Death Defining Act

In my Developmental Psychology class we were on the topic of death and dying. What amazed me was that in talking about death, students were concerned that if there was no afterlife then there was no reason for the actions in their lives. Why would we be moral and virtuous if we were not being judged?

Is this the only reason we live good lives? Do we only behave because we think that we are being watched by an entity who is recording our actions? A cosmic Santa with a naughty and nice list?

I read years ago that 80% of people don't steal because they are afraid of getting caught. Does that number apply to the afterlife as well? If we ramp up divine retribution, will our societies improve? What about the afterlife promises of virgins for martyrdom?

Maybe the problem with our world is that we don't have a consistent view of what will happen when we die. Maybe if we did we could all get along better? Or we could all be blowing ourselves up.

Sweater person

Here is another one. Someone in my family who will remain unnamed received this sweater. Look at the label. Say no more! I'm glad the sweater told me what to do, otherwise the person in my family who will remain nameless would be walking around with more chest exposed than either of us is comfortable with!

God at work in our world

I just returned from seeing "The Nativity Story". I thought it was well done. I was struck with the controversy that is embedded throughout the story. It was not easy for Mary and Joseph to walk around with everyone blaming them for having sex before it was societally and morally acceptable. And yet God planned it that way. Not the "having sex" part, the "everybody thinks we had sex" part. I realize that there was a prophesy to hold up to but it didn't make it any easier for the teenage couple.

It is as if God is saying from the get-go "Don't limit Me. I work and you won't be able to figure it out no matter how much you attempt to define Me." What is amazing about Mary, and what makes her such a role model is that she accepted it without understanding it.

I am increasingly amazed by the reaction of the evangelical community. It is a sad reality but very few churches would have welcomed Mary in. It might have been easier if there was a man, like Joseph attached to her and they could say that she had her momentary lapse of judgement. That would last until she started talking about being overshadowed by the Divine and impregnated. Then I think she would lose those who were still attempting to accept.

At the arrival of Jesus, God is indicating that He is not constrained by our flimsy moral or social code. I think it is dangerous to believe to have God figured out and rest in that knowledge.

It is precisely those people who would struggle the most with Mary's pregnancy.

Christmas eve

We sat in a semi-dark santuary listening to the choir sing "While we are waiting, come". It was a beautiful arrangement. The choir sounded soothing. "Mary and Joseph" stepped up to the manger. Mary and Joseph are picked each year from the pool of parents who have just had a baby.

We sang "Away in the manger". The cattle are lowing, The poor Baby wakes, But little Lord Jesus, No crying He makes.

Really? Good children don't cry? There is a child crying two pews back. He's upset about something.

I guess we can't all be "Little Lord Jesus". All can't be perfect.

Life is messy. As we sang "Joy to the world" a child dropped a handful of marbles. They rolled down beneath the pews and stopped at the kneelers at the front of the church. I picked up some and handed them back to the parent. I found another and another.

Somebody next to me was singing loudly in an operatic voice. Angels was mispelled in the bulletin. It read "Go to Bethleham and see, Him of whom the angles sing."

Christmas Eve service pairs down the mess of Christmas, and makes it more approachable. We don't like messes. We would prefer our "Little Lord Jesus" to not cry when the cows awaken him. We prefer a sterile service with comfortable sights and smells to Mary pushing out the afterbirth stinking of manure.

One approach isn't more noble than the other. I just don't want to be so far removed the Christmas story that I don't remember that life is messy and not a tableau at the front of the auditorium.

Equal power

At Perkins Thursday night I came across these items. Apparently, Equal wants you to get all riled up and protest for them so that they will increase their market share. Or maybe...keep their market share. They are advertising to the generation of the 60's The marketer that came up with this, probably lived through the 60's.

How do the advertisers want us to treat this information? Do they want us to glue the sweetener packets to popsicle sticks and stage sit ins, at the restaurant, chanting "TRUE BLUE! TRUE BLUE"! Or do we paste them on our fingers to remind us of how important it is to make sure we don't lose our cherished way of life with the advent of Spenda?

Or we could just say...That's so establishment.

Dealing with Dawn

In my continuing pursuit to document advertizers attempts at leading us to relate to their products as persons, I introduce Dawn.

Dawn comes in a number of fragrant colors and sports a pop top for ease of use as you WASH THE DISHES. Dawn apparently will not do your dishes for you, but it wants you to help it save WILDLIFE!

Here's a comment for you, Dawn, do my dishes which is why I bought you...then we can talk!

Oh wait. Did I just respond to Dawn as a real person? MYBAD! But it's not my fault! Dawn started it! You saw it egg me on...didn't you?

Life changing

I was finishing my last Christmas shopping. At a sporting goods store while I was standing in line, my daughter runs up with this item and asks if I can purchase it for her. I am fudging at this time, not giving her an answer, when the clerk turns to me and says, that one employee in the store bought and "it changed his life!"

That took me off guard. All it took was a $2.97 item to change a person's life. Is it just the way he drank water that was troubling him in his life? I think the employees may be a little given to hyperbole.

As I thought more about the cost of a life changing experience, it really comes from walking through painful times with your eyes open. That is really what it takes to change directions in a life. Anything else is a cheap substitute.

Oh...Snap!

The last final was graded. I was just logging it into the computer. There was a pop, a sting on my nose, and then blurred vision. I couldn't see. It took me a moment to realize that a lens in my glasses had popped out and was laying on my lap, not that I could see it!

I just purchased these glasses about three weeks ago and I had gotten frames with only metal at the top. The lens is held in place by a strong nylon strand around the lower half, much like a fishing line. That is what snapped.

I didn't have any other glasses so I packed up my stuff and headed to the store where I purchased them. The lady behind the counter was pleasant and put the best spin possible on how durable they were, but it sounded like there were a lot of repairs of this nature with these glasses.

I am again reminded that our lives are so fragile. We take for granted, the bonds that we depend on to manage our lives, and when one of them snaps, we are stunned and disoriented. Glasses are an easy fix. Organ shutdown, job loss, auto accident, loss of electricity, among the myriad supports in our lives, makes it trickier.

The end of a quarter

One of the delights of being an instructor is the end of a quarter. Papers are graded, finals are corrected and grades are assigned. Like new fallen snow, the rough is covered and the surface is pristine with the opportunity to form new footprints.

The end of the quarter allows me the chance to assess what was done right and what needed work, and in a week I have a chance to do it all over again, learning from my mistakes and successes and incorporating them into my teaching.

There are many opportunities to start over. The most dramatic one is each new day. I drag my problems with me from day to day. And every time the sun rises, it is as if God is telling me, "Here is your chance. If you want, you can do something different." What a wonderful gift! The only catch is that I have to actually DO something different, or the gift is squandered, and truth be told, I have squandered a lot of days.

www.wiihaveaproblem.com

I found the funniest website today. I couldn't stop laughing while I read it. It is www.wiihaveaproblem.com. It is stories and pictures of people who have hurt themselves or others while playing Nintendo WII. I just thought I would pass it on as a safety precaution if you are thinking of wii-ing.

Growing old

I talked to someone the other day who I would consider elderly. He talked about his strength. The deterioration of his muscle mass was obvious. He attempted to distance himself from the weak and sick in his age group.

As I age, I am losing my strength. There is medical proof that we start to slide slowly before 60 years old and then picks up steam afterwards. I am becoming weaker in my body, and yet my understanding has never been greater. I enjoy my life.

I believe that the work of getting older is acceptance. At the end of my life I am going to have to accept that what I've done, as there are no "do-overs". I realize I am not a young man. I realize that there are limits that can't be overcome. I am learning to understand and accept my limitations. I don't miss my younger years. I'm glad to be my age.

One of the great things about old age is that it doesn't last forever.

Loving my enemies

At a bagel shop today I was looking for a parking spot. A man walked to his car, and got in. I waited. I could see him in his car. He looked at me and then started digging in the glove box, looking at things on his seat. My wife got out and I waited. As soon as I went to find a new parking spot, he drove out. I had to drive around the parking lot to get back to the spot. I was angry!

I get angry when I see people act like no one else matters. I'm not even sure why, but it stirs anger from deep inside me. The driver of the car could see me waiting. If he considered the condition of the parking lot he would have realized that someone was waiting for his spot. And yet he took his time to leave.

In church today the pastor talked about loving our enemies. I wondered who my enemy was. It is easy to love our far away enemies. That take no sacrifice. In my anger towards this anonymous driver, he had become my enemy. LIKE HELL I AM GOING TO LOVE HIM. He doesn't deserve it!

And yet that is precisely what God asks us to do. In church, the pastor gave a practical suggestion for loving those who anger you. Pray for them. He talked about driving behind a slow driver and praying for her. He stated that it didn't make the drive go quicker, but it made him more tolerating of her slowness.

Thinking back on today and how I could have reacted, instead of the vile words I uttered at the rear of his car, I could simply ask God to forgive him for he didn't know what he was doing. That is what Jesus did while hanging on the cross. As I consider doing that, it seems like a REALLY hard thing to do! I can assure you that this response will not be the first horse out of the gate.

Maybe I could have parked my car, blocking him in his parking space, kneel in front of his car grille, and pray for him, demonstrating my resolve to love him. I don't know, maybe my approach needs a little work.

I guess I'll go pray about it!

When I'm old I'll join a group

At lunch on Sunday a group of matronly women came in wearing red hats and sporting purple scarves. I had no idea what that meant. My wife casually said "It's the Red Hat Society". I must confess I had never heard of it. She said that the Hallmark company was promoting it. She said something about wearing purple when you are old.

I thouught back to a poem I had read by Jenny Joseph. You can read it at http://www.aztriad.com/pathmark/purple_poem.html. A woman declares that when she is old she will live her life free of worry about what others think of her. It is an anthem to freedom.

I discovered this movement started six years ago, by founder and "Exalted Queen Mother" Sue Ellen Cooper who gave the poem and a red hat to a friend who was turning 55. It apparently caught on and since then women have been joining in droves. Its members extol the benefits. There is no set agenda for chapters of the Red Hat Society. Each chapter makes up its own rules.

It is great for us all to be a part of something bigger than ourselves, especially when we get to the point where we are deemed increasingly unimportant in our American culture of youth. I think it is great to see so many women so involved. What I find intriguing is that for most of us, to find expressions of freedom, we must conform

Tis the season to disappoint

Target 8:30 on Tuesday morning, Burl Ives was crooning his rendition of "Rudolph the red nosed reindeer" over the sound system. It was seniors day at Target with Santa and elves posing for random pictures and the elderly peering over the handle bar of the carts they pushed through the store.

At checkout, a clerk and a shopper were grousing about how the excitement was over for Christmas. They were facing the prospect of shopping for items that would be deemed inadequate on Christmas day

This time of the year with the exception of Valentine's day (where women give report cards on male thoughtfulness) is a time of great emotional risk. We had better buy the right present or run the risk of disappointing. We stress over the amount of money we should spend on a gift as it has come to symbolize our feelings toward that person. People are afraid that they won't measure up.

How do we cope? We compensate. Overbuying, and spending agonizing hours finding the "right gift". What do we buy for people who have everything?

Which might explain the rise of gift cards. The latest one I saw at Target doubled as a mp3 player. Others bark and sing, which appeals to the kid in us. They are a delight to wrap and mail.

With the pressure to get something that our loved ones will enjoy, the only stress left is to figure out the dollar amount that says "I care about you this much!".

Prolepsis

I learned a new word yesterday. Pro·lep·sis: the use of a descriptive word in anticipation of its becoming applicable.

The pastor asked why we don't ask for the gift of world peace when we have a chance to. Why don't we go for the whole enchilada? We don't. We settle.

Years ago, hiking up a ridgeline in fog, I could see what I thought was the top of the ridge, only to find that there was another higher point. After a couple disappointments I stopped believing, and focused on the next section. When I reached the top it came as a surprise as I thought I would never get there.

I wish for world peace. I would like to have a world where people aren't obsessed with the desire to hurt, or kill people and our beliefs would all be respected.

The sad reality is that life stands in the way of that belief. I no longer believe that it is possible. While I may desire it, it will not happen today, and I'm pretty sure, not in my life time.

I am a cynic. What stops me from wishing for world peace is the bomb that went off on a Bagdad street, and a little child in the ER, sporting bruises from an angry parent. I struggle to believe when I see the elderly lose their retirement to a scam artist, and a business acting unethically to squeeze bigger profits from their unsuspecting customers.

World peace is big. I don't know if my belief is that big. Perhaps I should practice prolepsis, acting as if it has already happened. If I'm honest, I am afraid that if I act that way, others may think that I have lost touch with reality.

An even bigger fear is is that I will think that about myself.