I recently made a 4AM drive to deliver my husband at the local airport. We joked and complained along the way about a several mile stretch of freeway that is under construction and has been for quite some time now. We wondered just what, apart from cement barriers, qualified this area as a construction zone if construction never, or seldom (to be generous), happens there. We did happen see two workers along this stretch, but we didn't actually see them doing anything. We assumed they were construction workers by the evidence of their hard hats, but they weren't working, and they certainly weren't constructing. We imagined that they were the only two who showed up for work every day, and overwhelmed by the prospect of building a freeway lane on their own, sat in their truck bewildered until lunch break, only to call it a day when their lunchboxes were empty. We imagined also that these two were the only state highway employees who missed the memo that all Caltrans workers were excused from duty for a paid summer holiday.
I suppose it is characteristic of man's sinful nature that the failures of others can loom large in our minds while our own shortcomings are easily dismissed. Musing over the freeway frustration later, I recognized in myself the symptoms of hypocrisy. I found it very easy to criticize the failings of the state (all too easy to recognize and they really do need to finish the thing), while being forgetful of my own failings. How many New Year's resolutions have survived beyond the new year? How many books were never finished? And my biggest question, Why can't I finish wallpapering the bathroom?!
The good news for those of us who in ourselves sometimes have difficulty in seeing a thing through, is that with God there is hope. We don't have to build freeways on our own. We may be limited, but he is limitless and his word tells us that he is able to fulfill every resolve for good and every work of faith by his power (2 Thessalonians 1:12). God can help even with the ordinary things such as wallpapering bathrooms, building ponds, and reading books if we include him in the project. Now to find my resolve.... I suppose I'm going to need his help with that one too.
I should hope this is not a universal problem of mankind, though I suspect it is, but I notice that very often things do not turn out as planned.
Several years ago my husband and I decided that in our back yard we would build a fish pond. Please understand that I use the word "we" very liberally. My part in building the pond was to embrace the idea whole-heartedly and to bring my husband lemonade as he worked in the sun. His part was to dig for many hours, mix cement, and generally do whatever actually qualified as work. The result hoped for would be a beautiful pond full of fish and lilies with other water plants, complete with a fountain and a redwood deck encircling the pond. Also envisioned were wooden benches and tiki-torches to provide a warm glow by which to enjoy our pond on warm summer evenings.
All my husband's work brought about our picturesque dream. Eventually, after many hours of his labor, we had what we hoped for. In the center of the pond was a fountain surrounded by water lilies with large leaves and colorful flowers. A stream coming into the pond had its source in the patio by means of another fountain which provided the sound of running water. As well as lilies, we also had parrot feather and a third plant with pleasant, small, round leaves. A couple koi and a few other pond fish completed the picture. The combination of all these elements had a pleasing effect and we spent much time around our pond. Our dream had been realized. But that was the first summer and time has a way of changing things.
We soon found that the algae, which grew all too quickly, had a habit of clogging up the filter in the fountain causing it to stop flowing. We were constantly cleaning it out and were eventually worn down by the project and defeated. It now seemed a better idea to have no fountain at all. We still enjoyed the second fountain that fed water into the pond via the stream, but that soon was to suffer harm (probably another dog incident) and quit working.
After several summers passed, the plants grew to dominate the pond, hiding the fish from view. Not only did they overrun the water, but they also made their way up through the boards of the redwood deck which served as a barrier between water and lawn. This was quaint for a while but soon the pond plants in the boards were competing with the bermuda grass which had overcome and annihilated the fescue and then sought to also overpower the pond as well. Soon the deck was being overcome by plant life from within and without and even by kids who somehow managed to remove a board, causing a toothless appearance. All this abounding goodness was too much of a good thing and we had to fight it back to regain lost balance.
It takes a lot of work to have dominion over a small thing like a pond, or a yard or even an aquarium; but every other thing that is worthwhile requires work as well. Not only must we work, we must have moderation. If we have too much of a good thing, the goodness gets lost. Without moderation we soon loose our enjoyment of things. What is meant to give pleasure can easily loose its gleam. If every morning were Christmas, children would eventually cease to rise early in eagerness of ripping open presents and would complain of being pulled out of bed as though getting up for school.
Perhaps it is a mercy that the vast majority of us are unable to indulge every whim, for indulge our whims we would. Most of us have to work pretty hard to earn the pleasures we enjoy and they are all the more pleasurable because of it. It is true that much of what we work for does not come about as we plan in the end, but there is satisfaction to be found in our imperfectly realized dreams.
As happens to melancholies on occasion, I woke up today in a puddle of self-pity. I had no good reason for this, but the puddle was just deep enough to warrant a pajama day. For those of you who are not acquainted with pajama days, they are days whose normal activities get canceled for the sake of self-interested indulgences such as spending the day in pajamas eating potato chips in bed while thumbing through magazines displaying immaculately decorated homes or tall, slender women with flawless, unwrinkled skin who are dressed in the latest and best fashions. The purpose of such activities is to sustain self-pity by comparing the reality of one's own life to the image of perfection presented in the glossy pages which are intended by the publishers of these magazines to create discontentment in the reader which will then compel them to buy better furniture, newer clothes and more wrinkle cream. I hadn't entertained these plans for long when I remembered a friend of mine who just a few years ago was going through a period of considerable difficulty and who every day for several years could have justified a pajama day. Each morning this friend would rise to the occasion of the day not by merely pulling her reluctant body out of bed, but by making effort to look her best (the rest of us wished her best wasn't so much better than ours) so that she could teach her children that each day was worth getting ready for.
Also intruding into my plans for a self-centered pajama day was the remembrance of a conversation I had just the evening prior in which I was reminded that our time does not belong to us. Made uncomfortable by conviction, I got out of bed as always and chose to not be mastered by self-pity.
Whatever our circumstances, every day is created by God and is worth getting ready for. Our time really isn't our own and we will do well to make the most of what God has given us. Those puddles of self-pity will evaporate as we open the windows and let the sunshine invade our space (which isn't really ours either) and embrace God's plan for our day whether it means going to work, going to church or doing six loads of laundry. The best thing may not seem desirable at the moment, but it yields the greatest rewards.here and start typing, or drag in elements from the top bar.
We all have things in our lives that don't go as planned or even remotely like they ought to have gone, or even the way they could have gone if only....
We have a situation at my house that seems symbolic of such things. At my house we have a cupboard full of flashlights and none of them works. It appears that the battery elves, (malicious elves, not the benevolent kind) have stolen all our batteries. We don't have the dead batteries that most people possess, we have no batteries at all. This means that we have a cupbord full of empty flashlights. At least they have bulbs.
I find that what is and what happened often bears little resemblence to what ought to be and what ought to have happened. This is such a common state of affairs that we have a saying that summs it up: The best plans of mice and men. Most of us have probably used that phrase at one point or another because most of us have felt at some time that we have no more control over our lives than has a mouse and surely the trap awaits us.
Life is full of ironies such as the cupboard full of flashlights with no batteries, or the large yard that can't be enjoyed because the dogs have destroyed it digging after gophers, or the drawer full of socks that don't match. And then there's my wonderful husband's recent favorite: using up a perfectly good Saturday fixing the dryer. Or perhaps that doesn't actually qualify as an irony. Either way, it certainly is a disapointment which is really what these ironies are all about.
Despite life's setbacks we must all be optimists at heart, intent on prevailing over our disapointments because we continue to replace batteries we know will only disapear and we continue to buy more socks even though we know the dryer will eventually eat half of them. We keep on loving the garden-destroying dog and persevering husbands will give up more Saturdays to fix dryers for their wives because they love them.
Life may not be what we expected, hoped for or worked toward; but somehow, despite the potholes and detours, life is good. Would we really want it any other way?
Because we live in a consumer and sensate age, the grace of intelligence and knowledge appears to be mediated through the consumption of goods. Though I resist its pull, I too am infected with the virus of consumerism and though on guard against its symptoms, have to admit that I feel smarter by simply buying a good book. To read a great book takes time and effort, but to purchase the wisdom of the ages takes only cash or credit.
As do I, my kids enjoy going to the bookstore. Their pursuits there are not the same as mine, however. I love to browse the classics and the music, the all too expensive journals I know I'll never write it in (I don't write. I type.) and finally the reading accessories. Bookmarks and reading lights are somehow fun for me. One day I may actually buy a bookmark and quit using grocery receipts or my husband's business cards to mark my place. The kids, always instructed to stay together while I enjoy a cup of coffee in the bookstore cafe, restrict themselves to one aisle. This aisle has aided several generations of young people to pass the countless hours of childhood summer vacations not by offering the good literature they are told they ought to read, but by offering a large variety of comics. The favorite comics in my house are Calvin and Hobbes, The Far Side, and Spider Man which offer philosophy, fun, and heroics.
Kids are excellent readers, not necessarily for their ability to form words from letters, or from being able to read sentences with a good degree of understanding; but children's reading excellence is related to their capacity for full immersion. My kids don't yet associate books with wisdom. They may associate books with school and learning, but they have never been tempted to indulge the illusion of upgrading their intelligence through the acquiring of many books the way adults are tempted. (We really do think we can buy anything, don't we?) The capacity for full immersion that makes kids great readers enables them to completely immerse themselves in the world of the book (or the comic) they are reading. They are able to lose themselves in another world where they become heroes and enjoy new friends until mother calls them to dinner.
This is the kind of experience that can't be purchased. I can buy the book, but as long as I'm content to simply own it I'll never experience it. On my shelves sit the greatest books of Western civilization. I can be content to enjoy the beauty of rows of books, or happy to feel smarter by virtue of the simple possession of paper and print; or I can read them and participate in the Great Conversation, making friends of the great men and women of the world. The consumer and sensate age may not encourage such participation, but it is a momentary day. When this day passes we will still have Homer, Dante, the Bible, and probably Dickens. Because so many things are fleeting I will do well to acquaint myself with those things that last. There are, after all, some things that money can't buy.
I organize ladies retreats for my church. I also lead the occasional Bible study and help with teas. All these activities can be lumped together into the same category and labeled, Women's Ministry. All is well with that except for the fact that I am relationally handicapped, but that can be the subject of another post.
Just this evening I was informed that one particular lady, who I was counting on being present at our upcoming retreat, was not going to be present. I did not have the opportunity to learn more than this bare fact at the time, so I filled in all the empty spaces with details of my own. Now, imagination is a good thing, but its evil twin sister, unrestrained imagination, is a bad thing. It is unfortunately characteristic of human beings that when our imaginations usurp the reign of reason, they do so not to strengthen and encourage, but to tyrannize and discourage.
My imagination filled in the blanks with all sorts of possibilities as to why my friend would not be joining us. I was searching my memory for possible sins of commission and omission, thinking that surely I had caused some great offense. I was entirely prepared to lose an entire nights sleep fretting about what I might have done or failed to do when I learned the reason for her expected absence.
Unsurprisingly, the facts were entirely unrelated to the fiction of my imagination. I had been tyrannized once again by unruly and treacherous thoughts. I had invented something to fret over and that thing had taken the place of truth. There is nothing new under the sun and I am not unique. How like the rest of mankind I am. Every decade has its tyrannical fear. Every year sees its own seizing anxiety. If the end of the world will not result from nuclear weapons as we feared during the cold war, then it will from biological weapons that will undoubtedly be used against us by American-hating terrorists. In recent years we have made much effort to worry about the West-Nile virus, the bird flu, mad cow disease and even cow emissions. But all these are mere anxieties compared to our fear of fears: global warming.
We do, in reality, live in a world of very many dangers; but like my earlier subjection to the tyranny of the imagination, we spend our energies fearing the wrong things. What man ought to be concerned about is not drinking organic, chemical free coffee; he ought to be concerned about eternity. "Is there a God?" is a bigger question than "Paper or plastic?" "Will there be a judgment?" is weightier than the problem of landfills. Eternal matters are the realities we must face even if our imaginary fears come to pass.
In the heart of all men is the desire for greatness. For some this desire is manifested in an overwhelming compulsion to achieve success and a name for themselves. Some, like Alexander, settled for nothing less than conquering the world while others, like Achilles, sought immortality. History is the bestower of the kind of immortality Achilles sought and the men like Alexander obtained it.
The uncountable others, though, desired and desire an un-named greatness; something abstract that they can't quite define. They don't know what it is, they only know that they want it. This desire doesn't take the shape of a larger-than-life goal, it is vague and abstract; and they know somehow that, though lacking an objective, what they want is larger than life. Perhaps what they yearn for is not larger than life, but simply a larger life.
The society of our day has offered us an ease and prosperity no other civilization thought to dream of. The average American today enjoys greater access to comfort and convenience than the royalty of any other age. We've come to hunger for so much and are able to indulge so many wants, yet we expect so little and our desires remain unsatisfied. We are a culture of consumers, wanting quantity of possessions while forgetting to expect quality of life. We buy kitsch, forgetting to expect beauty.
We all know that man is more than a glorified ape. Glorified apes can not long for greatness. Yet we sabotage our destiny of glory when we settle for so little. We pursue things rather than God. Rather than forming our minds and attitudes with the great books that have survived for millennia and fueled the imaginations of great men and women, we settle for sitcoms. We've exchanged heroes for the-flavor-of-the-month actors or actresses. Rather than seeking the glory of a virtuous life, hard won by discipline and self-control, our society settles for the passing mores of the day. It takes very little energy after all to develop a weak character.
There is more to life than the practicality that wears us down. There is truth, beauty, and goodness; the required elements of a life well lived.
Yesterday was the annual pulpit exchange, meant, I suppose, to encourage healthy relationships between the town's churches. Our small parish attendance, which mysteriously becomes even smaller during the summer months, was especially small yesterday. The timing of this pulpit exchange coincided with our youth group's camping trip which meant that not only were all the kids from seventh grade up gone, but so were the three families whose grown-ups made the effort of orgainizing the affair. The timing, if planned this way (it was not), would have been meant to unimpress.
The visiting pastor, a kind and glowing man, was from the other side of town as well as the other side of the ecclesial world. He pastors the large Mennonite Brethren church in town which is the closest thing our small town has to a mega-church. Now, the differences in theology, practice, worship, culture, ecclesiology, and history between the the Mennonites and the Episcopalians are well known to all. To all, that is, who know what an Episcopalian is. It seems that the acre of Christendom in which my parish is planted is dominated by Mennonites. There are others, of course, such as Anglicans, but we're such a minute concern, the majority neither looks twice nor gives us a second thought. I had to wonder just what this kindly Mennonite pastor thought of us with our liturgical ways and meager attendance, accustomed as he is to preaching to a thousand or two on any given Sunday.
Now, given that one cannot live in my acre and not know a Mennonite, I have to say that some of my very best friends in the world are from this bunch and I've learned some things about them, and on the whole, they fit into the category commonly called, "The good guys."
The first thing that one learns about Mennonites is that they are a clannish people. Anybody who is familiar with the town Hobbiton in The Lord of the Rings and the intertwining relationships of its inhabitants (everybody is related to everybody else) might wonder if the Bagginses and Tooks are really descendents of Menno Simons. For centuries now the Mennonites have stuck together. It seems that religious persecution has a way of forging a strong sense of community and along with their clannishness comes a strong sense of identity. A Mennonite does not just go to a Mennonite church. He is a Mennonite, as are all his kin alive and dead going back to his great, great, great, great, great, great grandfather whose name he can tell you as well as a bit about him.
I used to not think much this clannish attitude. A clan is a hard thing to break into after all if one wants to convert to their way. But of late I have pondered the condition of the church over all, the protestant church that is, as well as the culture of the world this church must face. Our world is rapidly changing and I'm not talking about politics or technology. Our world is rapidly changing its clothes, its shoes, its job, its spouse, its neighborhood, and even its church. It seems that much of evangelicalism has been infected with the attitudes of the surrounding culture. With the rise of anti-denominationalism we see the increase of community churches with their gymnasium style worship centers. These churches are typically faster growing than traditional churches and reach their city in far more imaginative and "cutting-edge" ways than the churches of our fathers and grandfathers do.
Whatever gains the modern ways are making for the kingdom, something of worth has been lost to the modern church. I think the one word that sums it up is "loyalty." It used to be that an Episcopalian always had been and always would be an Episcopalian. It used to be that a Baptist served the Lord in the same church his father and grandfather did and could expect that his son and grandson would do the same. But that was before we had so many choices. That was before the cultural shift from stability to mobility. When this happened exactly I cannot say, but it has carried over into the life of the church and we have a generation of young Christians who don't seem to have a strong sense of identity. If they grew up in church, they probably floated with their family from one church to the next looking for some kind of fruit without bothering to first grow roots.
I think we can learn something from the Mennonites (and the died-in-the-wool Episcopalians too) about faithfulness, community and identity. Without those things, how can we pass on a spiritual heritage to our children, or form them to stand against the wind like a tree, since without them we ourselves blow here and there like leaves? I hope the Mennonites can continue as they are, even if they do outnumber us 400 to 1, just as I hope it's true that there are some things that just never change.
I took the kids to the pizza place for dinner and gave each of them quarters for the machines. While I sat in the booth enjoying food I didn't have to prepare, the wrinkle-free little people, or not so little anymore, wandered around the restaraunt investigating all the machines. Some contained candy or gum, or perhaps small toys while others promised a prize on the condition that after investing too many quarters, one navigate the metal claw in just the right way so as to grasp an item and drop it in the hole before simply dropping it in vain which is the usual and frustrating outcome of this challenge. This outing seemed a simple enough treat to me, but to the girls it brought great pleasure with the obtaining of bouncy balls and sticky plastic centepedes as an added bonus. Later at home they busied themselves with making a tent from bed sheets in which they could enjoy a "high tea" of salted almonds and strawberry lemonade served on miniature dishes. It was truly a meal fit for a queen, or rather, queens. Oh the joys of childhood.
But what about the rest of us? What happens to us when we become adults that causes us to leave that wonderful world of imagination and enter the world of "reality" where we stare mindlessly at ball games on TV while eating instead of feasting? Is it really necessary to leave behind the magic of childhood? It can't be necessary and not every adult has committed such folly of forgetfulness. The evidence of this is that a full grown man wrote The Chronicles of Narnia and his close friend wrote The Lord of the Rings. Lewis and Tolkein didn't forget about magic. The questions for the majority of us is, How can we who live in forgetfulness of enchanted worlds recover our lost imagination in order that our own world can again become enchanted? If we can manage this recovery then our grindstones will be transformed into sword stones and our enslavement to the practical into kingdoms where we are kings and queens. I am not suggesting that we enter a world of unreality, but that we return the lost color to our lives and stop living and seeing in shades of gray.
We're in year three of a remodeling project. This project could have been completed in months rather than years had we hired it out but we didn't. We unfortunately entered into this project without the benefit of perfect hindsight. With hindsight before hand we could have known not only the great difficulty of this project: the many hours of labor and the black hole that drags all available resources into it, but also the family crisis and various personal disasters that would derail our efforts along the way. If we don't finish this remodeling before the new heavens and earth we'll be working on this eternally! Had we started out with hindsight we would have done things differently, perhaps with different timing or in a different way; but we had only our good intentions with the future closed to us. But that's the way life is, isn't it. We start out nearly blind and feel our way through and later, having improved eyesight, we look back and notice all the mistakes we made. If only we could recognize mistakes before they were cemented in our past, avoid them altogether and instead do things the right way, the wise way.
Life is one big remodeling project. Some of us have a goal in mind, others make up the plan as they go. All of us though are under construction. The good news for Christians though is that God is the builder. He already has a plan for our end result and he somehow works all our mistakes, sin, ugliness, and disasters into his plan for a good end result. I may not be able to overcome some of my mistakes, but God can and that is grace. It is the one who has sinned much that loves much because she has been forgiven much. None of us wants to wreck our lives, but when we foolishly do, God is able to make good of it in the end. What a great God we serve.
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