Whether in recent days you have read or heard about these haunting words and their original source, give them your full attention now:
"Where is my faith? Even deep down… there is nothing but emptiness and darkness... If there be God — please forgive me."
"Such deep longing for God -- and ... repulsed -- empty -- no faith -- no love -- no zeal. (Saving) souls holds no attraction -- Heaven means nothing -- pray for me please that I keep smiling at Him in spite of everything."
"What do I labor for?" “If there be no God, there can be no soul. If there be no soul then, Jesus, You also are not true."
"Jesus has a very special love for you. As for me, the silence and the emptiness is so great that I look and do not see, listen and do not hear."
"I spoke as if my very heart was in love with God -- tender, personal love. If you were (there), you would have said, 'What hypocrisy."'
"I utter words of community prayers -- and try my utmost to get out of every word the sweetness it has to give -- but my prayer of union is not there any longer -- I no longer pray."
Mother Theresa. You know, the beloved Nobel Peace Prize winner who is apparently on the fast track to sainthood?... Yeah, her. She said or wrote all of those words, revealed in a new book about her to be published this fall, in correspondence sent to friends and confidants over the last several decades of her life.
What’s your reaction?
Secular press reports I’ve seen treat this like another of the Mother’s miracles, though one with a wounded and stained history. The reports express surprise, as if it is some kind of newsflash that a person of such high spiritual regard, such laudable and selfless achievement, could experience, let alone openly confess, doubt and distrust of this magnitude.
There’s nothing necessarily mischievous about these secular takes. I doubt media people have it in for Mother Theresa, her beatification, or her place in Christianity’s hall of fame. More bluntly, I assume there are great numbers of Christians who upon hearing of her doubts reacted with similar surprise.
“She was a pillar of faith! No way she felt that much doubt.”
“She’s going to be a saint! They wouldn’t let her be a saint if she were that weak.”
“She’s my role model. I need her to be strong so I can be strong. Please tell me she didn’t really think those things!”
It is the faithful’s naive and needy from whom surprise at Mother Theresa’s doubts will sound most loudly. The naive, because they think of the spiritual journey as a linear progression in which travelers are stronger today than they were yesterday, and will tomorrow continue their steady, predictable advances. The needy, because invulnerable heroes – people who escape the demons of doubt – are for them an essential source of hope from whom even a hint of weakness can be crippling.
Seasoned followers of Jesus, however, will be heartened, not surprised, by Mother Theresa’s discouragement. First, because personal experience long ago proved to them that the road to spiritual growth is neither straight nor smooth-surfaced. Advances along the path today are painfully and easily erased tomorrow. Second, and I think more important, because followers of Jesus know that spiritual heroes conquer doubt; they don’t dodge it.
Exhibit A, Jesus. In the Garden at Gethsemene on the night before he died, all but abandoned by accompanying friends, Jesus pleaded with God to take away what seemed to be his inevitable fate. Yet, doubts clearly surfaced, he concluded his prayer with the conquering cry, “Not my will, but your will be done.”
Spiritual heroes survive doubt, but they can’t eliminate it.
Or, on a cross placed ignominiously between the death trees of two criminals, Jesus demanded God’s attention via the opening words of the 22nd Psalm: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” But in the end, victory sounded with his final breaths: “Into your hands I commend my spirit.”
Spiritual heroes overcome doubt, but they can’t avoid it anymore than you or I can.
I honor Mother Theresa’s candor. That she chose to follow one from whom she felt so completely isolated, and by whom she felt wounded, abandoned, and helpless – that she fed and housed thousands, and loved millions of others while inside she wrestled with imponderable spiritual issues is a blazing testament to hope... my hope. After reading the quotations with which this essay began I know that in the spiritual despair of my past I had good, hopeful company, much the same company as I will have the next time.
Later on today – perhaps three minutes after I post this piece – when I am once again vulnerable, I will look to heaven and thank God for all the saints, including Mothers named Theresa.
Pray with me:
If she could, if he could, if they could... so can I. Help me learn from the example of other followers, God. May I learn not only from their service, but also from their doubt. Not only from their faith, but also from their fears. May I learn from them that to be obedient is not to be happy in the moment, but rather joyful in the end. In the name of Jesus I have had my doubts, yet in his name I still pray, Amen.
Sunday, August 26, 2007
Sunday, August 19, 2007
Countdown to 50 - Redemption
Final random ramblings as I approach my 50th birthday tomorrow.
I have arrived at the last hours of the fifth decade of my life. A few hours and change from now it will be B-Day, an arcane observation brought to you as a precursor to this week’s final reflection.
My last word before 50 is actually an encouraging one, about progress and hope. When I review the seasons of my life, I do not find one that did not in some laudable, necessary way build upon, improve upon, learn or veer from its predecessors. I am today a better person than I was in my thirties. I was in that decade a stronger, more reliable cog in God’s human wheel than I was in my twenties, etc.
The advances have not been linear, of course. Just as no summer season is sunny and 85 every day, so have my personal seasons been unpredictable collections of stormy, seasonable, and delightful conditions. But from the convenience of hindsight, I can say I have always been better than before.
In my teens I cultivated the seeds of silliness and sarcasm that have so well served me since. But I was also naive, intensely, sometimes laughably naive, about the real world.
The twenties never roared for me as they did for our nation last century, but in them I stretched enough to open myself to profound educational experiences at Iowa and in seminary, encounters of the mind and heart that effectively coerced the surrender of my naivete while surrounding me with supportive, encouraging friends and mentors, people who picked me up when I fell and, in some cases, still share part of the road with me today.
But the twenties were also home to profound personal crisis, to the naming of the internal brokenness that had accompanied me unchallenged for most of my still-young life.
In my thirties I figured out, finally, who and I was. The answer not only provided the subject of my masters’ thesis (the seminary called it a “final project” or some such thing, but in my forties I learned that “thesis” sounded a hell of a lot more impressive), it also rooted my heart in hope that my life could mean something, a potential I had not authentically owned in previous seasons.
But also in my thirties I ended a marriage, only haltingly implemented the strategies for personal growth discovered the previous decade, and stalled professionally, allowing ministry to be a creative, but far too repetitive exercise. Though the world around me was changing fast, I didn’t. Though I could see the effects of those changes, I did nothing to respond to them. Naivete redivivus, perhaps.
And in the forties? I rediscovered physical exercise, which had been a missing person in my life for ten or more years. I acknowledged, finally, that the church wasn’t in Kansas anymore; it was time for change. I discovered God’s gift of a person, Shari, with whom I now share marriage. And I claimed more than ever before ministry as calling – divine imperative – rather than profession or career.
The decade was also home to the ethics case that prompted the most poisonous challenge to that call. While there is no doubt that the case was the most hurtful, disgusting experience of my life, during its hell I discovered that I was willing to fight for what/who I believed in, that I valued integrity about as much as anything, and that justice sought could suffice in the absence of justice received. In an earlier essay on this blog I confessed the flawed ways in which I handled that case, but it was the desert through which I had to journey in order to be the better person I am today.
Which is not at all to say the “perfect person” I am today. As this decade closes I speak no bon voyage to the haunting professional insecurities that have made frequent appearances on the Express. Since 1997, but more precisely, in the last 5-8 years, I have bounced mercilessly between celebrating and denying God’s call on my life. It’s been quite the struggle, one that, in these forties’ waning hours, I know I am better equipped for than ever before.
So what of the approaching fifties? I haven’t got a clue, except, with history as corroboration, that at the end of them I will believe myself to be a better person than I was on that humid August night in ‘07 when I brought this essay to a close.
May a similar conclusion accompany the end of your life’s next season.
Thanks for sharing this week with me. And if you’ll permit...
Happy birthday, Bill.
Pray with me:
For every moment that became an incident that joined with others to create patterns that produced the seasons I look back upon, in the name of Jesus I say thank you, God.
I have arrived at the last hours of the fifth decade of my life. A few hours and change from now it will be B-Day, an arcane observation brought to you as a precursor to this week’s final reflection.
My last word before 50 is actually an encouraging one, about progress and hope. When I review the seasons of my life, I do not find one that did not in some laudable, necessary way build upon, improve upon, learn or veer from its predecessors. I am today a better person than I was in my thirties. I was in that decade a stronger, more reliable cog in God’s human wheel than I was in my twenties, etc.
The advances have not been linear, of course. Just as no summer season is sunny and 85 every day, so have my personal seasons been unpredictable collections of stormy, seasonable, and delightful conditions. But from the convenience of hindsight, I can say I have always been better than before.
In my teens I cultivated the seeds of silliness and sarcasm that have so well served me since. But I was also naive, intensely, sometimes laughably naive, about the real world.
The twenties never roared for me as they did for our nation last century, but in them I stretched enough to open myself to profound educational experiences at Iowa and in seminary, encounters of the mind and heart that effectively coerced the surrender of my naivete while surrounding me with supportive, encouraging friends and mentors, people who picked me up when I fell and, in some cases, still share part of the road with me today.
But the twenties were also home to profound personal crisis, to the naming of the internal brokenness that had accompanied me unchallenged for most of my still-young life.
In my thirties I figured out, finally, who and I was. The answer not only provided the subject of my masters’ thesis (the seminary called it a “final project” or some such thing, but in my forties I learned that “thesis” sounded a hell of a lot more impressive), it also rooted my heart in hope that my life could mean something, a potential I had not authentically owned in previous seasons.
But also in my thirties I ended a marriage, only haltingly implemented the strategies for personal growth discovered the previous decade, and stalled professionally, allowing ministry to be a creative, but far too repetitive exercise. Though the world around me was changing fast, I didn’t. Though I could see the effects of those changes, I did nothing to respond to them. Naivete redivivus, perhaps.
And in the forties? I rediscovered physical exercise, which had been a missing person in my life for ten or more years. I acknowledged, finally, that the church wasn’t in Kansas anymore; it was time for change. I discovered God’s gift of a person, Shari, with whom I now share marriage. And I claimed more than ever before ministry as calling – divine imperative – rather than profession or career.
The decade was also home to the ethics case that prompted the most poisonous challenge to that call. While there is no doubt that the case was the most hurtful, disgusting experience of my life, during its hell I discovered that I was willing to fight for what/who I believed in, that I valued integrity about as much as anything, and that justice sought could suffice in the absence of justice received. In an earlier essay on this blog I confessed the flawed ways in which I handled that case, but it was the desert through which I had to journey in order to be the better person I am today.
Which is not at all to say the “perfect person” I am today. As this decade closes I speak no bon voyage to the haunting professional insecurities that have made frequent appearances on the Express. Since 1997, but more precisely, in the last 5-8 years, I have bounced mercilessly between celebrating and denying God’s call on my life. It’s been quite the struggle, one that, in these forties’ waning hours, I know I am better equipped for than ever before.
So what of the approaching fifties? I haven’t got a clue, except, with history as corroboration, that at the end of them I will believe myself to be a better person than I was on that humid August night in ‘07 when I brought this essay to a close.
May a similar conclusion accompany the end of your life’s next season.
Thanks for sharing this week with me. And if you’ll permit...
Happy birthday, Bill.
Pray with me:
For every moment that became an incident that joined with others to create patterns that produced the seasons I look back upon, in the name of Jesus I say thank you, God.
Friday, August 17, 2007
Countdown to 50 - As Old as I Feel
Daily random ramblings as I approach my 50th birthday next Monday.
[WARNING: THIS ONE LIVES DOWN TO ITS "RAMBLING" DESCRIPTION!]
Among my mom’s favorite aphorisms was “You’re only as old as you feel.” Variations on the same theme included “Age is just a number,” and “I’m 39 and holding.” I guess those were the slogans of her protest against aging.
Have you ever asked yourself how old you feel? Did you have an answer? I don’t, because I have no experience with ages other than with the ones through which I have already passed.
An exaggerated example: Due to the recent death of a Japanese citizen, a 114 year-old American now holds the title of world’s oldest living human. How can anyone other than possibly the 110+ crowd know anything about that lady’s experience? I can tell you what 49 feels like; talk to me on Monday and I will offer a snap review of 50. But as for any age I have yet to pass through... haven’t got a clue.
We have well developed age-based stereotypes, of course. Some true, some not. Some fair, some not: Kids are flexible and boundlessly energetic. Twenty-somethings are in the physical, albeit unrefined prime of their lives. Middle-agers expand around the waist, belly or behind. Seniors are wrinkled and deteriorated, at a deeply secreted rate moving inexorably to the end of their lives.
There is truth to any generalization, but not necessarily relevance. Most age-based generalizations aren’t relevant. What does it mean to feel "old," and why does it matter? Why do we cast our debilitations in terms of age rather than, say, symptoms?
Frequently I hear people grumble, “It’s not easy getting old,” as if age is the culprit, when clearly it is not. You rarely hear people say the more descriptive and accurate, “It’s not easy waking up with arthritis, or gout, or bad vision;” it’s more often about their age.
Hey! I could attribute my growing baldness to my age! After all, twenty years ago I had more hair than I now have. So, it’s not easy (nor as hairy) getting old.
With this essay I declare my independence from age. I am Bill Coley, a person increasingly fit for his....
Well, that didn’t work. I try again:
I am Bill Coley, a person who has to call his doctor in the next couple of weeks because the doc wants to check the usual suspects now that I am about to turn....
Not that either.
Hmm. Age is in fact just a number, but it seems to be an inevitable one.
How old are you?
Pray with me:
God, you are timeless. You offer the gift of forever to everybody. We can’t possibly know what forever feels like until we get there, but one day we will, because time and age mean nothing to you. Keep us on, but diverted from the clock, diverted so that we will spend more time living than counting. In the name of Jesus, Amen.
[WARNING: THIS ONE LIVES DOWN TO ITS "RAMBLING" DESCRIPTION!]
Among my mom’s favorite aphorisms was “You’re only as old as you feel.” Variations on the same theme included “Age is just a number,” and “I’m 39 and holding.” I guess those were the slogans of her protest against aging.
Have you ever asked yourself how old you feel? Did you have an answer? I don’t, because I have no experience with ages other than with the ones through which I have already passed.
An exaggerated example: Due to the recent death of a Japanese citizen, a 114 year-old American now holds the title of world’s oldest living human. How can anyone other than possibly the 110+ crowd know anything about that lady’s experience? I can tell you what 49 feels like; talk to me on Monday and I will offer a snap review of 50. But as for any age I have yet to pass through... haven’t got a clue.
We have well developed age-based stereotypes, of course. Some true, some not. Some fair, some not: Kids are flexible and boundlessly energetic. Twenty-somethings are in the physical, albeit unrefined prime of their lives. Middle-agers expand around the waist, belly or behind. Seniors are wrinkled and deteriorated, at a deeply secreted rate moving inexorably to the end of their lives.
There is truth to any generalization, but not necessarily relevance. Most age-based generalizations aren’t relevant. What does it mean to feel "old," and why does it matter? Why do we cast our debilitations in terms of age rather than, say, symptoms?
Frequently I hear people grumble, “It’s not easy getting old,” as if age is the culprit, when clearly it is not. You rarely hear people say the more descriptive and accurate, “It’s not easy waking up with arthritis, or gout, or bad vision;” it’s more often about their age.
Hey! I could attribute my growing baldness to my age! After all, twenty years ago I had more hair than I now have. So, it’s not easy (nor as hairy) getting old.
With this essay I declare my independence from age. I am Bill Coley, a person increasingly fit for his....
Well, that didn’t work. I try again:
I am Bill Coley, a person who has to call his doctor in the next couple of weeks because the doc wants to check the usual suspects now that I am about to turn....
Not that either.
Hmm. Age is in fact just a number, but it seems to be an inevitable one.
How old are you?
Pray with me:
God, you are timeless. You offer the gift of forever to everybody. We can’t possibly know what forever feels like until we get there, but one day we will, because time and age mean nothing to you. Keep us on, but diverted from the clock, diverted so that we will spend more time living than counting. In the name of Jesus, Amen.
Thursday, August 16, 2007
Countdown to 50 - Six Flags, Some Red
Daily random ramblings as I approach my 50th birthday next Monday.
The title track of Bonnie Raitt’s magnificent album “Nick of Time” describes her joy in finding the love of her life a bit later in her life than the social norm. Among the lyrics of the song are these:
I see my folks are getting on
And I watch their bodies change
I know they see the same in me
And it makes us both feel strange
No matter how you tell yourself
It's what we all go through
Those lines are pretty hard to take
When they're staring back at you
Oh Oh Oh, scared you'll run out of time
Of such panic are mid-life crises made, I suppose. Fears of unrealized dreams, unfulfilled ambitions, incomplete personal mission projects; fears that it’s now too late to accomplish what in our younger days we thought we would accomplish, that aging’s biological and physiological juggernauts have generated too much momentum to be stopped or even slowed before our names are added to their victim lists.
I don’t think I ever experienced a mid-life crisis. For men, aren’t they most frequent in their 40's (women are probably different; usually are)? I don’t remember a time when I had to have a sporty convertible or when I felt a desire to transplant into a younger generation’s culture to convince myself, if no one else, that there was still tread left on my life’s tires. I don’t look back with regret on the big choices I have made over the years; there isn’t much I would change, were the circumstances to repeat. I spend a lot of time on our treadmill, but that exercise is a natural extension of my life-long attraction to walking, rather than a reflection of a need to look younger than my age.
I’ve had crises, no doubt, but they were situational, not seasonal; once the precipitating incident resolved, so did the crisis. Mid-life crises aren’t as much connected to specific events as they are to generalized needs of the heart and soul; those I haven’t had. Not in family. Not in marriage. Not among friends. But in ministry, in the church, that’s another story.
My seasonal crises have been, oddly and cruelly enough, faith based. Recounted on several occasions in this blog, my struggle with doubts about my call to ministry has been a recurring character in the Coley drama. Often over the years I have asked God whether I was ever actually called to ministry, and if so, why that call had apparently been cancelled without notice. Unknowingly, perhaps I concocted my call out of the anxiety of a graduate studies program at Iowa I chose to give up in the spring of 1982. Or rather, maybe I correctly perceived the original call, but the memo suspending my licence to practice had somehow been lost in the bureaucratic menagerie of heaven’s many responsibilities, leaving me in the church and in the line of fire, no longer indemnified by divine underwriters.
However explained, there have been times when I questioned, not simply whether I was up to a particular task in ministry, but whether I could claim its particular call. That’s a crisis.
As I evaluate my first fifty years, I appreciate my childhood more than ever, I value my time at the University of Iowa immensely, and realize the grace of countless beautiful people with whom I have crossed paths since. But ministry is the unresolved mystery. It’s been an emotional and spiritual roller coaster, at times profoundly grateful for the privilege of serving Jesus; at other times profoundly angry to have been swindled into such a torturous career.
Most troubling, I don’t see the roller coaster stopping before I retire (or quit, or go to prison for spray painting protest graffiti on the walls of every church in the Quad Cities). This chaotic movement from suffering to satisfaction seems to have mastered perpetual motion. I can’t stop it. I can hardly manage it, except to know that I have company – people like the Old Testament prophets, who regularly barked at God for bringing them into revolving unrest.
There is no happy ending to this entry, but neither do I intend a sad one. Today was a good day. I am looking forward to the weekend. Monday will be a fine birthday. I’m in a good mood. It’s just that I know the coaster will begin its next climb to chaos at any moment, and I will almost certainly be on board.
Today’s invitation to leave a comment is about your crises, mid-life or otherwise. I doubt there is much to learn from my present confessional, but your experience might help someone in their struggles. Consider it.
Pray with me:
God of every crisis, author of every life, and Lord of every collision of those two forces, be my spiritual GPS through the maze of life. Help me locate important landmarks. Inspire me to journal valuable experiences. Conect me with people who will accept my fallibility and culpability, as well as people who will raise their hands with mine in praise when life is well lived and much loved. In the name of Jesus, Amen.
The title track of Bonnie Raitt’s magnificent album “Nick of Time” describes her joy in finding the love of her life a bit later in her life than the social norm. Among the lyrics of the song are these:
I see my folks are getting on
And I watch their bodies change
I know they see the same in me
And it makes us both feel strange
No matter how you tell yourself
It's what we all go through
Those lines are pretty hard to take
When they're staring back at you
Oh Oh Oh, scared you'll run out of time
Of such panic are mid-life crises made, I suppose. Fears of unrealized dreams, unfulfilled ambitions, incomplete personal mission projects; fears that it’s now too late to accomplish what in our younger days we thought we would accomplish, that aging’s biological and physiological juggernauts have generated too much momentum to be stopped or even slowed before our names are added to their victim lists.
I don’t think I ever experienced a mid-life crisis. For men, aren’t they most frequent in their 40's (women are probably different; usually are)? I don’t remember a time when I had to have a sporty convertible or when I felt a desire to transplant into a younger generation’s culture to convince myself, if no one else, that there was still tread left on my life’s tires. I don’t look back with regret on the big choices I have made over the years; there isn’t much I would change, were the circumstances to repeat. I spend a lot of time on our treadmill, but that exercise is a natural extension of my life-long attraction to walking, rather than a reflection of a need to look younger than my age.
I’ve had crises, no doubt, but they were situational, not seasonal; once the precipitating incident resolved, so did the crisis. Mid-life crises aren’t as much connected to specific events as they are to generalized needs of the heart and soul; those I haven’t had. Not in family. Not in marriage. Not among friends. But in ministry, in the church, that’s another story.
My seasonal crises have been, oddly and cruelly enough, faith based. Recounted on several occasions in this blog, my struggle with doubts about my call to ministry has been a recurring character in the Coley drama. Often over the years I have asked God whether I was ever actually called to ministry, and if so, why that call had apparently been cancelled without notice. Unknowingly, perhaps I concocted my call out of the anxiety of a graduate studies program at Iowa I chose to give up in the spring of 1982. Or rather, maybe I correctly perceived the original call, but the memo suspending my licence to practice had somehow been lost in the bureaucratic menagerie of heaven’s many responsibilities, leaving me in the church and in the line of fire, no longer indemnified by divine underwriters.
However explained, there have been times when I questioned, not simply whether I was up to a particular task in ministry, but whether I could claim its particular call. That’s a crisis.
As I evaluate my first fifty years, I appreciate my childhood more than ever, I value my time at the University of Iowa immensely, and realize the grace of countless beautiful people with whom I have crossed paths since. But ministry is the unresolved mystery. It’s been an emotional and spiritual roller coaster, at times profoundly grateful for the privilege of serving Jesus; at other times profoundly angry to have been swindled into such a torturous career.
Most troubling, I don’t see the roller coaster stopping before I retire (or quit, or go to prison for spray painting protest graffiti on the walls of every church in the Quad Cities). This chaotic movement from suffering to satisfaction seems to have mastered perpetual motion. I can’t stop it. I can hardly manage it, except to know that I have company – people like the Old Testament prophets, who regularly barked at God for bringing them into revolving unrest.
There is no happy ending to this entry, but neither do I intend a sad one. Today was a good day. I am looking forward to the weekend. Monday will be a fine birthday. I’m in a good mood. It’s just that I know the coaster will begin its next climb to chaos at any moment, and I will almost certainly be on board.
Today’s invitation to leave a comment is about your crises, mid-life or otherwise. I doubt there is much to learn from my present confessional, but your experience might help someone in their struggles. Consider it.
Pray with me:
God of every crisis, author of every life, and Lord of every collision of those two forces, be my spiritual GPS through the maze of life. Help me locate important landmarks. Inspire me to journal valuable experiences. Conect me with people who will accept my fallibility and culpability, as well as people who will raise their hands with mine in praise when life is well lived and much loved. In the name of Jesus, Amen.
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
Countdown to 50 - They Weren't What They Were
Daily random ramblings as I approach my 50th birthday next Monday.
On occasion I do the math related to my and my parents’ ages at various stages of my life. For example, thirty years ago, when I was in the last weeks before a return to the University of Iowa for my junior year, my parents were each 50 years old, the same age I will reach next Monday.
Thirty years ago my parents were so old. They looked old. They sounded old. They acted old. There was such a gulf between my modernism and their ancient-ism. I don’t remember being conscious of their numeric ages, but I recall being aware of our generational divide, which I obviously interpreted as their being old.
Today I am the age they were when I was a brand new 20-something. I don’t feel old. Though I clearly look older than before, I don’t think my appearance has fully surrendered its middle age moniker. And one of my ministry’s principal passions is to think and act younger than I am, so as to stay connected to the community our church needs to be desperate to reach........ I’m not old.
Yet, thirty years ago, my 50 year-old parents were.
I talked about this with a member of our afternoon Bible study group today. When I posed to her the historical setting introduced above, she said of my 1970's parental perspective, “They were ancient, weren’t they?” She knew, not that my parents were ancient back then, but that I would have viewed them so.
I suspect that it’s both universal and unavoidable: The more different we perceive people to be from us, the more prone we are to judge them inferior, deficient, or...older than us, whatever the origins of the differences. And then, eventually, if life demands or directs that we become like those from whom we were once so different, we come to understand that our youthful judgments were unfair because they were essentially mechanical, mathematical, and procedural, not personal.
So it is with racial bias. My goodness, it’s mechanical thinking to look at a person of an ethnic heritage different from yours and conclude that he or she is in any consequential ways different from (i.e. inferior to) you. Simple is the equation: Country of Origin + Dialect of speech - Years in mainstream America = Snap judgment.
But thirty years ago, I wasn’t smart or old enough to figure out how unfair I was being to my parents. I think it amusing that age was the problem back then when I assessed my parents... my age, not theirs!
What about you? In your youth, how did you perceive your parents or other elders? Were they in some odd sense older then than at any other time in their lives due to the indiscretions of your youthful judgments? Leave us a comment. Your experience can help us.
Today I have more respect than ever for my parents. Not only because I have a longer-term view of their achievements and contributions, but also because I now realize when they were my current age they had to put up with me at age 20!
Pray with me:
God, help me to think as young as the youngest, to act as wisely as the oldest, to choose as smartly as the wisest, and to love as completely I have been loved, by my parents and by you. In the name of Jesus, Amen.
On occasion I do the math related to my and my parents’ ages at various stages of my life. For example, thirty years ago, when I was in the last weeks before a return to the University of Iowa for my junior year, my parents were each 50 years old, the same age I will reach next Monday.
Thirty years ago my parents were so old. They looked old. They sounded old. They acted old. There was such a gulf between my modernism and their ancient-ism. I don’t remember being conscious of their numeric ages, but I recall being aware of our generational divide, which I obviously interpreted as their being old.
Today I am the age they were when I was a brand new 20-something. I don’t feel old. Though I clearly look older than before, I don’t think my appearance has fully surrendered its middle age moniker. And one of my ministry’s principal passions is to think and act younger than I am, so as to stay connected to the community our church needs to be desperate to reach........ I’m not old.
Yet, thirty years ago, my 50 year-old parents were.
I talked about this with a member of our afternoon Bible study group today. When I posed to her the historical setting introduced above, she said of my 1970's parental perspective, “They were ancient, weren’t they?” She knew, not that my parents were ancient back then, but that I would have viewed them so.
I suspect that it’s both universal and unavoidable: The more different we perceive people to be from us, the more prone we are to judge them inferior, deficient, or...older than us, whatever the origins of the differences. And then, eventually, if life demands or directs that we become like those from whom we were once so different, we come to understand that our youthful judgments were unfair because they were essentially mechanical, mathematical, and procedural, not personal.
So it is with racial bias. My goodness, it’s mechanical thinking to look at a person of an ethnic heritage different from yours and conclude that he or she is in any consequential ways different from (i.e. inferior to) you. Simple is the equation: Country of Origin + Dialect of speech - Years in mainstream America = Snap judgment.
But thirty years ago, I wasn’t smart or old enough to figure out how unfair I was being to my parents. I think it amusing that age was the problem back then when I assessed my parents... my age, not theirs!
What about you? In your youth, how did you perceive your parents or other elders? Were they in some odd sense older then than at any other time in their lives due to the indiscretions of your youthful judgments? Leave us a comment. Your experience can help us.
Today I have more respect than ever for my parents. Not only because I have a longer-term view of their achievements and contributions, but also because I now realize when they were my current age they had to put up with me at age 20!
Pray with me:
God, help me to think as young as the youngest, to act as wisely as the oldest, to choose as smartly as the wisest, and to love as completely I have been loved, by my parents and by you. In the name of Jesus, Amen.
Countdown to 50 - My New Favorite Stringed Instrument: the AARP
Daily random ramblings as I approach my 50th birthday next Monday.
Proof that I am about to change age ranges has arrived in our family mail box three times over the last couple of weeks in the form of marketing mailings from the good folks at AARP. While the realities of population demographics, generational turnover, and government financing have in recent years increased the official retirement age, AARP has apparently seen fit to recast its eligibility definition downward to include my (soon) age or older. Consequently, I have received at least three flyers, folders, envelopes, or whatever from them.
Not that I opened them, mind you! Perhaps as a form of civil disobedience against their expansive definition of aging. Perhaps in demonstration of some secreted denial that I am in fact getting on in years. Perhaps simply as another example of my refusal to enable mass marketing campaigns (a.k.a., junk mail). I don’t know why I didn’t open any of the letters, but I know I didn’t.
Which is kind of odd, actually, because in the last year I have thought about retirement more consistently, more afffirmingly than I ever imagined. The numbers from my annual denominational pension report race through my mind at least a couple times a year. I have a spreadsheet on which I track the predicted result of that fund’s increase in value. I have calculated how much we will need, how much we may have, and where we might obtain the millions that will be needed if I am to achieve my dream of retiring in the well-wired guest house on the estate of Bill and Malinda Gates.
So I’m thinking about retirement. Is that a sign of aging? A sign of professional burnout or frustration? Or is it simply a sign that I need something to occupy my free time? If you’re a baby boomer, what are you thinking about these days?
I also think about life after life more than ever. As intimated in a recent essay on this blog, I think about reunions with my mom and grandparents. I think about reconnecting, in whatever way God sees fit, with the people who over the years have so influenced my journey. And I think about eternal chat room conversations with people like Beethoven, Einstein, and the author(s) of the Bible’s “Job.”
Is that a sign of aging? Or of roiling faith? Or spiritual curiosity?
I am in an unusual season of my life. Still creative. Still childlike. Still interested. Yet also attracted to new and possibly telling issues and subjects. . . . just not to AARP mailings.
I wonder what the countdown to 60 will read like?
Leave a comment about your experience, if you feel like it. Don’t worry about making sense; it should be obvious to you that I don’t.
Pray with me:
What a time this is, God. Creative, but uncomfortable. Energized, yet attracted to slower paced life. Hopeful, yet never fully confident. Part of it’s the world we live in. Part of it’s that we’re all changing, time and age wait for no one. So stay close. May your promises never get old as we continue the walk toward your light in the name of Jesus, Amen.
Proof that I am about to change age ranges has arrived in our family mail box three times over the last couple of weeks in the form of marketing mailings from the good folks at AARP. While the realities of population demographics, generational turnover, and government financing have in recent years increased the official retirement age, AARP has apparently seen fit to recast its eligibility definition downward to include my (soon) age or older. Consequently, I have received at least three flyers, folders, envelopes, or whatever from them.
Not that I opened them, mind you! Perhaps as a form of civil disobedience against their expansive definition of aging. Perhaps in demonstration of some secreted denial that I am in fact getting on in years. Perhaps simply as another example of my refusal to enable mass marketing campaigns (a.k.a., junk mail). I don’t know why I didn’t open any of the letters, but I know I didn’t.
Which is kind of odd, actually, because in the last year I have thought about retirement more consistently, more afffirmingly than I ever imagined. The numbers from my annual denominational pension report race through my mind at least a couple times a year. I have a spreadsheet on which I track the predicted result of that fund’s increase in value. I have calculated how much we will need, how much we may have, and where we might obtain the millions that will be needed if I am to achieve my dream of retiring in the well-wired guest house on the estate of Bill and Malinda Gates.
So I’m thinking about retirement. Is that a sign of aging? A sign of professional burnout or frustration? Or is it simply a sign that I need something to occupy my free time? If you’re a baby boomer, what are you thinking about these days?
I also think about life after life more than ever. As intimated in a recent essay on this blog, I think about reunions with my mom and grandparents. I think about reconnecting, in whatever way God sees fit, with the people who over the years have so influenced my journey. And I think about eternal chat room conversations with people like Beethoven, Einstein, and the author(s) of the Bible’s “Job.”
Is that a sign of aging? Or of roiling faith? Or spiritual curiosity?
I am in an unusual season of my life. Still creative. Still childlike. Still interested. Yet also attracted to new and possibly telling issues and subjects. . . . just not to AARP mailings.
I wonder what the countdown to 60 will read like?
Leave a comment about your experience, if you feel like it. Don’t worry about making sense; it should be obvious to you that I don’t.
Pray with me:
What a time this is, God. Creative, but uncomfortable. Energized, yet attracted to slower paced life. Hopeful, yet never fully confident. Part of it’s the world we live in. Part of it’s that we’re all changing, time and age wait for no one. So stay close. May your promises never get old as we continue the walk toward your light in the name of Jesus, Amen.
Monday, August 13, 2007
Countdown to 50 - A Week to Go
Daily random ramblings as I approach my 50th birthday next Monday.
In January of this year I had such a lofty vision of my ascendancy to the middle of my life’s first century on August 20, a vision constructed of three ambitious fitness goals.
— to walk a local annual 10K event in under 90 minutes
— to log 600 miles in treadmill workouts
— to lose a total of 25 pounds, returning myself to the healthy weight that bad eating habits and prolonged inactivity surrendered over the last couple of years
How’ve I done?
— I didn’t enter, let alone complete, the 10K event.
— Current estimates predict close to 560 treadmill miles by Monday, not 600.
— I’ll close my 40's some 5-8 pounds over the healthy weight goal.
Taken out of context, each of those results has merit. Separated from the ambitions they originally reflected, I could make a case that these months before the debut of the throwback dramatic series “BillColey Five-O” have been productive,
But such a case would of necessity rely on explanations and rationalizations. I’d have to explain the injuries that hampered my 10K training efforts, the same injuries that stole as many as a dozen days from my treadmill regimen. And I would have to remind you that the older we get the harder it is to lose weight, so coming up short on the weight loss isn’t such a surprise.
Given your personal experience, you might then accept, even relate to my explanations, but something about them would bother me. I think because over the last four or five years I have come to give high value to accountability, taking responsibility for personal actions and their consequences. At some point, accountable people need to stop explaining their failings and do something about them.
As I approach middle age (each of us is entitled to our own definition of when that epoch begins!) I look back with bemused chagrin upon my first five decades. I have developed and displayed remarkable dexterity when it comes to stepping away from full responsibility for my actions. I can tell you why my best efforts in and outside the church didn’t work, why they might not work the next time, and why, in the end, it won’t matter as long as I tried.
But something tells me, if God’s interaction with my life continues its current pattern, I won’t be able to tolerate the excuses very much longer — I will have to make changes. Which, I suppose, means I have something to look forward to in my life’s next fifty years... if nothing else, a 10K race in which I actually participate.
Leave a comment on how you handle/explain/defend your failings. . . or a note rationalizing why you didn’t.
See you tomorrow.
Pray with me:
God, every day brings us closer to you, if not spiritually, then hope-fully. May I accept your guidance, learn from your wisdom, and be an instrument of your grace. I don’t understand my life, but by your mercy, I don’t have to. In the name of Jesus, Amen.
In January of this year I had such a lofty vision of my ascendancy to the middle of my life’s first century on August 20, a vision constructed of three ambitious fitness goals.
— to walk a local annual 10K event in under 90 minutes
— to log 600 miles in treadmill workouts
— to lose a total of 25 pounds, returning myself to the healthy weight that bad eating habits and prolonged inactivity surrendered over the last couple of years
How’ve I done?
— I didn’t enter, let alone complete, the 10K event.
— Current estimates predict close to 560 treadmill miles by Monday, not 600.
— I’ll close my 40's some 5-8 pounds over the healthy weight goal.
Taken out of context, each of those results has merit. Separated from the ambitions they originally reflected, I could make a case that these months before the debut of the throwback dramatic series “BillColey Five-O” have been productive,
But such a case would of necessity rely on explanations and rationalizations. I’d have to explain the injuries that hampered my 10K training efforts, the same injuries that stole as many as a dozen days from my treadmill regimen. And I would have to remind you that the older we get the harder it is to lose weight, so coming up short on the weight loss isn’t such a surprise.
Given your personal experience, you might then accept, even relate to my explanations, but something about them would bother me. I think because over the last four or five years I have come to give high value to accountability, taking responsibility for personal actions and their consequences. At some point, accountable people need to stop explaining their failings and do something about them.
As I approach middle age (each of us is entitled to our own definition of when that epoch begins!) I look back with bemused chagrin upon my first five decades. I have developed and displayed remarkable dexterity when it comes to stepping away from full responsibility for my actions. I can tell you why my best efforts in and outside the church didn’t work, why they might not work the next time, and why, in the end, it won’t matter as long as I tried.
But something tells me, if God’s interaction with my life continues its current pattern, I won’t be able to tolerate the excuses very much longer — I will have to make changes. Which, I suppose, means I have something to look forward to in my life’s next fifty years... if nothing else, a 10K race in which I actually participate.
Leave a comment on how you handle/explain/defend your failings. . . or a note rationalizing why you didn’t.
See you tomorrow.
Pray with me:
God, every day brings us closer to you, if not spiritually, then hope-fully. May I accept your guidance, learn from your wisdom, and be an instrument of your grace. I don’t understand my life, but by your mercy, I don’t have to. In the name of Jesus, Amen.
Saturday, August 4, 2007
You Might Already Be a Winner!
The flyer’s cover achieved my attention:
Congratulations. Your Rewards Are Here!
Because it was sent from our bank, I believed the mail to be legitimate, and so tore it open in search of my rewards.
Peeling back the first flap heightened the excitement:
Your Rewards Certificate is Inside! You’ve already started earning points toward great rewards. All 8 prize levels are full of perfect rewards that are perfectly within reach.
Removal of the tri-fold’s final flap revealed the featured item – a five piece set of luggage for just 800 points – and the temptation of awaiting goodies:
Congratulations! By using your convenient debit card, you have earned point toward a free gift! Below is a certificate you can enter into your rewards account. Once you receive 100 points you can select a prize!
My eyes moved to the top of the flyer where were pictured items such as watches, air travel, televisions, and audio systems, all free of charge to earners of sufficient points. . . . If thrills could kill!
Turning to the only flap I had not reviewed, I discovered a decorative certificate, reminiscent of a bank check, the report of our particular rewards. There in the middle of the flap, in bold print and accompanied by an impressive 32 character ID code, were our points: 1.
More than zero, but less than any everything else, we have earned one point. Only 799 to go for the luggage. Only 3,999 before one of the TVs comes our way. I can taste that second point already. . . . Though I really don’t know what we did to earn it.
The flyer mentions a debit card, which we own, but use exactly once a week at a local grocery store. If it took just five years of grocery store visits to produce our first rewards point, we’ll be packing fresh suitcases by the year 4002. (Though we may have to negotiate with the bank, since the flyer reports our reward point expires in 2009.)
One of the few things my fellow followers of Jesus can do that will raise my ire is to promote a rewards-based Christianity, an assertion that appropriate actions — usually sacrificial financial donations to the ministry promoting the rewards program — result in predictable and beneficial consequences. One Christian television network devotes much of its programming to preachers and other theological pundits who, with fire in their eyes and screeches to their voices, attempt to persuade viewers to call in...and win.
I’ve heard promoters call it seed planting or harvest offerings. “God is waiting to unleash a blessing in your life,” shouts the preacher. “But first you must show your faith. Call the number on your screen. Plant the seed. Show your faith. Then wait for the harvest.”
Captivated audience members wave arms and faces to heaven in apparent agreement, perhaps testifying to their own experience, but more likely energized by a desperate hope that the preacher’s right.
My encounter with the teaching of Scripture is that what awaits participants in this faith-faced shell game is a lot like the rewards flyer I described earlier. I envision the excitement produced as program players tear into their colorful rewards flyer.
“Congratulations! Your rewards are here!” announces the cover.
“Your Rewards Certificate is Inside!” says the second pronouncement, a bit deeper into the flyer, its print jiggling wildly in the players fidgety fingers.
Almost unable to contain their enthusiasm, with sugar plum fairies break dancing in their heads, the rewarded players rip open the flyer’s final flap to discover a certificate that is both less colorful and more attractive than the one described above.
“I am with you to the close of the age.”
Vainly the players search for a rewards points update, an account number, a personalized ID code, something, anything to certify their progress toward the promised blessings. But there is nothing else on the page.
Having located receipts for their gifts, the distraught players call the ministries with whom they had planted their seeds, but discover that those ministries are all out of business. Jesus’ is the only business still open, and he’s offering only one rewards program:
You preach, teach, tell, and baptize in my name. I’ll be with you.
And as for those preachers who proffered that other approach to rewards? That’s for another essay.
Pray with me:
God, in Jesus you changed the world; sadly, we don’t always let Jesus change us. Help me figure Jesus out. Help me both understand and practice surrender to him. Do something with my need for things, as I do something today to prove I no longer need any other reward than your company in his name, Amen.
Congratulations. Your Rewards Are Here!
Because it was sent from our bank, I believed the mail to be legitimate, and so tore it open in search of my rewards.
Peeling back the first flap heightened the excitement:
Your Rewards Certificate is Inside! You’ve already started earning points toward great rewards. All 8 prize levels are full of perfect rewards that are perfectly within reach.
Removal of the tri-fold’s final flap revealed the featured item – a five piece set of luggage for just 800 points – and the temptation of awaiting goodies:
Congratulations! By using your convenient debit card, you have earned point toward a free gift! Below is a certificate you can enter into your rewards account. Once you receive 100 points you can select a prize!
My eyes moved to the top of the flyer where were pictured items such as watches, air travel, televisions, and audio systems, all free of charge to earners of sufficient points. . . . If thrills could kill!
Turning to the only flap I had not reviewed, I discovered a decorative certificate, reminiscent of a bank check, the report of our particular rewards. There in the middle of the flap, in bold print and accompanied by an impressive 32 character ID code, were our points: 1.
More than zero, but less than any everything else, we have earned one point. Only 799 to go for the luggage. Only 3,999 before one of the TVs comes our way. I can taste that second point already. . . . Though I really don’t know what we did to earn it.
The flyer mentions a debit card, which we own, but use exactly once a week at a local grocery store. If it took just five years of grocery store visits to produce our first rewards point, we’ll be packing fresh suitcases by the year 4002. (Though we may have to negotiate with the bank, since the flyer reports our reward point expires in 2009.)
One of the few things my fellow followers of Jesus can do that will raise my ire is to promote a rewards-based Christianity, an assertion that appropriate actions — usually sacrificial financial donations to the ministry promoting the rewards program — result in predictable and beneficial consequences. One Christian television network devotes much of its programming to preachers and other theological pundits who, with fire in their eyes and screeches to their voices, attempt to persuade viewers to call in...and win.
I’ve heard promoters call it seed planting or harvest offerings. “God is waiting to unleash a blessing in your life,” shouts the preacher. “But first you must show your faith. Call the number on your screen. Plant the seed. Show your faith. Then wait for the harvest.”
Captivated audience members wave arms and faces to heaven in apparent agreement, perhaps testifying to their own experience, but more likely energized by a desperate hope that the preacher’s right.
My encounter with the teaching of Scripture is that what awaits participants in this faith-faced shell game is a lot like the rewards flyer I described earlier. I envision the excitement produced as program players tear into their colorful rewards flyer.
“Congratulations! Your rewards are here!” announces the cover.
“Your Rewards Certificate is Inside!” says the second pronouncement, a bit deeper into the flyer, its print jiggling wildly in the players fidgety fingers.
Almost unable to contain their enthusiasm, with sugar plum fairies break dancing in their heads, the rewarded players rip open the flyer’s final flap to discover a certificate that is both less colorful and more attractive than the one described above.
“I am with you to the close of the age.”
Vainly the players search for a rewards points update, an account number, a personalized ID code, something, anything to certify their progress toward the promised blessings. But there is nothing else on the page.
Having located receipts for their gifts, the distraught players call the ministries with whom they had planted their seeds, but discover that those ministries are all out of business. Jesus’ is the only business still open, and he’s offering only one rewards program:
You preach, teach, tell, and baptize in my name. I’ll be with you.
And as for those preachers who proffered that other approach to rewards? That’s for another essay.
Pray with me:
God, in Jesus you changed the world; sadly, we don’t always let Jesus change us. Help me figure Jesus out. Help me both understand and practice surrender to him. Do something with my need for things, as I do something today to prove I no longer need any other reward than your company in his name, Amen.
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