On - Then Off - Now On Again

The bike trip down the Pine Creek Trail is back on. I had given up on it, as I wrote here one day, since the price of airfare has gone up so drastically. I was beginning to make the necessary plans for a bike trip along a couple of trails in Wisconsin over my 60th birthday this summer to make my 60 Miles for My 60th.

Well, Sunday morning I was sitting at work when I call my wife just to see how she was feeling after being sick over night. Not long into the conversation she says, "I've been thinking about that trip to Pennsylvania. I think we should do it."

"Huh?" I said. "What made you change your mind."

She answered with no hesitation with two simple words, "Tim Russert."

"Oh!"

"Life's too short," she went on. "You will probably never get this chance again. Why not?"

Tim Russert's sudden death last Friday was a shock. He was just a couple years younger than I am. He was always so full of life. Energy, excitement, passion. He loved what he did and put himself fully into hit. He worked hard- very hard. Then, in a moment, he was gone. To stop and ponder that is a truly humbling moment.

It doesn't mean giving up your work if you love it. It doesn't mean becoming some kind of hedonistic party animal looking for ways to get out of responsibilities. It means, I think, live your life with passion and life and excitement. Live and do what gives you the kind of purpose and meaning and spiritual connections that only you can make.

I love my job. My goal is not to retire from working at any old time so that I can do things just for me. But as my wife picked up from Russert's death, it means grabbing life as it comes and going along for the ride.

So the 60 for 60 on the Pine Creek Trail is back on. It's a little more than 6 weeks away. (Already?) Wow! I'm psyched!

Principles of Life

Scanning down my saved posts on bloglines from Inward/Outward I came across this one at the bottom of the list. It was originally posted in August 2006. Don't say I don't keep up to date with my saved posts.

Anyway, it struck me then. It strikes me today. So I share it.

It would be impossible for all my ‘life principles’ - what I believe and act from in my life - to be named in a list, but here are some that play a big part in how I live. I hope they might inspire you to share some of the principles that guide the way you live.

1. I might not be able to control what comes into my life, but I can control how I respond to what comes.

2. I am a product of my past, but not a prisoner of it.

3. I never saw a hearse with a baggage rack. When I pass to glory, all I’m taking with me is love, love, love.

4. What’s down in the well comes up in the bucket.

5. The key to happiness is forgiveness.

6. The image I am learning to have of myself is the image that God has of me. When I ask God, “What are you thinking about me as a person?” God answers, “I think you are a beautiful, loving person.” And I answer, “Yes, I am, because you made me that way!”

7. A little bit of fragrance always clings to my hand when I give you roses.

8. I try to keep my 8’s in balance: 8 hours of ministry, 8 hours of being ministered to by others, and 8 hours of rest. These are not in strict pockets of my life but roll in and out of my 24 hour day. However, if they’re out of balance, I will not be the minister God has called me to be. The workaholic is a person whose 8’s are out of balance.

9. All that I give to you, I also give to myself.

10. What keeps me unwell are my secrets.

11. Joy is the echo of God’s life in us.

12. Two hallmarks that God is alive and well in me: joy and peace.

13. As Nietzsche said, I could only believe in a God that knew how to dance.

14. Be still … and let God love you.

15. The moment I die, there’s going to be a great big roar of laughter in heaven and a big hug from Jesus.

16. All my interruptions turned out to be my ministry.

17. I fall seven times, get up eight. (From a Japanese proverb.)

18. We are a community of cripples, helping each other up the road.

Brother Francis Delvaux is a member of the Holy Cross Brothers and a job counselor at Jubilee Jobs.

Graduation Cliches

I have nothing against graduations and the people who graduate. They have become cherished parts of our traditions. Whether High School or college graduations, they are important rites of passage that mark endings and beginnings.

This past weekend I attended the graduation from college of my best friend's son. It was neat to see him walk across the stage and get his diploma. My wife and I are fortunate (and blessed) to know him and his family since he was born. There's a joy in watching these events, even as I become aware of the movement of time.

You see how easy it is, though, to fall into the graduation clinches, those words, phrases, or sentiments that you can't get through a graduation without hearing. I almost hate to say them here lest I, too, fall into the cliche trap.

• The future is in your hands.
• You have an unprecedented opportunity.
• You can do whatever you want.
• Our generation has messed things up; you can make this a better world.
• Etc.
• Etc.

Of course, cliches become cliches because there is a truth in them. They also become so when they are used over and over. So here I sit: 42 years after high school graduation; 38 after college; 33 and 15 after my master's and doctorate. Time has shown me that while these cliches are true, they are also just words. We say them because we are expected to say them and if we didn't hear them we would feel cheated.

The truth of the matter is most of us won't even know how or even if we have made a difference in the world. Is the world a better place in 2008 than it was in 1970? I don't know. Is it better or worse because I have been here? I hope so. That is where the truth comes to bear. I have been fortunate to know a lot of people who I have had the privilege and joy to make a difference with.

Some of them have told me. Others have shown me. And many I can only guess. Then the phone rings and it is my daughter. She calls to talk to one or both of us almost every day. She keeps in contact. She suggests that we go to the Twins-Yankees game or take a road trip to Milwaukee since we have never been to Miller Park.

Then I know. The cliches are true. But they are true for most of us one person at a time. Those are some of the thoughts that have gone through my mind as I watched one of those people walk across the stage and graduate.

I can only describe it as

• humbling, and
• neat!

Sunday - Life Is Coming- In Fact It's Here!

The Old Familiar Stories can be both dull and exciting. The dullness happens when we think we have heard it all before and there's nothing new to see. The excitement happens when we "get it" in a new way that applies eternally- and today. Sarah at Dylan's Lectionary Blog always seems to get it.

When we cry out from the depths, God hears. When Jesus seems slow in coming, he is coming nonetheless. And if we worry that it is too late, Jesus shows that it is never too late. After we have become convinced that all is lost, when we are ready to concede to death and are seeking only to contain the damage or bury it, Jesus demonstrates that there is no loss, no death, no tragedy, no depth, no power in heaven or on earth or under the earth that can place a person, a situation, or a world beyond God's redemption, beyond the reach of infinite love and abundant life.
--Dylan's Lectionary Blog

That paragraph is nothing short of powerful and life-changing. Go ahead, read it again. Did you catch it again. I have read and re-read it several times in these past days as I put this post together.

When we become convinced that all is lost...

When we are ready to concede to death...

We seek only to contain or bury the damage...

Sounds like a Friday on a Cross or, perhaps more powerfully and poignantly, a Sunday morning in the garden by The Tomb.

Sounds like many a day that most of us humans face when things don't look or feel or go right.

Sounds like the way of the world we live in- a place of death and darkness and the temptation to throw our hands in the air and give in or up.

And there was Lazarus. As good a metaphor for all this as anyone could ever want. But to Mary and Martha he was anything but a metaphor. And to Jesus he was a friend. Life is not a metaphor. Activities are similes to be used only as illustrations. Not when the healing power of God is at hand, or when the light is beginning to dawn. The metaphor becomes real. It isn't "like" anything else. It IS something else that we can only begin to grasp.

Which moves us to be those who live in the light. We become the carriers of that light. And no matter what, darkness does not cover light. It can never, ever, be more powerful than light.

So, as Sarah ended her post:

Open every dark place to light and air; this is the time to uncover and unbind!

Here If You Need Me

Well, I got back into reading with this truly remarkable book that is packaged as a memoir of a widow who becomes a warden service chaplain in Maine. It is a book that sneaks up on you. It starts out as charming- or at least a charming style. But coming in the back door is the power of life and death and their intimate, unbreakable connection. Every time you think you have the book in hand it takes a different turn with a different insight into something you had not quite thought of before.

Kate Braestrup is the widow of a Maine State Patrol officer killed in an auto accident. Her loving care for him is the beginning of the skillful weaving of death and life and love and loss into a tapestry of wonder and awe. She is a pastor ordained by the Unitarian Universalist Church and serves the Maine Warden Service. That means she is often there for searches for lost hikers or campers or children. That means she gives a caring presence when such a presence is needed by survivors, relatives, or other wardens.

But always in the background is the reality that we all face day in and day out- death and loss and how we find meaning in life that we know ends in death. As such it is disarmingly readable. But you will be made uncomfortable by her bluntness and, if you are like me, pleasantly surprised and relieved that she doesn't take a lot of easy ways out. She just faces it and moves through it as best she- or any of us- ever can.

Chaplaincy like this is a different form of ministry than the local church.

Or is it?

That tension may be at the heart of some of the difficulties the post-modern church is facing. Local churches, especially longer-established and traditional-style churches, are in fact places where ministry is seen as chaplaincy. There's nothing wrong with that. It is an essential part of ministry. How it competes and challenges and is challenged by an evangelical or missional perspective is part of the issue that will probably never be solved to anyone's complete satisfaction.

This book, by taking it out of the parish setting, allows ministry of this type to be observed in its richness, ambiguity, and hope. In the end, even when death seems to have been the winner, well, we all know better than that.

Or if we don't, this book will help you find it.

Making Changes

Well, even at our age we can have new adventures.

Such was the reaction of a friend about my age when I told him the other day that I was going to be starting a new job at the beginning of December. I will be leaving the private addiction treatment program where I have worked first part-time then full-time over the past 4+ years. I will be going to another city about 100 miles away and starting at a hospital-run addictions treatment center.

I do not like moving. But the change is exciting. New possibilities, new situations, new experiences. Yes, new adventures. That is how I have always enjoyed living life- one adventure after another. Sometimes I have been able to do that without moving, sometimes I have had to move. This one is a move.

But you know there are always new things around the corner. That doesn't take away from the past or present. Each day, each moment, each adventure is its own unique place in the timeline of one's lifetime. I do not expect any interruption in the blogging. (Famous last words?) After all, I will have to sit and take a break from packing once in a while. So I will try to keep you posted on the move and what I am learning now.

It should be fun.

To Conquer or to Celebrate
Howard Thurman was an author, philosopher, theologian, educator and civil rights leader. He was also a deeply spiritual mystic who was able to live life to its fullest. Inward/Outward had this post the other day from Thurman. A great way to end the week!

Life is seen as being something to conquer, to struggle with and against. Life is the enemy. It is not be embraced, to be lived. Hence we creep through our days, reacting to our world as if our faith were in magic, rather than in life. Man must experience life; he must feel it run through his whole being that life belongs to him and he to life…. He discovers that the test of life in him is to be found in the amount of pain, of frustration, he can absorb without spoiling his joy in living. To keep alive an original sense of aliveness is to know that life is its own restraint and a man is able to stand anything that life can do to him.

Source: The Inward Journey

Always Disturbing
I am coming to realize that as one gets older one truly does become more aware of death. It has been happening and it has hit me again. I heard from my brother on Monday that a high school friend of mine was killed in a tragic lawnmowing accident when his lawn tractor tipped over on him on a slope at his home. I went to the local paper's website and read his obituary it was like getting hit over the head. Especially when I read his birthdate...1948...the same as mine. Of course it was. We graduated together.

I remember noticing this about older people in the past. It seemed like a morbid curiosity about deaths. "Did you see that so and so died?" they would ask each other. "Yes. Wasn't that a shame?" would be one of the possible responses. "How awful for his family" or "What a blessing after all he's been through" would usually come next.

Perhaps part of the reason for all this was that as long as you can be having the conversation, it isn't about you. It is also because you are nearer to that possibility for yourself than you might like to admit. Unless some HUGE, really HUGE medical breakthrough happens in the next few years, I know that I am far more than halfway through my life. Probably even closer to 65-70% through. I passed my mom's age at her death over ten years ago. I will pass my dad's by the end of this summer.

And that is hard to accept or even understand.

It raises lots of questions about what one has gotten out of life- and in my book- what one has given back. It brings to mind life-lists of things you haven't done yet and would like to and things that you will probably never get to do. It makes one take a look around and say, "Wow!" because such a view can have a non-morbid side to it, a non-depressing side, if one is willing to accept its reality and move on.

For I am also coming to realize that as one gets older one truly does become more aware of life. Listening to The Story on public radio last evening, I heard a doctor who herself had been afflicted by an almost fatal illness. She should not be alive. As an oncologist she faces such issues day in and day out. As a result of her own near-fatal illness she said that she has a greater awareness that death is always around. It is always in the room. But that doesn't stop her.

I guess we end up back to the adventure beginning when control ends that my poet friend Larry said. It is only when one can give up control- or the sense of control that we can truly find the adventure of life.

That doesn't make someone's death any less disturbing, sad, or depressing. We miss people. But the hope is that in that awareness of ultimate powerlessness we can also find the joy of living in the days and moments and times we have.

In Love With All the Seasons
As spring continues its slow growth into the life of Minnesota and the green begins to overpower the browns, it would be easy to think that this is the best of all possible worlds. Yet I came across the following quote from George Santayan (1863-1952) that reminds us that such "love" is only infatuation and doesn't hold up for the long haul.

To be interested in the changing seasons is a happier state of mind than to be hopelessly in love with spring.

Ah, if life were but one ongoing springtime....

But we know it is not. Which is all the better. But spring is the beginning. It is the yearly reminder that life is good and that the cold and dreary darkness of winter is just as much a part of life as the colors of spring.

So I enjoy today, another spring day. The explosion of life is something to behold.

Back to The Seventies-
Harold and Maude
(Finally- back to the movies!)
It has been so long since I saw Harold and Maude that I have to put it on my first time list. I didn't even remember the ending! Shame on me.

What I did remember correctly was how wonderful a movie it is. Mention the movie to me and I would have felt good. I would have smiled and said, "Ah, yes. Harold and Maude. What a movie." Now I remember why.

Bud Cort and Ruth Gordon are the title characters. They have no chemistry- and complete chemistry- throughout the movie. They almost relate past each other and yet become deeply involved. Harold is a rich young man obsessed with freaky actions. Maude is an almost 80-year old who insists that life is worth having a good time with. Only one brief scene about half way through the short 90-minute movie explains it all. If you blink you might miss it as the two sit along a bay and Harold glances down at Maude's arm. There, for a brief second, almost subliminally visible, is a tattooed number. All is clear. Life is the witness she must proclaim. Anything else would be to forget- a crime.

If you have never seen this cult comedy classic from 1971- do so. But be prepared for kookiness, quirkiness, dark humor (fake suicides abound) and out of left field sights. It may sound out of place to say that such a movie so filled with dark thoughts of death is incredibly life-affirming. That sounds like an oxymoron. Far from it. It has a lot to say to us all these years later.

Like this:

Maude: A lot of people enjoy being dead. But they are not dead, really. They're just backing away from life. *Reach* out. Take a *chance*. Get *hurt* even. But play as well as you can. Go team, go! Give me an L. Give me an I. Give me a V. Give me an E. L-I-V-E. LIVE!
[beat]
Maude: Otherwise, you got nothing to talk about in the locker room.

Or this:

Harold: Maude.
Maude: Hmm?
Harold: Do you pray?
Maude: Pray? No. I communicate.
Harold: With God?
Maude: With *life*.

Death gets too much press, I have a hunch Maude would tell us, even as she walks to a funeral with a bright yellow umbrella. Life gets so short-changed. Go, celebrate. Live life and love. It's what we are meant to do.

Grounds for Hope
It has been a difficult number of days in many ways due to the killings in Virgina on Monday morning. Again we have been shaken up. Again the clouds of death and fear have fallen over us and we lay open to being overcome by despair and darkness.

The debate has begun again on gun violence and gun control. Questions are being asked about ways to find people like this ahead of time and stop them. (Think of the movie Minority Report.) NBC showed the video from the gunman sparking another vigorous debate.

Debate is good. Conversations on the nature of our world and the ways we can deal with it are helpful. But what are we focusing on? Over and over and over we see the hate-filled, pain-filled and potentially fear-producing images.

I am quite aware that what occupies our minds can have serious negative impacts on our lives. Our brains are very sophisticated organs that are made to respond to our enviroments in sympathy, empathy, and compassion. But that also means that we respond to the darkness.

There is no reason to do so. There is light and hope and health.

As I sat on the bike at the fitness center Tuesday morning watching one of several variations of the same coverage on several different tv sets and listening to my iPod, God took hold of that shuffle and reminded me that this life is not to be about darkness. First came the Sam Bush song, Howlin' At the Wind that I quoted on Tuesday. Then, shuffled in right after that was John Michael Talbot's version of Praise God From Whom All Blessings Flow. As he introduced it he asked his audience to stand and raise their hands together as a reminder that we need each other. We cannot do it alone.

So as we come to the close of this week, I bring back words from poet and theologian Gerhard Frost. Our District President sent it out to us this week. It may originally have been written for Christmas. But Christmas happens whenever hope and light is needed and born into the world. We need that reminder this week.

If I am asked
What are my grounds for hope,
This is my answer:
Light is lord over darkness,
Truth is lord over falsehood,
Life is lord over death.
Of all the facts I daily live with,
There's none more comforting
Than this: If I have two rooms,
One dark, the other light,
And I open the door between them,
The dark room becomes lighter
Without the light one
Becoming darker. I know
This is no headline,
But it's a marvelous footnote;
And God comforts me in that.
--Gerhard Frost

It Keeps Happening
It is all too familiar. The pictures look the same. It could be Virgina Tech or Columbine or a mall somewhere. It is the scene of ambulances, SWAT teams, police officers with rifles and guns. It is young people standing around looking shocked and out of sorts and shaking their heads in bewilderment.

The events at Virginia Tech yesterday are stunning in their sameness. They are frightening in their familiarity. Even the picture of the gunman, while a different person, is still the same. The reasons are as undecipherable as ever. The media feeding frenzy as over the top as usual.

Each one gets a little more frightening in its commonness. Each one reminds us again of our mortality. Each one says that we never really do know what's going to happen when we leave home any given morning.

Or we don't even have to leave home. An email came today that a colleague and friend I went to seminary with died suddenly at his home on Sunday. He was 60 but that doesn't make it any less unexpected or any more emotional than the students and faculty in Virgina.

In the midst of all our attempts at saving lives, a friend commented last night, this kind of massacre makes absolutely no sense. We always seem to be losing the fight for life. Someone comes along and mocks all our efforts and reminds us that in the end we all pay the same price.

The causes of the massacre can be analyzed forever- and probably will. We will pick apart the life and times and attempt to recreate the mind of the gunman. Partly to help us find ways of preventing the unpreventable and partly to prove to ourselves that we aren't like that. We wouldn't do that.

Maybe not. Probably not, since most of us are not built that way. For some reason these unexplainable ones no doubt had massive brain issues, shortcomings, neurotransmitter defects that shut down empathy and compassion and knowing right from wrong. Thank God- O THANK GOD- that most of us don't have that or this world would be a far sadder and distant place than the one I want to live in.

Perhaps it goes back to yesterday's post about Imus and racism. It is always a matter of heart- or lack of it. It goes back to what one of my professors said early in his survey course of the Old Testament. Original sin is the only provable doctrine in the Bible. And he was a confirmed Liberal. That doesn't ease the pains- personal, school-wide, or national- when something like this happens. It does however remind us that we need to always be at work on two things.

First, the personal quest to be able to have a life that is different and peace-ful and able to make the world a better place. This is the life of the spiritual quest that knows that this darkness is real and yet can also be overcome by the light of the Spirit. To delve deeply into our lives with God and to find the ways of hope that only He can lead us to is essential.

Second, the personal awareness that life is short and that the ability to live it fully is within our grasp. We don't know when or how any of us will find an end. Which means we need to find the joy and hope and life abundant each day. It means saying "I love you far more than saying mean and nasty things. It means not letting the sun go down on your anger. It means walking in other people shoes and processing understanding in life.

It also means living in the awe and wonder and hope and joy and promise that each day brings. No it isn't crazy. The world may seem crazy some days. Thus we need to show a sanity in its midst, and that means to live life to its healthiest and fullest degree.

Contemporary bluegrass genius Sam Bush sang about it in one of his neatest songs, Howlin' At the Moon.

Take a little time for sunshine
Take a whole lotta time for love
Take time to praise and thank heaven up above
You gotta make music (Gotta make music)
Raise your voice it’ll be gone soon.
Take a little time for howlin’ at the moon.

Take a little time for sunshine
Take a whole lotta time for love
Take time to praise and thank heaven up above
Take your life as it may come ‘cause boy it’ll be gone soon
Take a little time for howlin’ at the moon.
--Sam Bush

Maybe in so doing we can prevent one more Columbine or Virginia Tech from happening. At the very least, the world around us will have more opportunities to be special.

On Final Goodbyes
We all said goodbye to our friend, Sue, on Saturday. It was a remarkable service of celebration and memory. We sang and sang, listened to scripture and music, and then sang some more. We ended with the Easter liturgy- and then sang Hallelujah, Praise the Lord.

The church was full- as expected. The tears and the laughter flowed- also as expected. Pain was lessened by being with others. Stories were shared to strengthen all our memories of our remarkable friend.

A number of weeks ago in the series about what I would do if I went back into the parish ministry I wrote about an experience I had as a pastor with only a handful of people standing in a wind-driven cemetery. The role of the pastor at that moment, I said, was the ancient one of spiritual leader- shaman, in some traditions- showing the way into the next life, reminding us who remain here that there is more to all of life than meets the eye.

Memorial services and funerals are the flip side of that same coin. I was Googling around the Internet last week and came across a site from Israel about Jewish burial customs. I nodded my head in agreement as I read the following:

[I]n order to achieve [our] most human goals, man must be part of a group. Without the group structure, human achievement is virtually impossible. Human groups include parents, teachers, friends, neighbors, etc. We see in the course of our daily routine the importance of individual roles within the group. A case in point is our daily bread. Even before processing begins, workers are needed to plant, tend, water and harvest the wheat. The processing, until actual purchase, involves many more workers to knead, bake, package and ship the product until it actually arrives on our shelves. All this for just plain bread - imagine how much more is involved in the production of raisin bread!

The Talmud states that if a person were required to carry out all the tasks necessary for his existence by himself, he would have time to do nothing else! Therefore, the Creator, in his infinite goodness, created a group structure for mankind. The group allows man the freedom and flexibility to pursue varied and individual goals. Without group membership, it would be virtually impossible for man to develop his characteristics and fulfill individual needs and desires. This is in contrast to the animal kingdom. An animal is created in a manner which allows it to fend for itself, on its own, with no thought to future material needs and surely no spiritual goals. Its survival instincts are part of its divinely-designed nature. How does all the above relate to the European woman and her inappropriately festive funeral?

One function of a funeral is to allow us to be together with the deceased one last time. We should focus our thoughts on the strength we derived from the deceased. The contribution which he made to the group we have discussed, allowed the rest of us in the group to grow and accomplish in many areas. We must now seek a replacement for a vital part of our group structure which is now gone.
--Source: Shema Yisrael Torah Network

Funerals are not about death- they are about life- our human life. Memorial Services are not about sadness but about the possibility of a God who brings us joy and love and hope- no matter what. They remind us of the part we play together in life. They remind us of what we have learned from the one whose life we remember at that service. They remind us that no matter what- there is nothing in heaven, on earth, or under the earth that can ever separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ.

Yes, we continue to mourn. Yes, we are sad beyond description at times. But the word is that this is not the end. God does not leave us separated and alone.

Thanks be to God who gives us the victory in our Lord Jesus Christ.

Note: For any of you who knew Sue and would like to post a story or memory, you can go to the Remembering Sue blog to read what's there. If you have a comment, just click on the comment link there and leave a note. We will then post it to the blog.

Life Does Strange Things
One thing about life, it teaches you what you need to know even if you didn't know you needed to know it. In the 12 Step program there's this thing called the 10th Step. The 10th Step is where you do a daily self-check. When you do a 10th Step you usually end up learning one of two things about yourself.

First-- you become aware of what and how you do what you do. This often leads, as the Step continues, for you to make an amend when you are wrong. It's in that moment that you often discover something about your character defects and why you continue to need to be making these crazy amends. If you are honest with yourself that will quickly lead you to the 6th and 7th steps. These are where you become ready- and then ask your Higher Power- to get rid of your defects of character. Time to turn them over. Time to let them go and try to find a better way of living your life without these things about yourself that seem to get you into trouble.

There is also a second thing that you can learn. You can also ask in the midst of that personal inventory whether you are doing the things in your life that you need to be doing. That is a quick jump then to the 11th Step where you try to understand what your Higher Power's will is for you and then ask for the power to do it. This may be the most important step of all 12 (well, at least one of the most important) because it can certainly move you off square one and the experience of your powerlessness to a new way of living.

This step, then, can become a significant challenge to one's belief system or vocation.

It can raise questions like, "Am I hanging on to something that should be let go of, or is what I'm hanging on to some core belief that is worth keeping?

These are never easy questions to answer. But they are deep in the lessons that life hands us. They are what life at least tries to teach you.

Being a student of life can be such a difficult thing to do.