Unlearning

The Friends Who Helped Me Become More Human

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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.

Christmas Dinner with People I Don’t Know – The Abrahamic Version

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Our sons and their families are not strange. But they are far away — and one family is Jewish, so we don’t do Christmas with them. That’s been OK in previous years, because Christmas Day was the day I collapsed after all the Advent activities, two or three services on Christmas Eve and, if Christmas fell on a Sunday, on Christmas morning, as well.

This year, free of that activity, we learned about some other folks who were going to be alone at Christmas. We contacted them, pooled our resources and everyone gathered around the table at our house on Christmas Day. About half of us were Christian. The other half Jewish.

When the meal began, I knew everyone from a little bit to not at all. Then, we shared stories of where we came from, people we missed at this time of the year, and kindnesses we have received in the past year. After the sharing of stories, I understood at a deeper level my wife, Jacquie’s, observation: “To know someone’s story is the love them.”

The coincidence of the gathering of relative strangers on Christmas Day has made me ponder the theme of hospitality that runs through all three Abrahamic religions.

For example, I have heard stories coming out of Iraq of American soldiers breaking down the doors of houses in search of insurgents, only to be offered tea by the Muslim family whose home they invaded, so strong is the teaching that those who “believe in God and the Last Day” will offer hospitality even to those who come unannounced.

Christians and Jews remember Abraham’s hospitality to strangers who came with the promise of an impossible child. Thus, a Jewish Christian wrote in the first century, those who welcome strangers may “entertain angels without knowing it” (Hebrews 13:2).

At Passover, a place at the table is set for Elijah.

At Christmas, our manger scenes testify that Jesus came into a world that believes it has no room for strangers, and those who find the real meaning of Christmas seek to reverse that.

Henri Nouwen defined “hospitality” as making room for other people to be themselves. What I did not realize is that the ostensible host gets to be himself or herself, too.

Often, when we gather with relatives — or even with old friends — we think we know everyone and everyone thinks they know us. Recall a family gathering in which you were treated as if you were the 10-year-old you used to be. Family gatherings are great blessings, but they can hamstring us into old roles that we have outgrown — or want to outgrow.

Dinner with strangers, on the other hand, can reveal something new and delightful — maybe something that you thought was impossible, if you give each other room to be yourselves.

Riding a Bicycle in Circles

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Here are a couple of questions for you:

  • Are we fundamentally BAD people?
  • Are we fundamentally GOOD people ?

 This bicycle has been raising those questions for me recently and I wonder what you think?

Read on for some context:

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Imagine a 9-year-old girl riding her bicycle around and around a circular driveway in front of her school every day instead of going to class. 

According to A. S. Neill, that happened at the unique private school he started called Summerhill. Unlike other schools, Summerhill doesn’t have rules that say you have to be in class at a certain time or that you have to study the alphabet in first grade and biology in 10th grade. You could follow your passions and the students there are surprisingly successful in life. 

The girl on the bike had come from a more traditional school with strict, top-down rules.  She had heard that Summerhill was different so, on the first day of school, she got on her bike and rode it instead of going to class. She did that day after day for a couple of months and then one day, she didn’t get on her bike. She went to class instead.

I read Neill’s book many years ago. I had a hard time imagining a school like that.  I went to a school where the principal and the teachers made the rules and the kids obeyed them. We operated on a strict schedule controlled by the clock and bells. If it was 10:15, I was to be sitting in my seat in Mrs. Barber’s Geometry class or else.

I carried this discipline to college and graduate school and into my adult life. It was useful and it made me useful. It also oriented me. I always knew when it was Tuesday morning because I had a  meeting every Monday night.

One of the things that terrified me about retirement was that it has no structure and no rules. I feared that if I didn’t have some kind of discipline imposed by external obligations, I would start drinking Jack Daniels for breakfast, become addicted to “Days of Our Lives”, and play solitaire ’til dawn with a deck of 51.

So, shortly after I retired, I started a blog called “The Second Half”. It got its name from this quotation from Carl Jung:

“Wholly unprepared, we embark upon the second half of life. . . . we cannot live the afternoon of life according to the program of life’s morning; for what was great in the morning will be little at evening, and what in the morning was true will at evening have become a lie.”

Apparently, I did not read my own blog.

We bought bicycles a few weeks ago, and I admit that I’ve been riding my bicycle instead of writing a blog; feeling guilty at first, and then  . . .not so much.

Oddly, I’ve gone back to writing in the past few days. Not sure how often I will be publishing  posts to The Second Half, but I’m knocking out a lot of words for some other projects.

The purpose of this is not to fill you in on  exciting developments in my glamorous lifestyle. It’s to raise deeper questions about human nature.

Do you need disciplines imposed from the outside so that your inner urges and impulses don’t make you run amuck? 

Do you have an inner compass that points toward “true north” that  gets knocked off course by the magnetic attraction of trying to please others or when those more powerful than you are take the wheel of your life? 

What is your experience?

Finding the Grain Beneath the Paint – The Search for our True Character Part 1

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I was lying in a hospital bed awaiting surgery one day when a hospital chaplain came in to visit my roommate who was also awaiting surgery.

The chaplain introduced himself and as they chatted, the chaplain said, “are you retired?”

My roommate said he was, but that he was a sculptor.

The chaplain, as if he hadn’t heard, said, “What did you do before you retired?”

My roommate said, “I was an accountant, but now I’m a sculptor.”

I don’t think the chaplain heard the exasperation in my roommate’s voice because he went on to inquire about where my roommate had been an accountant and what sort of accounting he did.

My roommate politely answered those questions but his voice was flat and uninterested.

After the chaplain was out of the room, I told my roommate that I couldn’t help overhearing and asked about his sculpting.

My roommate enthusiastically told me how he welded metal objects together to create abstract forms.

At that time in my life, I had never met a sculptor – much less one who used a tool that my Dad used to fix broken wagon hitches.

This happened 30 years ago, but I never forgot it. I remember because:

  • I learned about art.
  • I learned even more about how not to make a hospital call.
  • And now I remember it because I missed an opportunity. I wish I had asked my roommate, “How did you know that, underneath that accountant, there was a sculptor wielding a welding torch?”

 

I didn’t ask that question because I was still in the first half of life. Like the chaplain, who probably was my age at the time, I was more comfortable with categories than with character.

In his book, The Soul’s Code, James Hillman says that the soul’s code is our unique character.

The word “character” is derived from the Greek word for the stamping tool used to engrave a figure on a coin.  Your character, your soul’s code, is as deep and as hard to change as Lincoln’s head on a penny or the grain of the wood in this chair.

 

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Jacquie’s mother gave this chair to us when we set up our first household, but it was covered with red tractor paint.  The paint may have helped preserve it through the six generations before us that sat on it and slid it back and forth so many thousands of times that the legs have been worn too short to fit under our table.

The paint may have made the chairs look more alike and brightened Jacquie’s grandmother’s farmhouse kitchen, but when Jacquie stripped the paint away, she found the grain of the wood out of which the chair was made. Then she refinished it in a way that brought out its character.

Most of us have covered our characters with red tractor paint. We did it when we learned to  imitate the people who taught us how to walk, talk, write, add and subtract, make pies, change tires, paint houses or portraits, balance a checkbook, and all the complex things we have done to earn a living, raise a family, and take part in human society.

Like the paint on the chair, this imitation is useful and protective – even decorative – it helps us fit into our family of origin, high school cliques, adult social circles and organizational cultures. Many of us put a lot of energy into painting over our uniqueness in the first half of life.

But our real beauty lies in our characters – underneath the paint of imitation. As we age, we can strip off the paint, and bring out the grain of our lives.

How do we do that?

Over the next couple of weeks, I intend to publish three short blogs about how we can find our characters underneath the categories – the red tractor paint of imitation, social convention and professional identity that cover up our real selves.

In the meantime, how is your personal search for who you are underneath the red tractor paint going? What have you found? What are you afraid to find? Has the search — or what you found — changed anything in your life?

Unlearning instead of Learning: Old School and New School

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First half of life = learning

Second half of life = unlearning.

Funniest comment about that last week: “We don’t have to unlearn anything in the second half of life. We just forget”.

If only it were that easy.

Recently, Jacquie and I took a tour of the school we attended from Kindergarten through high school graduation. We were there for our 50th high school class reunion. The building had been remodeled and added onto many times since we left in our caps and gowns.

  • Hallways, that we once could have walked with our eyes closed, now have walls and branches that they did not have before.
  • The old study hall is the new technology lab.
  • The old big gym is now the little gym and the old little gym has been remodeled so that its upper reaches are new classrooms and its floor, the floor I stood on as my mother registered me for my first day of school, is now a storage room used only by custodians.

As we walked around bewildered by the new layout, we agreed that we would have a harder time learning to find our way around this building than someone who had never been in it before because we would have to unlearn the building that we remembered in order to learn the building that now is.

This feels like a metaphor for my life these days. I went to the old school to learn. My teachers poured knowledge into my empty head.

And that is precisely what I gained, knowledge. I not only learned that 2+2 makes 4, but I also learned how to find the square root of 224. I not only learned that George Washington was our first President, but how to use an encyclopedia and a library to learn more facts like these. I not only learned that I need both a subject and a predicate before I have a complete sentence, I also learned how to use a dictionary in order to find the nouns and verbs that I could use in that sentence.

In the New School of the Second Half of Life, unlearning is teaching me wisdom.

In the Old School, if the numbers didn’t add up, I checked my work to find the error. In the New School, I have to unlearn that in order to gain the wisdom I need when things don’t add up – and never will.

In the Old School, I learned facts and repeated them on the test. In the New School, I have to unlearn my “facts” in order to see  through different lenses.

By coincidence, after the 50 year reunion, we attended the Shaw Festival at Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, less than 80 miles as the crow flies, from our hometown. I stopped in front of a historical marker honoring Butler’s Rangers, an irregular Loyalist militia that raided frontier communities in Western New York and Pennsylvania during the War of 1812.

“Wait a minute”, I thought, “these guys were terrorists”.

That was what the Old School had taught me. They had burned settlements and tortured and killed American patriots in order to stop American heroes like General Sullivan, who was marching through the same area burning settlements (including Niagara-on-the-Lake) and torturing and killing people loyal to George III.

Perhaps, I will approach the word “terrorist” and the word “patriot” with more wisdom from now on.

What are you unlearning these days?

 

The World Turned Upside Down

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I preached my last sermon two months ago.  Two days later I walked across a stage, shook my bishop’s hand, and received a certificate stating that, after 45 years, I had entered the “retired relationship” as an ordained minister of the United Methodist Church.

Since then, these words of C. G. Jung keep running through my mind:

“Wholly unprepared, we embark upon the second half of life. . . . we cannot live the afternoon of life according to the program of life’s morning; for what was great in the morning will be little at evening, and what in the morning was true will at evening have become a lie.”

If the Law of Gravity suddenly changed and “up” became “down” and “down” was “up”, I could not be more confused about how to proceed with life. 

Here are some things that used to be important and what is important now: 

  •  It used to be important for me to be productive and now it is important to be present.   

  • It used to be important for me to improve and now it’s important for me to accept.

  • It used to be important to go fast and now it’s important to slow down.

  • It used to be important for me to learn and now it’s important to unlearn.

  • It used to be important to acquire and now it is important to let go.

  • It used to be important to work toward success and now it is important to come to terms with failure.  

  •  It used to be important to focus on quantity and now it is important to focus on quality.

  • It used to be important to keep up with news from the outside world and now it is important to listen to my soul.

  • It used to be important to acquire expertise and now it is important to bring a beginner’s mind to everything I do.  

I intend to write about these reversals – and more – in this blog.

I’m wondering what you experience? What is different now? What is upside down from the way things used to be?  Let me know, so we can share the wisdom that comes in the Second Half.