Promises To Keep - Chapter Five -The Longing Way Home -

Friends,

Once started, even a blog-book takes on something of a life of its own. What's been written poses the ever new question, "Where do I/we go from here?" Sorting that out requires a lot of wondering and thinking. And time. At least for me.

Since I excerpted the title of this chapter from a Robert Frost poem, I'll use a quote from another in this little preface. "The Road Not Taken" begins, "Two Roads diverged in a yellow wood/ And sorry I could not travel both/ And be one traveler, long I stood/ and looked down one as far as I could/ To where it bent in the undergrowth…" The final stanza is: "Two roads diverged in a wood, and I --/ I took the one less travelled by,/And that has made all the difference." (1)

As in life, so in writing, there are always choices to be made, diverging roads to take, and Frost is right, it makes a big, though not necessarily"all," the difference, which you choose. As did the poet, I "... looked down one as far as I could …/Then took the other as …/ having perhaps the better claim…" The path I chose constitutes this chapter. You may decide I should have chosen the other one. If you do, let me know why. I'll try to address it the next chapter.

Thanks for hanging in with me. Ted

PROMISES TO KEEP - CHAPTER FIVE: THE LONGING WAY HOME

You probably recognize that the title of this chapter is from a familiar Robert Frost poem,

Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening. It closes with these evocative lines: "The woods are lovely, dark and deep./ But I have promises to keep./ And miles to go before I sleep./ And miles to go before I sleep."(1)

It seems like a prayer, doesn't it? Who can't relate to the almost reverential feeling and tone of the verse? Who doesn't identify with pressure of feelings gathered in the pivotal word, ""But …" on which so much in the future turns, one way or another. "But …" carries the critical weight of choosing, again and again, between the enticing lure of "lovely, dark and deep," and the hopeful call of "… promises to keep. And miles to go before I sleep. And miles to go before I sleep." Don't you imagine that repetition of the last phrase is a whispered awareness of the strange power and mystery of promises?

Frost's poem speaks to our hearts. These feelings, this decision, this seminal realization are profoundly familiar to us. In some compelling way this is our recurring inner conflict, our struggle, our dogged, if mostly sub-conscious, determination: "But I have promises to keep./ And miles to go before I sleep."

And yet, even as we identify with the poet's promise keeper, a tumble of questions follow: "What promises do we have to keep?" "How do we keep them?" "Why do we make them?" "What happens if we don't keep them?" The list could go on, along with our answers. So would an inevitable joust of comparisons, conflicting judgments, confusing arguments and turbulent frustrations. Our proposed answers wouldn't necessarily be wrong. But they would be premature, partial and shallow because we'd be missing the basic question.

That question is: "What is a promise?" That question ushers us into the mystery of our deepest longing for, and our elemental connection to, God and each other. It's a connection that can be ignored, muted, disguised, dismissed but never totally broken. A promise is an echo of our longing for that elemental connection. It's a move in a direction which meets our primal need to be truly with an "other" or "others," just as a young tree in the shade begins to lean toward the sunlight in order to live and grow.

Even more enigmatically, a promise signifies a reflexive response to a sense, however dim, of longing's reach toward us as well as ours toward it. The more heartfelt the promise, the greater it manifests both of those dimensions of longing, though we may remain mostly unaware of that. A promise is not a specific legal contract. Spoken or unspoken, a promise is a commitment to a direction toward connections that are indispensable to life's deepest meaning. Nor does the probability that we are only dimly, if at all, aware of those elements being involved in a promise mean they are not intrinsic to what a promise essentially is.

What I'm getting at is this: a promise is an undertaking entered into by at least two persons. Certainly one of those "persons" may be, in some way must be, that essential part of one's own self which is accessed through that inner dialogue we often refer to as "talking to yourself." Even so, a promise can be made within one's self, by one's self, for one's self but it inevitably relates one to others as well.

The point is that in every instance a promise is relational, made by one person with or to him/her self and/or another person. It is confirmed by one's self and the other or others. In some sense it is kept and/or broken by both parties, however unequally. A promise establishes a bond or coherence between the persons who are party to it and who trust that it will be kept. If, or more accurately when, it isn't kept, all the parties involved suffer some degree of injury or loss.

Here's the heart of the matter: redressing and working through the injury or loss of partially kept, or totally broken, promises is a crucial part of the ongoing process of making and trying to keep promises because no human promises are fully kept, nor do they ever completely satisfy the need for which they are made.

That is so because the persistent but myserious longing that suffuses our finite promises is not slaked by either the partial keeping or breaking of them. That truth does not diminish the importance of promises or our need to make them. In fact, the very partialness of the keeping or breaking of our promises tends to amplify our longing. That is what takes promises out of the realm of the inconsequential or trivial. Promises are intimations of our inborm longing for those sustaining, meaningful connections which are the essence and energy of hope, love, joy, justice, life and a relationship with God.

Now on to point 1A of this chapter which so far as been mostly an attempt to clarify the nature of longing itself and to introduce promises as one expression of that longing relative to human connections. Herb Reinelt is my very dear friend going back to our days at Yale Divinity School where we began our shared experiences and theological dialogue. Herb got his Ph.D. in Philosophical Theology at Yale and went on to be a university professor while, for family reasons, I had to give up my fellowship and drop out after one year of Ph.D. study. That tilted the scale of theological proficiency Herb's way. But it also unleashed my own less academically constrained theological imagination. The result has been that over the years our friendship and dialogue have been a treasured gift and an abundant blessing to me.

With that background, I quote the following except from what Herb recently wrote to me about my blog: "I think … we yearn (long) for what Royce called the Great Community. That community would be the home that we yearn for beyond our individual homes. It would included the joy of reconciliation with God (which HRN* saw as the work of Christ and the church) and the reconciliation of ourselves with others and the whole creation. I suspect that you would agree … *H. Richard Niebuhr, a seminal theologian/professor at YDS

"You say that 'best friends' can't cure being lonely, I agree, they are not a complete cure, but they are a partial cure. They are real (though partial) answer to loneliness and, insofar, a foretaste of the Great Community. We really do long for them, not just for God. One might say that we can't get right with others unless we get right with God, but I think it also works the other way. Your emphasis is on longing as the way home to God, but I want to say that the longing for God is not all we long for; we equally long for each other and the longing for the other can be the way home to God."

As always, Herb makes thoughtful and stimulating comments. For the most part, I agree with him, with one key exception with two related parts:

1st, I do not contend that “… longing is the way home to God, only that it is a primal connection to God and that and paying it attention is crucial;

2nd, I agree "that the longing for God is not all we long for…" but I don't agree that "we equally long for each other …" I think longing itself reflects a primal connection to God and thus is the genesis of all other corollary forms of longing as well as pervading them, however faintly. I agree there's an inseparable connection between the longing for God and all other longings, but I don't agree that they are equal or identical. That may seem to b a relatively insignificant difference but I don't think it is.

Here's why I don't: To make longing for any finite other equal to our longing for God sooner or later results in nagging disappointment and disputation In response to the fear and anger of our disappointment, we are prone to ramp up our investment and loyalty to the finite objects or subjects to which we attach our longing until our investment and loyalty becomes blind, idolatrous. Our over investment frequently results in the kind of destructive behavior and dogmatic claims which are corrosive to the "Great Community” which I view as essentially the whole human family. Consider, for example, the partisan rancor and divisiveness that is tearing at the fabric of our country and the world right now.

As I see it, it isn't possible for any finite subject or object to fully satisfy a longing for an eternal being or relationship. When that truth is ignored, tit can, and often does, result in idolatry, generate arrogant claims and counter-claims of certainty about the particular, finite subjects or objects of our"longing." Thus, in the service of our little gods we fall into divisive conflicts between persons, members of families, groups, religions, causes, political parties, social or economies classes, nations.

The problem is that our anxiety driven claims of certainty make us self-righteously defensive and evokes destructive reaction to, and from, every other "particular, finite claims made for the objects or subjects of longing." Part of the destructiveness resides in our refusal to openly acknowledge our disappointment over finite broken promises we make or are made to us in response to our longing. So we stop short of "addressing and working through the injury or loss of (those) partially kept, or totally broken, promises …" - i.e. our particular, finite expressions of our "longing." Rather than doing that, we become increasingly dogmatic about our claims and hostile to those of others, and via versa, ad nauseam. And there's sin's fertilizer.

I believe that all we finite beings need to acknowledge that we cannot claim infinite truth for ourselves or our dogmatic positions or promises. Something, Someone, namely God, is more, and in crucial ways other, than any or all our finite longings or promises.

Realizing and accepting that can lead us to a process of reconciliation; that is, of addressing and working through the injury or loss resulting from our partially kept promises and the inadequacy the objects of the misplaced attachments of our longing. That is the ongoing challenge of being, or becoming more human as creatures who carry the image of God but not the fullness of God's being or truth. I believe most, perhaps all, expressions of longing and the promises they generate carries a trace of our longing for God to varying degrees, if and when we pay it attention.

It is paying attention to those varying degrees, some more basic and compelling than others, that enables us to discern the value, direction, integrity of the longing and its consequent promises or intentions. For example, to say that nothing totally satisfies our deepest longing is not to say that the longings we have or the promises we make are irrelevant and unimportant to our decisions or how we attempt to live by them. On the contrary, the efforts we invest in making and trying to keep promises keep us linked to our deepest longing if we keep evaluating the direction they take us.

Recognizing and accepting the claim of that if are the work of trust and love . Ignoring that if leads to hypocrisy. self-righteousness and dogmatism. Our capacity to keep setting and resetting the direction we take in our lives forges a link to Grace. It focuses and shapes our thinking, deciding and actions in intensely relevant but not totally explainable ways. It is a fundamental ingredient in reconciliation with others, and God.

The directions we choose to take are the most essential component in life. The efforts we invest in making and trying to keep promises keep us linked to our deepest longing if we keep evaluating the direction they take us. Recognizing, accepting and implimenting the claim of that if are the work of trust and love . We may long for others in ways that are destructive to them and to ourselves when we make them objects, when we use them, exploit them for our own gratification or advancement.

We can make corrections in our directional course and the relative state of our promises by referring to our spiritual orientation's GPS. That orientation is linked to our longing for God however dimly or falteringly we might discern it as being. Through the process of referring to that GPS, or spiritual orientation we are able to keep resetting and going in a direction toward some gripping vision of the good, or of what matters most even when we never quite get "there" because we're not exactly sure where or what "there" is." We just sense* when were heading in the right direction, when it's "right" or "just" or "peaceful" or "beautiful" or "loving" or whatever is truly precious to our hearts. *See references to David Brook's book coming up later in this chapter.

The truth is that never quite getting "there" and yet with an innate urge to keep "pushing on" is what it means to be finite, mortal beings. The process of "pushing on" is what is profoundly hopeful about us and life. As we go, our lives are laced with , experiences, hints, intimations, interludes of wonder, of joy, of sacredness, of grace. All of them are transitory but none-the-less genuine, powerful, encouraging, inspiring and real. Moments when we're aware of "The Great Community," as Royce and Herb put it, are not occasions to stop but inspiration to go on.

Okay, okay, I agree that this chapter has become increasingly abstract, dense, murky, somewhat irrelevant, not very helpful and needs a good editor. Truth is that I've spent many weeks going back over this draft and trying to edit it which proves that I need a good editor. This is not meant as a some kind of obsequious apology. It's a sincere explanation. You have my hearty permission to do whatever editing on your own that might help me out here. Meantime, I’ll try to clarify my thoughts by first repeating three key ideas from a few previous paragraphs which may have been lost in the screech and screen of words around them:

1) "I believe most, perhaps all, expressions of longing and the promises made by them carry a trace of our longing for God to varying degrees, if and when we pay it attention";

2) " The directions we choose to take are the most essential component in life. The efforts we invest in making and trying to keep promises keep us linked to our deepest longing if we keep evaluating the direction they take us. Recognizing, accepting and implimenting the claim of that if are the work of trust and love …"

3) "We can make corrections in our directional course and the relative state of our promises by referring to our spiritual orientation's GPS. That orientation and process is linked to our longing for God ... we can keep resetting and going in a direction toward some compelling vision of the good, or of what matters most even when we never quite get 'there' because we're not exactly sure where or what 'there' is."

In the context of those statements, I'll try to lay out some more specific ideas about what I mean by them. *I start by referring to David Brook's recent, fascinating book, 'The Social Animal". Among other pursuits, Brooks is a columnist for The New York Times and a weekly commentator on PBS Newshour. The sub-title of his book is "The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement" and the examination of those sources constitutes the purpose his book. If that purpose seems vaguely reminiscent of my purpose in writing The Longing Way Home, you're on to the reason I'm referring to it. I'm not above hooking my tail to a celebrity's kite.

In an article on his book, Brooks writes;"Over the past few decades, geneticists, neuroscientists, psychologists, sociologist, economists,and others have made great strides in understanding the inner workings of the human mind … A core finding of this work is that we are not primarily the products of our conscious thinking. The conscious mind gives us one way of making sense of our environment. But the unconscious mind gives us other, more supple ways. The cognitive revolution of the past thirty years provides a different perspective on our lives, one that emphasizes the relative importance of emotion over pure reason, social connections over individual choice, moral intuition over abstract logic, perceptiveness over I.Q. It allows us to tell a different sort of success story to go along with the conventional surface one." (2)

In the Introduction of his book, Brooks further sketches out the profile of that "different sort of success story." This is what he writes: "If the study of the conscious mind highlights the importance of reason and analysis, study of the unconscious mind highlights the importance of passions and perception. If the outer mind highlights the power of the individual, the inner mind highlights the power of relationships and the invisible bonds between people. If the outer mind hungers for status, money and applause, the inner mind hungers for harmony and connections -- those moments when self-consciousness fades away and a person is lost in a challenge, a cause, the love of another or the love of God." (3)

There's an intriguing connection between Brooks' commentary on the unconscious mind and my exploration of longing. The basic connection is reality and nature of love and it's time to make that clear. From shared experience, we might agree that love is an obvious form of longing. But are we now also ready to see that longing is itself a form of love, a love that is not so much romantic as it is the principle direction we are strangely or mysteriously summoned to seek. Longing is the form of love that is the source of "the invisible bonds between people” because it is a element of creation itself and an invisible bond between human beings and God.

When we respond to our longing by choosing a direction that rejects, distorts or dismisses those invisible but real bonds we violate ourselves and others. I believe the lives of all of us, certainly including mine, are scarred and marred by the many occasions when we have foolishly or selfishly chosen a damaging direction for ourselves which has also hurt others. In so doing we become less than human to some lesser degree. In the long history of theological discussion about whether Jesus was fully human or fully divine, or how much of each he was, more recently some have proposed that Jesus was the most fully human of us all, and the rest of us struggle to become more fully human. The love of God that haunts our longing and is revealed in Jesus helps us in our struggle.

Let me clarify my understanding of love. Love is a feeling, of course, but more than that it action. Love is what we choose to do, how we choose to live, how we choose to relate to others even when we don't "feel" drawn to them. We can choose to love our neighbor as ourselves and love our enemies, even when we don't like them, just as we don't like ourselves sometimes. Love is work in all aspects of life, from intimate family relations to close friends to neighbors to anonymous people who are poor, sick, hungry, of a different gender, age, sexual orientation, race, nationality, belief system or lack thereof, the whole human family.

I've long insisted that justice is love with its sleeves rolled up. That's one of my most felicitous statements and succinct ways of putting it. Love is most fully revealed in the life of Jesus who is mistakenly portrayed elsewhere as meek and mild because that is not what love is or how it acts. Love is gentle, tender, patient, humble and kind. But love is also direct, honest, bold, assertive and forceful. Love is risky, brave, creative, innovative and holds itself and others accountable. Love is longing for the fullness of life with God which issues in just, peaceful, joyful relations with others. felicitous

Moving toward the end of this chapter, I refer to another of Herb Reinelt's views of longing: "The "Great Community" is the redeemed community in its relationship to God; it is not just human to human relationships … But I do want to hold that sometimes we get closer to God by following out our longing for God and sometimes we get closer to God by following out our longing for others … I think that the longing for God can arise and be felt in our human relationships. And that seeking loving relations to others is a way to become aware of God."

I agree with my friend but with a question or two. One is, Doesn't using the word "redeemed" to define human to human relations, or the "Great Community," unnecessary, even unfortunately, raise issues about the limits of that community and who determines those who qualify to be included in it. I put that question, and implied answer because in utter disregard of the mysterious reach of God's grace, so many persons and factions presume to claim that right for themselves? Hence, because of that mystery, I believe loving neighbor and enemy as ourselves means that we should recognize that all human beings, the whole human family, are to included in that community, at least is so far as the direction, concerns and actions that emanate from our primal longing for God are concerned. Justice seems to me to be an imperative applying to all of us, even though in our finitude we fall short in its implementation. I pretty sure Herb agrees. If he doesn't he should and owes me a cup of coffee for his dissent.

The other question is, How can we get closer to God by following out our longing for God? I’m not sure I know how to do that as an independent enterprise. I think Herb is persuasive in suggestion that our longing for God necessarily involves following out our longing for others and I agree as long as the two are not seen as separate, or equal. For another example: A life devoted to prayer and meditation, either solitary or in a reclusive community, may be a calling for some, but even in such instances, the prayers are at least partly for others, thus confirming the invisible bond between people.

Though prayer is essential for all of us, we also need to be part of the answer to our own prayers if we are to live the direction of our longing and love. To do that necessarily involves making choices and taking concrete actions to extend justice to everyone. Yes, we live in a complicated world in which our choices are mostly in the gray area. But that is not a reason to defer or bow out. Most often unjust conditions and those who suffer them are clear and compelling enough for us to risk action to try to address them. But love without risk is empty.

As I said earlier, in long past moment of inspiration, I came up with the insight that justice is love with its sleeves rolled up. I've insisted there is a priority and distinction between longing for God and longing for others, but there is not, indeed cannot be, any disconnect or separation between them. If there is, it leads to a misdirection of life and the risk, if not inevitability of idolatry, of raising some non-God to the level of God. In case you don't remember my reference to Martin Luther’s definition of our “gods’ and the constant risk of idolatry, here it is again: "Whatever you give your loyalty to and get your sense of worth from, is properly your God."

That said and that distinction made, I hold. as I think Herb does, that longing is first a stirring in us of love for God which, either faintly or intentionally, moves us toward loving others as ourselves by working toward justice for all. Loving some others is certainly easier and more enjoyable than loving others as well as enemies, for God’s sake -- and there you have it, “For God’s sake”. Genuine spirituality, or the persistence of longing, necessarily has a social application. All good subjects or objects of our loyalty don't have to become idolatrous if we keep alert to how easily that can happen.

The possibility, yea, the probability is that in working in the direction in which our longing calls us, we can nurture and expand relationships, community. We can at least limp on in the direction of our longing and partially our promises to love one another. But longing unheeded or disavowed, or its elusive quality yet holy persistence reduced to dogmatic certainties, will curdle it and diminish us as those seeking to become more human.

The "promises we have to keep" are claims of justice and compassion and peace to which love summons us in all our human relationships And always, "There are miles to go before (we) sleep. And miles to go before we sleep."

Please know that I am not naive or innocent. I do not in any way believe, think or claim that what I propose is easy, or simple, or a cure all for the challenges, complexities, hostilities and conflicts of our society, our country, our world. (More on that in the next chapter.) What I am attempting to do is present a way of seeing ourselves and each other, of recognizing glimmers of the longing we experience as bearing some degree of what it means to throw the "little ounces of our weight, to tip the scales of humanity toward justice" and leave the outcomes to God.

So this last question, perhaps the key question of all: "What are the promises made to us that keep us?" That's an enormous question and we'll keep encountering it as we move on toward the "home" alluded to in the title of this blog-book. Essentially, I believe the short and concise answer is the history of Israel and the life, example, teaching, crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus are the promises that keep us. From those two reveal sources come other dimensions of awareness just as daylight reveals what darkness covers.

I am deeply moved and strangely sustained by Marilynne Robinson's beautifully written and spiritually inspiring novel, Gilead which has rightly been called “a hymn of praise. Two brief images she shapes for us carry, at least for me, what I mean by those “dimensions of awareness f the mystery of the promises that keep us in our Longing Way Home.

Gilead is essentially the reflection on his life by an old Baptist minister, Reverend John Ames, who has spent his life in Gilead, a town in rural Iowa. It is full of awesome insights. One of them is this written in a letter to his prodigal son: “They say an infant can’t see when it is as young as your sister was, but she opened her eyes, and she looked at me. She was such a little bit of a thing. I know she didn’t really study my face … But I know she did look right into my eyes. That is something and I’m glad I knew it at the time, because now, in my present situation, now that I am about to leave this world, I realize there is nothing more astonishing than a human face … It has something to do with incarnation. You feel your obligation to a child when you have seen it and held it. Any human face is a claim on you, because you can’t help but understand the singularity of it, the courage and loneliness of it. But this is truest of the face of an infant. I consider it to be one kind of vision, as mystical as any.”(4)

I don’t think we have to be as old as John Ames to grasp, or be grasped by, the powerful longing and love this old pastor expresses in that scene. “… nothing more astonishing that a human face,” the faces of those you naturally love, the names faces of those you see every day, faces of neighbors, even of enemies, your own face. Each face, each person “has something to do with incarnation.” Each is the embodiment and challenge of what life is about, what it means. Each reflects at least a little of what we long for, and the promises of God that keep us.

The other awesome insight John Ames writes somehow follows on the first. “This morning I have been trying to think about heaven, but without much success, I don’t know why I should expect to have any idea of heaven. I could never have imagined this world if I hadn’t spent almost eight decades walking around in it. People talk about how wonderful the world seems to children, and that’s true. But children think they will grow into it and understand it, and I know very well that I will not, and would not if I had a dozen lives. That’s clearer to me every day. Each morning I’m like Adam waking up in Eden, amazed at the cleverness of my hands and at the brilliance pouring into my mind though my eyes …”(5)

Like Adam? Maybe partly, as in Adam’s amazement at creation, and of course, Eve’s as well, and that’s what old Ames is directing our attention to, really. And yet, perhaps not necessarily like Adam who missed the point of it and lost his direction. I confess that too many days, I stumble as he did. But not every day. Not when I pay attention to my longing and try to follow it as best I can, not being like God, or trying to be. But trying to be more fully human by rolling up my sleeves and embodying love of self, neighbor, enemy, the whole human family by trying to do justice. That’ what I think it means to trust the promises that keep us.

How about you?

(1) The Poetry of Robert Frost Edited by Edward Connery Lathem Holt, Rinehart and Winston 1969 p.224

(2) The New Yorker magazine, p. 27, January 17, 2011

(3) The Social Animal - David Brooks - pg. xi - Random House, New York Copyright 2011

(4) Gilead - Marilynne Robinson - Farrar Straus Giroux / New York Copyright 2004 pg.65-66

(5) Ibid - pg. 66

Memoir Supplement - Chapter Four - The Longing Way Home

Friends,

Again, it's been a while for reasons I won't go into. Tardy though it may be, here I am again whether you missed me or not. All I can say is that trying to write a book is equal parts inspiration and pain-in-the-ass labor. And sometimes it's just pain, period, brought on by the prospect of labor without any inspiration. But since writing is probably as much, or more, for the sake of the writer as it is for the reader, the time comes when I, presuming to be a writer, have get down to it before I feel up to it. So, I'm parking my pained ass in a chair and starting to work. My hope is that inspiration will begin to trickle in from the muse, or down from the mind or up from the heart, then out onto the empty page in the form of words. So, let's see. Here we go. Give it your best effort and I'll do likewise. Blessings. Ted

MEMOIR SUPPLEMENT - CHAPTER 4 THE LONGING WAY HOME

Years ago, a friend passed along this quote: "People put their best foot forward when it's the other one that needs the attention." I'm not sure where he got it, but the observation makes a provocative point. Plus it helps explain why Mark Twain, among others, insists that no one can write an honest or complete autobiography which, reviewers say, Twain proves in his recently published effort. In that, he's like the rest of us, wanting to hide faults and failures, those things and times in life we're ashamed of and want to keep a secret. So we keep our best foot forward while keeping the other back and out of sight even though that stance is unsteady and makes it hard to move except in circles.

But the rest of the problem is that more often than not, it's hard to know which foot is the best and which isn't, and how do we really tell the difference. Is best about performance, making impressions, conforming, popularity, avoiding risks? What, exactly does best mean? What's so inexcusably bad about the other foot, or the outspoken, bumbling, irritating, sometimes mean spirited, confrontational, earthy, creative, experimental, even objectionable part? Without pressing the issue, which was Jesus about doing? Best foot forward in our terms would never have dumped over any pots of hypocrisy or given a hot foot to any injustices. It seems to me, the best foot could be either foot, best experiences at the moment might not be recognized as such, nor the worst really turn out that way. In any case, here is an attempt to share some of that mixture about my life.

Turning eleven years old marked the beginning of an even more intense period of anxiety and bewilderment in my life. Probably it was not completely unlike the adolescent season of most lives but this was my life and not all the changes were inside my body and mind. Those few years were strewn with challenging changes around me as well. That combination haunted me for what seemed an interminable span of days and nights. It still haunts me in some ways.

In 1941, close to my actual eleventh birthday, we moved across town in Huron, South Dakota, to the first home my parents had ever owned. The house needed many repairs but it was theirs and they determined to make them. It was a momentous step for them. So we moved from 1315 Illinois Street to 640 Idaho Street. For me it was like moving from the state of Illinois to the state of Idaho, totally new town. I felt upset and helpless. Why did we have to move again?

It meant saying "good by" to the house I loved and could navigate in the dark. It meant "good by" to my old buddies and leaving the alleys and short cuts, the vacant lots for games and the hiding places of the neighborhood I knew like the back of my hand. It meant a tearful "good by" to the red brick building with the big windows and gaveled playground just three blocks up the street called Lincoln School after my favorite of all presidents. It meant "good by" to the band of students in different grade levels but of the same school brand; "good by" to dear teachers, the surveillance of George Washington's unblinking eyes from his picture over the blackboards and pendulum tick-tocking of the classroom clocks; "good by" to the low ceiling of the gym where we had to learn to shoot baskets without much arc on the ball and to the spicy smell of the dust compound the janitor used to sweep down the halls. It meant a self-conscious "good by" to girls I'd gone through the first five grades of Elementary School with and who lately had become much more interesting and appealing than they'd been before.

It meant having to start everything all over again and really not knowing how, or what, or who, or why, or if I could. I wondered if I'd ever have friends, or teachers I'd like or if other girls in a different school could or would be interesting in that different way or if I could make the sports teams in the new school so I could become a high school football and basketball player which I dreamed of being before the move when where we'd lived only two blocks up the street from the high school football field and maybe five blocks the other direction from the gym where the basketball team played and practiced. Suddenly, all my certainties and dreams seemed as far away as Idaho Street seemed from Illinois Street. It was all disorienting. I didn't know where I belonged, if any where. And yet, it was just the beginning of the world changing radically for me and for everyone.

The big State Fair was held in Huron every late summer. Most of the time, I went to it with my parent. Both of whom grew up in small towns in the farm country of Nebraska and liked the exhibitions of cattle, pigs, horses and seeing which in each category won Blue, Red or White ribbons. But one day that summer of 1941, I went to the Fair alone to just wander around. There was a section called "The Midway" which had lots of games of skill in which contestants won prizes of stuffed animals or trophies of some kind. There were also a section of rides, my favorite being the Ferris Wheel from the top of which you could see for miles in all directions in that prairie territory.

That summer day I got into an argument with one of the men who ran a skill game by my contending it wasn't possible to toss a circular wooden band from the edge of the booth toward a display of prizes in a table in the center of the booth and have the small band settle over the major prizes on blocks of wood only slightly smaller than size of the band. In anger, he ordered me to leave and flipped his lighted cigarette at me. It hit me in my eye and the pain was intense. I found a water fountain and ran water into my eye to help with the pain, and that turned out to be the best thing I could have done.

Never-the-less, the injury to my eye was serious. My cornea was badly damaged and the doctor didn't know if I would be able to see out of that eye again. There was no guarantee. I felt very frightened and alone. Every day for a week, I laid on the old couch in the new living room while every few hours my Mother lifted the bandage and put drops in my eyes. I couldn't read, which I loved to do and worried if I'd ever be able to do again. I listened to hours of soap operas on the radio and wondered if the people in them would ever get through their terrible problems, or I through mine.

During those days, I began to realized more sharply and painfully how fragile and vulnerable things are, we are, I am, life is. I was also felt overwhelmed with how complicated everything is, even though I didn't have the right words to express that feeling. I never forgot that feeling or those insights even though my eye recovered with only minor lasting damage that didn't compromise my sight.

Actually, I think that experience deepened my already melancholy nature as well as triggering a tendency to hypochondria which has plagued me all my life. For at least two years after, I worried about my vision, especially whether the eye injury would jeopardize my athletic chances. I'd nag other kids to devise tests to determine whether they thought I had any problem seeing clearly. I needed constant reassurance, but I realized much later, my need was really reassurance for something deeper than my eye sight, something more than I could know or name about myself at the time. No one ever could, or can, make the fragility or vulnerability of life go away, or the eliminate the risks living involves. It was a lifelong, slowly learned lesson with profound implications beyond the grasp of an eleven year old kid. The feelings remained embedded in my psyche.

In September, I started 6th grade at Jefferson School and I really don't remember much at all about my year there which is perhaps a symptom of my trauma over the change. Then, came an event that changed the world for everyone and added immeasurably to my fear as well as that of the country that was beginning to emerge from the ravages of the Great Depression. On December 7th, 1941, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and World War II began. We all wondered whether an invasion would follow, or attacks on mainland United States. Uncertainty prevail. What would we do as a country, as a state, as a family?

The Japanese went on to invade the Philippines, driving the small number of American troops there into the peninsula called Bataan that was the last bastion of our little army, precipitating a battle our soldiers fought heroically and vainly to protect against overwhelming odds. The battle was lost at a great cost of our soldiers and ended in what was called the Death March of American survivors. General McArthur was evacuated with a few of his staff as he made his historical promise, "I shall return." It was a dark, scary time. I had trouble sleeping for weeks.

In the Fall of 1942, I started 7th grade at the Junior High School to which I walked a dozen or more blocks to yet another building. The most vivid and searing memory of that year's experience was the late Autumn day a U.S. bomber crashed in a field at the edge of town near my old 1315 Illinois St. house. Growing up, I used to play baseball with my buddies on that field. We crowded around the big school windows and watched black smoke swirl up in the distance. After school dismissal, I walked with a lot of kids to see the crash. Wreckage was scattered everywhere and the stench of burning metal was heavy in the air. No one had survived and we spotted what we thought was a smoking body or two amidst the debris. Motionless, I stared at it for a long time. It all seemed unreal, yet very real. No one talked about it much then, or afterwards. But the scene is seared in my memory along with a welter of questions and feelings. Why did it happen? How did a playground become a killing ground? What was it like to die? The world was suddenly very threatening. What did it all mean?

To further unsettle and disorient me, just before Christmas in 1942, my father was transferred again. This time to another town, Aberdeen, South Dakota., about 90 miles north of Huron. He had to start his work a week later,on January, 2, 1943. My parents decided that he and my older sister, Rosemary, take residence in a hotel room in Aberdeen so she could finish her Junior year of high school and become introduced to kids and integrated in the school as the best way to prepare for her Senior year to follow. My mother and I were to stay n Huron where my Dad and Sis would visit on weekends as often as possible. One of my jobs was to be in charge of the coal burning furnace, putting coal in, banking the embers to last through the night, and shoveling out the ashes and clinkers. I felt both grown up and continually overwhelmed.

The arrangement seemed very strange. The reason for it was the house had to be sold before the entire family could move. Then, almost miraculously it seemed, some rich man from out of state who liked to hunt pheasants in South Dakota came to look at the house. Fifteen minutes later, he peeled off $2,200 from a wad of bills in his pocket. In late March, we all moved into a rented house on Kline Street in Aberdeen. I finished the last couple months of 7th grade in a Junior High only a couple of block down the alley but full of kids I didn't know and who, quite understandably yet callously showed little interest in getting to know me. Their friendships and alliances were already set.

Actually, the only good thing about the move at that point was that Aberdeen had a YMCA across the street from the Methodist Church we started attending. Guess which one I liked better. I spent hours in the gym, shooting, dribbling, playing pick-up games with whoever was there, even older guys. But in spite of that, I remained terribly homesick.

That summer, 1943, the war was going better for us but lots of things were rationed, including gasoline which meant no visits to family in other areas of the Midwest. It was then I started obsessing about finding a "best friend." Of course, there were many tributaries to that river of preoccupation: being new in town, feeling lonely, living in a strange house, and possibly. though sub-consciously, the fact my Mom had given still birth to two potential brothers. I didn't know why I was so focused on finding a "best friend" and I didn't much care. I just wanted one more than anything.

To help me get acquainted with more kids in Aberdeen, my parents enrolled me (read required me) to attend the Junior Youth Fellowship at the Methodist Church. I felt like a fish out of water there because everyone quoted the bible and we held candles and sang soupy songs and it felt sort of phony to me. The kids were nice, maybe too nice, I learned things I was glad I did and I along well enough. But there was no "best friend" in that group, friends, maybe, but not best.

My parents also signed me up for Boy Scouts, which I didn't like because the Scout Master acted like a top Sergeant ordering us around and telling us stories about his war experiences. In July I went to Boy Scout Camp where I felt even more lost since we slept in a tent invaded by clouds of mosquitoes and everyone was working on merit badges to become Eagle Scouts, in which I had no interest. Not only that, but out door latrines we had to dig weren't too appealing plus we were camped on what was euphemistically called a "lake" but actually was about two feet deep with another foot of mud under the water and you could walk across it, after which it was just a swirl of muddy water. I was desperately homesick. There were no best friends in sight in that venue.

To top the summer off, my parents signed me up for YMCA Camp which sounded more promising, and was okay for the first week. The Camp had an asphalt basketball court and we were assigned to play on teams. My team won. That part was fun and I was so good that one of the counselors who coached a high school team in the area asked me to come to live with his family and play on his team: heady stuff, but the very idea scared me.

Everything went downhill from there. Other boys had their pre-camp buddies and, outside of basketball, I was pretty much alone, even in group activities. Shortly after the second week began, I went off by myself and cried for a long time. Finally, I went back to the main building and told the Head Counselor I was sick and they sent me home with someone going the 30 miles to Aberdeen to pick up something for the camp. There was no best friends in that setting either.

When I got home, I cried intermittently the next few days. I felt wrong for lying to get home, for being a baby, a coward, a failure for not sticking it out, for embarrassing my parents, and myself, since I was sure other kids would make fun of me when school started again. I sat with my head in my arms, sobbing, telling my Mother, "God must have put me on earth to show other people what not to be." Melodramatic? Probably. Part of the trial of puberty? Maybe. A passing trauma? No, not close to that. Those boyhood feelings of inadequacy, of being wrong, of shame, can still shudder me like the whack of the wind and the choke of dust storms on those Dakota prairies.

So what's the point of this, other than a rigmarole of remembering? Well , I think there are several points, not just one. The first, and before any other, is that most of us have variations of my experience because it is part of being human and transitioning from childhood to some degree of maturity, which is really, a lifetime process. Looking back on it, I realize that there was a tenor or sense of a kind of homesickness or better, a sickness for a home beyond mine, beyond imagining, like the way off in the distance note of a flute, the indecipherable message of it and the eerie feeling it evokes of something or somewhere haunting and beautiful, beyond reach, yet at the same time, inescapable.

Okay, talk about indecipherable, that attempted description of my experience probably fits -- too florid, convoluted, murky, whatever. But somehow I wonder, I trust, that if you scrape down through your long trashed childlike feelings, those you thought you'd buried or dismissed as ridiculous, irrational, outgrown; perhaps way, way down under the more manageable, acceptable, supposedly rational religious profile you've projected, down, down to something --

memories, feelings, there's A LONGING, an elusive but insistent part of you, your psyche, your spirit, your soul, your "self." There, I've said it. I'm writing about longing as a kind of sickness for a "home" of which any we know as finite beings is at best a fleeting glimmer.

Another point is that being lonely in some deep sense is an inescapable part being human. It's not the same as being alone. It's commonplace to be lonely in the midst of a crowd, or a small gathering, even more disturbingly, in an intimate twosome. Perhaps we feel it more at certain times than others, but it's always lurking, as longing, at the edge of the hustle, habits and worry, of the one more task of our days, or the mind race, play-over, toss-turn, wrinkled sheets nights. It's in the nibble of an inchoate hunch that something is missing in it all, so if we could just figure it out and get it right, everything would be fine. After all, isn't that what magazine articles tell us and self-help books and TV ads and, sadly, too often politicians, even preachers?

But when all is said and done, we feel lonely because in some essential way we are finite, limited, and yet unique; the only one who will ever be you, or me, or whoever. Best friends are precious but they don't cure being lonely. They just help confirm and help define longing as a resource and existential reminder. It took fifty years for that truth to dawn on me.

Yet another point is how easy it is to feel sorry for yourself. But self-pity shouldn't last more than ten minutes, max. The world record is probably ten years or more. My personal record was closer to two intervals of maybe three months each with both being expunged because of my inexperience at the time. Yet, as I said earlier, those feelings still blow through me for ten minutes every so often. Now I recognize them pretty quickly and don't wallow in them.

Here's the issue: self-pity is often presented and interpreted as humility. It isn't. It is not! You are not the only hurting one in the world. To think that is perverse pride. It's pride in disguise. It's manipulative and hypocritical. I know about and have indulged in those distortions a few times to my own determent and the injury of others.

I stopped decades ago when I returned to therapy I because of a devastating blow from someone who betrayed me in a deeply personal way. The psychiatrist, who'd worked with me for years and knew me well, listened as I cried and complained. Then he asked, "Ted, what's broken, your heart or your pride?" I knew the answer immediately: my pride.

It had been a long time learning and came as a great relief and release. It wasn't easy to move in another direction, to accept myself and experience the healing challenge of a fundamental truth and the freedom of it. It took courage and a heavy dose of real humility. It was a gift of grace. I've never forgotten the question and have had many occasions to ask it of myself as well as others.

It's one you can ask of yourself. It's about honestly accepting your own imperfect humanity which curiously makes you more human, not less. Less is what we become pretending or trying to be more than human. Pay attention to your longing which abides even when desire, dream, accomplishments, hopes, goals, expectations are met and stored away. Real humility bears scars but is the beginning of peace within.

The final point is this, or has been the point all along, so in a way is rather a summary. What this section of my memoir is about is longing. It's the longing beneath the struggle of those early years of my life and I had no clue to it. I think recognizing the longing in our lives may come only in the biblical sense of the fullness of time, the right moment when we are ready. Or maybe it never comes because we mute it with all our self-justication, our denying something in ourselves, about ourselves, we try to hide or disguise and forget until it bites us in the ass, or conscience, or soul.

The "bite" is the truth that we are just finite, mortal beings. None of us is perfect, or close to it. The "there" we are so hell bent to get to is really out of reach and it's okay. It's a resource to accept that, to heed what it tells us about ourselves and what it is to live as a human being. It tells us we have a core, a strange essence we name as a soul. It tells us the pursuit of perfection is a fantasy. We are not perfectible. Let go of that illusion and relate to others honestly as just other human beings, precious but imperfect just as you and I are. To expect or demand perfection of yourself or others, is to live under self-imposed tyranny. Don't duck away from your longing. Pay attention to it. Accept the mystery of it. Heed it as something claiming you beyond all you can see, or understand, but can trust and live with in increasingly free ways. Trust the God in and behind it.

Have I done that? Obviously, not always, or even often. But I'm trying. How about you?

Think about it. Pray about it. Try it.

With longing, Ted

Picking A Dance Step - Chapter 4 The Longing Way Home

Friends,
I don't in the least presume that anyone has been waiting for the next chapter of "The Longing Way Home" while I've been mulling and trying to sort our some ideas. They have been rather big, complicated ideas that resist my capacity to make clear even to myself, let along anyone else. In one sense, the ideas have to do with the gallery of gods we all have and which we change periodically almost as easily as we change our socks or underwear. Mostly we don't realize we're doing that until our expectations of whatever god of the day we're counting on doesn't cut the mustard. Even then, we wouldn't usually consider that we've hung our expectations on anything like a god and besides, there's always another one in the gallery we can substitute for the one who didn't make the cut this time. In fact, we can have one or more of those interchangeable, substitute, minor gods in play all the time, shuffling them in and out as needed.

To unravel the snarl of all that and try to reach some helpful insights about how that process doesn't work is too much for a single attempt. So, I'm tying to break the whole ball of wax down into smaller candles to shed some light on the core claim of this book which is that longing is one of God's most primal connections to us. It helps to remember that this is a first draft of the book we're undertaking, not the final addition. That means if and when you read this chapter, or any of the others, your comments, criticisms and suggestions are needed and welcome.

Thanks for your patience and here we go. Think with me and don't forget that thinking is part of praying. Ol' St. Paul may have missed the mark in a few things but he was got it right when he said, "I will pray with the spirit, but I will pray with the mind also." That's Corinthians 14:15 if you're interested. Ted

P.S. Yes, I know it's a long chapter, but you never know, it may be worth reading anyway. After all, it took me a very long time to write it. So, again, thanks for your patience and comments about what you think

PICKING A DANCE STEP - CHAPTER FOUR: THE LONGING WAY HOME

Whenever I hear or read some bromide of supposed wisdom, I sigh, cuss and roll my eyes. Lately, I'm doing that a lot because of a number of fatuous verdicts much in vogue these days. Here's one such banality first peddled by advertisers, then parroted by all types of self-promoters and practicing narcissists: "You deserve the best" which gets transposed to "I deserve the best" to which I mutter, "You do? And what would that be? According to whom?" Then there's this additional head-scratcher: "It is what it is." about which I ask, "Do you mean what it is right now, which is sliding into the past as you speak and as the world whirls to a different place? Or do you mean always and forever, because nothing changes and no effort matters? And, by the way, what is the definition of 'is' anyway?" (Apologies to Bill Clinton but more relevant in this context.)

But to me, "Life isn't fair" wins the most trite utterance award for now. "LIFE isn't fair"? All life? Everyone's? Everywhere? Your whole life? The claim reminds me of a baby's tantrum, throwing toys and tears, fists, arms and legs in all directions because something makes him/her angry; or a teen ager screaming and stomping around because he/she can't do something they want to, or have to do something they don't want to, or "deserve" something they didn't get.

Or, to be honest, it reminds me of me when I run into snags and hitches or something triggers my temper by not conforming to my efforts and intentions and I slam my fists at whatever - the door, the desk, the wall, even a person a couple of times years ago and that doesn't include words spit out in a flurry of fury or cold, cutting comments at those who "don't get" what I get or "don't do" what I think they should. And you? At the very least on occasion, and probably without actually saying so, which of us hasn't felt that life is somehow unfair? The "Stomp, Point, Bow Polka" or SPB Polka surely must be one we all know -- the stomp of anger, the point at someone else to blame, the bow of devotion to some substitute god

Okay, anger and blame we all get that. But bowing and devotion? What's that about? Try this for an example. My friend Bill Coffin, at the young age of 34 but probably near 60 in experience, was appointed Yale's chaplain, he reports being interviewed at a gathering of alumni. He wrote, "I had barely been introduced before an older alumnus said, 'You look awfully young to be chaplain of Yale, but I guess it's all right as long as you believe in the free-enterprise system.'

Fortunately, another chimed in, 'Jim, I thought you were going to say the Trinity.'"*1

And there it is, the bow toward two substitute, minor gods, one after the other. The first, "free-enterprise" is the most blatantly erroneous minor substitute god but just as dangerous as any. The second,"the Trinity," though a traditional theological and doctrinal Christian affirmation about how to view the nature of God, is still just that, an "affirmation about" God. It is a creed crafted in human terms reflecting human efforts to define God. It can helpful, thought-provocing, even a devotional guide. But for those very reasons, it can go undetected as a minor and false god because no matter how sacred we might hold the concept to be, it should never be substituted for God, any more than a map or road sign is to be taken as the destination itself. Home isn't in a creed.

You see, orthodox doctrine can be its own form of idolatry and impose on people a closed religious position or system that designates which views of God are correct and which aren't? Even Jesus might not make that cut. Any religious view that promotes some form of tyranny in the name of God is essentially idolatrous. Tricky, these substitute, minor gods, this bowing in devotion, isn't it? And soooo easy to fall into and join the SPD Polka.

Now, in the interest of fuller disclosure, and as another illustration of this point, as you may have guessed, I'm a political progressive, or liberal, because to me that is the closest public stance to my orientation as a Christian who tries to live out what Jesus said and showed as the way of love of neighbor as well as enemy. I see it as an important way for "would be" Good Samaritans to get organized. But I confess I am prone to hang too much laundry on that line of belief. Therefore, in effect it becomes a kind of god for me according to Martin Luther's definition that "whatever you give your loyalty to and get your sense of worth from is properly your god." Given the fact that I'm still in recovery from the recent "shellacking" my party/god got in the November election, I'm learning again how easy it is to slip into a contemporary kind of idolatry and end up in yet another ramble around in the desert of disappointment and despair. Now do you get it? Sure you do.

Where am I going with this? Back to the Golden Calf episode in the Exodus to begin with. That's when, newly freed from Egypt, the Israelites practiced the SPB Polka. Surely, you remember! It's one of the most widely referenced events in the bible and surely is familiar to even those who never read the bible. There the motley band is, camped out in the Sinai peninsula on the way to an unknown destination and they're a little antsy about it all. Moses has gone up on the mountain, supposedly to talk to God though the sweaty, sore-footed Israelites weren't too sure about that since he'd been gone a while. They feared he'd abandoned them in the trackless desert and they'd become food for whatever critters might be lurking out there.

So Aaron, Moses' brother and second in command, offered to placate them by molding a golden calf out of whatever jewelry they could gather up and when it was done, this incredibly credulous bunch proclaimed that this Golden Calf was the god who brought them out of Egypt and would take them to a land of milk and honey. You'd think that knowing how the thing got made, and out of what, they'd know better. But no, they made sacrifices to this Golden Calf, and danced around it in revelry. It was the SPD Polka: the stomp of anger because things weren't going the way they want them to, the pointing at Moses and Yahweh to blame for the situation, the bow of devotion to the idol of the Golden Calf. Ir was the polka of guile, of cunning deceit, primarily self-deceit, which is always the first stage of guile.

I won't go into the details of what happened when Moses came down from the mountain and found the Israelites shimmying and shouting around the Golden Calf. It wasn't pretty. Moses was enraged, and reportedly so was God. The Calf got ground to powder and mixed with water which Moses made the people drink. Whether it was that, or God's wrath, or something else, a significant percent of the Israelites were "blotted out," to use that biblical euphemism. However you interpret the thinning of the herd of Israelis that day, the essential point to file away here is that the SPB Polka always has grim consequences one way or another.

So file that in your mind and let's come back to the present and to the recent election as another example of how the SPB Polka happens, and doesn't work. It's redundant to describe the political climate in this country as polarized, ideologically judgmental and divisive, and the election campaign harshly caustic. The political pundits spoke and wrote incessantly about how angry the voters were and listed the things people were angry about, primarily the economy but other things as well. So did the candidates. Obama and Pelosi were named the culprits behind every problem.

Noted New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman wrote this in the September 12, 2010 Sunday edition, beginning with a quote from Robert Samuelson: " 'The unstated assumption of much school reform is that if students aren't motivated, it's mainly the fault of school and teachers.' Wrong, he said. Motivation is weak because more students (of all races and economic classes, let it be added) don't like school, don't work hard, and don't do well. In a 2008 survey of public high school teachers, 21 percent judged student absenteeism a serious problem; 28 percent cited 'student apathy.' "

Friedman suggested: "There is a lot to Samuelson's point and it is a microcosm of a larger problem we have not faced honestly as we have dug out of this recession: We had a values breakdown -- a national epidemic of get-rich-quickism and something-for-nothingism. Wall Street may have been dealing the dope, but our lawmakers encouraged it. And far too many of us were happy to buy the dot.com and subprime crack for quick prosperity highs … Our big problems are unfolding incrementally -- the decline in U.S. education, competitiveness and infrastructure, as well as oil addiction and climate change. Our leaders never dare utter the word 'sacrifice.' All solutions must be painless … So much of today's debate between the two parties, notes David Rothkopf, a Carnegie Endowment visiting scholar, 'is about assigning blame rather than assuming responsibility. It's a contest to see who can give away more at precisely a time they should be asking more of the American people.' "

And who is it demands painless solutions to our problems and challenges? It couldn't be us, could it? Quick now, blame must be assigned, right? Let the SPB Polka begin: Altogether now, Stomp, Point, Bow to the Scape Goat that's replaced the Golden Calf for us. Someone else is surely to blame. We'll never run out of offenders.

Plus, we can ultimately blame God. After all, why does God let bad and painful things happen to me/us/whoever? How many variations on that theme are there, and don't we all play some of them? Well, to answer that probably we should begin by asking why does God let good and beautiful things happen, like composing symphonies or cures for diseases or incredible paintings and dramas? Maybe then we could ask if we really think we're the only free creatures in creation or might not freedom be laced all through creation from photons and atoms and cells to meteors and solar systems as scientists are finding to be the case? Okay, I'll write more about this issue later but in the meantime, think about where blaming God takes you, or us. Here's a hint: nowhere.

Now, one step down and back to the SPB Polka we're free to dance, or not. How many Aarons are at large in your network who continually shape the Scape Goat(s) for you, and the rest of us, by pointing the longest finger and plucking the loudest tune we dance to: Falalalalalala, someone else is always to blame.

But are they always to blame? No, at least not exclusively! And Yes, to hold others accountable is an honest, ethical, even prophetic way to live. It's how Jesus lived and, to some extent, why he was put to death. Well, death is not a likely outcome for those among us who do that, but the odds are that some form of retribution might be. That threat gives most of us pause.

And yet, to hold others accountable is part of loving them as ourselves. And that's the kink of honesty in the pointing finger, isn't it? " … as ourselves" as in "love your neighbor as yourself." To hold others accountable requires we be held accountable ourselves, and first of all by ourselves, even if we need a kick-start in starting the self-examination. Of course, there's alway enough blame to go around, at least a couple of times, and a significant portion belongs to us. The wonder is that, at its core, the process of holding ourselves and others accountable is a crucial piece of loving your neighbor as your self. Otherwise, any show of love is counterfeit.

Here then, is a little help in starting to walk the maze of our own selves. If you step back from the SPB Polka for a moment and cock an inner ear, you'll realize that the Polka is always seriously off-key. Why? Because under most anger is anxiety. Take another step and keep listening: What are you and I really afraid of? That's a big question. I wrote something about it in the last chapter and I'll probably write more about it later,

In any case, each of us would likely give a different answer to the question of what it is we fear. But from my own ongoing self-examination, and years if listening to others I counseled, I think there might well be a somewhat common undercurrent in them. The eminent psychiatrist Harry Stack Sullivan wrote of three basic mental images that help us understand ourselves and the world. In recent years they've opened a crucial long locked door in my my understanding my own life and self. I offer them here, in summary:

• The first image is the "good-me" which is what we like about ourselves, focus on and openly share with others.
• The second image is the "bad-me" which is about things about ourselves that are considered negative and repulsive. We tend to try to hide those things from others, even from ourselves, but under certain circumstances, the "bad-me" crashes our party, leaks anxiety that turns to some form of "life isn't fair" defensiveness and anger.
• The third image is the "not-me" which refers to all those things that imply such crushing anxiety we can't accept them as part of us and try all our lives, in every way, to avoid, and deny entry to our conscious self. But unconsciously, that anxiety sneaks around the psyche undercover, twisting us into various forms of destructive feelings and thoughts, even that of not being at all, blotted out somehow..

I think the answer to what it is that we fear is some combination of the "bad-me" and the "not-me." The consequences are a crippling lack of self-awareness and self-acceptance that distorts and impoverishes our own lives and relationships. We become as those who the poet T. S. Eliot memorably described this way entitled a poem The Hollow Men: "We are the hollow men/ We are the hollow men/Leaning together/Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!/ Our dried voices, when/We whisper together/Are quiet and meaningless/As wind and dry grass/Or rats' feet over broken glass/In our dry cellar."*2

Granted Eliot's imagery exceeds gloominess and seems a bit over-stated and outdate in our present technological modes of communication. But don't scoff and miss the point. When we deny parts of who we are, we do become hollow, empty, heads filled with the straw of anger, whispering together in dried voices our familiar self-justifying half-truths, trying to stem the leak of anxiety of our 'bad-me" or worse, our "not-me" but not being totally able to stop the trickle of it, even as we do the SPB Polka.

Depressed yet? Don't be!! There's another dance we can learn if we choose to. The first step is courage, the second is honesty, the third is trust. It's called the CHT Jig and the three steps are interdependent.

But start with the step of courage. It takes courage to really examine your self, all the bits and pieces, especially the bad- and no-me parts we don't want to face because to do that seems too threatening. And in some ways, it is. It threatens the distortions that trick us into feeling safe.

And it exposes our illusions about the world. In his story The Cardinal's First Tale, Isak Dinesen has a scene that powerfully makes the point:

God asks of a candidate for some spiritual position, "Do you take it that I have meant to create a peaceful world?"

"No, my Lord, the candidate answers.

"Or that I have meant to create a pretty and neat world, or a world easy to live in God asks.

"O good Lord, No!" the candidate says.

"Or do you hold and believe that I have resolved to create a sublime world, with all things necessary to that purpose in it, and no one left out"

"I do," the candidate replies.

"Then …" says God, "take the oath."

Do you understand how that "oath" is close to the core of living a true, honest human life? Can you imagine how such an oath begins to deliver us from the illusions of privilege, entitlement and exceptionalism, the toxicity of self-righteousness, the corrosion of hypocrisy? Can you grasp that taking such an oath, as surely Jesus' disciples must have, would enable us to live as a finite human being unburdened from the grinding load of self-importance and pretending you have to be perfect, or can even come close? Can you see how courage is essential taking that oath and that it requires a lifetime to begin to embody it? Carlos Castaneda helps to clarify it; "Self-importance is our greatest enemy. Think about it -- what weakens us it feeling offended by the deeds and misdeeds of others, Our self-importance requires that we spend most of our lives offended by someone." I would add, what a waste that is. I takes courage to take the oath and keep trying to apply it to your self and your life, no matter what anyone else try to sell you.

Then take the step of honesty and examine yourself without filters or excuses. No one of us is without flaws, limitations, faults, failures. No one is perfect no matter how hard we might try. as I did for far too long, persuaded that nothing less would be acceptable, and breaking down in that process. The question is, "acceptable to whom?" Perfection is a fantasy, a pretense, and curiously enough, Christians can be particularly susceptible to buying into it, practicing it, suffering from it and causing others to suffer because of it. Honesty is one way to argue that sin is the most "provable" Christian affirmation and honesty counts us all "in" or it's all in us. Thats why I always hang on to Luther's advice, "Sin on boldly but believe more boldly still." That isn't to advocate for sin, just to acknowledge its pervasiveness and what to do about it.

Honesty is about wrestling through the demons of pretension and self-righteousness to reach find our souls. It is to dismantle the emotional and mental armor of defensiveness and duplicity and gratefully accept who we are. It is to tune our hearts' music to the pitch note of longing whence we muffle with our illusions and realize that the longing that abides beyond all our successes and failures, lies and idolatries is the truth about who we are and are not, and whose we are, and are not. Psychologist James Hillman helps here. He says, "The dimension of the soul is depth (not breadth or height) and the dimension of our soul travel is downward." I assume "downward" means down into the depths of your self. That is the first direction of the step of honesty. And I would differ with Hillman's statement that the dimension of the soul is only depth. From depth comes the breadth and height of the soul. Look at Jesus' life.

Here's a song that sums up what I'm trying to say here. It's entitled Anthem and Leonard Cohen wrote the lyrics. In paRt, they go like this:

"The birds they sang at break of day,

Start again I heard them say.

Don't dwell on what has passed away

or what is yet to be …

Ring the bells that still can ring

Forget your perfect offering.

There is a crack in everything.

That's how the light gets in …

You can add up the parts

but you won't have the sum.

You can strike up the march

there is no drum.

Every heart, every heart

to love will come

but like a refugee.

Ring the bells that still can ring.

Forget your perfect offering.

There is a crack, a crack in everything.

That's how the light gets in."

There is a crack in everything. Mortality, finitude is a crack of sorts. Limitations, failures, flaws, mistakes, heart breaks and aches, disappointments, loneliness, are cracks. Losses, crises, wounds, anxieties, rejections are cracks. The list could go on. But it is not a list of woes and laments, or of anger and accusations. Cracks are how the light gets in. It's the light of that glimmer of longing that won't fade even if you don't attend to it. It's the light of hope that doesn't depend on hopeful circumstances as my old friend Bill Coffin used to say. It's the light of the grace of God, the love that doesn't seek worth but gives it to each and all of us. It's the crack in us and around us that's how the light gets in. We need to keep learning that.

And the final step of the CHT Jig is trust. Trust is not so much something we have, like faith or belief which, of course, are spiritually essential. And I am always encouraged and repeat the words the father said when Jesus healed his epileptic son; "I believe, help my unbelief." I repeat those word so often because I think faith or belief is a process and it involves facing into our unbelief as well as our belief.

But trust is something we do, how we live, what we earn from others who our lives touch. In that sense, it is fused with love. I'm always glad we don't have to like those we are called to love, anymore than we like ourselves all the time, or what we sometimes do that is unlikeable.

But love goes past liking. It's about being fair and honest about ourselves with others, meaning what we say and saying what we mean, being just, generous, compassionate, empathetic, peace making, actions we can live by and with no matter how we feel.

Of course, it is trusting as much of God as we know, as we can, as we will take risks for and get our sense of worth from, again, no matter how we feel. Trust is about how we live and what love is about when the chips go down and we make our choices. Trust is about ringing the bells that still can ring and there are an abundance of them once we forgo the illusions of our "perfect offerings."

When Joan Hemenway, a beloved colleague and friend, a marvelous leader in the Clinical Pastoral Education field, died, this benediction she used with her CPE groups was printed on the cover of her Memorial Service bulletin: "When we walk to the edge of all the light we have and step into the unknown, one of two things will happen: either there will be something solid for us to stand or we will be taught to fly." That's about trust and it touches on the freedom we can live in when we do.

Another benediction in stammer out as often as I can is like it. We often used it as an Affirmation of Faith in the church I served. It's Saint Paul's affirmation: "I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, not height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord," or the love of God revealed in anything or anyone else ever.

My own personal version of trust, which I try to hang onto, better onsome days than others, but is always my close to my soul. I've never verified its source though it's attributed to Charles Spurgeon but I read it first in a book by the Scottish theologian, Donald M. Ballie. I share it now as a sort of benediction for this chapter and a summation of trust, indeed of the CHT Jig:

"Let me no more my comfort draw

from my frail hold of Thee.

In this alone, rejoice with awe,

Thy mighty grasp of me." Amen.

*1 - William Sloane Coffin, Jr. - Once To Every Man - Atheneum - New York - 1977 - pg.134

*2- T.S. Eliot - A Little Treasury of Modern Poetry - Charles Scriber's Sons -1946 pg. 292