Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Halloween Lesson

A Father's Enduring Lesson 
for Halloween

My favorite Halloween story was Sleepy Hollow and the Headless Horseman. I could not wait for the show to air.  The spectre of the night coming out of nowhere was rooted in the primary fear of the unknown--a kid's true haunt.  Then there were these lines which I never forgot which I found in the text.



Reverend Steenwyck: Their heads weren't found severed. Their heads
He told me that my fears had a name--
were not found at all.
Ichabod Crane: The heads are... gone?
Notary James Hardenbrook: Taken. Taken by the Headless Horseman. Taken back to hell.

My father always seized on the teachable moments for me--and without punishment.  He told me that my fears had a name--

FOFF!  

"The more you run from Foff," he said, "The bigger and more fearsome he gets.  Stand and face him, and he shrinks so small you can laugh at him." 

Was that the lesson of Sleepy Hollow?  To face what you fear?  There is this unforgettable line from the story:

Ichabod Crane: It is truth, but truth is not always appearance.


Fear wears its own mask—and does not resemble the truth that God’s love is ultimate reality.  The lesson of the Headless Horseman is that he is obviously—blind!  He cannot see things as they really are.  If we want to be blind for our lives—that is indeed a nightmare.  It’s a piece of heaven when we can wake up and see things as God intended for us.  Thanks Dad for the lesson! 

 




        


Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Hurricane Thoughts

Thoughts in a Hurricane
Sandy, October 30, 2012



The Hurricane
William Cullen Bryant



Lord of the winds! I feel thee nigh,
I know thy breath in the burning sky!
And I wait, with a thrill in every vein,
For the coming of the hurricane!










I went out this morning for the dog to walk me as usual.  We know our path very well now. The day was colored in hurricane--swirls of leaves twisted into grey sky.  The rain blew sideways and trees inverted like umbrellas.  Nobody else braved the outdoors. Mother Nature and my dog had an urgent rendez-vous in mind!  As we rounded the corner, there in the field between two homes stood a magnificent buck with several points on the antlers. Almost as if posing for us, he lifted his head into the sky...and for a brief moment, he seemed to say, freedom.  Nobody else dared the day but us, mere onlookers, who backed off quickly not wanting to disturb such majesty.



  Sandy, 2012

Oh Lord, send us a hurricane that cleanses the earth,
And waters the ground for months to come and gives life,
To creation. Carry the leaves heavenward and twirl them
Into neat bundles to feed the foliage with compost rich,
In minerals. Lay waste the campaign signs and chase away,
Candidates, and pull the plug on our power to save us
From endless commercials and ourselves, the illusion
that we know what we do without you. 



  

Monday, October 29, 2012

HOW do you get there from here?



How Will You Get There    
From Here?  


“You can’t get there from here!”  Oh really?  Isn’t the real question, “HOW will you get there from here?”  Something there is in us which finds a way.  That was the one memorable line from Jurassic Park—“nature finds a way.”  So do we.  But we have to be willing to have eyes to see new ways.  All too often it is easy to resign ourselves to the old euphemism—“You can’t get there from here.”  

 Then I discovered this amazing combination of images along my daily walk.  The familiar path. The obvious bridge across the creek.  But now, after a massive oak fell across the path on the other side of the bridge—there’s a cut through of a section to clear the way.  Trust me, without the section cut out, you would have to really climb to pass. 

It occurred to me that the picture represents the three ways we try to walk through life.  The first is to follow the path in front of us--are we willing to seek other paths?  The second is to cross bridges--are we willing to help build bridges between others and our future?  How about cutting our way through?  Removing obstacles? Sometimes necessary, and also hazardous.  Always it entails a combination of the above if we want to get there from here. 

There is this one glaring exception from Robert Frost. We may think we know where we are trying to go.  We may even struggle to find new paths, build bridges and even cut our way through to where we think we wish to go.  But!  in the end discover a whole new destination.  Remember Frost's famous lines for the walker? 

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.



Sunday, October 28, 2012

The Car Talk Secret

How do the Car Talk Guys Make It On The Radio?  

Let's cut to the chase.  This is the age of special effects and the LED screens--make that 3-D. So much so that the Disney Magic of Snow White flopped on its  DVD debut.  But along come Ray and Tommy Magliozzi, the Tappet Brothers known  as Click and Clack--and what happens for this radio show?  3.3 million loyal listeners across 660 stations.  There are nuts like me who actually buy their classic hits cds for long distance trips.

Of course, they are fantastic diagnostics.  They play "stump the chumps" and go back to previous callers to see how their advice went.  Most of the time--these guys are in the ball park.  Then again, the music is zany, country tunes with car lyrics. The puzzler can really be a head-scratcher.  But let's face it--who listens to the radio just to get information (just google it) let alone to get puzzles and hear music? 
 
If you are a part of the loyal listeners--you already know the answer.   Personal connection.  That's the key.  These guys connect with people who call the show.  That particular connection then extends to a universal connection with the general audience.   Don't we all want a person on the line?

 Every week the radio show ends the same way…“That’s it, you have wasted another hour….and don’t drive like my brother,” says Tom Magliozzi, and followed by a resounding refrain by brother Ray, “and don’t drive like my brother.”  

We could all stand to waste an hour by our culture's standards. Connect.  Laugh. Don't take the world so seriously. Remember you are a person!  Television just does not connect in the same way for me. The secret to this show is the call in and the connection which we can identify with.  In a world of things, the Car Talk guys connect with people.  

Albert Camus was reputed to have said.............

"Our most desperate need is to be heard as a soul."











Saturday, October 27, 2012

All the World is a Canvass



The Canvass of the World

The other day, I went to a wedding and it poured rain before the ceremony.  I heard the old phrase, “Oh don’t worry.  It is good luck if it rains on your wedding!”  Then we emerged from the ceremony, there was not just one rainbow—but two complete rainbows, one higher than the other.  “Oh, that means good luck!”  I guess you can read anything you want into the weather.  


It is also called a pathetic fallacy (pitiful falsehood) --the belief that the natural world empathizes and predicts with our lives.  I want to say this with TLC.  I have also gone to funerals when people would say that the natural world is "crying" for the deceased and the loss of life. The natural world I love is no god, some separate power to take a stand in human affairs.  

The recurring motif (abiding theme)  is that we create a canvass of the world.  We paint our emotions and thoughts right into the natural world. We see in the world our heart's brokenness and and joy. At no time do I experience this more than at sunrise.  Everything suddenly bursts with light that is reflected by the natural world. I see in it our essential nature to be the canvass of God, wearing the colors of vibrant life that lives abundantly.  

Those two terms (pathetic fallacy, recurring motif) I learned in sophomore English.  They were not on the SAT.  But we should examine our lives and enhance our artistic nature to look into the world and allow it to draw our creative selves into being. 


Friday, October 26, 2012

Living in Every Dimension


Do We Care For Ourselves
As We Really Are?
 
Time to get on my high horse—

We have really gotten the message about caring for ourselves physically.  Even if we don't do it--we have heard it.  The punch line is--the more we care for ourselves, the longer we will live.  The marketers sell everything by linking it to either to lower your chances of dread disease or to extend your life span. The new motto for the age--Live Longer

Look at the pie chart.  The new motto sees life only in physical terms--a level one, singular dimension.  Is it too much of a stretch to say we invest in one dimensional lives and living? What's your workout schedule?  How many supplements do you take?  Which diet for this year?  

I hear something vastly different from those with illness that threatens to cut life short.  They enter multi-dimensional life.  They become aware of their social, psychological and spiritual needs.  They stop asking about quantity of years. What about the quality of living each moment?  They care less about extending life and focus on what Buddhists call "mindfulness" for living.  You cannot live the past or tomorrow.  Only today.  Live it now!   Maybe that is another way of saying Carpe diem--seize the moment. Rudyard Kipling said it marvelously in his poem "IF."



If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,


Now, what about advocating for ourselves in the health care system?   Only you can make that happen.  We can raise for our physicians our full considerations and needs beyond the limited focus of cure.  Really?  Sure--it is the rare physician who knows that medicine was once referred to as "the cure of souls."  Now it is the body. 

Need enouragement?  Go on line and get The Washington Post, 10/20, B-2, “On Faith.”  It’s a new column and this one highlights the work of Christina Puchalski. Professor of Medicine at George Washington Medical School who writes on the integration of soul, spirit with health.  She calls it “whole person care.”  She teaches future physicians to ask the personal questions, the religious questions….because we don’t treat sickness, we treat people. (Thank you Patch Adams!).  Can we envision a time when we will visit physicians and their offices will include certified chaplains as a part of whole health treatment?

Don’t wait for it.  Do it yourself!  Advocate for your whole health needs.  We all easily shop for the whole health foods—what is the food that feeds the spirit, the soul-food that lasts?  All too often I find the discovery of patients who find themselves as far more than bodies to cure, but whole people for compassion.  We can only offer that ourselves in how we treat physical illness.You just may not want certain treatments because of what it does of your life.  Look at the diagram--whatever you do at the base of the pie chart effects the other dimensions. 

 I love the prayer that says, “Grant O Lord that this sickness may be an occasion for my faith in you.”  Can sickness, failing bodies, be the new vision of a spiritual life to see ourselves and others differently—and to renew life in profound ways?   I also love the prayer that bids that we might be “restored to wholeness in our lives.”  We need to say that prayer for ourselves and seek in total health care.

Do more than get on a high horse.
Ride it!  

Thursday, October 25, 2012

Charlie Brown Eyes

The Wisdom of Peanuts 
(rather, George Schultz)  

What was it that Schultz saw in Charlie Brown that was the "theme of every person?"  It is that vision that I am after....and it runs throughout the Peanuts' cartoon strips.  Don't we all remember this one?


Lucy: Aren't the clouds beautiful? They look like big balls of cotton. I could just lie here all day and watch them drift by. If you use your imagination, you can see lots of things in the cloud's formations. What do you think you see, Linus?

Linus: Well, those clouds up there look to me look like the map of the British Honduras on the Caribbean. [points up] That cloud up there looks a little like the profile of Thomas Eakins, the famous painter and sculptor. And that group of clouds over there... [points] ...gives me the impression of the Stoning of Stephen. I can see the Apostle Paul standing there to one side.

Lucy: Uh huh. That's very good. What do you see in the clouds, Charlie Brown?

Charlie Brown: Well... I was going to say I saw a duckie and a horsie, but I changed my mind.



Don't laugh!  Don't we often try to see with the vision of Linus...and we don't dare to allow ourselves to see with Charlie Brown eyes?   There is a child in each of us that we never lose, but often ignore at our peril.  I am not talking about immaturity--but simplicity, to see things as they really first appear to us without driving ourselves mad by looking so far beneath of the surface of things. 


Life is like a ten speed bicycle.
Most of us have gears we never use.
                                                             Charles M. Schultz


                                                          Or forget to use!



Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Just Go!

Just Go!  

Who dares to let go of the world we control for ourselves...all the gadgets for remote control, the texting, the emails, 24/7 news clips--it is time to ask the question:

do we live our lives,
or do the things of life control us?

Can we see our life stretching out before us like a path, meant to follow, explore, discover and repose in awe? 


RX:  Put a Walk on your Schedule! 
Give me a walk in the fall anytime. Breathe in those colors raises your mood to a new height.  The joy is to see the colors hidden through other seasons so fully expressed—paraphrasing St. Paul—“in the fullness of time.”  (Gal. 4:4; Ephes. 1:10)  The glory within takes time to mature to the glory given for us to see.  

Friederich Schiller (1795) captured it in his poem “The Walk,” with is burst of joy: 

Greetings from me, my hill, with the reddish, radiant summit!
      Sun be greeted by me, shining so lovely thereon!

I have noticed this insight in the life of Jesus.  So often, he just tells people to go,  and in their going, they find new life.  The 10 Lepers go—and they are healed.  The man goes and washes in the pool and regains vision. The Centurion goes back home and learns on the way that his servant is healed. Finally—the women and disciples are told to go to Galilee to greet the risen Lord.  Just go.  Just go for your walk. See what shouts from inside and do not be surprised by what you hear.  Then go again!


Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Write Your Epitaph NOW!





Remembering Senator George S. McGovern 
1922-2012
 There can be no doubt that in his half century career in the public arena, George McGovern never gave up on his principles or determination to call this nation to a higher plan.  America will be better because of him.   Sen. Bob Dole

 Each of us has the opportunity to begin to write an epitaph before we "get that way."  Do we know what we live for--who we live for--and does our life show that forth?  

We saw that quality in George S. McGovern. His death holds up a standard of integrity which I find lacking in the current campaign--or at least, it is a standard that he upheld which others now struggle to maintain. As one pundit observed, no candidate has shown one ounce of humility.  Not so McGovern, though he lost by a landslide to Nixon, he did not spend a lifetime smearing Nixon after he resigned from office. The resignation said enough.  Years later, he attended the funeral of Pat Nixon, and when asked why he would come, he said that life is not about campaigning.  

Even in declining years, McGovern dedicated himself to his original mission to eliminate hunger in the world.  He began as JFK’s appointee of the Food for Peace program and ended as recipient of the World Food Prize.  

George McGovern fed the nation in many ways as a statesman.  I shall never forget his concession to Nixon in 1972 as he parted with these words from Yeats: 

Think where man’s glory begins and ends,
And say my glory was I had such friends.


The lesson from George McGovern is that lived his epitaph before he even died.  That’s purpose and integrity. 




Monday, October 22, 2012

James Taylor's Greatest Hit

Don't say Goodbye 
to the Fall without J.T. !
  
September Grass

Well, the sun's not so hot in the sky today
And you know I can see summertime slipping on away
A few more geese are gone, a few more leaves turning red
But the grass is as soft as a feather in a featherbed
So I'll be king and you'll be queen
Our kingdom's gonna be this little patch of green


I can’t let the fall slip away without a few stanza’s from James Taylor’s least known non-greatest hits—from the October Road cd.  Whether I am rolling up and down Maine’s back roads or stuck in metro traffic—if it is the fall, I have this cd playing.  The tone of the music is soft and fits the season as it passes away.  It also brings back memories of seeing him in concerts—and for me—this music fits his gentle character and nature. Perhaps the greatest hits have little to do with sales and everything to do with the authenticity of the composer.  






October Road
Keep me walking, October road.
Keep me walking in the sunshine, yeah
A little friend of mine
October road
(repeat)
Help me now


Sunday, October 21, 2012

God Takes Off!


God’s Fall Flight

God flew over the shore this morning,
And could not resist coloring the trees
With joy. They shook with delight and
lifted limbs in a chorus that sang colors,
into the water and reflected the heart
of Creation.
       I reached up to grab hold,
And soared with him toward the heavens,
But He dropped me into the colors of
Heaven and the song of the trees,
Raised in me to higher pitch, the joy
God simply cannot resist. 

Saturday, October 20, 2012

The Great EYE

Pemaquid Lighthouse
Maine
What do you really see? 



Do you see the face in the top of the lighthouse?  That’s my son looking down at me.  What a view that is from that point—more than 15 miles out to sea. 


The lighthouse stands more than 100 feet above the crashing surf of Pemaquid Point. John Quincy Adams commissioned the lighthouse in 1827 which was later fitted for a rare Frensel lens—one of six still used in Maine.   By popular vote, Maine citizens voted this lighthouse, with the windjammer Victory Chimes, for its quarter.  



What always strikes me as I stand on that point is the real vision into the nature of things.  It takes me back to the original settlers, to the shipwrecks on those rocks, and to march of civilization over the years.  A few lines came to me which later penned this poem. 




Pemaquid Sightseer

Look through the eye of the lighthouse atop Pemaquid,
hundreds of feet above surf that pounds those cliffs 
and see more than fourteen miles of tide and time that 
stretches a two hundred year canvass of the past and 
those who first landed here.  Only the great Eye of God 
alone looks beyond what we see to the heart of people
tossed through generations upon wild seas, denying
Light for light.

What do terns know above the lighthouse, seeing
where the wind comes from and how to rest on its arms,
Or the hermit crab that sees home and how it to wear it,
With starfish grace of one movement that walks its legs?
This vision sees more than the past, but into the present
nature of things God gives to see with Seeing, sentinels
perched in hearts to light divinity and enlighten the Way.  







Friday, October 19, 2012

WHERE Do You Look For The Meaning of Life?




The Real Question….

Where Do You Find the Meaning of Life? 

Read that again! 
The question is not—“WHAT is the meaning of life.” 
The question is “WHERE do you find the meaning of life?”
The difference is that if you ask “what,” then you have to state an objective value—of the mind.   If you ask “where” do you find it—then you know subjectively—of the heart.  That may not sound like a big difference.  But if you settle for “what it may be,” then the discussion is over.  Whereas—if I know where to find the meaning of life—then, I am on a journey.  Got it?  Life is not a problem to solve in the present, it is a journey toward ultimate meaning.
Here are two authors.  Which side of the balance do you come down on?  Where do you place the weight of your experience?  




EXAMPLE 1: 
Leo Buscaglia & The Fall of Freddie the Leaf

The theme is that Life is stronger than individual lives which pass away.  Our joy comes from the moment of knowing we are a part of Life.  Death is to be an accepted part of life in the “fall season of death.”  So Freddie the leaf falls from the tree and has a momentary glimpse of the whole tree before passing into nothingness. 
Freddie asks his friend, Daniel: "Then what has been the reason for all of this? Why were we here at all if we only have to fall and die?"
Daniel answered in his matter-of-fact way, "It's been about the sun and the moon. It's been about happy times together. It's been about the shade and the old people and the children. It's been about colors in Fall. It's been about seasons. Isn't that enough?"
What do you, the reader think—is that enough?  For many—it is enough to make your own meaning in the present. The rest is “pie in the sky.”  When Freddie does fall from the tree, the narrator repeats the great theme of enduring Life: 
Freddie landed on a clump of snow. It somehow felt soft and even warm. In this new position he was more comfortable than he had ever been. He closed his eyes and fell asleep. He did not know that Spring would follow Winter and that the snow would melt into water. He did not know that what appeared to be his useless dried self would join with the water and serve to make the tree stronger. Most of all, he did not know that there, asleep in the tree and the ground, were already plans for new leaves in the Spring.

 EXAMPLE 2:William Blake & Auguries of Innocence


Notice how he moves out of the natural world into the spiritual.  He does not stop in the physical realm, but journeys toward the ultimate.  The same could be said of William Wordsworth and Intimations of Immortality.  The natural world leads to the spiritual, ultimate one. 

 
To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.
 


So What Do You Think?  Or Feel?  
Remember the real question—not “what” but “where” do you find the meaning of life?   
You can easily stop with Buscaglia and “Freddie” in the immediate world—we pass this way once, 
are aware of Life, and that’s that—blunt but honest.  Or, is there a sense in the natural world, a deeper 
vision or intimation that we are going with Life on a journey.  Not just passing away, but passing on….
Think of it, feel with it--every time you see the fall colors. 
 
 


Thursday, October 18, 2012

The Weather of the Heart

The Weather 
of the Heart 



Every afternoon brings several miles of walking with my dog—or maybe, she walks me!  Today was different. Dark storm clouds gathered in the sky in front of me.  No need for thunder to warn me that rain was on the way.  Yet, Jezebel just walked me on…when usually the drop in air pressure warns her first, and she takes me home, pronto.  Still the clouds gathered, still we walked on….fathered and farther from home. Who can I call if we get stuck out here?  Is it really safe to be walking across this open field?  Sprinkles of rain portended possible downpour.  Then, the walk started toward home…we had reached the farthest point, and now we made tracks home.  The clouds hung in the close humid air. Gee, maybe we will make it after all!  But I quickened our pace no matter how times she wanted to stop.  We took a short cut off the path and came out very close to home.  What did I think when we made it through the door?  Guess. 

I worried over the walk and I missed the walk itself!

 Enough said?   

A parable is a story which is not literally true but speak Truth.  That walk did actually happen.  But in this case, the Truth is that I had worried out the walk.  I missed my usual observations, the prayers I say, and the reflections that catch up with me. 


 Now contrast that with Gene Kelly and the famous “Singing in the Rain.”  There’s a song of optimism, new love, energy inside him which is for me “the weather of the heart.”  The interior weather of the heart drowns out the rain that falls from the skies.

I'm singing in the rain
Just singing in the rain
What a glorious feelin'
I'm happy again
I'm laughing at clouds
So dark up above
The sun's in my heart
And I'm ready for love....




In fact, there comes a time when we recognize that the real matter is not what happens to us--life is not fair and adversities do rain upon us.  But we can discover some gifts that come in adversity, from facing up to our worries so that we do not run from them. Leave it to Shakespeare...again: 


 The quality of mercy is not strain'd,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.
The Merchant Of Venice Act 4, scene 1, 180–187


Walking with a Question

What would life be like if you had to carry an umbrella with you no matter where you went--just out of fear, that worry that the skies would open up on you?  Nobody does that, you say?  Really? I ask back.  

Plenty of people go through life with so much worry that it literally empties the day and days to come of its life blood.  The weather of the heart is such that it knows, it does not worry, but it expects it to rain anytime--yet rejoices that the weather of the heart comes ultimately from God's love and not this world. Maybe we discover that the rain is drowned out by the mercy of God. 






Wednesday, October 17, 2012

Who Do You Admire?


 Dare-devil Diver Drops 24 Miles 
and Breaks the Sound Barrier

 Last Sunday, “Fearless Felix” Baumgartner jumped 24 miles from the stratosphere at an estimated 833mph, that’s Mach 1.24, which is faster than the speed of sound. He offered two thoughts:
1.      We look awfully small from up there,
2.       All I wanted to do was to come back alive.  

What exactly did he contribute to science?  So much for the pride of human spirits to risk their lives for meaningless records—except to be first and say you did it

Then I remembered poet Denise Levertov--who hardly sports the face of the competitor out to shatter records.  Compare these faces and ask yourself--who has really plumbed the depths of the human spirit?  She captured this enduring truth in her poem "Suspended:"  

I had grasped God's garment in the void
But my hand slipped
On the rich silk of it.
The 'everlasting arms' my sister loved to remember
Must have upheld my leaden weight
From falling, even so,
For though I claw at empty air and feel
Nothing, no embrace,
I have not plummeted
 

 Oh, that last line—“I have not plummeted.” 
And I thought of those courageous people who have to dare the unknown of their own medical fate—going into tests and surgeries without end—and feeling upheld, no matter what the diagnosis.  Or those people whose lives are challenged where they work, day after day, just not knowing if the pink slip will come…and when it does, what do I hear but—something just held me up.  And the ones who lose a loved one tragically, a bolt out of the blue steals them away—and they go into complete freefall only to find new legs and keep on walking.  

I don’t think we need to dare ourselves to climb to great heights and free-fall to break the sound barrier.  Life hands us enough of that already.  In those moments, I know those who have discovered that Life embraces, upholds, and ultimately trustworthy no matter how small they look to us.