What is this thing called "death?"

Tony used to work on my cars for me and apologize for what he had to charge me.  He was full of helpful advice regarding taking care of my automobiles.   He had clear and uninhibited opinions about many things including my son's cars and how he took care of them and drove them.   

 He was ribald and loved to laugh at his own jokes.  He was constantly aware of who was driving by and would know who they were and if they had been good to him or not.  And if they were out to get him.

He recently told me that when he was a young teenager because his step-dad and mother were disabled he would often be kept home from school to drive them to medical appointments or whatever.  And that his step-dad was abusive and he would take measures to avoid being hit even while he was driving.

Anyway, whatever, now he is no more.  At least here.  He was working on clearing land near his house and his backhoe wouldn't start and then I suppose unexpectedly it did and ran over him.   At something like 36 years of age his life here is done.  Complete.   Over.

Now his wife is without a husband and his son and daughter have no dad.  Now for them I imagine there will struggle and memories and faded pictures.

And I am in this surreal world where I drive by his house or drop off some flowers for his wife and I avoid the torn up patch of ground where I suppose the accident happened.  The backhoe thankfully is gone.

Something has ruptured.  The world feels different.  I look out my window towards the direction of his house and tears well up.  I'm not entirely sure why but I think it has to do with unfinished business and what seems like the futility of life.   One cantankerous backhoe and death shows up eager and vengeful.

Anyway,  there will be a memorial service and a burial and life will go on.

For some reason I don't even consider "where" Tony is now.  I choose to have a certain belief regarding God and so I don't worry about Tony.  His life with in some ways was always a struggle is over and he is in love.  I don't know where, I don't know how, well actually I do have a clue, but I'm sure he is well taken care of.

So here I sit with no answers really.  The sun is shining, the rest of the household will get up and life on the surface will go on.  But I tell you something was ruptured and will never be the same.  For me at least there is a golden remedy that fills the cracks but the cracks of life are always there even though the event of the breaking may fade.

Rest in peace, Anthony Clark.

Heart Happens

I've been thinking about how we get (or don't) get each other's heart. I realized this is a metaphor for something. So it's not going to be described precisely but perhaps the conversation around something indescribable is the beauty of it.

I am fortunate to have a lot of friends that "get" my heart and I get theirs. We relate at what I would call a heart level. It's interesting that I'm quite sure we have dramatically different political perspectives, we are all over the place in how we understand (or misunderstand God) but that is immaterial to the enjoyment of our friendship.

I love something one of those friends posted this morning;

"I still crave the extravagant gesture, the woman spilling a year’s wages on the feet of Jesus, the rarest perfume, washing his feet and drying them with her hair, a gesture so sensual it left the other men in the room paralyzed with criticism, analysis, theoretical moral concern - for what - the poor?

Or was it just misdirected outrage in light of the glaring poverty of their own imaginations?" Linford Detweiler

Jesus' interest in people must have so strongly connected with their heart. And it seems like often the people he connected with so strongly and beautifully were people with wounded hearts.

So I think there is something about the wounding and breaking processes, the processes that were so wrong or so painful and feels unredeemable, of life that open us up to heart connection. It's so often true that those events that have been painful make us respond by hiding our hearts away but also I think they create a yearning to have our hearts opened up and connected with others.

At least with people that we think value our heart. Not our wisdom, our beauty, but our heart.

The mystery of that heart. Just as I believe God finds endless enjoyment watching us grow and act and be, we find people who connect with that open-ended invitation to be who we were created to be.

When we are in conversation with those people it feels open and inviting. We don't have to measure our words. We get to experiment in ways that perhaps have been shut down for years.

Silliness becomes possible. Wisdom unexpectedly shows up. Tears happen. Empathy connects us. We walk away invigorated and refreshed.

Rob Bell and my family, a parable

My kids don't have to struggle to be my kids that I love so much. They don't have to do anything. If they want to participate in that relationship all they have to do is rest in being my kids. I don't require that they love me, though I like that, they don't have to do special practices altho hey, if they give me a little red two-seater as I have requested, I'd love it.

I haven't given them a booklet on how to maintain that family relationship because thankfully at some point we developed a healthy "spirit" of the family that they can either grow in or grow away from. I'm not even requiring that Scott love me the same way Tim does, and I certainly don't need Jenny to keep track of Jesse's way of being with me.

As we love each other, our being with each other will grow and develop and change if it needs to, to allow us to continue to love each other in ways that work.

Are there specific ways of being and doing that will enhance the relationship? Yup! Could we develop and use a booklet to enhance the growth of love in the family? Sure enough.

But without referencing the "spirit" of the family, even following the instructions in that booklet won't produce more closeness in fact it could lead to disjointedness.

I have to wonder if part of the enjoyment of my family is that I just plain and simply think my kids are the best. Thinking of them, and the fact that they are where they are, just gives me pleasure.

Guess you ran afoul of this, Rob Bell

"lacking god's power to create tangible things, the false self creates by use of ideologies, definitions, social myths and words. The false self give it's own name to life and then like a self-proclaimed demiurge, demands that all of life conform to it's wishes.

What is enacted here is the tragic error of naming the elephant and then trying to ride home on the name given, instead of on the elephant itself.

This whole process frequently occurs in religion as well. We give God a name. We than equate God with the name we have given him, and in doing so we make ourselves, in effect God's God. Instead of acknowledging God as the source of our identity and existence, we make ourselves the self-proclaimed source of God's identity. God then becomes the one made in our image and likeness.

Those engaged in the undertaking of naming god see themselves to be participating in a holy work. They are the God-definer, the definition makers. They give shape to the ultimate perimeters of life.

Of course, one of the procedural principles is that God is everything and we are nothing. But they define what this means. They mark off those who properly grasp it from those who do not. Thus, while maintaining that they are nothing, they turn their nothing into a nothing that defines itself and thereby make that nothingness into a kind of everything to which all who which to know the truth must listen. This is a far cry from the true theological inquiry but it is not a far cry from the stance of the Pharisee who is always with us in the form of a deep-seated universal tendency within ourselves, It is the false self expressing it's futile, odious outcry against the Creative sovereignty of the divine freedom.

Once the false self gives birth to it's own dark gossamer existence as cut off from God, it begins to function as it's own God by passing final decision and judgements upon everything under the sun. A whole system of formulas, laws and ideologies is created to form not only one's relationship to others but to God as well. Both self and God become equated with the definitions given to them. Both God and self become cogs in a smoothly running system of self-creation."

From Merton's Palace of Nowhere, James Finley.

Feelings, nothing more than feelings?

A friend and I had another installment of a long running conversation regarding theology and it's application to humans. This seems important to us because a theology that doesn't somehow reference humans is sterile. It may be true, it may be useful, it may give glory to the divine but if somehow it doesn't touch the human condition it's merely an esoteric discussion without any chance of transformation of people's lives.

I would submit that the subject of my theology, God, is about having relationship with humans.

When I said this in one online forum, I got a terse reply; "state Scripture, chapter and verse."

I choose to ignore him and he still wants an answer. It seemed so obvious that it would be insulting to him and me to respond.

One reason the discussion with my friend is interesting is that we by our personalities and life histories are interested in different aspects of truth. He seems to want to get as clear as possible regarding rational, conceptual, dialectic truth.

I on the other hand want to know "truth" in the sense of how does it express God's personal love for humans. I want to understand the implications of rational, conceptual truth as it would be "felt" by humans.

This will come as no surprise to friends of mine that are clear that "feelings" are a focus of mine. (all together now; Whoooo, feelings, nothing more than... )

Certainly guilty as charged. But for me the connection between "truth" and feelings is compelling because for some reason I didn't have much connection with my feelings for much of my life. And I was strongly taught in "truth." This state of mind became painful and I deconstructed and started to rebuild my life. Recovering the ability to "feel" was an important part of this.

This conversation with this friend is important to me because as much as I value feelings because God said he "so loved the world" and I think he expects that love to be felt, ultimately there is truth that undergirds that love.

Love and truth support each other.

If there is anything to the quote; "The glory of God is man fully alive," than thinking and feeling are partners in that delicate dance.

Boston harmonies

I love cities. I suppose growing up in a practically virginal valley in the western edges of the Catskills shouldn't set me up for this but it did. But even now I live on the main street of a small NH town and I can walk out my door across a couple of yards and I'm back in the woods from where the deer sometimes glide out and eat the yews around the houses.

I love the hustle and bustle, I love the traffic confusion, I love looking at huge buildings and looking in the window trying to see past the drapes and wondering who lives their life up there?

Recently I've been in Boston more than usual as I am having dental work done at Tufts Dental School to save money and also to support students who need practice.

As I stand waiting near the windows of the 12th floor I look out over Chinatown and can see lots of roof tops. This reminds me of one drapery job I did in Cambridge just over the river from Boston was installing a 30' wide motorized drape (into the concrete ceiling!) into a penthouse the building owner had built on top of his apartment building so that his daughter could live there while she went to Havard or something. Just threw a penthouse up on top of his apartment building! For his daughter to live in while she goes to college! Hey, presto; empty rooftop now penthouse.

This is what I'm talking about. Another world, another way of living.

So I had been to the dentist and was driving away when I looked out at the scene ahead of me; Chinatown stores, tall residential buildings, people scurrying around, construction going on and suddenly I was elevated by having this urban scene overlaid in my head with this section from The Message;

"From beginning to end he's there, towering far above everything, everyone. 
So spacious is he, so roomy, that everything of God finds its proper place in him without crowding. Not only that, but all the broken and dislocated pieces of the universe—people and things, animals and atoms—get properly fixed and fit together in vibrant harmonies, all because of his death, his blood that poured down from the cross." 
 Colossians 1

It was a surreal moment. I felt a kinship, a joy in this huge, gritty, intimidating world. A vibrant harmony.

In Reaching Out, by Henri Nouwen, Nouwen describes the ability to engage in solitude anywhere you are, people or no people, quiet or no quiet. It's an inner attitude that I can choose. And in so doing be where I am for others.

This is in contrast to the emotion of loneliness I'm sure I would have felt in a big city a few years ago. Sad, anxious, and always living in the future of getting back to where my partner in co-dependency, my wife, was. Taken up with the impossible assuaging of my own feelings of loneliness that I was choosing.

Now in this celebration of vibrancy in the midst of the ebb and flow of traffic and bustling people I was able to engage a God's eye view. What could be seen as "broken and dislocated pieces" fitting together in smooth harmony. All the diversity and activity flowed as a beautiful river through the canyon walls of brick and mortar and glass.

And I was part of a larger whole. 

40 year time warp

Yesterday I attended my 40th High School reunion out in the beautiful hills of New York. I had connected recently with a few of my classmates on Face Book and had enjoyed the connection so I wanted to follow up on that.

High School was miserable for me. ADD and belonging to an obscure religious group and living out in the country in what could be considered a commune of sorts set me up for all sorts of weirdness.

I always felt that I was a geek or outside bouncing around everyone else's world. I had for religious reasons very little social interactions with classmates so I seemed to have very little in common with them.

One thing I was very clear about. I didn't want anyone to notice my ears (which are not all that pronounced) but I noticed how someone else received the name "Ears (Last name) and I was petrified that that would happen to me.

So with all of this trying to be invisible I'm sure that I created some of the awkward relationship dynamics that existed. Classmate now tell me that they just thought I was shy. I was certain that they would have used the word "weird". I haven't checked with Gordy Temple about that. He I'm sure, would honor my request for honesty! He and Bill Briggs were just a much fun to be around as they were in HS.

So, the reunion was fun because I had fun meeting everyone and hanging out. I actually miss being closer to them. And now it's interesting to me that I so could wait to get out of High School and move on.

What I didn't expect was driving by some depressing place along the road on the way and having a groundswell of emotion from the past. Self-loathing, disgust, embarrassment, shame, you name it it because fully present to me. All the mistakes I made, jobs that I didn't finish, High School projects I barely finished or got a zero on all the negative came up and smacked me like a dead fish.

I was able to notice it and move on by it but wow, was it not fun to be reminded of what I lived in emotionally for so many years.

No wonder at some point when my wife started to recover from her emotional issues and she wanted me to be "present and available" I was confused and scared"

I was used to hiding out and had no idea what the heck she meant when she said "present and available." I'm sure I must have looked blankly at her and said that I'm right here!

So here I am 58 years old, feeling ageless really and enjoying the process of living life in the moment, present and available for myself and others.