You have two brains,” she said. “A Lizard brain and a Wizard brain.”
The concept of Lizard brain was not new to me. I had majored in Psychology in college. I knew that, at the base of the brain, there is an almond-shaped structure called the amygdala. The amygdala senses changes in our environment and tells us to flee, fight, or freeze. Even lizards have a brain like that.
My therapist explained that the amygdala works 50 times faster than the prefrontal cortex. That’s why you jump when a snake darts across your path before you even register that it is a little green garden snake — not a cobra.
The part that distinguishes between garden snakes and cobras is the prefrontal cortex in green below.
Only humans have a highly-developed prefrontal cortex. It is where we concoct the magic that writes symphonies, builds skyscrapers, and sends people to the moon. The prefrontal cortex is the “wizard brain.” The rest of the brain may store our past memories of encounters with snakes or pictures of snakes. The prefrontal cortex sorts all those snakes into “poisonous” and or “harmless” categories and can decide what to do on the basis of that taxonomy.
The amygdala also stores memories — especially those associated with pain. These memories may go back to birth. We may not be able to access them the way we remember learning the multiplication tables. But these memories do not fade with time. The amydala may also store our fundamental fears of falling or of death.
I suspect, for example, that as a child, I came to associate any trip to the doctor meant that I felt miserably sick. It also involved getting a needle jabbed into my little rear end. So, when I see the word “doctor” on my calendar, my amygdala immediately says: “Doctor = Sick + Pain in the . . .”
This happens so fast that I am not consciously aware of it.
The therapist asked me to close my eyes and relax. She called up the image of the doctor’s office and asked me what I felt — not what I should feel. What did the little boy in me feel?
Then she had me open my eyes. She placed an empty chair in front of me and said that my wizard brain was sitting in that chair. She told me to explain to the wizard brain how I feel when I am in the doctor’s office.
I did that, describing how I felt as a child: sick, bewildered, and hurt.
Then the therapist asked me to move to the wizard brain chair. She asked my wizard to respond to this bewildered, hurt, frightened child inside my lizard brain.
In the wizard chair, I told the lizard brain that I understood his fears and I cared and I would take care of him.
I then went back to the lizard brain chair and questioned those nice words. How would the wizard take care of me?
Back in the wizard chair and with the help of the therapist, I formulated a plan.
I would make a list of the questions I wanted to ask the doctor and read them over. I would listen for the Lizard brain’s response.
I also agreed to consult with the lizard brain about his concerns about my health. That part of the brain is more in touch with changes in my body than my wizard brain. My wizard brain is too busy writing blog posts to notice the pain in my left side.
This conversation didn’t take very long, but when I was done, I was no longer ashamed of my “denial” about my health. I had created alliance within me between the lizard and the wizard. I could combine intuition with reason. In this past year, that has helped me deal with doctors and take more personal responsibility for my health.
So don’t feel guilty about being in “denial.” Instead, create a relationship between the “Wizard” and the “Lizard” in your brain. The Lizard responds well to understanding and compassion. It runs away from — or fights — guilt and shame. Let them work together. Your lizard can detect how you are feeling. Your Wizard can respond with wisdom.
Together, you can become more discerning about how to face any problem including the problem of diminishment with age. Your lizard brain notices the changes in your body, mind, and relationships. Your wizard brain can find things that you can change. Working together, these two parts of your brain can give you the courage to change the things you can change and the serenity to accept what you can’t.
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.”
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.
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.
In Kindergartenwe spent a lot of time with crayons, paint, paper,paste, and scissors. This was the time when I felt most out of my depth. Every picture I drew, everything I made out of pipe cleaners or popsicle sticks looked like. . . a mess.
The picture above, for example, is not a keepsake from those days. I drew it this morning. I have improved a lot.
So, one of the things that I learned in Kindergarten is that “Art” is not for me. Later, the school choir director would tell me that singing is not for me. My failures at “Art” and singing persuaded me that the manual dexterity, self discipline, and ear required to play a musical instrument were not in my wheelhouse either.
My school days reinforced the lesson about “Art” that I learned in Kindergarten. “Art” is for other people who are more talented, disciplined, and creative than I am.
I bet that I am not only person who learned that lesson.
Our culture also gives us the message that “Art” is for theprofessionals to make. The rest of us can pay for the concert tickets, recordings, museum memberships, and streaming services that support the professionals.
But, at its most basic level, art is what Mrs. Crawford tried to teach me with modeling clay or popsicle sticks that I could glue together. What I made did not resemble anything in nature, but I was putting things together, I was giving shape to the shapeless, and color to blank sheets of paper.
I was also learning that whatever I create will probably look like a mess at first. I eventually learned how to create with words. I made my living with words. Everything I write is a mess at first. It has taken me weeks to write these 500 words.
I see people around me putting things together, bringing a new order out of the chaos of COVID-19.They may make messes, but they keep at it until something new emerges.Some do it Mrs. Crawford’s way, with paints, and crayons, and colored paper. Some make mouth-watering dinners and desserts. Some are trying to work from home, keep their kids on track, and maintain their sanity. Some are literally trying to make something out of nothing.
My friend and former neighbor, Stephen Calhoun, who began playing around with his digital camera and an iPad and discovereda whole new form of art, posted a quote on Facebook a couple of years ago that sums up what I want to say:
Creativity belongs to the artist in each of us.
To create means to relate.
The root meaning of the word “art” is “to fit together”
I wrote this a few weeks after our 50th high school reunion a few years ago. I know it isn’t great poetry, and I said the same thing more prosaically back then, but I thought I would post this anyway. I think a lot of people feel this way later in life.
One of the school’s staff members took us on a tour of thebuilding that had been remodeled, updated and expanded a number of times since we graduated. I said to Jacquie, who had graduated with me, that I would find it easier to learn my way around a completely new building than this one, because I had the old school inside my head.
The Old School
I went back to the old school,
the one where we learned 2+2,
and that every state was a star
on the American flag.
(There weren’t so many then.)
I learned the facts my teachers thought were true.
I recently discovered that Time Travel is a thing. I mean a thing that scientists study; Mental Time Travel, that is.
It’s kind of a big deal. Scientists study our ability:
To go back in time and learn from experience.
The ability to go ahead in time and plan for the future.
These scientists look to St. Augustine (354-480 CE) as their precursor. He said:
The past is present as memory.
The future is present as expectation.
What is happening now is also present.
In this post, I want to write about how to go back to the past. Soon, I will post about how to go to the future. And then, how to stay in the present.*
How to Go Back to the Past
Yes, traveling back in time means remembering.
But, it’s different from the way you remember your mother’s maiden name or the value of pi. Those memories seem to be stuffed inside some neurons in your brain.
If you close your eyes and remember:
What it was like to sit down at the family table
What your mother’s pie looked like, what it smelled like, and how it tasted
Then add guests from her side of the family
The visual, hearing, olfactory, and emotional parts of your brain light up the way they would if you were there eating that pie at that table with those people.
In a very real sense, you are traveling back in time.
I found there are right ways to do it and wrong ways to do it. I’ve been doing it wrong. I am learning to do it right.
You may have tips of your own. I’d like to hear them.
The wrong way to do it.
If you have read stories or seen movies about people traveling back to the past, you know the danger of getting stuck there. That can happen to us.
The two great dangers of Time Traveling in the past are nostalgia and resentment or regret.
Nostalgia holds us in an idealized past. Nothing in the present or the future will ever measure up to our glowing memories of things like:
A happy childhood.
The year you were captain of the high school basketball team.
Back when anything was possible, and you dreamed about backpacking in Europe, or starting your own business, or becoming an artist.
Resentment holds us in the grip of past times when people wronged us:
When mother forgot your birthday.
When the coach took you out right before you could have won the championship.
When someone else’s decision narrowed your choices.
Regret holds us in the grip of times past when we did wrong:
That first lie you told your parents.
Missing the basket that could have won the championship.
Not spending enough time with loved ones who are now gone.
We all know that the cure for resentment is to forgive others The cure for regret is to forgive yourself. But how?
I am not much given to nostalgia. But the way I am learning to travel in the past strikes me as a good way to overcome nostalgia and it helps with forgiveness, too.
Close your eyes and see a door. It is a door you know. Some examples:
The door to the first house you remember. • The door to your elementary school. • The door to a friend’s house. • The door to a house of worship. • The door to a bedroom.
Close your eyes and see the first door that comes up for you.
Now, open that door, and step inside. What do you see? What do you smell? What do you hear? Whom do you meet?
You can also close your eyes and look into a deep well, and see a face reflected in the water. Whose face do you see? What do you remember about that person?
Practice this kind of remembering. You could write down what is on the other side of the door, or what you remember about the face in the well. Do it deliberately for a while and, soon, the past will arise unbidden.
When I do this kind of time traveling, there are certain images and times that keep coming up. They are almost always on the farm where I grew up. They are not idealized. They always have manure or mud in them. I remember my mother scolding me. I also remember her pie.
I open the back door to our farmhouse and see my mother in the kitchen stirring something on the stove with one hand while trying to read a book with the other. That’s definitely her.
I look into a deep well and see my maternal grandfather’s face staring back at me. It looks a lot like the face I see in the mirror.
I open the door to the bedroom I shared with my brother and remember hearing the distant train whistle blowing in the middle of the night.
Each of these are likethreads that, if I pull on them, will release moments, days, and years with all their drama and feelings. The memories seem to unfold like a movie of my own life.
The more I go back to these places and people, the more I see them without anger or shame or longing. I just look. I see myself and others as if I were in an audience watching a play on stage. I might be caught up in the story, but I never confuse my observing self with what is taking place on my mental stage. I can watch without nostalgia, resentment, or regret. I can just let these moments be. I can learn from them. I can also let them go.
One of the most famous books of the 20th Century was, In Search of Lost Time, by Marcel Proust. He says that his several-volume work all flooded back to him when he broke open a warm pastry one morning. The aroma reminded him of visiting an aunt when he was a small boy. She always served the same pastry.
I am not as good as Proust at traveling in the past, but I am slowly learning. By using these two practices, I travel back through the years. I learn from the past without getting stuck in nostalgia, resentment, and regret.
How do you safely travel backward in time? What do you remember?
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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 fightabout? 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.
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.
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.
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.”