That 1960s song “what’s it all about?” plays in my mind occasionally as I think – endlessly, it seems – about this event, or series of events really.
It’s been a week since David Dewees, the Jarvis Collegiate teacher who committed suicide after being arrest on charges of luring, and invitation to touch. He was my son’s section head at Pioneer Camp this past summer.
Aidan, 16, revered David. Such a great guy, a good man, so much fun, the most amazing Bible study leader, a gifted teacher so inspiring that Aidan has started to consider that vocation -- the kudos seemed endless.
The whole affair has taken on huge moral proportions – great men sin (and women) – and where do we find God in it, and where do we find right judgment in it. I bring up the idea of moral dilemma in trying to find ways to discuss this tragic thing to Aidan. The truth must out and yet is the whole truth may be lost to us forever with David’s death. We must protect our children, yes. But what of the hundreds of children whose lives were touched, positively, and changed forever on account of his example? And what of those who will never benefit from his probing questions, his exuberance, his musical genius, his deep and abiding love of Christ? Is David’s life now completely discounted because of his suicide, and even more by what led to it?
We heard things that make for unclear judgments, moral ambiguities, which we aim to examine in both the stark light of God’s truth and the compassion of Christ’s grace. Aidan understands that one must judge another on how he presents himself to us, and not on what others may say. But he and his friends talk and some of them are deeply hurt: “I thought I knew him,” said one. “How could he do this,” cries another.
Aidan has thought about this, and concludes that he can forgive David for being something other than what he may have thought he was. Nobody is two-dimensional, we all have dark sides – witness great King David, who loved God mightily and yet arranged another man’s murder so he could steal his wife.
Aidan doesn’t really understand what made Yukon (Dewees’ camp name) take his own life, but I can imagine: despair, shame, humiliation and the weakness we all suffer from – disbelief that God could possibly bring any good out of this mess.
Sunday, October 11, 2009
Tuesday, September 01, 2009
Getting Up and Going On
I could make excuses, and some of them sound and legitimate, for not keeping up with this blog. The past several months have been extremely stressful for family reasons. The situation with access to my elderly father deteriorates, and there is nothing we can do legally -- my brother manages to keep just one inch above the law on this. The marriage teeters on the edge of nothingness and many days I just feel like giving up. Freelance work has come to a standstill and my income is half what it was last year, which wasn't any great shakes then.
Lo, the many times I've been lying awake at night feeling completely overwhelmed by the problems, and feeling I can't find a way out of this. I start dragging up things from childhood, and mistakes I made, and dwell in a constant whirlwind of self-doubt, self-recrimination, and sense of hopelessness.
Payer is the only thing that drags me out of it. And that usually prompts me toward thanksgiving: how my children thrive, with Aidan reaching new levels of relationship with God, and Anna dealing with anxiety and perfectionism; and also to view how blessed I am compared to about 97% of the population.
I try to remember what Harriet Tubman always said to herself: "Just keep on goin', Harriet, keep on goin'." And she did it with Christian love.
And then today's cqod (Christian quotation of the day) came to my inbox and knocked all that sheer determination on its head:
To do for yourself the best that you have it in you to do-- to grit your teeth and clench your fists in order to survive the world at its harshest and worst--is by that very act, to be unable to let something be done for you and in you that is more wonderful still. The trouble with steeling yourself against the harshness of reality is that the same steel that secures your
life against being destroyed secures your life also against being opened up and transformed by the holy power that life itself comes from. You can even prevail on your own. But you cannot become human on your own.
... Frederick Buechner (b. 1926), The Sacred Journey, San
Fransisco: Harper & Row, 1982, p. 46
Yes, we've been given a brain to think through things, a will to carry out what we think is right, and even a heart to temper it all with compassion. But this quote talks about obedience, I think -- that we must wait on the Lord and remain open for Him to do His work. I have failed to obey this in my quest to fix problems.
Lo, the many times I've been lying awake at night feeling completely overwhelmed by the problems, and feeling I can't find a way out of this. I start dragging up things from childhood, and mistakes I made, and dwell in a constant whirlwind of self-doubt, self-recrimination, and sense of hopelessness.
Payer is the only thing that drags me out of it. And that usually prompts me toward thanksgiving: how my children thrive, with Aidan reaching new levels of relationship with God, and Anna dealing with anxiety and perfectionism; and also to view how blessed I am compared to about 97% of the population.
I try to remember what Harriet Tubman always said to herself: "Just keep on goin', Harriet, keep on goin'." And she did it with Christian love.
And then today's cqod (Christian quotation of the day) came to my inbox and knocked all that sheer determination on its head:
To do for yourself the best that you have it in you to do-- to grit your teeth and clench your fists in order to survive the world at its harshest and worst--is by that very act, to be unable to let something be done for you and in you that is more wonderful still. The trouble with steeling yourself against the harshness of reality is that the same steel that secures your
life against being destroyed secures your life also against being opened up and transformed by the holy power that life itself comes from. You can even prevail on your own. But you cannot become human on your own.
... Frederick Buechner (b. 1926), The Sacred Journey, San
Fransisco: Harper & Row, 1982, p. 46
Yes, we've been given a brain to think through things, a will to carry out what we think is right, and even a heart to temper it all with compassion. But this quote talks about obedience, I think -- that we must wait on the Lord and remain open for Him to do His work. I have failed to obey this in my quest to fix problems.
Thursday, May 07, 2009
Acedia & Me
Having not slept well last night, I took to my bed this morning as soon as Anna was out the door to school, and snuggled up with Kathleen Norris’s latest book Acedia & Me: A Marriage, Monks, and a Writer’s Life.
In between fits of catnaps, I read it, and it struck a deep chord, echoing my own faith (or faithless) journey in her biography of churchgoing childhood, to adolescence and young womanhood of agnosticism, and eventually back to the church, to faith, and one hopes into the love of God. But no journey is so simple, especially one beset by the sin of acedia, sloth, lassitude, listlessness, despair, depression, or whatever you wish to call your own noonday demon.
It’s this acedia I have been suffering with the last several months, and possibly for much, much longer. I wish I could find something funny to say about it, but in some ways humour can be an effective shield against honesty, and losing faith, in yourself if not in God, requires no small amount of self-reflective honesty. And it’s not all that funny, either.
So far, about a quarter of the way into the book, it does seem as though Norris is suggesting that the antidote to acedia (for it is truly as poisonous as a serpent’s bite), is digging in deeper to commitments – to one’s self, to life, to your spouse, your friends, your vocation, your God. It seems to be a complete cessation of desire – which is a sickness of the will and consequently the heart – and in modern Dr Phil terms, the prescription is fake it til you make it.
Of course Norris is much more eloquent that Dr Phil, and one sentence in particular seemed to sum up what I have been feeling much of lately. Listlessness has a seductively soft sound, but at root, it means being unable to desire, which is a cause, and a symptom, of serious mental distress. What most of us do is delve deeper into distraction – the worst thing, Norris says – because it makes us “in danger of becoming immunized from feeling itself.”
In between fits of catnaps, I read it, and it struck a deep chord, echoing my own faith (or faithless) journey in her biography of churchgoing childhood, to adolescence and young womanhood of agnosticism, and eventually back to the church, to faith, and one hopes into the love of God. But no journey is so simple, especially one beset by the sin of acedia, sloth, lassitude, listlessness, despair, depression, or whatever you wish to call your own noonday demon.
It’s this acedia I have been suffering with the last several months, and possibly for much, much longer. I wish I could find something funny to say about it, but in some ways humour can be an effective shield against honesty, and losing faith, in yourself if not in God, requires no small amount of self-reflective honesty. And it’s not all that funny, either.
So far, about a quarter of the way into the book, it does seem as though Norris is suggesting that the antidote to acedia (for it is truly as poisonous as a serpent’s bite), is digging in deeper to commitments – to one’s self, to life, to your spouse, your friends, your vocation, your God. It seems to be a complete cessation of desire – which is a sickness of the will and consequently the heart – and in modern Dr Phil terms, the prescription is fake it til you make it.
Of course Norris is much more eloquent that Dr Phil, and one sentence in particular seemed to sum up what I have been feeling much of lately. Listlessness has a seductively soft sound, but at root, it means being unable to desire, which is a cause, and a symptom, of serious mental distress. What most of us do is delve deeper into distraction – the worst thing, Norris says – because it makes us “in danger of becoming immunized from feeling itself.”
Monday, May 04, 2009
the silent scream revisited
Bernard Nathanson’s book, The Hand of God, should be on every young person’s reading list. He describes his own journey from a broken childhood with a dictatorial doctor father, who was verbally and emotionally abusive to his mother, into his own medical career, and the pathways that led him to become one of the leading early abortion doctors, who was also a leader in the pro-choice movement. He performs 60,000 abortions over the course of his career – including that of his own child – and only when ultrasound becomes standard use, does the veil fall and he sees that the fetus is life. His arguments rest on that fundamental principle, not in all the bafflegab of pro-choice proponents who have fairly sophisticated arguments for when and how a fetus is human, and whether there’s a moral absolute, and whether a fetus can feel pain (yes, it can). He stops doing abortions in 1979, and at one point even asks one of his colleagues if he minds having the ultrasound machine on while he conducts an abortion. When his colleague sees the ultrasound results, he is sickened, and stops doing abortions himself.
The strength of Nathanson’s book is its honesty, how he became pulled and lulled into the pro-choice movement, and with good compassionate reasons. He also supports it all with some pretty shocking stats – especially gruesome are the deaths of some women seeking abortions from bad doctors. He discusses how the cream of medical crop bypasses this as a career choice, because of its scummy aftertaste, leaving the doctor dregs to perform abortions – some of them doing 30 a day.
Ironically, it is his pro-life about face that eventually leads to his conversion to Christianity. He witnesses the quiet, deep of the pro-life vigils, and prayers, and holding the mirror to his own soul, finds it lacking. He eventually becomes Catholic.
The other strength in the book is his prescriptions: prayer is vital, non-violent vigil, too – as he points out, no one was ever convinced of God’s unbounding love or of the personhood of a fetus by argument alone. It is love -- relayed through visual and emotional means -- that can successfully grab one in the gut and demonstrate the reprehensible act of abortion.
The strength of Nathanson’s book is its honesty, how he became pulled and lulled into the pro-choice movement, and with good compassionate reasons. He also supports it all with some pretty shocking stats – especially gruesome are the deaths of some women seeking abortions from bad doctors. He discusses how the cream of medical crop bypasses this as a career choice, because of its scummy aftertaste, leaving the doctor dregs to perform abortions – some of them doing 30 a day.
Ironically, it is his pro-life about face that eventually leads to his conversion to Christianity. He witnesses the quiet, deep of the pro-life vigils, and prayers, and holding the mirror to his own soul, finds it lacking. He eventually becomes Catholic.
The other strength in the book is his prescriptions: prayer is vital, non-violent vigil, too – as he points out, no one was ever convinced of God’s unbounding love or of the personhood of a fetus by argument alone. It is love -- relayed through visual and emotional means -- that can successfully grab one in the gut and demonstrate the reprehensible act of abortion.
Friday, April 24, 2009
From this day forward...
The thing that keeps playing in my mind is my friend’s statement that she deserves to be happy, and that this marriage is not making me happy. Her announcement of the marriage ending deeply saddened me because she and her husband were good together, and they were in love at one time; but she has always restlessly sought happiness, and so has he.
Ironically, we all seem burdened with two human traits that make it difficult to survive: on the one hand we bury our great disappointments with life – especially with the frailty and flaws of our fellow humans and even more so with those humans who are supposed to love us – and on the other we have this unreasonable expectation and hope that somehow it will be all different with a different person. It does seem to be on the one hand, a refusal to engage with the flaws, and on the other, a denial of the universality of love’s frailty. That is, human love. Is it any wonder that so many people scoff at the good news preached about God’s love, when they have nothing to gauge that by?
As Vietnamese bishop Francis Thuan learned, during his 16 years of imprisonment (nine of it in solitary confinement) on trumped up charges, struggling against no matter how inhumane, unfair and injudicious the treatment at other’s hands, only ends up making the knots tighter and the imprisonment more despicable.
The only real way to freedom is through Jesus Christ: “When every former security fell away that I felt I must concentrate all my life on the one thing necessary, on what is solely important.”
And his prescription is the same as Pope John Paul’s: “Let every moment of our life be, the first moment, the last moment, the only moment.” That is, we must deal with the moment, and not the outcome of other’s actions.
Or as Dr Phil might have put it, is your reaction (to this imprisonment of the soul, of the body, of the mind, of the heart) “working for you?”
Ironically, we all seem burdened with two human traits that make it difficult to survive: on the one hand we bury our great disappointments with life – especially with the frailty and flaws of our fellow humans and even more so with those humans who are supposed to love us – and on the other we have this unreasonable expectation and hope that somehow it will be all different with a different person. It does seem to be on the one hand, a refusal to engage with the flaws, and on the other, a denial of the universality of love’s frailty. That is, human love. Is it any wonder that so many people scoff at the good news preached about God’s love, when they have nothing to gauge that by?
As Vietnamese bishop Francis Thuan learned, during his 16 years of imprisonment (nine of it in solitary confinement) on trumped up charges, struggling against no matter how inhumane, unfair and injudicious the treatment at other’s hands, only ends up making the knots tighter and the imprisonment more despicable.
The only real way to freedom is through Jesus Christ: “When every former security fell away that I felt I must concentrate all my life on the one thing necessary, on what is solely important.”
And his prescription is the same as Pope John Paul’s: “Let every moment of our life be, the first moment, the last moment, the only moment.” That is, we must deal with the moment, and not the outcome of other’s actions.
Or as Dr Phil might have put it, is your reaction (to this imprisonment of the soul, of the body, of the mind, of the heart) “working for you?”
To Have and To Hold
I just got off the phone with a long time girlfriend who tells me her marriage is dissolving, and she has been having an affair for the past two years. While I do understand that she’s felt frustrated with trying to get her husband to pay attention to her, I also know what it feels like to be on the receiving end of the infidelity news.
And she’s not the first. In the past month or two, I have heard of the split up of four other relatively good friends. In one case, the husband had been addicted to office affairs, and had even been blackmailed by one of his past flings. In the other two, the husband had left for another woman. So the stats are right on one thing – this happens 75% of the time with men, and 25% with women. And the final one, he left not for another woman, but to be away.
In my own case, I keep holding on, but when I get to the point where I am ready to throw in the towel he makes a turnaround. Some friends say he seems to enjoy having me dance to his tune. Others say essentially the same, but add that it’s just his personality to need to assert his power to leave anytime (which he’s been threatening to do for 22 years, and never does).
The conversations with friends always revolves around how does this affect the kids. Is it better for them to have parents staying together even though it’s pretty clear there’s little love, or is it better if mom and dad move on -- either alone or to someone new -- so that they can stop exposing the kids to impotent relationships. I’m married to a man whose parents stuck together and their horrible relationship may have caused him to be virtually incapable of making a commitment (he did this kind of thing with girlfriends before me so I know it's a trend). And yet, my children are doing quite well, all things considered. And I am doing fairly well myself -- we are amicable (most of the time), and I do work I like. Except for occasionally feeling suspicious that he is having an affair, my emotional life is pretty consistently calm. (Though this could also be due to having cut myself off from feeling.)
Anyway, I’d love to hear from others what they have to say. Because I don't have the answer(s)!
And she’s not the first. In the past month or two, I have heard of the split up of four other relatively good friends. In one case, the husband had been addicted to office affairs, and had even been blackmailed by one of his past flings. In the other two, the husband had left for another woman. So the stats are right on one thing – this happens 75% of the time with men, and 25% with women. And the final one, he left not for another woman, but to be away.
In my own case, I keep holding on, but when I get to the point where I am ready to throw in the towel he makes a turnaround. Some friends say he seems to enjoy having me dance to his tune. Others say essentially the same, but add that it’s just his personality to need to assert his power to leave anytime (which he’s been threatening to do for 22 years, and never does).
The conversations with friends always revolves around how does this affect the kids. Is it better for them to have parents staying together even though it’s pretty clear there’s little love, or is it better if mom and dad move on -- either alone or to someone new -- so that they can stop exposing the kids to impotent relationships. I’m married to a man whose parents stuck together and their horrible relationship may have caused him to be virtually incapable of making a commitment (he did this kind of thing with girlfriends before me so I know it's a trend). And yet, my children are doing quite well, all things considered. And I am doing fairly well myself -- we are amicable (most of the time), and I do work I like. Except for occasionally feeling suspicious that he is having an affair, my emotional life is pretty consistently calm. (Though this could also be due to having cut myself off from feeling.)
Anyway, I’d love to hear from others what they have to say. Because I don't have the answer(s)!
Sunday, October 12, 2008
as time passes
It is Thanksgiving Sunday today, and I have been thinking about how we get caught up in certain things. Several years ago when my 15-year-old son was about 8, there was a great furore among Christian circles over the Harry Potter books -- were they occult and dangerous, or were they getting your kids to read. Which was the lesser of two evils?
It started me thinking about the role of parents in their children's discernment, which ultimately led to writing a book about making wise discernments with your teenagers (it has not been published, nor raised any interest, but that's another story). After an incredible amount of research and several rewrites, my son finally turned 13, but it was only in the past six months or so that I have come smack up into the face of the teenager, and can truly write and know what it's like.
And for all that research, and all that experience, the sum of it is this: love. Sounds simple, love them and they will turn out fine, but it's hard. When children know they are loved, they are more inclined to be good. When we spend time with them, reassuring them of their worth, they will know it when they hear that their Heavenly Father loves them and values them. When you really love them, your discipline is in their best interest and not out of anger.
St Paul really had it right on when he wrote:
1If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.
4Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
8Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. 9For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. 11When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. 12Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
13And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
It's also incredibly difficult to follow.
It started me thinking about the role of parents in their children's discernment, which ultimately led to writing a book about making wise discernments with your teenagers (it has not been published, nor raised any interest, but that's another story). After an incredible amount of research and several rewrites, my son finally turned 13, but it was only in the past six months or so that I have come smack up into the face of the teenager, and can truly write and know what it's like.
And for all that research, and all that experience, the sum of it is this: love. Sounds simple, love them and they will turn out fine, but it's hard. When children know they are loved, they are more inclined to be good. When we spend time with them, reassuring them of their worth, they will know it when they hear that their Heavenly Father loves them and values them. When you really love them, your discipline is in their best interest and not out of anger.
St Paul really had it right on when he wrote:
1If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.
4Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
8Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. 9For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. 11When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. 12Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
13And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
It's also incredibly difficult to follow.
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