Take the Voyage of Life

Take The Voyage of Life!

 Thomas Cole (c. 1842) came from the Hudson River School of Painting and created the Voyage of Life series.  With four enormous canvasses, Cole depicts childhood, youth, manhood (i.e. womanhood), and finally old age and death.  Each picture tells the story with changes in the landscape, the age of the traveler, and angels.  In the National Gallery of Art, they are displayed in a circular room—not in a linear line—to suggest the timeless theme of “the circle of life.”  If you want to get ahead of my posts, go ahead and google “Voyage of Life” and take a look at the pictures.  You might want to do that anyway as you seek to use each frame to take a look at your life at a particular stage—either a stage where you have been, are, or will be. The theme of this blog is learning to tell our stories through different mediums, writings and reflections.  (You can purchase a set of these prints through the National Gallery of Art.  They make wonderful background for computer screens.)  

 

Background:

Cole develops the birth of the infant and child on a tranquil river symbolizing life--the river that ran through Eden.  The angel guides the boat, representing its divine image and origin.  A new day dawns to show forth the new birth. If you look very, very closely--there is an hour glass in the wooden angel's hands on the front of the boat. The infant may have come trailing clouds of glory of kairos, God's time, but now enters the chronos of linear time.  

Reflection:   

In what way do we believe in the divine origin of our birth.  It makes a difference what we believe about who we are--products of random selection or made in the image of God.  (There is room to believe that we arrived randomly, yet still bear the image of God.)  The point is that what we believe about ourselves says a lot about our sense of purpose and ambition in life.  Look how Wordsworth developed this theme in "Intimations of Immortality," as we come from afar trailing clouds of glory." As he misses it, the search for immorality within life and nature becomes a purpose in his life.  it is the very search itself which points to his "intimations." 

 

				536. Ode Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood

THERE was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparell'd in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.	5
It is not now as it hath been of yore;—
Turn wheresoe'er I may,
By night or day,
The things which I have seen I now can see no more.
There is a fountain of youth: it is your mind, your talents, the creativity you bring to your life and the lives of the people you love. When you learn to tap this source, you will have truly defeated age. Sophia LorenItalian Actress and Film Star

The Bridge, Part 2

The Year of the 

New Bridge

This story just has to be told!  The sea-worthy legs of the Capitol Island Bridge last about 35 years of rough weather, but it was the sea worms that eventually ate through the pilings.  Many meetings were held to discuss the new, contemporary bridge that would be weather and worm proof.  Diagrams were drawn up, final architectural renderings constructed from styro-foam--and then the money was raised--or rather, the islanders were "assessed" their equal portions.  When I left late that summer, I said good-bye to the old bridge.  It had crossed us over into our summer time world of fantasies. We took many leaps from that bridge into the frigid cold water.  None of us wanted to awake from that world out of the the world.  So I said goodbye, and during the fall, I imagined the bridge being dismantled and the new one taking its place.  Alas! Life goes on.  It could never be the same. 

The next spring, I drove to the crest in the road which I would climb and see the new bridge.  The car eased up slowly, and I stopped with a gasp.  Did they not build the new bridge after all?  I thought I heard it had been completed on time?  There before me stood an exact replica of the former bridge!
I soon learned that they had found the plans to the old bridge stored away at the island Casino, a recreation center, and found the original builder to replace the bridge with a duplicate. 

Something very deep in my heart welcomed this sight.  Life goes on.  Change happens.  But some landmarks remain to remind us of very sacred territory--and this was surely it.  It was for us "the bridge of everywhere."  That's not sentimental slush.  Thornton Wilder said:  "There is a bridge between the land of the dead and the living--and the bridge is love."  It was on that island that many of us learned about love in all of its forms.  That's a never-ending story across a bridge called love. 

The Bridge

The Capitol Island Bridge

Off Southport Island 
Boothbay Harbor Region

The Bridge

 Cars brake at the Capitol Island Bridge,

And turn around at the sign that reads—

“Dangerous Narrow Road.” 

The bridge looks like a rickety old man,

with bent back that can barely hold up,

his own weight let alone somebody else.

The islanders arrive at a different place,

Of gratitude for their ageless friend,

Who bends his back to bridge them,

Into a world received only in trust.

What are your familiar landmarks?  The Capitol Island Bridge is indelibly marked in those who come to the island.  It represents an old Mainer life, other-worldly, that transports us from one world into another that renews us. 

The Internal Guide

Do You Know What You Are Looking At? 

Scenic Overview....   How often do we see these signs as we drive along?  Or, take the photo above from the Skyline Drive in western Virginia.  It literally tells you what you are looking at--the Thornton Hollow?  If you read the map, it actually points out the landscape markers. Otherwise, you'd drive past with eyes wide shut to the world.

I wonder.  What internal maps and guides do we have that interpret the world for us?  We fly through each day, the miles roll up toward tombstones--and what are we on the lookout for so that we pull off and take a second look?  We hear--"stop and smell the roses."  Where is our internal map in heart and mind that tells us what roses really are for us?

Look at this billboard.  It says:  "Atheist:  Someone who believes nothing made everything."  I am using this sign purely as an example.  If this happens to be your internal guide, then obviously, you would not be looking to pull over or stop for a "coincidence" wondering if it might be  "God-incidence."  What billboard do you suppose poet Gerard Manley Hopkins had when he penned these lines?

THE WORLD is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
What is on your Billboard?
So what is on your billboard?  What signs do you have in your heart and mind of experience which tell you what to look for in the world.  Next time you pull over to look.  Look inside!

What is really Priceless?

What Would You Save?  

I go back to my pictures of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and still cannot put my head around the devastation in the ninth ward.  I caught a taxi and spent several hours just touring around. Most notable was the taxi driver.  "Folks knew the blow was com'in," he said, "but many still stayed. At least they could have gotten out with their lives."  

I don't know why, but I was profoundly struck by the destruction of the cemeteries. Even the dead were not left alone.  The head stones were hurled in all directions.  Surely somebody kept a map showing the exact location for each one.  But who is left for those from centuries ago to care enough to restore their resting places?

There we were at Camp Coastal Care--an interdenominational restoration community carrying out daily tasks to help people rebuild their homes.  What we heard over and over was the same message. "We're so thankful you are here...we were afraid that we'd be forgotten."  The most priceless gift going?  That human connection that says we are human.  Community washed away --- and then returned with a veritable flood of people,  real people,

Priceless....really. 

The Eye in the Sky

Traffic Cameras:

The Eye in the Sky 

We now see cameras to enforce traffic lights.  Last year alone, about 22% of traffic accents and 800 deaths came from running stop lights.  The evidence is in that the cameras do compel a higher percentage of adherence, since the actual number of tickets goes down where they are used.  We also know that the cameras are a tremendous source of revenue.  I will leave it to you as whether these lights came about to save lives or get people to pay up.  All I know is that they have worked on me. I find myself glancing up to recall which intersections have the sky high cops. 

For some, the cameras mean a “surveillance society,” big brother and sister monitoring the play ground. For others, how do you find this kind of ticket in court? How would you prove the camera malfunctioned? For others, what’s the big deal—just stop at the lights, and you won’t get ticketed. 

 

A while back, the movie came out—Defending your Life, with Meryl Streep and Albert Brooks.  What would your life look like if you had to watch replays of it?  Or, what would your life look like if you KNEW there would be replays of your life.  Cameras in the traffic of your life, so to speak, from which to judge you?  Maybe we would all be neurotics. Or, maybe as we approached the intersections of crucial choices, we just might stop and reconsider what we were about to do. 

From a personal standpoint, the traffic cameras injected more intentional driving on my part. I consider what I am about to do at the intersection.  No more automatic pilot.  That’s a very good, positive analogy—rather than getting caught—for making purposeful choices.  With all the people I listen to—this much I know—there are a lot of emotional, personal wrecks from just not being intentional about what is done and how it is done. 

The unexamined life is not worth living.

 

Socrates, in Plato, Dialogues, Apology
Greek philosopher in Athens (469 BC - 399 BC)

You are HERE!

Who has the Map for Today?

I'll admit it.  I am a guy, and I rarely stop for directions!  It has something to do with male genes for ego control--I am in charge!  I am self-sufficient!  I will not admit a weakness!  But there was the time when I went to the King of Prussia Malls, and I had to stop and read the directory. The place is literally several malls put together with duplicate stores.  The "You are Here" map, a universal language, bailed me out. (Nobody saw me looking at it too!) 

Walker Percy put out a book called "Lost in the Cosmos," with the subtitle "the Last Self-Help Book."  His major theme is that we cannot transcend ourselves.  By ourselves, we ARE ourselves alone in the cosmos.  Whatever meaning there is, we must manufacture it.  "HERE" is therefore wherever we want it to be.  So from that standpoint, Percy argues that we are fundamentally "lost."  Or, I might add--"alone"--left to ourselves as our own "meaning makers."  The "X" factor becomes--"You Are WHATEVER You Make Yourself to Be." 

Okay.  If you have continued to follow this argument, let me say that a lot of people are perfectly content to live this way.  You are your own god.  Meaning and value are what you say they are. 
Percy argues that this leaves us lost, void of ultimate meaning.  Percy quotes author John Cheever: "the main emotion of the adult Northeastern American who has had all the advantages of wealth, education, and (with a) culture that is disappointment. Our own meaning ultimately disappoints.

There is a gift in disappointment.  It can put us on the track of what we desperately seek....more than ultimate meaning, I believe, but the assurance that we are not ultimately alone.  Or, forgive the rewrite: our ultimate meaning is that we are not alone.  It is not what we invent.  It is what we discover that a Creator has planted within us.  As Augustine wrote, "Our hearts are made restless until they rest in God." 

Lost & Found

Lost & Found

Oh, those school day memories of loosing your stuff and going to the “lost and found.”  A definite place, usually located in the central office to reap sufficient embarrassment so you did not loose things again!  The New Yorker had a cartoon in which a perplexed wife looks at her husband and exclaims:  “Why is it that men only loose things that women can find?”  Maybe that’s why they invented the “car finder.”  Does a day go by when we don’t push the little button to find our cares that we loose?  Maybe we pay less attention to where we park because we now have these little devices.   

I wonder if our society has become so crowded with people and complex in its inter-workings that we ourselves feel misplaced?  Think about this.  We have so many things to live with, I wonder if we have forgotten who we are and what we live for?  In fact, life is said to be a never-ending race of getting and consuming.  In the end, the popular saying goes, the winner is the one who dies with the most toys.  

TS Eliot penned a poem with a title that describes it:  “The Hollow Men.”   The theme says that we reach outside of ourselves to get things, we hollow out inside.  Things cannot feed the character or spirit or soul or whatever the human essence is.  In fact, we are fed in an opposite process.  As we give ourselves away to something or someone, we find who we really are inside.  

“When you carry out acts of kindness you get a wonderful feeling inside,” writes Rabbi Harold Kushner, “It is as though something inside your body responds and says, yes, this is how I ought to feel.”  

Let us dare to add, and we find who ought to be.  Anytime we feel like we have misplaced ourselves, we begin anew by stepping out and caring beyond ourselves. 

When Life Dances

The Dance We Do

The Actress on the Stage

The Actress

For the longest time I only saw the actress,

And marveled at the dance she did, the ease 

with which she slipped Into her character 

like a pair of well worn shoes.Any place became

her stage from where To walk and work the crowd 

into the complicityn that held her fragile and fearful 

self.

       Then one day I beheld out of the corner of my eye,

The momentary revelation of what had been withheld,

A glimpse of herself suddenly given like the sun

to break the darkness of her days with light that radiated  

in all directions with a brilliance that blinded with a lasting

sight of splendor.

I knew this young person for a long time and watched her growing up.  Life had not been easy for her, and she had been very tough on herself.  There wasn't a persona she could not instantly wear to hide her real self.  Then, one day, she just danced across the table where we talked and I caught a glimpse of who she really was.  Beautiful and real.  But it really only matters when we realize that the audience no longer matters as long as we are true to ourselves.  That's when the acting stops and life dances.  

The Art of the Hand-off

How Well Do You Pass the Baton?

I saw the above picture and the euphemism immediately came to mind--"You go, girl--go!"  In all the relay races, the hand-off was absolutely critical to running the race.  The British team was stunned when their second place silver was disqualified because they crossed the line in making the hand-off. They were fast.  They still lost.  I wonder how many of us are in race, making countless hand-offs, and end up disqualified because of the way we did it?  You can take this one to the bank: it matters less on winning and  more about how we make the hand-off, connect with people, and who we become as a result of it.

Let's  rephrase this question to ask:  Who are you as you pass the baton? Are you aware of a relationship as you make the hand-off---in business, in pleasure, from family and friends? We make countless hand-offs, don't we?  But I wager that what others recall is who gave them the baton.  When I survey the Harvard Business Review articles, the essence of leaders, entrepeneurs, HR execs, and even "the art of the deal" comes down to relationships.  Get this through our heads.  What we hand off is first and foremost ourselves and not the order, the standing operating procedure or the commodity--it's YOU.  

Let me switch to the meta-meaning.  In the Jewish and Christian Religions, the heart of both is not a system of belief.  It is the personal relationship that God gives to us. God is the Good Shepherd in the Hebrew Scriptures and in the Gospels.  God call us by name and enters into covenant with us.  God gives himself to us.  Then we are called to hand it off, pass it on to others.  My favorite biblical passage is this one:

I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that lived first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and now, I am sure, lives in you. ⁶For this reason I remind you to rekindle the gift of God that is within you through the laying on of my hands; ⁷for God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline.     2 Timothy 1:5-7

Life does not have to be a race.  Nobody wins with record-times.  Life is a gift that we can only hand-off by the gift of who we offer ourselves to others.  Are we aware and do we give thanks for what has been handed off to us.

A quick formula for making the hand-off:

First--connect with people, build rapport
Second--engage with people, make the hand-off 
Third--affirm people.  Say the magic words "thank you." 

Connect, Engage, Affirm! 

Remember this formula:  connect, engage, affirm. 

A Gift in Different Packaging

Inter-State Commerce Fraud 
Comes Home!

I posted a while back that we lost our old Lab Izzie.  She was a piece of work never to be duplicated. Her death was compassionate.  It gave me life.  So I found myself walking through the adoption pages.  Of course, never with a conscious thought that I was getting another dog--just curiosity to see what was out there.  Well, you already know the rest of the story.  I found a gorgeous Golden/Lab mix in exactly the 1 yr old age span we wanted as a family.  Perhaps we could make ourselves ready for the right dog--or so I thought.

When she arrived from South Carolina, I began to realize that the only accurate part of the advertisement was her color.  A Vet check revealed that she was really 3-4 years old, already had a litter of pups (but was spayed!), and had real disease issues (heart worms, lyme disease, major tooth decay).  All of these medical problems on top of the behavioral issues; she had real triggers for fear. In fact, when other family members wanted to meet her, they had to search under tables to find her.

Of course, I told the agency that we'd have to return her.  That was fine with them.  However, they had just found a vet who could do the heart worm treatment pro bono.  Could I possibly take her to the Vet and leave her for a few days?  Of course.

Meanwhile, I worked on the fear issues using Caesar Millan's dog whisperer series--they're great!  Foremost treat the frightened animal as a dog.  Get her back into her skin as a dog with long walks.  Make her walk next to you to establish the relationship.  So we walked and walked our feet and paws off.  Slowly out of the frightened animal came a dog bonded with me.  From that point on, I had the trust to begin working with her.

So at the end of the trial period, I told the agency that "Jezebel" is now home.  (Our first two labs came with their names--Annabelle and Isabel.)  Oh, she has medical issues to be taken care of.  We have more miles to walk for training.  But somewhere in this process, I recognized the dog I wanted out of the dog I had expected.  To form a working relationship, a bond of trust to walk off our years together.  You're home girl....

When I think back on the lives I have listened to over the years, I hear the same pain in my own life over expectations that did not work out.  Life arrived in packages not ordered.  I like to remind my children that if I had had my way in my early years, well then, they would not even be here!

TS Eliot put it this way in my favorite play, The Family Reunion:  "Why I have this calling, I will never know.  And it must have been preparing always. Now I see that it is exactly what I want.  I must follow the bright angels." 

The Long Search

The Long Search--The High Climb

The Long Search is open to anybody.  It does not have a tidy beginning, middle or end. You are on it the moment you start wondering where you were before you were born, where you will go when you die, and what you are on earth for in the meantime. If you knew the answers, then you would not ask the questions. But other people’s answers should be worth collecting. And, so should other people’s questions.  

                                                                                   Ron Eyre

                                                                        The Long Search

In the early 70’s, a 16 part TV series ran called “The Long Search.” The narrator, Ron Eyre, walked the audience through major world religions and its various expressions. He asked how each one connected the individual with meaning not of their own making. Where is the light uncreated?  Let us open our eyes to it in each world religion.  

I recall the closing segment. After so many shows, you want to hear something at the end that ties it all together.  This is what I heard:

Show me where you want to go.  What mountain do you wish to climb.  Then, I shall show you what mountain climbing gear to take.

All I know about mountain climbing is this—it’s a fool who goes alone!  You climb a mountain with others, all are tied in—the inner connections are the climb itself.  Each world religion is about some dimension of community and its medium for gifts of God for the people of God (however we understand the name “God”). 

This blog is about people’s stories—your story in fact—and if it leads anywhere, I hope that it provides some good questions, a fresh perspective, and a companion for the climb.   

Consume or Create?

 Do We Consume or Create? 

Have you ever seen a Wal-Mart that looked like this one? I drove into the parking lot along the Mississippi Gulf Coast months after Hurricane Katrina. Everything was gone.  I will never forget the feeling of sheer emptiness.  I am talking about more than just its goods--but the heart of Wal-Mart had been gutted, was utterly gone, now just the empty shell.  Then it struck me.  Even when it was in perfect working order, isn't the store essential "empty" of spiritual goods?  And what if we centered our lives in the physical reality of things, stuff to live with--and somehow forgot what and who we live for? 

The difference is in the question?  Do we consume or create?  Or, do we understand that we should consume in order to create?  That's the connection!  Consume to Create! 

Now let's flip the story. The fact is that Wal-Mart, Lowe's, Home Depot and a number of big warehouse stores sold many items at cost along the Gulf Coast during the rebuilding effort.  These stores were on the front line to make the whole project work.  People who had homes washed away were encouraged by the creativity and generosity of a larger community.  I think the real message I heard down there was this--"Thank God you did not forget us!" 

Thank God that the rest of us were spared Katrina.  But do we grasp the lesson of "consume to create?"  Do we use things that we consume to create community that reaches out and embraces?  I like the plan of collecting a bag of groceries each month or quarter to drop off at the food bank. Or, pet supplies for the animal shelter?  Try giving a unity of blood. The consumption of our lives leads directly to the blood which cannot be manufactured, but is a gift from consumption in our lives.  

More Michael

 Going Where You Cannot See

In yesterday’s post, I told the story of Michael, the young man who died from misdiagnosed cancer.  I feel certain that he would want me to continue to pass along stories that shout to be told again and again from his life.  

He told me that he had a recurring dream of being adrift in a boat without oars. He would always wake up crying.  Then came a startling turning point. In the dream, he heard a voice say, “stick out your hands the oars.”  Of course, there were no oars.  But he put out his hands nevertheless—and oars appeared in his hands.   He could then make it to the other side of the shore.

 

 Stick your hands out for oars when you can’t see them?  So he puts out his hands and the oars appear out of nowhere?  What does this mean?  For Michael, the message for him was to “take hold” of “gifts beyond the naked eye.”  Or, perhaps…you need to reach out beyond your senses, the familiar, and the logic of this world.  Everyone knows that seeing is believing, right?  This is a story of acting beyond what you can see, or intuit—and taking hold of it.  

Okay, how about the example of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade? Harrison Ford has to cross a deep ravine where no bridge appears to the eye.  He just steps out, and as he does, the bridge appears. That’s fine for the movies, but Michael’s story is one that leaves us with the risk of life.  Life is to be found wherever we reach out, step out, by believing it is founded by something which upholds us beyond human senses and logic.

What choices must we make where we have to step out and take the risk of life?  Think it over.  Do we ever have a 100% guarantee of the way ahead and the future?  Michael would say that he was only told to reach out.  He had to take it from there—and start rowing!   

Open Doors

For the Love of Michael 

 “Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you.”  Matthew 7.7

 

"Then said Jesus unto them again, Verily, verily, I say unto you, I am the door of the sheep."   John 10:7

The last thing I ever want to do is take somebody's life and turn it into a bible lesson or a moral.  It dismisses the uniqueness of the person--and that is especially true for Michael.  I knew him in Louisiana and only barely knew how much trouble he got into with drugs. He never lost his smile, however, that lit up the room -- even when he showed up unexpectedly in Atlanta and with a shaved head.  

My youngest son asked him bluntly as only kids can--"Why is your head bald?"  Michael gave back an equally honest answer--"I have been very sick and the medicine did this to me."  I stood there chastened. 

Such began several months as we tried to answer his question--"What does it mean to live and die?"  He had several months to live after a misdiagnosis.  The symptoms were not due to his wild life but the cancer, which was treatable when caught early.  It was way too late.  

The turning point for Michael came in a library where I worked.   Michael was pacing, agitated and wondering what good a bucket list is for somebody who is going to die. His eyes were wild and unfocused.  I went over to the door, shut it and locked it.  I asked him to try to open the door without touching the lock.  So he pulled hard at the door, cussed at it, until that is....he heard me open another door on the other side of the room.  

"What did you hear," I asked him?  

"That other door just opened," he said.

"Right.  You will never get back to your life as you knew it. The promise is that another door will open for you."  

It registered for him. He calmed down, even sat down on the sofa.  Michael saw for the first time that hope for him was not through a locked door, but another door that would open.  

Now I can't explain why he experienced and understood it that way.  But once he let go as life as he had known it, he took began to live with the new life he now had.  He wrote poetry, visited cancer patients, planned his funeral as a "service of gratitude."  In fact, he had 12 urns made for his ashes, and he gave them away to others.  "Well, that is YOU...Michael," I said.  

 

Here's where I do not want to ruin the story.  

 

The old saying is true. When one door closes in life, God opens another.  Remember!  I did not say that “when God closes a door.”  Life closes doors.  We have the God-given free will to see what door God will open next.  

The other old saying is true.  Doors are locked from the inside by us.  Michael opened a door to his life preparing for the next life.  A bunch of us still taste that life Michael found.  

Temple of Life

Life Blooms for Us

This post follows yesterday's comments about Bryant's "Thanatopsis"--Greek translation: "Meditation on Death."  I tried to say that the poem is so important because it asks the impossible.  How can we face our death with "unfaltering trust" and lie down for "pleasant dreams?"  Remember that it was Hamlet who thought about suicide, "To be or not to be," and feared most of all eternal nightmares!  Give Bryant his due!  At age 17, he penned "the question" which he seemed to find an answer for himself.

The question of facing death is not of the head--but the heart.  It quivers our bones.  I remember my high school years during a summer in Maine. It was the summer they called "the great fog," when it moved in for almost a month--dark, thick, enveloping the sun.  Somehow I had asked myself "the" question--what if there is nothing after death, just the enduring fog of nothingness, not even the awareness of silence?  And as a born and raised Christian, I got down and dirty to it: "Maybe the smartest people hid Jesus' body so that generations could worship a lie and be saved the fear of death?"  Yikes--a high school in a real funk and fog. 

Well, I worked on a fishing boat, a party boat for cod (when there was still codfish around!)  It was the same boat my Dad had worked on as a college kid.  The same day this question hung like a noose around my neck, I was working a trip on the boat.  I climbed up onto the roof for the trip out to sea. Only now do I laugh that I curled up in the life boat!  I was really adrift in my faith.  All I can tell you is that on my way out of the harbor, all of life pressed down on me with nothingness.....and that we hit a pocket, where suddenly after weeks, the sun broke through with a waterfall of light.  Everything lit up!  That light filled me with such a joy that I just knew the story of Jesus was TRUE for me.  Not in my head, or for history--but in my personal life itself.  I was washed in my own tears. 

Imagine my dilemma.  There I was in the depths of this experience with tears coming down my face...and all I had was a crew of Mainers to share it with.  Don't bet on it!  That would have required another conversion experience. 

Notice how I said--that was MY experience. It was intensely personal.  Intended for nobody else, it alone still beats in my heart.  Oh, don't get me wrong.  I still look into graves and ask myself "how can life really come from there?"  However, each time I face up to the question and walk there with others facing their deaths, I step beyond the place my limited reason to the Spirit of life which breaks through and fills the temple of life in me. 
 
I have never, ever known anyone on the verge of death to philosophize. What I have witnessed is that there are some who face the question and find the answer for themselves.  Until the question is really asked, and we let ourselves drift in the sea of nothingness, we cannot be found by the Answer for us.  The point is this:  when we really face "the" question--our own "Thanatopsis," then we can discover what, or who is truly ALIVE. 

Let's work with the above picture.  It is framed in the fog.  The boats fill the frame itself.  Right? Now, look at this picture. Same scene, next frame--there are tulips, life blooms in the middle of it.  Or, the fog does not prevent the flowers from blooming.  Whatever...but when we dare ourselves to confront the fog, we find and see the flowers as they really are--a gift always in our midst.  Go find the flowers meant for you. 

House of Death

Stanza from Thanotopsis

or

"Meditation on Death"

by 

William Cullen Bryant

So live, that when thy summons comes to join

The innumerable caravan which moves

To that mysterious realm where each shall take

His chamber in the silent halls of death,

Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,

Scourged by his dungeon; but, sustain'd and soothed

By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave,

Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch

About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.

This post may have too much reality.  I've always been struck that Bryant wrote this poem at age 17 with such poignancy about "the question" in life.  How do we go to the house of death and lie down with "unfaltering trust" for "pleasant dreams?"  The poem implies a source for that trust. I have always wondered if he meant for us to seek and name that source of trust for ourselves.  

 

So, with apologies to that poet, I wrote my own response to  “Thanatopsis” called “River-Riders.”  I tried to be more direct about the source for that trust.  See how it works for you. 

River-Riders

Either this life makes sense

or perfect nonsense.

Ech generation rides the river

to the falls to vanish forever,

or carried by grace to the

Garden only God could give us,

to grow beyond what we ever

deserve or desire or dream,

from the everlasting flow of life,

that begins and ends and

then begins again in the God,

who we discover is the river. 

We have to discover our own answers if they are to work for us.  For me, it was to recognize that the "caravan" toward death was really the River of Life itself which continues in the Garden (metaphorically) which God intends for us.  Or, like the birds of the air who simply trust the air as the place where they truly fly with an unfaltering trust.  

What's 100 Bucks Really Worth?

Don't Let the Chain of Love Stop   

with YOU! 

Hey, I admit it.  I am not a country music fan.  But I confess that the lyrics can get caught in my head and mean alot to me. Have you ever heard Clay Walker's The Chain of Love?   The whole meaning gets stuck with me--whatever good you do is passed forward...and it returns in a different way--usually with the love magnified. 

Here’s the gist of the plot.  A man is driving home in a beat up Pontiac and fixes a flat for an old lady’s Mercedes.  He fixes more than the tire, however, because she is frightened in the dark where a hundred cars have passed her by.  “What do I owe you,” she asks?  He replies that his name is Joe” and then gives the song’s refrain: 

You don't owe me a thing, I've been there too
Someone once helped me out,
Just the way I'm helping you
If you really want to pay me back,
Here's what you do
Don't let the chain of love end with you

The story continues as the lady stops at a diner, and a waitress who is about “eight months along” and dead on her feet takes her order.  The lady leaves a $100 tip and writes the refrain on a napkin.  When the waitress arrives home that night, she tells the refrain to her husband about the “chain of love” and to keep it going.  Then she adds:  “Everything's gonna be alright, I love you, Joe!”  

Look what’s happened—they are all links in the chain of love.  The point is not that we benefit monetarily in the end, although that’s a nice touch.  The point is that we ourselves magnify love and receive it only if we give it away.  What good is love if it stops with us—a dead end? 

We are rather human links that pass along what can never be earned, but which is always a gift--the love of one person from another.  

 

We all know Jesus’ familiar lines—“it is more blessed to give than to receive.”  But do we understand that he is talking about the Chain of Love that began with him?  God sets love in motion in the world with his Son, and we regardless of how think it continues—in fact keep it going.  We know love because others have become links in the chain of love.  Isn’t that what we pass along--“Everything's gonna be alright, I love you, _____ and then we fill in the name?”   

By the way, what's the 100 bucks worth in this story? The cost to change the tire?  The generous tip? Or, the recognition and affirmation of another human being?  

 

Starting Over

 The Stuff of a New Day...

Beginning Again

The years will never take away
Our chance to start anew
It's only the beginning now
So dreams can still come true.

                                   Gertrude B. Mclain  

I have listened to many people pour out the pain of their lives.  There is one indelible lesson I learn each time.  The most painful wounds are self-inflicted.  All of us go through painful times in our lives, suffer profound losses, face into the brokenness of our lives and those of others.  Shakespeare's slings and arrows of outrageous fortune come from us.  Let me say emphatically that the pain in our lives is real.  The problem is what we tell ourselves about them--especially, the resignation that we cannot keep going.  The stones in our lives fall silent...to be true to this blog's theme.

Look a Piglet--is it just a kid's story.  He goes off to a birthday party carrying a balloon.  He falls on it and B*A*N*G--it explodes.  Okay, that's a loss for him.  But look what he tells himself about it.  He falls on ground and tells himself that "the universe has blown up, or at least the forest part of it has."  So he lies there on his back giving up!  Then, he finally determines to get up and get going.  "No sense lying here on my back forever," he says.  

Is that a kid's story, or the wounded kid in us that gets hurt in life and cannot carry on in life?  Okay. If you read this blog, the last two posts have been about the filters we use to interpret our experiences.  Experiences are neutral. Two people with the same experience can interpret them entirely different.  Piglet chose to lie on the ground.  Or, what we tell ourselves can ground us in reality.  We can challenge our irrational thinking.  No matter what we suffer, and it can be great, the sun does come up the next day and we can begin anew.  Besides. Lying on your back is not a great way to see life.  New days begin with or without us.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Shipwrecks, Part Two

Shipwrecks--Same Song, Next Verse

In a musty old hall in Detroit they prayed, in the "Maritime Sailors' Cathedral." The church bell chimed 'til it rang twenty-nine times for each man on the Edmund Fitzgerald. The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down of the big lake they call "Gitche Gumee." "Superior," they said, "never gives up her dead when the gales of November come early!"

 Gordon Lightfoot
The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald 

 SS Edmund Fitzgerald 

Remember the song by Gordon Lightfoot that tells the story of the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald?  It is based on the actual shipwreck of an iron ore vessel on Lake Superior on November 10, 1975. When asked about his music, Lightfoot said this was the most important piece for him because of the living tribe it gave to the crew.

We also carry our shipwrecks with us.  And unless we are able to understand them in new ways, they can prevent us from living fully in the present.  Not only did our ship sink in the past, we tell ourselves, but stand on watch to keep it from ever happening again.  


I started a piece yesterday and want to build on it.  The question was:  How do we keep the shipwrecks from past from wrecking the present….and the future for that matter?  The premise is that we all have filters or grids which channel and interpret our experiences.  As the experience filters, we interpret it.  What we think about the experience creates our feelings. 

Look at the diagram below.  This HEPA filter channels and eliminates the allergens—and it really works too!  As a result, our sensory system does not detect and react to the allergens.  Put a different filter in place—and watch out!  

 The point is that our shipwrecks from the past can become locked in place as our filter. It channels the information from similar experiences and can set off our warning alarm—fear fills us into panic.  However, change the filter and you no longer interpret the experience as a threat. 

Albert Ellis wrote a great book about this concept:  How to Keep People from Pushing our Buttons. His message is simple. Our experiences are neutral. Our filters send us the information which we define as the threat.  Two people can react entirely different to the same experience.  Case in point:  we know the sound of the dentist’s drill. We react differently if we are actually in the chair or if we hear something similar on TV.  It comes down to the filter. People don’t push our buttons.  The filter sets us up so that we push our own buttons.  

Example:  In the movie, Rudy, Dan Rudy beat incredible odds to enter Notre Dame and then make the football team.  His past “shipwreck” was that he could never measure up to family expectations.  In other words, his filter interprets his experiences as saying that he just cannot make it.  So he tries doubly hard.  He puts a different filter in place that interprets every challenge as a stepping stone to his goal.  Changing the filter changes his interpretation. 

However, at the end of his senior year, a new coach will not let him dress for the final game.  Dan had promised his father that if he came to the game, “you will see me run out of that tunnel.”  But now he is told that he won’t dress for the game.  The past shipwreck is back in full force—his ego is wrecked.  So he misses practice and is going to quit the team—“I am no good after all.”  When the stadium grounds manager finds him, Rudy explains that he “wanted to prove to his father” that he had made the team.  The manager replies—listen for how he enables Rudy to change the filter: 

Fortune: You're 5 foot nothin', 100 and nothin', and you have barely a speck of athletic ability. And you hung in there with the best college football players in the land for 2 years. And you're gonna walk outta here with a degree from the University of Notre Dame. In this life, you don't have to prove nothin' to nobody but yourself. And after what you've gone through, if you haven't done that by now, it ain't gonna never happen. Now go on back.

What’s the key for changing the filter? Confront the negative thinking.  Challenge your irrational thoughts.  Who are you REALLY?  In this life, you don't have to prove nothin' to nobody but yourself.  Use that as your filter!  Tell yourself rational thoughts that you can accept.  Don’t get shipwrecked by the past!