It's a Wonderful Life: Duty and Despair

I love the movie "It's a Wonderful Life".  My wife does not.  It makes her a little mad really.  A lot mad actually.  It's always been a mystery to me why she won't watch it with me.  In certain areas, we just don't see things the same way.  It's a mystery, but not all that surprising.  She finds beauty in things that are beautiful.  I am ever struggling to see the beauty in broken things.  "What's that honey, another black and white picture of a desolate, abandoned barn?"  is something she might comment.  She mocks with love, but truly she does not "get" it.  And she's not wrong in mocking.  It's a little indulgent to constantly plunge myself into dark things to find beauty, when beauty is also available in a more obvious form...nearby...easily accessible.  But also, it's the way I'm wired.  And the way she is wired is very different, and this difference between us is expressed in the way each of us feel about the movie "It's a Wonderful Life".

I talk about this too much, but several years ago I discovered that I was a pessimist.  It was such a revelation to me and really freeing in a lot of ways.  I don't mean pessimism in a negative emotional way.  It's just that fundamentally I cannot help but consider the worst case scenario and then to expect it to come to be.  When I'm healthy mentally, that means I am prepared for when things go bad and unfazed by catastrophe.  It made me well suited for Restaurant Management.  When I am unhealthy, it can be nearly impossible to overcome.  I become unable to see any positive outcomes.  Being a pessimist makes me cautious and often times unwilling to take a chance.  It also makes me pretty steady.  The real joy of being a pessimist is the possibility of being overwhelmed by gratitude.

My wife is an optimist.  She is the best kind of optimist because she is a hard working, practical optimist.  She thinks things can and always will be better...because she's going to make sure of it.  She sees things as pretty black and white.  Thing either are, or are not.  She indulges me, but the "why" of the way I do things will never be obvious.  I think she lives in a perpetual state of gratitude, ever moving forward.  When she is healthy mentally, she is working toward making things better.  She is thankful and wants to make things the best they can be.  When she is unhealthy, her potential for despair is crushed by her pure will.  She can then become fearful and controlling.  Being an optimist makes her productive and because of her heart, and she is always looking to draw people in to her world of making things better.  She understands gratitude and her natural reaction to it is to keep working.

When I view late stage George Bailey I see a man who has succumb to the grind of reality.  All the promise and potential of his early years are gone.  He is burdened not only by the responsibilities of his family and business, but really the whole town.  He is not like me, because I would have seen the disaster coming from a mile away.  

(I think) When my wife views late stage George Bailey, she sees a quitter.  It's the whole point of the movie, but she truly cannot understand why he doesn't see how blessed he is.  My wife is someone who is not given to despair.  It makes her an extraordinary strength.  The few times I have seen her feel defeated have been very unsettling.  The feelings that George Bailey is feeling before his adventure with Clarence the wingless Angel are foreign to her...irrelevant almost.  She might say, "Be thankful for what you have and work for what you don't".  

The hopelessness of George Bailey was, for long periods of my life, almost a default setting for how I felt.  Before I felt the love and acceptance of Jesus Christ I relied on self-pity on the low end and delusions of grandeur when my moods swung high to get me through...to make me productive.  I loved my family and I worked hard to improve, but my own efforts were not enough.  Underneath it all was this baseline hopelessness, the feeling that things aren't going to work out.

I identify with Merton's expression of despair.  Not at the time of course, but you get older you can see the mechanics more clearly.

“Despair is the absolute extreme of self-love. It is reached when a man (or woman) deliberately turns his back on all help from anyone else in order to taste the rotten luxury of knowing himself to be lost.  In every man there is hidden some root of despair because in every man there is pride that vegetates and springs weeds and rank flowers of self-pity as soon as our own resources fail us. But because our own resources inevitably fail us, we are all more or less subject to discouragement and to despair.  Despair is the ultimate development of a pride so great and so stiff-necked that it selects the absolute misery of damnation rather than accept happiness from the hands of God and thereby acknowledge that God is above us and that we are not capable of fulfilling our destiny by ourselves.  But the man who is truly humble cannot despair, because in the humble man there is no longer any such thing as self-pity.” * New Seeds of Contemplation, Thomas Merton, New

Directions Paperback, first published 1961. Pgs. 180-190.

It's this kind of self indulgent Pride that is an obvious flag to my wife.  She sees through it right away.  When I had come to the revelation that I was indeed a pessimist, I expressed it to my wife with a sort of giddy excitement.  
"Honey, I've realized something pretty interesting about myself that explains a lot...I think I'm a pessimist!"
To which she responded, "Ya think?" in an appropriately sarcastic tone.  She then rattled off years of examples of this obvious revelation.  This exchange brings me joy...that I'll work so hard to discover something so obvious and she'll still be there waiting for me.  There is just something about me that causes me to tease and pull apart, test and purify, to examine and discover things that are otherwise immediately obvious to her.  We are both a mystery to each other in that way.  As our marriage has grown stronger, we have come to love that about each other.  Much like Donna Reed in the movie, my wife is patient, wise, steady and supportive...also stunningly beautiful.  Mrs. Bailey, foolishly and hopelessly in love with a fool waits and hopes for her husband to discover what is so painfully obvious to her.  

I'll always view the world through a sort of despairing fog.  But I also have hope.  Because of this Hope, I can push through the fog, knowing that good things lie beyond.  I am blessed beyond measure.  I am privileged to Love, to be Loved and to have always known Love.  It is only through the ultimate Love of Christ that I have been able to accept this.  My wife will always work with purpose and duty.  It can make her blind to things she does not want to see, it can make it hard to accept things as they really are.  But it is her Love for Jesus that calms her and puts her at ease when her own flesh tells her she should be earning his Love.  As George Bailey finally realizes how good he has it he is overwhelmed with Gratitude.  And it's not just gratitude for what he actually has, but gratitude for the opportunity to see it.  This is what gets me, because this happens to me now on a regular basis.  In spite of my potential to dip into the dark, there are moments when the beauty of this Life and it's participants just become so obvious that I am crushed with joy.  I'm usually the last to go to bed each night.  As I'm locking doors and flipping off lights my subconscious does a George Bailey sort of check list of what things could be and what they really are.  Yes, there is plenty to despair about but then: look at these children, look at this roof over our head, look at what I have made with this amazing woman.  It's the type of gratitude that you just can't work for, you can't count your blessings and talk yourself into it.  It's a gratitude that is a pure gift of God.  And though I am blessed beyond what I deserve, it is a gratitude that would be present in any circumstances.  It's a gratitude I have felt in my darkest moments.  I suppose that is why I explore the way I do and plumb the depths of this human condition.  It's the strangest sort of optimism to expect to find Hope where there appears to be none...to look for beauty in the broken.  It's the strangest optimism and it seems like a contradiction.  We even wear a symbol of pain around our necks that represents joy.  We look upon a instrument of torture in the cross and see the ultimate hope for us all. We celebrate a baby and call him the Savior. I'm not saying it makes sense, but I am saying that it is true.

Awful Beauty.

The beautiful.  The awful.  The heart of man and woman.

We read old things, 100 year old books or 1000 year old stories and we marvel that such simple folks could predict so well the current state of affairs.  We are amazed at their inspired writing, that somehow in their primitive state that they could muse about the future so accurately.  But it is our own dim arrogance that calls it prophecy.  Someone writing about the state of the world all those years ago and yet we can only view our own present sufferings.  Things are awful, but that is nothing new.  The characters have changed, but their character has not.  The details may seem more perverse, but they are not...they are the same...they are the same as Orwell or Shakespeare or Steinbeck or Solomon described.  It is beautiful and it is awful.  It is the heart of man and woman.  There is nothing new under the sun.  Things seem bleak, but they wax and wane, build up and destroy.  The darkness cannot endure forever though, it is temporary.  Hope is more than light in a dark place, it is the very permanence of our universe.  It's okay that we can't conceive of it.  Hopes existence doesn't rely on our belief.  It will prevail because that is it's very nature, the nature of God.  God is Eternal, Hope is Eternal, Despair is fleeting.  God is Love.  Perfect Love drives out Fear.   

I take weird comfort in our discomfort...it can only be temporary.  Not that it is not awful, it truly is.  Many suffer on enormous scale.  That's what makes things all the more miraculous when something beautiful can shift the weight of the universe so easily.  Something small and sweet can overcome a mountain of misery.  It's because the beauty speaks of the Eternal.  Even if the bondage of time only allows us a glimpse, it is enough for our souls to recognize home, to see the truth of what things are meant to be and what they will be.  To gain Hope.  Eternity is more than "a really long time".  Eternity is those truest moments made full, absent of the fog of time, Hope fulfilled.  Eternity with Christ is an ecstatic gasp that never ends.  Awe.

East of Eden: The Glory of Man.

"Sometimes a kind of glory lights up the mind of a man.

It happens to nearly everyone. You can feel it growing or preparing like a fuse burning toward dynamite. It is a feeling in the stomach, a delight of the nerves, of the forearms. The skin tastes the air, and every deep-drawn breath is sweet. Its beginning has the pleasure of a great stretching yawn; it flashes in the brain and the whole world glows outside your eyes. A man may have lived all of his life in the gray, and the land and trees of him dark and somber. The events, even the important ones, may have trooped by faceless and pale. And then -the glory- so that a cricket song sweetens his ears, the smell of the earth rises chanting to his nose, and dappling light under a tree blesses his eyes. Then a man pours outward, a torrent of him, and yet he is not diminished. And I guess a man's importance in the world can be measured by the quality and number of his glories. It is a lonely thing but it relates us to the world. It is the mother of all creativeness, and it sets each man separate from all other men.

I don't know how it will be in the years to come. There are monstrous changes taking place in the world, forces shaping a future whose face we do not know. Some of these forces seem evil to us, perhaps not in themselves but because their tendency is to eliminate other things we hold good. It is true that two men can lift a bigger stone than one man. A group can build automobiles quicker and better than one man, and bread from a huge factory is cheaper and more uniform. When our food and clothing and housing all are born in the complication of mass production, mass method is bound to get into our thinking and to eliminate all other thinking. In our time mass or collective production has entered our economics, our politics, and even our religion, so that some nations have substituted the idea collective for the idea God. This in my time is the danger. There is great tension in the world, tension toward a breaking point, and men are unhappy and confused.

At such a time it seems natural and good to me to ask myself these questions. What do I believe in? What must I fight for and what must I fight against?

Our species is the only creative species, and it has only one creative instrument, the individual mind and spirit of man. Nothing was ever created by two men. There are no good collaborations, whether in music, in art, in poetry, in mathematics, in philosophy. Once the miracle of creation has taken place, the group can build and extend it, but the group never invents anything. The preciousness lies in the lonely mind of a man.

And now the forces marshaled around the concept of the group have declared a war of extermination on that preciousness, the mind of man. By disparagement, by starvation, by repressions, forced direction, and the stunning hammerblows of conditioning, the free, roving mind is being pursued, roped, blunted, drugged. It is a sad suicidal course our species seems to have taken.

And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. This is what I am and what I am about. I can understand why a system built on a pattern must try to destroy the free mind, for this is one thing which can by inspection destroy such a system. Surely I can understand this, and I hate it and I will fight against it to preserve the one thing that separates us from the uncreative beasts. If the glory can be killed, we are lost."

Dead Man

If we had our way, we'd have pulled Christ off the cross and propped his lifeless body up like a puppet. We'd have draped an American flag (or whatever symbol suits you) around him and called him king and then rule by our own agenda. Never letting him be buried. Never permitting his resurrection. Never declaring him master of all. And never receiving salvation.

LJH

Here I am.
Leave me alone.
I need friends.
I don't want to be bothered.
So tired of being lonely,
Around all of these people.
I want to be unburdened...free.
Won't someone take care of me?
I've lived life to gather memories.
Now.
Now.
Now.
All I have is this moment.
All I have is this moment.
All I have...
I'm so focused on my distraction,
Persistent in my dissatisfaction,
I long to be settled,
I long for extraction.
With the past dissolving,
Dripping away,
I can only dwell on the future.
I CAN SAVE MYSELF!
who will help?
NOTHING IS WRONG!
what happened?

Just forget it.
Just forget it.
Just...
You don't care so
Just forget it.
Must I remind you again, to just forget it?
Forget it, forget me,
Forget Memory.
Did you remember what I told you?
When?
Now?
Now?
Now?
All I have is this moment.
No big ending.
No Grand Finale.
No Graceful Finish.
Just a drip, drip, drip...
Dripping away.
Now.
All I have is this moment.
Drip.
I am not beyond hope, but hope is somewhere beyond.
Now, all I have is this moment.
All I have...
Is now.

Six Ships.

Six ships set out sailing.  None is dependent on each other except by choice.  Each could go their own way, but a treasure ties them together.  The treasure comes with responsibility.  The treasure has provided for those at sea and now it is time to return the care.  Each can remove their claim on the treasure and also remove the burden it carries.  Six ships set out sailing, though not bound by law or oath, each has accepted responsibility for the safe passage of the treasure.  Six ships sail in unknown, uncharted, dangerous and beautiful waters.

My siblings and I are on a journey together.

As we all interact with each other, sometimes wondering what the other is thinking, sometimes being too crude or too sensitive, I am reminded of something C.S. Lewis wrote about in mere Christianity.  It has to do with how we go about our voyage.

The metaphor told by C.S. Lewis to describe ancient ethics consists of three questions concerning voyage. These three considerations are like the three things a fleet of ships is told by its sailing orders:

1) The ships must know how to avoid bumping into each other.

2) They must know how to stay shipshape and avoid sinking.

3) And most important of all, they must know why the fleet is at sea in the first place.

In our current situation this metaphor is extremely relevant.  All six of us must know how to navigate around each other.  We MUST take care of ourselves and stay healthy for the sake of each other as well as ourselves.  And we must know why we are there in the first place.  In our situation, it is a perpetual reminding of this last point that is sustaining us...we remind each other why we are here.

We are learning day by day more about ourselves and each other.  Each of us has a pretty independent streak, but in our current situation it seems that we have chosen as a group to trust and depend on each other.  So far I find myself in a perpetual state of gratitude, in spite of how difficult the circumstances might be.  I get something different from each of them, but only if I open myself up to trust and be trusted.  We each have something to offer the other...something, perhaps that we can't get on our own.  I now have access to 5 different Points of View, 5 particular giftings and 5 brains that know my brain but aren't quite like my brain.  Without trust, these gifts are useless.  

One way to help each other trust is to be predictable.  I ride my bike in the city daily.  A new rider on the road might think it is their job to stay out of the way of traffic.  It makes sense.  A new rider might move over instead of staying in his lane, thinking that he is avoiding trouble.  In reality, the best thing a rider can do is to pick a line and stick with it.  Be predictable.  Even though you might feel exposed or in the way, the best thing you can do for others sometimes is just to let them know where you are and how you are going to proceed.  Weaving in an out of traffic puts a burden on everyone else.  It causes wreckage.  This is something I think each of my siblings is doing a great job of communicating:  "Hey, this is where I am.  This is where I'm heading."  It helps each of us to make our own decisions, knowing where the other is.  

And we each have to be aware of our gifts and our weaknesses in order to serve each other.  I worked in the restaurant business for a long time.  During one of my stints, while working at a pizza place, I was having some communication issues with a kitchen manager.  When it got busy and I went to the kitchen to help him, he got surly and resentful.  Over a couple weeks of this, each of us frustrated at the other, we finally got into it.  After an extended discussion, we finally got to the heart of things.  When I went to help him, I thought I was being pre-emptively helpful.  But for him, it wasn't an issue of pride as I suspected, it was an issue of rhythm.  "Scott, I can't go out front and help you.  The best thing I can do to serve everyone in this restaurant is be perfect in my process.  In my kitchen, I know where everyone is, how they are doing and what they are capable of.  When you insert yourself into that process, you effect my ability to execute.  At some point I will need your help and ask for it.  But the best way for me to serve you, is to do what I do best."  He didn't need me and he couldn't do what I do in the Front of the House.  So the best option in his eyes was to be the very best at what he was doing for the benefit of all.  That is  a pretty profound realization.  Physically helping the kitchen manager was a short sighted fix.  And for other managers it was welcome and needed.  But the best thing I could do for this particular manager was to put him in position to execute to his already high standards.  And then over time we could get into the subtler issues of why he was resistant to help.  It took understanding to develop Trust.  It took communication to get to understanding.

Some of us have a strong desire to help, while some see that not requiring help is the best way to serve.  We all have to deal with our own internal wiring, the healthy and unhealthy patterns we have. The best each of us can do is to play to our strengths while surrendering to the group.  Being Firm, or Tenacious, or Organized, or Encouraging, or Emotional, or Stoic, or even Contrary all has it's place.  Love is the constant thread that makes it all possible.

1.  My brother and sisters are all on a journey in which we are bound together.  We must first know how to keep from bumping into each other, to keep from wrecking each other.

2.  To best serve each other, we must know how to take care of ourselves, to keep ourselves in good working order.

3.  And we must be reminded of our purpose, not only in the matter at hand, but in service to the family as a whole.  We must also know that we are in service of a loving and worthy God.

Without the trial of these current stormy seas, I don't think I could appreciate the fullness of how miraculous it is to be a part of this group.  There is so much pain and heartache and guilt, but it is all buffered by a tender and loving support that overwhelms me and keeps me afloat.  My siblings are less than perfect and we are so clumsy in our cumulative efforts, but because the Love is strong, and we are in the care of Jesus, all things seem to be working for the good.  Don't get me wrong, things are not good, but they are working for good.  Somehow that makes sense to me.  None of us is required to be strong, just present.  None of us is required to be wise, but unknowing humility seems a better course.  As always, availability is greater than ability.  

Psalm 107:23
Some went out on the sea in ships;
    they were merchants on the mighty waters.
24 They saw the works of the Lord,
    his wonderful deeds in the deep.
25 For he spoke and stirred up a tempest
    that lifted high the waves.
26 They mounted up to the heavens and went down to the depths;
    in their peril their courage melted away.
27 They reeled and staggered like drunkards;
    they were at their wits’ end.
28 Then they cried out to the Lord in their trouble,
    and he brought them out of their distress.
29 He stilled the storm to a whisper;
    the waves of the sea[b] were hushed.
30 They were glad when it grew calm,
    and he guided them to their desired haven.
31 Let them give thanks to the Lord for his unfailing love
    and his wonderful deeds for mankind.

Math: A Metaphor.

Ahhh, the metaphor.  It gets so close and yet always disappoints.  But what choice do we have but to use metaphors.  Everything is representative.  Language itself is only a representation of our thoughts, expressions and feelings.  They cannot be the actual thoughts, expressions and feelings themselves.  I've often wondered what the internal conversations of a feral mind might be, someone who was raised without language.  There must be some "language" present to represent thoughts.

Metaphor is like waking from a dream.  As soon as you start to explain it and describe it, the original experience begins to dissolve.  In fact you are likely to insert meaning and descriptions that were not originally there.  There is evidence that every time you access a memory, you change it.  So, metaphors cannot be trusted completely, nor our own memories...but still we try.  Some one really skilled with language and metaphor cannot speak the Truth, they can only point to it.  The value of that language and metaphor is in its ability to speak to the Truth within each of our own existence and experience.  If there is a Truth within each of us, the best we can do is try to describe it or point to it in the world.  "Life is but a dream!"  There is a way that that statement is true, in feeling and experience, but we could never say that the statement itself is true.

I say all this to preface the lackluster metaphor that I am about to use.  Math is such a fantastic metaphor because if it's very nature.  It deals with solid things, true provable things.  Yet the equations themselves are mere metaphor...pointers to the truth.  If we were to never exist, if there were no creatures to discover Math, the principles of Math would still exist throughout the Universe.

So, I've already used too many words and metaphors and haven't even begun my point.  But here goes:  Word Problems.  A traditional school exercise Word Problem makes no sense without the context and concept of Math.  If a person had gone their whole life and never learned anything about addition, subtraction, multiplication and division and such, then presenting a Word problem (Katie leaves on a Train going X miles an hours, etc..) might appear to be a normal sentence, but also appear to be complete nonsense.  Such, for the purposes of my efforts here, is the Word of God.  Some have read the Bible and have seen God there, but frankly most that read the Bible or verses do not see God.  Some get Math without explanation, most do not.  My exposure to scripture as a young man left me cold, confused and did more to create rebellion than wonder.  Life has a way of teaching you though.  Learning to add and subtract is a part of an intentional effort.  And until we get those concepts down, we cannot proceed to the next level.  Reading the Bible without a learning sense of Justice, Mercy, Sacrifice, Love, Faith, Law, Guilt, Good, Evil, Shame, Forgiveness, Truth and Beauty leaves you ill equipped to get some meaning and context from the Word.  Some believe and obey because they were told to.  Some never believe in spite of what has been shown to them.  My point is that until you can begin to understand the fallen nature of man, the perfect nature of God, the creation that makes humans both the Apex and the great disappointment of the universe, you cannot process what is in the Word.  Until you can conceive that there may be a Love greater than your ability to comprehend, you cannot have the truth of the Word come alive in you.  The Word will only start to makes sense when you start to concede the possibility that there is something greater behind it.  Like Math has always existed, so too the Reality of a Creator has always existed.  The Bible is the ultimate word problem, which tells the story of a Perfect God and an Imperfect Creation.  However you set up the equation in your own work, the only answer that can bring balance must include  Jesus = Salvation .   But there again, Jesus only makes sense if you know that you need a savior.  The best I can do is point to the Truth in the World, in the Word and in us and Hope and Pray that a connection is made.

Thoughts...

Equalizer.

We were a little late to the Enneagram Party.  If you don't know, Enneagram is a personality test that is really popular in Christian Communities.  Over the years I have done many personality tests: Myers-Briggs, Birkman, DISC, other random work related tests.  I enjoy it.  I'm pretty curious and pretty good at figuring out patterns and seeing how people operate.  If I find something to be useful, I'll usually dig in and try to get everyone I know to do the test so I can make wild assumptions based on a little bit of information.  Some folks are eager to participate and some cannot see the value in these types of things...even if they are accurate.  Maybe especially if they are accurate.  What I have realized about myself, is that I am always in search of the one thing that will help me figure everything else out.  I'm looking for my emotional Rosetta Stone.  The piece of information that will unlock understanding between individuals and help us all to relate and finally "get" why we do the things we do.  I'm looking for a light switch, one connection to rule them all.  None of these tests or any piece of wisdom gathered can give us that full picture.  At best, each of these switches is like a gliding lever on a Hi-Fi Stereo system.  The Enneagram gives insight and may help me figure out one or two levers, but it will never give me the whole picture.  Folks are never as simple as one switch, although it may only take one switch to set someone off.  Our motivators, inspirations, dreams, work identities, sexual identities, family dynamics are but a few levers in our operating systems.  I tend to know believe I know how the whole sound board works just because I've figured out a few levers.


Botanical.

One really glorious illustration of the covenant between God and Man can be found in a Botanical Garden.  We happen to live right next to a good one here in St. Louis.  One of the ways in which we bare the image of God is in our desire and ability to create.  We take the enormity, the power and beauty of the ultimate creation, the wildness and subdue it and give it new beauty.  It is such a delicate partnership because of course God's creation needs no assistance in being beautiful.  But we do anyway.  We arrange and prune and nurture to give new purpose and new meaning to what God freely gives.  It is the very essence of worship, to take what God has given and give it back to him and to all to enjoy.  I hope that it pleases him. 


Praise.

Inauthentic praise is one of my biggest pet peeves.  If you were to give me a generic meaningless compliment, I would hate it worse than being insulted.  An insult I can believe!  An insult I can trust.  I have issues.  As a result, I am reluctant to give out praise.  I'm getting better, but with my children, I don't want them to question whether I mean it or not.  I want my words of praise to have weight and meaning.  But what I am being taught is that my issues are not their issues.  While I worry about the authenticity of the words I speak, some people are appreciative that you thought to speak the words at all.  My youngest especially lights up when someone chooses to say kind words.  She trusts.  It is less about the actual words that have been given to her, but the action of speaking kindness is what moves her.  I have a lot to learn.


Promise.

I heard a story on NPR recently about Weddings.  As a part of the story they were playing clips of people's wedding vows.  "I promise to Love you forever."  Wow!  What a promise.  I have been trying to wrap my head around what that actually means.  How do you promise to Love someone forever?  It's common enough.  It might have even been a part of my own vows.  But what does it mean?  Is it the feeling of Love?  Is it the act of Love?  What is Love and how can you promise or will yourself to do it?  You can't can you?  The real meat of wedding vows are in the For Better For Worse, segment.  There should be more time spent fleshing that out.  That is where a marriage is made.  Love will happen, Love will persists because of your choices and commitment and sacrifice...not because you will it to be so.  You don't have that kind of will...at least not for the length of time a marriage is suppose to laugh.

I want to take a shot at a new kind of vow: 
"Dear Wife:  There will be times when you slight me and I don't even know it, but I'll resent you none-the-less.  I promise to be diligent about looking at why that is happening and communicate it to you.  I promise to communicate it to you even when I know it may make things worse.  I'm in this and I'm willing to wade through the mess that will inevitable happen when we really commit ourselves to each other.  Our past, the errors of our parents and loved ones, our own messed up chemicals and wiring will reek havoc on us.  But I forgive you in advance.  I pray that you can forgive me for the unseen pain I will cause.  My hope is in the Lord.  That in this and through this he will make something beautiful.  As we get closer to him, we will be bound closer to one another.  As time goes on, I trust that all the ugliness will become a part of our story and as Two Become One a great light will shine out of that and give hope and stability not only to our family, but to everyone around us.  The reasons I Love you now may or may not be the reasons that our Marriage survives and thrives, but I am so excited to become someone new with you, and with your help, to become a better version of myself.  Today, the feelings and the romance and the genuine hope of our Love can carry us until we become strong enough to carry the weight of a meaningful union as partners in Love."

Confusion of Grace.

I woke up this morning, bleary eyed and wandered down the stairs.  Church at 10:30 means that we can all sleep in, well all except Abigail who wouldn't consider it sleeping in until she hit Noon.   I was well rested, but still tired.  As I wandered into the kitchen to get coffee, my lovely wife was there, dressed and ready for the day.  She is a morning person.  I am not.  The look she gave me woke me up.  With a big, radiant smile, she said, "Good Morning...I love you."  She was beaming.  I did indeed believe that she loved me.  It's hard to explain, because 20 + years in, I know that she loves me.  But this morning in particular, it was like she really loved me.  My response...mild panic.

“All human nature vigorously resists grace because grace changes us and the change is painful.” 
― Flannery O'Connor, The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor

I like this quote.  I identify with this quote.  I don't know that it particularly fits in this scenario, but it does hint at what happened inside of me when I realized that my wife loves me.  What was I to do with this unsolicited, unearned, unfounded expression of love?  My first response was to gather more information.  It's so absurd that my first response isn't just to accept it, good Lord what is wrong with me?  

So after I gave a responsive, but questioning "I love you, too."  I came back with a "What's up?"  

She raised her eyebrows, knowing that she confused me and enjoying the knowing, but still very much in love with me, "Nothing...how'd you sleep?"  Her face was still beaming.

"Good...real good.  What's going on with you?" I said, still trying to figure out what was going on.

"What do you mean?" she said coyly.

"You seem like you're in a good mood."  This was a stupid, year 1-5 sort of comment.  It suggests that I'm saying that she's not normally in a good mood.  Which is not true.  It's a subtle mistake in those early years, but something we should be well beyond now.  She is beyond it and doesn't dig in on it.  She does give a knowing smirk and then releases me of my miss-play and says, "Scott, I just love you."

Wow.  I can't process it, why can't I process it?  My mind vacillates between wanting to know if there is some other cause for this love and wanting to know if I had somehow done something in my sleep to earn this love.  If I had done something to earn it, I need to know so I can do it again!  As I think back to the previous day I remember that I was particularly annoying, which can happen on the weekend when I don't know what to do with myself.   Nothing had happened in particular to put her in a good mood.  I certainly had not done anything to earn this extra expression of love.  But by the time I came over to kiss her cheek I realized what was going on:  She was conscious of her love for me.  

In marriage, a working marriage, the love is always there.  Love is the framework and scaffolding from which all the productive life of a marriage is made.  It's always there, but it isn't always generating an emotion or the romantic feeling of love.  But there are moments, when you see the whole thing, the whole marriage, all the moving parts, all the work and all the joy and then you look at your partner and think, "Wow...this is Love."  I think that is what was happening for my wife this morning.  

As humans, we only have moments, small glimpses of the Truth.  We must use these moments to sustain our Faith.  Faith is the belief in something unseen, but not without evidence.  These moments of extra Love like my wife had this morning are glimpses into the unseen world, a quick look at what is really going on.  But we live out this Faith, this belief in a fallen world, a world waiting to be redeemed.  We only get moments of consciousness: but God is Love.  That means he is eternally conscious of His promised Love for us.  There are things I can do and have done that put a strain on my wife's Love for me.  But there is nothing I can do to make God lose sight of his Love for me.  No sin that is heinous enough to make him question it.  God Is Love.  And that is the driving force of all existence.

Peace and Hope

5 Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we[a] have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 2 through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we[b]boast in the hope of the glory of God. 3 Not only so, but we[c] also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; 4 perseverance, character; and character, hope. 5 And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.

6 You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. 7 Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. 8 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Teacher.

"When the Student is ready, the Teacher will appear."  This quote is attributed to many people, including Tao Te Ching and the Buddha himself.  It's probably safe to say that is comes from the East.  Like all great Proverbs, it seems vague until you really explore yourself and find that it is very specific and very personal.

The quote has to do with the readiness of the Student.  It can be a commentary on those who fail to see their need for a Teacher, those who toil and fail to ask for help or those who just can't see beyond their own immediate struggles.  It is also a comfort to those who are in search of understanding that when you have gained a certain posture and perspective, that there will be someone to help you along the next path.  But in either case, what remains true is that you can't see it until you can see it.  

What is unspoken in the quote is how the Teacher appears.  The reality is that someone is always passing through your life, waiting to teach you.  The Teacher doesn't just appear, some variation of a Teacher is always present.  I think of the joke of the Preacher waiting to be rescued from a flood.  As the flood waters start to rise, folks from the congregation come to get him from the church, "No, No need...the Lord will save me!"  The waters get higher and into the church and a boat comes to get the preacher.  He replies, "No! No need...the Lord will save me!"  As the flood gets higher, desperately high, the preacher is clinging to the steeple of the church.  A helicopter comes and attempts to rescue him.  He screams, "THE LORD WILL SAVE ME!"  The preacher drowns of course and in heaven he questions God, "Lord I was faithful, why didn't you save me?"  God replies, "What do you want?  I sent a truck, a boat AND a helicopter!"  

Certainly, I am more blessed than most.  I have had loads of help and teachers in my life.  I can look back at times and see certain faces and certain interactions where someone was there ready to help me, waiting to see if I was going to wake up from my self-absorption and accept teaching.  Most of the time I did not.  This student was seldom ready.  However, at the moments when I did surrender out of desperation or curiosity, the Teacher did appear.  For most of us, if we are able to lift our heads up, someone is there to teach us something.  The Teacher doesn't just appear, the Teacher is ever present in one form or another.  As we experienced a lovely Easter service with my brother yesterday,  I was reminded that this is how it is with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  If we are raised in the church, we will have heard that, "God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son and whosoever believes in him will have everlasting life..." hundreds of times before we hit double digits.  John 3:16 is the simplest expression of the Gospel and it's the first thing we memorize.  It is ever present, given in a 1000 different ways, but until we are ready, it won't take hold of us.  Beyond the explicit Gospel, the story of God's love for us and the salvation available to us is present in nature and in beauty and in the telling of each others stories.  There is enough to make us curious.  There is enough to make us ask...to seek a teacher.  

Romans 1 says "20 For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse."

This particular Easter, I was not in my home church, but the simple expression of the Good News of Jesus rang in my heart and filled me with joy, just like it did the first time I really heard it.  Not as a young boy in Sunday School, but as a 33 year old father and husband.  Although I had been presented the Gospel in so many times and so many ways, I could not and would not receive it.  But when I was ready, it was there.  The truth crushed me and raised me up all at the same time.  More than a teacher appeared, the Master and my Savior revealed himself.  It took time and study and it took mentors and the work is not finished.  But I am ready and that is all that is needed.

Annihilation.

I recently watched the movie Annihilation with Natalie Portman.  To be clear, Natalie is in the movie, we did not watch it together.  The movie checks a lot of boxes for me: sci-fi, end of the world, tense thriller, philosophical implications...Natalie Portman.  I thought it was great.  The movie has several layers.  It's really an allegory about cancer.  That's pretty straight forward, I didn't solve a mystery to think of that.  Cancer is mentioned in the first scene, I think, but it's not too obvious so as to be the only thing you think about. But the event that starts things in motion is the landing of a sort of meteorite.  From it comes a pulsing, translucent, iridescent film.  This thing, the shimmer, begins mutating the life within its membrane.  It's alien, but it uses the life, the dna already within it's membrane to alter the landscape and life forms, and to destroy.  The protagonists, scientists and military, send teams into "the shimmer" to figure things out, to stop the spreading of this alien force.  Natalie Portman is on one of those teams.  Her husband was on one of the previous teams that did not return.

The movie is about cancer, but it is also about self-destruction, among other things.  It parallels the cancerous behavior with our own propensity for destructive behavior within relationships, and even just the subtle ways we destroy a good healthy thing.  In one of the scenes, Natalie (Lena) is trying to figure out why her husband would go into something that meant he would not return.  Her own betrayal by affair, damaging her relationship that was otherwise healthy, my be the root for his decision.  

In this scene, Portman is discussing this with Jennifer Jason Leigh's character, the leader of the group, Dr. Ventress.

Lena: Why did my husband volunteer for a suicide mission?

Dr Ventress: Is that what you think we're doing? Committing suicide?

Lena: You must have profiled him. You must have assessed him. He must have said something.

Dr Ventress: So you're asking me as a psychologist?

Lena: Yeah.

Dr Ventress: Then, as a psychologist, I think you're confusing suicide with self-destruction. Almost none of us commit suicide, and almost all of us self-destruct. In some way, in some part of our lives. We drink, or we smoke, we destabilize the good job... and a happy marriage. But these aren't decisions, they're... they're impulses. In fact, you're probably better equipped to explain this than I am.

Lena: What does that mean?

Dr Ventress: You're a biologist. Isn't the self-destruction coded into us? Programmed into each cell?

This scene, this perspective and the correlation between unthinking biology and presumably intelligent human behavior stuck with me.  I've had my own streaks of massive and subtle self-destruction.  Most of the time I had no idea why.  Why would I take something relatively healthy and stable and put strain on it?  I certainly had justifications, real and imagined, but logically I had no reasons for the things I would do.  I suppose I'm not out of the woods yet, I still create tension where it need not exist, it's just not the big ugly gestures I used to make.

"Isn't the self-destruction coded into us?"  She's talking about the cancer and our own actions.  I think she's right.  Given my worldview, it's easy to make this parallel with "The Fall".  And the term The Fall contains a lot as well.  It is the actual event in which God's apex of creation, man and woman, chose their own sovereignty over God's.  What resulted was the corruption of perfection, the infection and decay of that which was meant to be good.  What came was Death.  This event echos in every living thing and in the very fiber of our being.  Things that were meant to be good, cannot be.  Things that are beautiful, have a cost.  Birth is pain, Life is death.There is something unavoidably destructive about the present state of creation.  Furthermore, it speaks to the condition of our own heart, our own state of being.  A quick google search on depravity yields these scriptures that speak of this truth:  Depravity

The reality in the movie and in our lives is this:  We are bent towards destruction.  And while we are a part of the problem, yet we still feel that it ought not to be this way.  In the movie and for many people, the answer is that it is up to us to save creation, to save our bodies and to save our relationships.  Human Kind, in it's wisdom and power can save the environment, can cure cancer and can save their marriages.  In reality, this seems an impossible task.  Personally, if it's going to be you and I to save the world, well that leads me to Despair (which I plan on talking about in another movie post).  The conclusion I have come to is that we cannot do it ourselves.  We absolutely need someone to rescue us.  We are not absolved of action and responsibility.  We SHOULD be taking care of our earth, our bodies and our relationships.  However, it is this tension between aching for perfection and yet sabotaging our own efforts that declares that we need a savior.  But because we are so infected with Death and destruction, despite our best intentions and efforts, we are not enough to overcome.  We require a supernatural force.  We require an external, yet familiar force to enter our "shimmer" and undo the destruction we have caused.  We need someone/something pure and perfect to make us whole, to restore us to how we were intended.  Again and again in so many ways, this is the story of Christ.  Christ has entered our world, from beyond our world, out of perfection and into the mess.  He is restoring now and in the life to come.  But he requires and invitation and then submission to enter into our mess and to go to work.  Surrender to Christ is not easy, it is often painful, but for me it has led to the most glorious revelations: I am loved, I have worth, I am more, there is more, we can be more, I am forgiven, I can forgive, I can love, I am a part of God's will to make things new.  

It is hard to be a human.  It is hard to see so much pain and still hope.  But there is also so much beauty and tenderness.  And though I cannot see what God is doing, I can still feel that I am a part of it and in a very real way, he is with me and within me.  Though at times hopeless, what is giving me comfort is the realization that God's Imagination is bigger and better than mine.  This should be obvious, but it isn't.  I simply lack the imagination to imagine another's imagination.  But whatever fear I can concoct is no match for the solution he has already offered.  And even though I participate in my own destruction, he has already rescued me from the greatest possible disaster.

Dr Ventress: [from trailer] It's destroying everything.

Lena: It's not destroying. It's making something new.