Wisdom

The Marvelous Grandpaphone

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Photo by Arthur Edelmans on Unsplash

The word “grandpaphone” came to me as I woke from a dream.

In the dream, I was at a family reunion. Some youngsters were showing me a trick that they learned. They poured a liquid on an old LP record. It flattened the grooves, making the surface shiny and smooth. I said they shouldn’t do that and explained what the grooves were for. I wanted to tell them about playing my grandmother’s old wind-up gramophone as a boy. It played recordings on cylinders instead of disks. But first, I wanted to figure out whose grandkids these were. They must belong to one of my siblings. However, they seemed not to know who I was talking about when I named my brother and sisters.

I realized the meaning of this dream in what my son calls “Ha-Ha time” (half asleep and half awake).

The children who erase the LP and do not remember my generation’s names will be my grandchildren’s grandchildren. I don’t know all the first names of my sixteen great-great-grandparents. Do you know yours?

Unless your ancestors are the kind of people recorded in history books or you are an obsessive-compulsive genealogist, you are unlikely to know much about that generation.

The dream confronted me with an aspect of mortality that may be even more profound than the eventual death of my body — the erasure of the fact that I ever lived.

I heard this hymn playing in the background:

Time, like an ever-rolling stream,
bears all who breathe away,
they fly, forgotten, as a dream
dies in the dawning day.

Isaac Watts revised by Brian Wren

That was when I woke up, and the word “grandpaphone” came to me. A grandpaphone picks up and plays the vibrations of the ancestors through the generations.

That is the best I can hope for. My efforts to become immortal aren’t bearing much fruit.

If my descendants have an enormous trust fund, it won’t bear my name, and they won’t have other reminders of my existence.

I did publish a book of sermons, but it went out of print in the 1990s. The paper in the copies I have on my shelves is already turning yellow.

I can count on appearing in the histories of the churches I served, but I fear that most of those churches won’t make it past the middle of this century.

The dream was calling me to recognize a truth my culture ignores –the importance of ancestors.

My particular Christian tradition has been guilty of looking down its nose at what it calls “ancestor worship.” So we reduce one of the Ten Commandments: “Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long upon the earth,” to handing out corsages on Mother’s Day.

Rabbi Abraham Heschel was once asked what this commandment meant for people who had been abused or abandoned by their parents. Rabbi Heschel said the commandment does not require us to pretend that bad behavior is honorable. What it does command us to do is to have a reverence for the mystery of our own existence. Our parents, their parents, and all our ancestors are the symbols of that mystery.

Our ancestors do, indeed, represent a mystery: the mystery of who we are, how we got here, and, maybe, where we are going.

I was lucky to know all four of my grandparents, one of my great-grandmothers, and a step-great-grandmother. Some people come from family lines full of the kind of people who get biographies written about them — or at least an article in Wikipedia. Some people don’t even know the names of the two people who made them. But we all have this in common: a family tree that doubles in size with every generation: four grandparents, eight great-grandparents, sixteen great-great-grandparents — you can do the math. We don’t often realize that if even one of our 128 ancestors seven generations ago had not “come through,” as it were, you and I would not be here.

Perhaps your reaction is, “I’m just a random set of genes that came together to win the life lottery.”

Or maybe you think like my grandchildren. Once, when all four of them were together, I told them how my 15-year-old self got up the nerve to reach out for their grandmother’s hand, and she let me hold it. After telling that story, I asked, “Are you here because I reached for her hand? Or did I reach for her hand because you are supposed to be here?”

They all agreed that their inevitable future existence was the reason I crushed on their grandmother.

Whatever you think—and I admit there are days when I think my life is a lottery ticket and days when I think my life is inevitable—just thinking about it should fill us with reverence for the mystery of our existence.

You can create a very simple daily discipline of remembering your parents and their parents, grandparents, and ancestors and bowing in gratitude, thanking them for the gift of life. Since I have added that to my morning routine, I feel a reverence for life that I haven’t felt before.

I think I am playing the grandpaphone.

JFK and Julius Caesar

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For about twenty years, I could get a congregation to nod their heads in agreement when I said, “We all remember where we were and what we were doing when we heard that President Kennedy had been shot.”

But now, as Longfellow once wrote about another event, “Hardly a man is now alive who remembers that fateful day and year.” (There are, statisticians tell me, more women alive who remember).

I was in a 10th-grade English class. We were in the middle of reading Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. I remember reading out loud a speech by Marc Antony encountering Caesar’s body after he had been assassinated:

O mighty Caesar, dost thou lie so low?
Are all thy conquests, glories, triumphs, spoils
Shrunk to this little measure? Fare thee well.—

[ Act 1:Scene 1)

There was a knock on our classroom door. Our teacher, who would unexpectedly die in a car accident herself in about eighteen months, went out and then returned a couple of minutes later to tell us that the President had been shot.

That moment taught me that even the most important people are mortal and how quickly and unexpectedly life and even history can change — the same thing Shakespeare was trying to say.

Shakespeare also says that the assassination of Caesar had consequences that Brutus and Cassius never intended when they drove their knives into Caesar’s heart.

I grew up in a family and a community that preferred the upright and honest Richard Nixon to the spoiled Democrat (said with distaste) John Kennedy. And many of us believed that Nixon would have been president if Richard Daley had not been able to dig up a lot of Democrats from Chicago’s graveyards. Kennedy won by only five electoral votes and a little over 100,000 popular votes (cp. Joe Biden’s 74 electoral votes and seven million popular votes in 2020.)

But, we (following Nixon’s example) accepted the official results when Kennedy was elected and mourned along with the rest of the country when he was killed. And we wished the new President well.

That taught me what it means to be an American.

I don’t know how the world would be different if Kennedy had not been shot that day. Historians I respect doubt that JFK could have gotten the Civil Rights Act through Congress the way LBJ did. Some of them also wonder if he would have escalated our involvement in Vietnam the way LBJ did. Both of those events have shaped much of our history since.

I’d be interested in your answers to at least one of these questions:

Where were you, and what were you doing on November 22, 1963?

Do great people make history, or does history make great people?

What event or experience taught you what it means to be an American?

What event taught you that life can be unpredictable?

When Churches Split

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In 1996, Bob Dole was running for President against the incumbent, Bill Clinton. It was, like all presidential campaigns, hard fought and, at times, nasty. I mentioned in a sermon that both attended the same church in Washington, D.C. — Foundry United Methodist. I said I thought that was remarkable until I realized that our own congregation included both Frank, whose liberal views were well-known, and Roy, who everyone knew was pretty conservative. That got a big laugh from the congregation, especially from Frank and Roy, who embraced each other and joked about it for years afterward.

This kind of connection across a lot of social, political, and economic barriers was something that made me proud of the church that formed my faith and that I served as a pastor for forty-five years.

But, something has changed. In the past three years, the United Methodist Church, once the largest Protestant denomination in America, has been shrinking like Greenland’s glaciers as congregations break off and, in many cases, join newly-forming Methodist denominations.

The presenting issue is the church’s stance on homosexuality.

As a world-wide denomination, our official rules prohibit ordaining “practicing” homosexuals and marrying same-sex couples. An increasing number of clergy and congregations in the U.S. are critical of, and even defying, these regulations. They argue for an open and affirming acceptance of people in the LGBTQ+ spectrum. This has, of course, led the other side to demand compliance.

Both sides accuse the other of being captured by the culture: 

Conservatives see Liberals are replacing scripture with  "Woke" ideology.

Liberals say conservatives are ignoring the core command to love God and to love our neighbor by joining in the political Right's scapegoating of LGBTQ+ folks.

Both sides are right, but not for the reasons they think.

The culture we have been captured by is the Culture of the False Binary. It is the culture that believes:

  • “If I am right. You must be wrong.”
  • ”If I am right about one thing, I must be right about everything.
  • And, if you are wrong about one thing, you must be wrong about everything.”

This is not a new phenomenon. The world in which Jesus lived was split between Pharisees, Sadducees, Zealots, and other religious-political groups that believed they were right and everyone else was wrong. They sorted the world into “good people” and “bad people,” Jews and Gentiles, clean and unclean.

The dominant culture has almost always encouraged people to split into these kinds of binaries: heretics and believers, solid citizens and welfare cheats, native born and immigrants, white and not-white, traditionalists and progressives, “Men” and “Women.” It is always easier to win an election or get people to fall in line by pitting “us” against “them.”

In contrast, Jesus gathered people from all those groups into his band of followers. Two of them, Simon the Zealot and Matthew the tax collector, would have made Joe Biden and Donald Trump look like best friends.

The church, at its best, is Roy’s and Frank’s church. It counters fearful division by creating a community that brings “us” and “them” together at the communion table and in service to the world. Now, however, “Traditionalists” want to create a “pure” church and “Progressives” want to be free to welcome everyone.

The split has become personal for me as the first church I was appointed to after I graduated from seminary is going through a process to discern whether they want to stay in the denomination or leave it.

Even after almost fifty years, I still know members of that church. A couple of them have asked if I would write about it. I haven’t wanted to. It breaks my heart. And, I have nothing new to say about the issues that divide us than has already been said.

But, I guess I could share the most important lesson that church taught me in those early years of ministry:

I am not always right.

It was a hard lesson to learn. I had, after all, spent seven years in college and seminary learning to become a pastor by studying psychology, Hebrew, Greek, theology and other subjects that I thought would help. Furthermore, the church I served part-time when I was in seminary had grown big enough to support the full-time pastor that followed me. I was hot stuff.

When I arrived, I could see the things that needed to change, and I began to institute them. Some of them worked. But, to my surprise, not everyone agreed with everything I said or did.

At first, I took this personally. But, over time (perhaps longer than it should have taken) I began to understand that none of us is as wise as all of us. My beautiful ideas got mashed up in Administrative Board meetings and produced solutions that weren’t as elegant, but worked in the real world.

This did not mean that I gave up producing ideas and proposals that I really believed in. It did not mean that I had no convictions. It meant that I learned to hold them with the kind of humility that John Wesley exhibited when he prefaced many of the things he said with the words, “Until I am better instructed, I will believe . . .” These are not words we hear when Republicans and Democrats debate each other, but they are words that I think Methodists should use when we make our assertions.

Back then, I had many of the same convictions about human sexuality that the most conservative Methodists hold today. But, in that church and the five that followed, I met people who did not fit my theological cookie cutter. Their experiences, their love for Jesus, the faithfulness of their commitments, and their spiritual maturity convinced me to reread my Bible and change my mind. That is why I am on the “progressive” side in this argument.

However, I have friends on the other side who have parishioners who were chewed up by a permissive and promiscuous culture. These people found healing in churches that gave them structure and guidelines for their lives.

I do not think my friends have to be wrong for me to be right.

I think it would be more helpful for all of us to first of all ask:

How well do I understand my own sexuality?

How well do I understand my partner’s sexuality?

. . . before we make dogmatic pronouncements about the sexuality of people we have never even met.

We would be much more helpful to each other and to the world around us if we approached this particular subject with humility and compassion instead of self-righteousness.

Right now, that kind of respectful dialogue may be beyond the capabilities of a small-town congregation. It is certainly beyond the capabilities of the larger denomination. So, ultimately it will come down to a vote: “Yes?” Or “No?”

That reminds me of the another lesson I learned in that particular church.

When I was there, the congregation made a huge decision that involved a large amount of money and some big changes. One of the “pillars” of the church was particularly opposed to it. I was firmly on the other side. When the vote came, most people voted for the proposal.

Afterward, that man came to me and said, “You know that I was against this. But, I believe that the majority should rule. My wife and I will support the decision and give to it.” And, they did.

In the next four decades, I lost a lot of votes in the churches I served and on the floor of my denomination’s ruling bodies. Sometimes, those loses were pretty tough, but I remembered his words and I moved on.

I suspect that, in the end, that little church will not go the way I want it to go. But, whatever it decides, I will love it and pray for it.

From Tourist to Pilgrim

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Photo: Roger Talbott

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It Isn’t Denial. Your Wizard isn’t Talking with Your Lizard

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Created by the author in Dall-E

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.

That Other “D” Word

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“Old Man with Cane” Created by Dall-E

“You know how people say ‘passed away’ when they mean ‘died’?” our friend, Jim, said recently. “Well, there’s another ‘D’ word, ‘Diminishment,’ and  the euphemism for that is ‘Aging’.” 

Both Jim and I know what he is talking about.  I used to have to walk right along to keep up  with him. Now he pushes a rollator. 

I started wearing hearing aids when I was 35. Almost 30 years later, my hearing got so bad that I underwent surgery for cochlear implants. I also have gone from running 5K’s three times a week, to barely being able to walk a mile. I struggle with chronic fatigue and brain fog due to Long COVID. 

On top of that, I joke that my job was a post-graduate course in aging. During my career as a pastor from 1971 to 2016, the average life expectancy in the U.S. rose from 71 to 78.5. What that meant was that on Mother’s Day in the 70’s, I would see kids, parents, and grandparents sitting together. In the 2010’s, I would see kids, parents, grandparents, and great-grandmother all in the same pew.  Since great-grandmother was probably the only person who still attended on a regular basis, I spent a lot of my time with people in their 80’s and 90’s. 

I learned that “diminishment” means two things: 

– Not being able to do what we used to do. 

– Not being able to be who we used to be. 

Sometimes, just turning a page on the calendar will change who we are. A colleague said that his father complained, “Yesterday, I was the boss of the biggest construction project in the state. Today, I was issued a card that lets me go bowling for half-price.” 

That’s why Supreme Court Justices and Senators and our President still hang on to their jobs into their 80’s. I can’t say that I blame them. It’s taken me six years to quit dreaming every Saturday night about preparing (or not preparing) to lead worship on Sunday. 

The other form of diminishment is when physical and mental limitations keep us from doing what we used to do. 

In those post-graduate studies I mentioned earlier I saw people handling diminishment with three other “D’s”: Denial, Despair, and Discernment. 

I work as a volunteer with people who have hearing loss. The first barrier to overcome is denial. People wait an average of seven years between the time they notice they aren’t hearing as well as they used to and when they start looking into getting a hearing aid.  

What are they doing in those seven years?  

  • – Driving family crazy when they turn up the TV too loud. 
  • – Losing their own ability to speak clearly – as they unconsciously mimic the way they are hearing words pronounced. 
  • – Mishearing what was said and being embarrassed so that they learn to pretend to hear when they don’t or they withdraw from conversations entirely. (The last one is why hearing loss is highly correlated with cognitive decline). 

So, why do we live in denial? 

To save ourselves from the despair we will feel if we face the truth. Jesus may have said, “The Truth will set you free,” but we don’t really believe it. And, yes, I’ve talked to way too many people who faced the truth of their diminishment and despaired. On some days, I have been one of them. 

However, I have seen others take a different road and I am trying follow it myself. It is the Way of Discernment. 

Most of us are familiar with this famous proyer:  

Lord, grant me the courage to change the things I can change. The serenity to accept the accept the things I can’t change. And the wisdom to know the difference. 

Reinhold Niebuhr

The trick is finding the wisdom to know the difference. I think James Baldwin shows us the way:  

Not everything that is faced can be changed; but nothing can be changed until it is faced.

Yes, I said above that facing diminishment can lead us into despair, but that is because we jump too soon to the conclusion that our life is essentially over. “Facing” really means looking at the problem and asking, “Is there anything I can do about this?” 

Take hearing loss as an example. We are fortunate to live in an era in which technology can help us overcome a lot of the limitations imposed by hearing loss. However, sticking a hearing aid in your ear is not the same as putting on eyeglasses. We are required to work at learning to use the aid correctly and to be proactive about asking people to speak more clearly. (And to sometimes explain why, as the writer, Katherine Bouton says, Shouting Won’t Help)

But, not everything can be overcome. I am still trying to discern if there are answers to Long COVID. I’m convinced that I can’t take a pill that will cure me. I am discovering that fasting has made a difference, as well as patient, disciplined forms of exertion. But, I’m still not running any races. 

I could despair about that, or accept it with serenity. On my good days, I choose the latter. At a superficial level, I like to think of myself being as cool as Tony Bennett asking beautiful girls to walk a little slower.

But, I also am discovering something deeper. The psychoanalyst, Ernest Becker, wrote in his book, The Denial of Death , that aging requires “terror management.” For Becker, I think (I don’t pretend that I’ve read his book carefully enough to understand it fully), the trouble with being human is that we can anticipate death and  knowing we will die threatens us with meaninglessness. 

In contrast, the Christian tradition describes a scene shortly after Jesus has died his terrible death and then reappeared to his disciples. In this scene, Jesus says to his disciple, Peter, 

“Truly, truly, I say to you, when you were young, you used to dress yourself and walk wherever you wanted, but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will dress you and carry you where you do not want to go.”  — John 21:18

Christians read that as a prediction of Peter’s eventual death by crucifixion, and Jesus is reassuring Peter that even that will have a purpose in his life.  But, those words  also describe what will happen to a lot of us, if we live long enough. 

As things fall away in my life; as people I love more than life itself die; as I look at a picture taken 50 years ago and barely recognize the young man I was then; as my vibrant wife, three months younger than me by the calendar and fifteen years younger by any other measure, goes off to the theater while I go to bed, I still sense that there is something  that I call “me” that I am just discovering. 

William Stafford has expressed how I feel as well as anyone can:  

There’s a thread you follow. It goes among

things that change. But it doesn’t change.

People wonder about what you are pursuing.

You have to explain about the thread.

But it is hard for others to see.

While you hold it you can’t get lost.

Tragedies happen; people get hurt

or die; and you suffer and get old.

Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.

You don’t ever let go of the thread.

The Way It Is, by William Stafford. 

I think Jesus was saying to Peter that even at the end, when he is helpless, he will still be following the thread of his life. 

Whatever happens, beloved, your life isn’t over until it is over (and maybe not then). Hang on to your thread. 

The Mystery of Three

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“Is Jacquie there?” 

This question — the very first words I heard after I picked up the phone –  told me that my mother-in-law was calling. It was back in the day when people paid for long-distance calls by the minute and she didn’t have the pennies to spare on chit-chatting with her son-in-law. I got it.  I also suspected that her feelings about me were . . . complicated. 

Over the years, however, we forged a relationship.

She and I were both early risers. When she would come to visit, we would sit together in the kitchen drinking our first cup of coffee of the day and we would talk about the three people we both loved with all our hearts.  Not long before she was diagnosed with the cancer that would take her life, she sent me a Father’s Day card on which she listed all the good qualities she saw in me. It was an affirmation I still cling to. 

My love for her daughter and her love for our sons transformed a difficult relationship into a kind of friendship. She died more than 30 years ago, and I still miss her.

We are tempted to see the world in binaries. The most fundamental being “I” on the one hand and anything else, including “You,” on the other. And when it is just “you” and “me,” we either try to absorb each other, or push each other away.

The first page of the Bible says God made it that way. On the first day God creates the first binary: day and night. On the second day, God separates earth from sky. I never noticed until someone pointed it out to me recently, that God does not bless these first two days. These binaries are static; in opposition to each other. But, on the third day, God separates the land from the sea and these binaries start producing a third thing: Life. That is when God starts calling the Creation “good.”

This is the mystery of Three.

The ancient alchemists were focused on transformation.  How does one thing turn into another? The alchemists knew that one substance all by itself was inert. Two substances, like oil and water, would never really come together. But, add a third thing — a coagulant — and they would form something new. 

The alchemists wanted to turn lead into gold. But there is also an alchemy that makes a distrustful stranger, a competitor, even an enemy, into a friend if you add a third thing. According to the mystics, that third thing is either Love or Fear. Both of them can turn enemies into friends.

You know the saying:  “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Fear seems to be the basis of everything from family dysfunctions to international relations.  

We create communities based on fear, not because we are bad people, but because we have evolved to sense threats to our existence. And we have learned that we have a greater chance to survive those threats if we band together. The members of NATO have many competing interests, but they recognize that Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine implies a threat to each of them. That is not an irrational fear. 

However, alliances based on fear can survive only as long as the threat persists. Indeed, NATO was on the verge of falling apart as Russia became more integrated into the global community. 

Lacking any genuine threat, human communities are tempted to manufacture fears in order to hold themselves together. Just think of the ways our political parties energized their bases to get out the vote two months ago. Sadly, it works. And it is easy to do. 

But, there is another image of the “Three” that appears in front of churches during this short season of 12 days called “Christmastide” — a mother, a father, and a baby. You don’t have to be Christian or even religious to understand that this is a symbol of Love with a capital “L.” 

It is a reminder that human beings can and do forge relationships based on their mutual love for some other person or thing.  At weddings we laugh and dance with each other. At funerals we cry and hug each other. We connect with complete strangers and create community because we all love the same people. People who love growing flowers form garden clubs. People who care about the poor form the crew at the hunger center. 

While the headlines focus on the building up of international alliances based on the fear of Russia’s military aggression and China’s economic hegemony, tens of thousands of individuals and hundreds of organizations are banding together rescue people from poverty, hunger, and disease in ways that seldom appear on Fox News or CNN. These groups are often coalitions of people from many nations and of different faiths.  

When people band together to fight a third party they often feel a sense of belonging and purpose. But, ultimately, those relationships are destructive.

In his play, No Exit, the philosopher, Jean Paul Sartre, created a vision of Hell as a cell containing three people who would spend eternity creating shifting alliances based on their fearful hatred of each other. It is a hell in which a lot of us live every day. Fear encourages lying and betrayal. It creates a “brood of vipers” as one biblical prophet called them. 

In contrast, the relationships forged on mutual love are usually marked by deep loyalty and faithfulness that persist over years. These relationships  encourage honesty and integrity in those who enter them. And they are creative.

It does not have to be a child, but it does have to be something that calls out the best in people — something they love and serve with all their hearts, and also makes them want what is best for each other.

Again, the Holy Family is an obvious symbol of this mystery and Christians have spun it out into the doctrine of the “Trinity.” I would assert that, in the conversation between the great Wisdom Traditions of the world, Christianity’s main contribution may be its insight that this Mystery of Three is what puts the “uni” in “Universe.” *

As a teacher of mine who was well-versed in both theology and science pointed out: planets and solar systems and galaxies are held together by gravity. Atoms and molecules are held together by atomic forces. The universe is held together by mutual attraction — the universe is held together by love.

As the New Year begins, consider the Holy Family and ask yourself These questions:

  • Which relationships do you have that are based on fear?
  • Which are based on love?
  • Which ones are most satisfying?
  • Which call out the best in you? 
  • Which ones will you work on?

And, If you would like to transform a relationship ask:

  • What do both of us love?  

Do you have any stories of transforming a relationship? I’d be curious to hear them.

The Feast of the Holy Family, January 1, 2023

*(Although, sadly, Christians have spent almost 2,000 years fearing and hating people who understand this mystery even slightly differently from the way they understand it.) 

figurines of the nativity of jesus

The First Christmas After Death

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Jacquie and I are grateful for the cards, emails and other messages we have received in the past few weeks that acknowledge our ongoing grief.

One of the hard things about losing someone who is as much a part of you as your arms or legs — or more precisely, your heart — is that the rest of the world quickly goes on with its business. As it should. As it has to. We understand. We have done the same. However, we are comforted by those who remember that something important stopped for us this past summer.

In all honesty, our Christmas, on the surface, won’t be much different this year. Matt, and his family live(d) in Portland, OR, across the continent from us. He would call us on Christmas Day. We will miss that — that voice. (A church secretary once announced he was on the phone by saying, “it’s your son with the great voice.”) But, we won’t have the empty chair at the table like our daughter-in-law and grandchildren will. Just thinking of their table brings tears to our eyes.

I wondered if we would just try to skip Christmas this year.

However, as Advent progressed, it felt more and more like Christmas — not the way the bouncy Bing Crosby tune puts it. But, more like Christina Rossetti puts it:

“In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan.
Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter, long ago.
. . .
In the bleak midwinter a stable place sufficed
The Lord God Almighty, Jesus Christ.”

I am late to the Rachel Held Evans fan club, but this morning I came across something she wrote that resonates with me at a deep level:

“I know that Christians are Easter people. We are supposed to favor the story of the resurrection, which reminds us that death is never the end of God’s story. Yet, I have never found that story even half as compelling as the story of the Incarnation.

. . . the true miracle of the Incarnation— the core Christian conviction that God is with us, plain old ordinary us. God is with us in our fears and in our pain, in our morning sickness and in our ear infections, in our refugee crises and in our endurance of Empire, in smelly barns and unimpressive backwater towns, in the labor pains of a new mother and in the cries of a tiny infant. In all these things, God is with us—and God is for us.

Rachel Held Evans with Jeff Chu, Wholehearted Faith (New York: HarperOne, 2021) p. 5.

I hope that, when Easter comes around next April, some power beyond my own will have rolled away the stone in my heart. But, right now, I agree with Evans. I don’t know if I believe in an empty tomb right now. I do believe in a baby in a manger.

The one thing death does for us is enable us to see our loved ones whole. Whenever I think of Matt, I see him not just as the almost skeletal, cancer-ravaged remnant of himself who looked out at us the last time we Facetimed a few days before he died. I see him as the man who came to celebrate Father’s Day 2021 with me, bringing his own grown son with him. Both his mother and I were proud of what a good father Matt was.

At the same time, I see him as the young man I visited when he was working in Poland after college. I especially remember his ardent efforts, a decade before cell phones, to place a call to a young woman whom he had met in Geneva. I was not surprised when he married her.

I can see him in adolescence and in boyhood and as the baby his Mom and I brought home from the hospital, tiny enough to cradle in one arm, nursing like every baby ever born and sleeping like . . . well, like a baby who can sleep soundly in a bassinet or a feed trough.

I used to wrap the baby Jesus in metaphysical swaddling clothes. This year, for me, he is like every baby, including Matt. Therefore, he is the Incarnation of Life. As Matt was. As you and I and everyone we love are. He came into this world, whether he knew it or not, to live and to love, which means taking on all the risks of skinned knees, viral infections, broken hearts, cancer, and crucifixions. But also to delight in sunrises and sunsets, good food, friendship, skin contact, and new babies.

Matt loved every moment of Life. Incarnation was not wasted on him.

Easter may promise something after death, but, in this bleak midwinter, all I can believe in is Christmas and the life in this world that Christmas celebrates and calls us to live generously, gratefully, . . .fully.

The first poem I ever memorized — before I could read — were the last four lines of Rossetti’s poem. It was a “piece” I said at our church’s Christmas pageant, with my parents and grandparents of blessed memory looking on:

“What can I give him, poor as I am?

If I were a shepherd, I would give a lamb.

If I were a Wise Man, I would do my part.

What can I give him: give him my heart”.

“A Christmas Carol” by Christina Rossetti.

Seventy Christmases later, I finally understand those words. It is safer to give those other gifts: lambs, frankincense, Walmart gift cards. Giving your heart means to risk having it broken. Yet, to not give your heart would mean that you would miss Life — the real meaning of Christmas.

What to Say to a Grieving Person

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Last September I started a series of blog posts on grief. I never finished due to the fatigue that I suffer from Long COVID. I was just starting to feel better when our son called us about his diagnosis. “I am going to die,” he said. I am writing this partly to offer thanks to all those who have reached out to us with your prayers and condolences. Nothing makes it better, but we have felt supported.

A few weeks ago, Jacquie and I lost our oldest son to pancreatic cancer. He was 49. His wife and two teen-age children are grieving and disoriented from the fact that he was fine until about 10 weeks before his death. So are we.

We got a lot of cards, emails, and personal expressions of love and support from dozens and dozens of people. People told us that they were sorry for our loss. Our Jewish friends and family usually said, “May his memory be a blessing.”

Many of them admitted, “I don’t know what to say.” Some just said, “There are no words.”

In fact, we found those expressions of wordlessness the most comforting. They matched our own feelings of inexpressible grief.

The French philosopher, Montaigne, the inventor of the essay, tells a story about a king who was defeated by his enemy. To torture the king, his enemy had the king’s beloved horse brought forward and then had the horse slain in front of the king. The king cried out in dismay.

The enemy brought forward the king’s closest advisor and best friend and cut his throat. The king howled with grief.

The enemy then brought forward the king’s wife and children, and murdered them before his eyes. The king said nothing.

The enemy was surprised. Why had the king wept for a horse, howled in grief for his friend, but was silent about the loss of his family? The enemy thought he had failed to break the king’s heart.

But, as Montaigne said, “Lesser griefs weep. Great griefs are dumb.”

There are no words.

Statisticians can tote up the numbers murdered in the Holocaust. Historians can trace the development of Hitler’s final solution. But anyone who walks through the Holocaust museums in Washington, D.C. or Jerusalem leaves knowing that there are no words.

We have been fortunate not to have encountered the kind of people that Gardner Taylor, one of the Black Church’s great voices of the 20th century, used to call, “Spiritual Speakeasies.”

I used to meet them in funeral homes when I visited parishioners who had lost loved ones. They, to paraphrase Reinhold Niebuhr, always seemed to be able to describe the furniture of heaven and knew the temperature of hell. They glibly said things like, “we know (insert the name of the deceased) is with (insert the name of a dead grandparent) and they are rejoicing to meet all their other loved ones.”

Well, maybe.

The New Testament tends to describe the afterlife the way you might describe Florida to an Eskimo without the aid of photographs. All you would be able to say is, “There are no polar bears in Florida. No ice. No snow.”

So, Jesus says that there is no marriage there (Matthew 22:30). And Revelation says “there will be no more death’ nor mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”

To come back to the Eskimo analogy, you could say that Florida has palm trees and white sandy beaches, but it would not mean much to someone who has never seen them. The Eskimo might take your word for it that Florida is a nice place, but would not sign up for trip there anymore than most of us want to be on the next bus to heaven.

Death, especially the death of a child, leaves us with more questions than answers, more grief than confidence.

There is a part of me that cannot believe that my son still lives. But, I have no proof of that, either.

Death is a great mystery.

Maybe when we die, we die.

Maybe our atoms return to the stars from which they came.

Maybe we get to try life all over again.

Or maybe there is something after death that is beyond all that we can ask or think. I hope so.

We do not grieve like those who have no hope. We only grieve like those who have no words.

Re-membering: How Grief Makes You A New Person

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Seeing the Whole Person


In the days after my Dad died, his grandchildren put together a display of photos. There were pictures of:

  • A grandchild steering his garden tractor while sitting on Dad’s lap.
  • Christmases past surrounded by kids and grandkids.
  • Dad giving his daughters away at their weddings.
  • Dad and Mom, barely out of their teens, at their own wedding.
  • A 12-year-old farm boy standing proudly next to his first deer.


Suddenly, it seemed like all of him was there. Not just the man I had seen the last time we were together: an old man who could barely hear anything you said. I also saw him in the prime of his life. I saw the young man I remembered from when I was a boy. My memories brought all of him together in a way that would not have been possible when he was alive.

Our memories ambush us years after the funeral. The smell of fresh-baked bread reminds me of one grandmother. The sight of a new commemorative postage stamp reminds me of the the other, who encouraged me to collect them. What triggers your memories of those long-gone?


When we remember our loved ones, we re-member them. We put them — and ourselves — together in a new way.


Re-membering Together


People gather after someone dies to share their memories. It may be the calling hours at the funeral home; an Irish wake; or in Greek Orthodox culture, a dinner honoring the deceased on the one-year anniversary of their death. Jews observe Shiva for a few evenings after the funeral. Friends, neighbors, and extended family visit the immediate family in their home.

Every traditional community has a way of creating these gatherings. Our secular suburban life is poorer when we don’t have them. But, just sharing a cup of coffee with good friends in those first few days after a death can help. In this pandemic era, we have even learned how to gather on Zoom.


We gather to listen with empathy as the most-bereaved talk about losing their loved one. Telling these stories can help them process their loss. But, it also helps the most-bereaved to hear stories about their loved one from others who knew that person.


In response to the first of this series, my sister-in-law, Jo-Anne, said that everyone’s life is like an elephant. The people who know us are like the blind men who famously announced their true, but very different, conclusions about that elephant. We all see only part of a person — including our parent, spouse, sibling, or child. Hearing stories about them from others helps us fill out our picture of this person who is so important to us.


I came away from my Dad’s funeral with a much bigger picture of him. I listened to people who had worked with him at the electric company, or on the volunteer rescue squad and the town board. Neighbors told me how he had helped them. After all, he could fix anything; from your refrigerator to your kid’s broken arm.

This also happens when I gather with my brother and sisters. Each of them related to our parents differently. As I listen to their stories, they fill in the picture, and at the same time, deepen the mystery, of who my parents were.


The Pieces Come Together in a New Way


“Closure” is a myth. We have this fantasy that, after someone important dies, we will go through the stages of grief: denial, anger, depression, and acceptance. Then we should be able to pick up where we left off.


Instead, we are changed

as we re-member our dead

into our lives.


The Mystery of Your Existence


All my grandparents were born in the 19th century. All my grandchildren were born in the 21st century.

If you are now in the Third Half of your life, you can probably say the same about many of the people who loomed large in your childhood and some of the people who are dearest to you now. And, here you are in between the past and the future.

We are participating in some kind of grand scheme of things. My hope is that we are moving toward Shalom, wholeness, peace, good will toward all people, and toward Creation itself.

Remembering and passing on our memories is one way we actively participate in this grand scheme.

The Bible says God does not forget us. Whatever resurrection is, it is definitely a kind of re-membering.


Remembering is the work of grief that lasts long after the tears stop flowing.

There are three more aspects of this work:

  • We make sense out of our memories
  • We forgive.
  • We decide what we believe about life, death, and life after death.”

I will write about them soon.

Let me leave you with this beautiful litany:

A Litany of Remembrance – We Remember Them


In the rising of the sun and in its going down,
we remember them.
In the blowing of the wind and in the chill of winter,
we remember them.
In the opening of buds and in the rebirth of spring,
we remember them.
In the blueness of the sky and in the warmth of summer,
we remember them.
In the rustling of leaves and in the beauty of autumn,
we remember them.
In the beginning of the year and when it ends,
we remember them.
When we are weary and in need of strength,
we remember them.
When we are lost and sick at heart,
we remember them.
When we have joys we yearn to share,
we remember them.
So long as we live, they too shall live, for they are now a part of us,
as we remember them.

by Rabbi Sylvan Kamens and Rabbi Jack Riemer
From Gates of Prayer, published by Central Conference of American Rabbis.

Image credit: Raul Diaz, Berlin Germany, Holocaust Memorial https://www.flickr.com/photos/radzfoto/2621999611/in/dateposted/