Veteran's Day 2010

Hamlet's Blackberry

I have just finished reading this book, which explores the way in which we modern folk have become tethered to our "screens" in so many myriad ways.  This was a convicting and at the same time enlightening and encouraging read for me.  I often wonder if I might be too connected, too dependent on my electronic doo-dads, and if so, what effect this is having on my soul.  How do I deal with this new electronic culture, and what effect is it having on us all?

As it turns out, this problem is not new, it's as old as humankind. 

The author, William Powers, takes us on a journey into the past, exploring the writing, thoughts, and cultures of Plato, Seneca, Gutenberg, Shakespeare, Ben Franklin, and even Henry David Thoreau.

What do these figures from history and literature have to teach us about dealing with our laptops, desktops, IPads, Droids, and Blackberry's, and even each other?  Quite a great deal, it seems.  Is it all bad?  No.  Is it nothing but goodness?  No, not that either.

And why is it that we are constantly gazing into these gadgets?  What is their magnetic appeal upon our lives?  In a word, affirmation and recognition.  We return over and over to Facebook pages, Tweets and blogs to find out if people like us, or love us, or even if they notice what we just said or tweeted.  This need for electronic affirmation, and how this affects us is powerful stuff. 

But maybe what we really need to be asking ourselves, as Williams Powers so effectively does in his book, is .........Really?  Can't we just be.  Here.  Now?

I don't think for a second that the Windows Phone will free us at all, its just the same as the others.  However, the idea here is just brilliant......

Attempting to Express an Inexpressable Faith

Religious Talk
God.

Faith.  Believing. Jesus.  Holy
Spirit.  When these terms are mentioned, right away, it seems, our minds start spinning.

And, if you're like me, your mind fills with all the images of faith that you have carried with you, likely for all your life.  For me, it starts with the big stained glass window in the old Methodist church in Arcadia when I was little.  The minister who sounded like Charlie Brown's teacher - I never understood anything he said.

Maybe your mind fills with, well, nothing; as you have no reference points for faith.

And sometimes when the conversation comes to those things of faith, your mind might fill with other things.  Maybe the frustrations, disappointments, and anger you carry around inside you.  The brutal death of someone too young to die.  Angry at God.  Lots of people I know, even good friends, are carrying with them a soft and subtle anger at the Divine.  It's there, and they can't even articulate it.  It weights them down.


For some time now, I have been beginning to sense that expressing my faith to others seems often, at least to me, an exercise in futility.  Not because I don't think others will listen, but more because I have come to a place in my life where it seems that mere words, or paragraphs, or dissertations, or even volumes of books could not express accurately what I have experienced in my life.  Exactly how do you tell someone that for more than three decades you have known, beyond any rational explanation, that not one day has passed that you have felt truly alone.  How do you express something in mere words that is so much a part of your soul?

Nowadays, when I think about the prospect of articulating what I have come to believe, the first feeling, and even first mental image that comes to mind is ... weeping.  And so that may be, at this point on the journey, the best I would have to offer as an explanation.  My tears.  Tears of joy, of knowing, of sadness, of loss, of laughter.  And sometime, tears of confusion.  But all tears forming a testament to Love.  For a long time.  Ever present and unyielding.  

How do you express the inexpressible without cheapening the depth of meaning.  How can you put to words the weight of all the substance of life?  I can't leave it up to some televangelist with big hair in a shiny suit or Hawaiian shirt.  The Guy That Has It All Together.  That Emperor has no clothes.

There Are Some Words That Point the Way
However, their are such bright glimmers of explanation - in words written 2,000 years ago.  If we just leave the explanation to the people who experienced faith in its original form (before we "modern" American religious folk messed it all up), the words seem, if only for a moment, to sing:

Ephesians 3:14-20 (The Message)

 ^14-19My response is to get down on my knees before the Father, this magnificent Father who parcels out all heaven and earth. I ask him to strengthen you by his Spirit—not a brute strength but a glorious inner strength—that Christ will live in you as you open the door and invite him in. And I ask him that with both feet planted firmly on love, you'll be able to take in with all followers of Jesus the extravagant dimensions of Christ's love. Reach out and experience the breadth! Test its length! Plumb the depths! Rise to the heights! Live full lives, full in the fullness of God.
 ^20-21God can do anything, you know—far more than you could ever imagine or guess or request in your wildest dreams! He does it not by pushing us around but by working within us, his Spirit deeply and gently within us.


   Glory to God in the church!
   Glory to God in the Messiah, in Jesus!
   Glory down all the generations!
   Glory through all millennia! Oh, yes!

And then, every once in a long while, someone in the modern paradigm gets it almost entirely right.  Pardon this very loose film analogy, but I think Jodie Foster has been supported by some very good writing here in explaining the unexplainable, from the film Contact.

The Wounds of War, and the Love the Helps Heal Them

September Again, Simeon, and Red Rover

September Again
And so, we have come back around to September again. There have been 52 of them for me thus far, 19 for Oldest Daughter, 16 for Younger Daughter.  My lovely wife has had somewhat fewer Septembers in her life.  It's the first September for the new puppy, now 8 months old and sleeping at my feet as I write this. This can be a time of year to take stock of the summer past, and look forward to the fall ahead, and perhaps ponder our place in the Universe.

The end of summer.  Time to say goodbye to longer days, warm evenings; being able to jump in the pool at 8 PM and not get chilled after you get out.  Its also time for the start of school.  The streets in our neighborhood are again full of parents and kids, all walking to school. The 7:45 AM rush, a timeless tradition here for more than 50 years or so, I guess.  Strollers, little bikes, kids in helmets, small students with parents holding hands, backpacks and lunch sacks, moving slowly westward from the top of our street, daily participants in some not-so-distant Big Event.

It really is a Big Event, this life we lead, isn't it?   Full of millions of little events, like your first bike solo, your first day of school, and, as you grow older, heading back to college in the early fall.  All these seemingly little events that begin to pile up, and make something beautiful, or sad, or challenging.  Each step is important, and if we handle them with love and humor, perhaps the finished result might be something beautiful.

We participated in that again this year, for our second time, in the start of college thing. Three weeks ago, we were in Chicago moving Kelly into her completely hip college apartment. Four girls in three bedrooms (and what looks to have been the former den), ready for another year at school.  Trips to Ikea, and Target and Costco, gathering up the stuff needed to make the apartment work.  With my lovely wife along, I felt sort of like Cro-Magnon Man With Wallet.  Following wife and daughter to all these places, grunting occasionally at some decorating choice, and supply my VISA card at the crucial check-out moment.  Most of the sounds I made sounded much like the names of the products sold at Ikea, such as "Fnork", or "Trall", or "Glank".  This is my new roll as the Dad of a college aged daughter; follow, grunt, pay.

Its a gorgeous apartment in Lincoln Park, two blocks from school in one direction, and three blocks from Trader Joes in the other direction. That sounds like the perfect location to me!

As I followed the ladies around Ikea and Costco, I was also quietly reflecting on how life had led me to this place, and remembering, through the fog of middle age, my own college years.  What if I could relive those years, only with the middle life perspective I now have?  What would that feel like, and how might I experience those college years differently?  This is what I wondered, as I pushed the cart around Ikea.

Simeon
As part of all this pondering, about college and daughters and life, I have been reflecting on the ark that the life of Older Daughter is taking as she reaches toward 20 years.  A sophomore in college now  As a young parent there was no way I could have ever know or fully understood who she was going to become as she grew.  No way I would have known that she decided in the fifth grade that she should become a teacher for her vocation.  So many things I could never have imagined, that have now come to pass.

This place of "not knowing" about where are kids are headed is as old as humanity, and reminds me of one of my favorite stories in the Gospels.  In Luke, where Joseph & Mary present their little child to the Lord, and a man named Simeon is present.   How would you feel if an old man took your child in his arms and pronounced clearly just exactly what his or her future would look like?  My favorite line in this story is:

"Jesus' father and mother were speechless with surprise at these words."

I can completely understand how they felt, those two very young parents.  What was this old man saying?  How did he know?  And for me, what would it have felt like to have been told the future and fate of my own child, when she was so very young?  What a moment.  What a life.  We parents, we need time to take it all in.  Learning it all too fast can break our hearts.

Red Rover
And then, several days ago, I stumbled on this beautiful song by Rosie Thomas.  It seems to connect the pieces together perfectly at just this point in life.  

When they are little, you want to hold them so tight.  I think Mary and Joseph felt that too.  I did.  But as time passes, our grip must loosen.  I keep telling myself that.  Loosen up, dude.  I said that to myself as I circled around inside Ikea.  Loosen up.

I need to remember, that, in spite of my own unconvinced heart, and sometimes undercover smile, that I need to just let her go.  She's beautiful.  Otherwise, she may never know.



Red Rover by Rosie Thomas

Red rover, red rover
Send Mary right over
School books in her hand
And her shawl over her shoulders

And let her run
Run as fast as she can
Don't let her grow up to be
Like her mother
Heart so unconvinced and a world
So undiscovered
And asking for forgiveness
Not knowing how to forgive.

And oh
Just let her go
And oh
She's beautiful
If you hold her back,
She may never know.

Red rover, red rover,
Send Daniel
School books in his hand
And a coat over his shoulder
And let him run
Run as fast as he can
Don't let him grow up to be like his father
Heart so set in stone
And a smile so undercover
And opening the door to love,
Never letting love in.

And oh
Just let him go
And oh
He's beautiful
If you hold him back,
He may never know.