I-YOUniverse

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 2008

Hitting a Wall

I’ve walked through posting a comment with two people wanting to support africancounselingcenter.org. What an absolute hassle. I’m skittish about anonymous commenting, but for now with blogger that seems to be my only option for making it EZ to comment. I’m leaving the word verification in, but risking anonymous. So maybe that’ll simplify a gosh-awful process. If there’s a way to require name and URL even though non-published, on blogger, I’d appreciate somebody cluing me in. Thanks. jlh

Urgent Prayer Request

News from allafrica.com here reports rioting throughout Cameroon, including Doula and Yaounde, where our African family live and work.

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 2008

A companion to Hineni, the previous post

You don’t hear many sermons about the end of David’s life at about 70 years. But I’ve always found 1 Kings 1-2 especially tragic: a man whom we remember for the psalms, vibrant with emotion, unable to get warm, which at least suggests that he’s emotionally and spiritually freeze dried.

Two Ways to Grow Old

Abraham, who married and fathered six children in his later years, “breathed his last and died in a good old age, an old man and full of years, and was gathered to his people” Gen 25:8 (NRSV). Moses was “120 years old when he died; his sight was unimpaired and his vigor had not abated” (Deut 34:7 NRSV).

David, however, is unable to get warm. This is not ED, in modern advertising lingo, but spiritual wasteland, an I-It terrain relieved only momentarily by a flash of You. His advisers find a beautiful young woman Abishag to “lie in his bosom” (TANAK), recalling with more than a bit of irony the prophet Nathan’s parable of the poor man’s little lamb who nestled in his bosom (2 Sam 12.4).

My Father’s error or his joy

Abishag means something like, “My father’s error” from a root related to error (BDB p. 4, or 922 “go astray” for Hebrew buffs). At any rate, it’s not complimentary. Compare Abigail, an exemplary woman from a more positive time (1 Sam 25), whose name means something like, “My father’s joy.” How much grief David could have spared himself by turning to Abigail, rather than Bathsheba!

David might have answered this question that Martin Buber asks, “Take the much discussed eroticism of our age and subtract everything that is really egocentric-in other words, every relationship in which one is not all present to the other, but each uses the other only for self-enjoyment-what would remain?” (p. 95). Buber insists we build authentic marriages only in I-You mode of existence.

Emotions at the end

David’s sons aren’t grieving as their father lies near death. Adonijah is busy feasting himself as next king, while Bathsheba connives for David to designate Solomon his successor. In addition to the obligatory Deuteronomic admonition to keep the Lord’s statutes, commandments, and ordinances, David urges Solomon to take vengeance on two men against whom David had long held grievances.

David’s end shows the consequences of mishandling emotions. David failed to confront dysfunction among his sons, not least because they were just taking after the old man. But by stuffing emotions, ignoring conflict, playing favorites or at the other extreme giving his impulses free rein, David insured his premature emotional demise.

Buber calls feelings, cut off from the You of self and God “a fluttering soul-bird”; the severed It, the daily grind apart from God, he calls “a golem, an animated clod without a soul” (p. 93).

Healing Emotions through Worship

In the psalms worshippers do not indulge in a tabloid-style exhibitionism. Rather, they share the dynamics of their feelings without blow-by-blow detail. As such, they exemplify the proper role of feelings in worship.

Had he done what the psalms do, express emotions-all emotions-in a healing, disciplined way before the Lord, David could have ended his life able to express as vital and appealing a range of feelings as did the shepherd boy, the young friend of Jonathan, or the ecstatic worshipper who brought the Ark into Jerusalem.

I find myself grieving what David lost when he became heir apparent, then king of Israel. In a sense he’s one answer to Jesus’ question, “What does it profit you if you gain the world but lose your soul?”

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 2008

Hineni, Here Am I

A Meditation on 1 Samuel 16.1-13

See also next post The Golem and the Flutter-bird

Prophet on the move

“Hineni,” the old man muttered.

More agile than most men his age, he clambered among the rocks, leading a docile white mule. He was small in stature, wiry of frame; a tangled beard obscured the lower part of his face. A thick lock of hair fell across his forehead. Only a little of his face, brown and tough from sun and wind exposure, remained visible. Quick black eyes seared through the mass of hair.

Rocks skittered underfoot. “Hineni,” he repeated, unaware of doing so. “Hineni.”

He hammered away at the word, restless, unsatisfied. Such moments were rare for the prophet. Old Eli had taught him as a child to say, “Hineni, here am I,” when the Voice spoke. In the years that followed, his life lay open to God; he struggled to obey, in part because his mother Hannah taught him each year when she visited the sanctuary, and in part because he saw the tragedy of disobedience in Eli’s sons and rejected it for himself.

The people demand a king

He judged Israel, wisely, fairly, for the most part-yet the people demanded a king. He warned them how royalty abuses its subjects, but nothing would do: Israel must have a king like other nations.

When God chose Saul, Samuel’s hopes soared. This strapping young fellow could lead the nation well. But Saul acted rashly, at times grandiose, at times insecure, moody, hostile, deceptive. The last time Samuel saw him, he had violated herem, the holy war ban, saving the best loot for himself and his men rather than sacrificing it all to the Lord. Sparing Agag. Samuel himself had to hack the evil king to pieces before the Lord; spattered with blood, he turned his back on Saul.

“How long will you grieve?” the Voice asked. “Fill your horn with oil, go to Bethlehem; I’ve found me a king.”

“Hineni,” Samuel answered. He set out early the next morning, avoiding Gibeah, Saul’s village, by circling to the west before turning south to Bethlehem. “If Saul gets wind of this, we’re all dead,” he thought.

Hearng the Voice

By mid-afternoon, needing rest, he found some rocks jutting from the grasses and sat with his back against one of them. He fell asleep. Jonathan! The tall young man stood beside him, asking about Yahweh. How did Samuel hear his Voice? Did he speak to ordinary men? What’s his will for me Jonathan? Samuel awoke, looked around for the crown prince, but his strong sweet voice faded with the dream. The red evening sun glared in Samuel’s eyes. He heard hissing; his body tensed.

There before him, a mountain lion crouched. The cat screamed and jumped, but fell beside him dead. He lay stunned with fear. A shadow blocked the sun. A very young voice asked, “Old man?” Hands shook him gently, and the boy repeated his question: “Old man? You hurt?”

Samuel wasn’t sure, but he moved carefully to see. The boy tugged a sharp stone from the lion’s skull. “I’m glad I was here, old man. Or you’d be dead.” He spoke, almost in a whisper, like one used to gentling skittish lambs. “Old man” he meant as a title of respect.

By a shepherd boy’s fire

“C’mon,” he said, helping Samuel to his feet. “I have fire, you can warm, while I find my stray, and there’s bread and goat cheese for supper.” He left the prophet and returned with a lamb in his arms.

“Who are you, boy?” Samuel asked.

“A nobody who keeps the sheep, cause my brothers don’t want to,” the boy answered. “If I was anybody, I wouldn’t get left out here all the time.” He spoke without bitterness, but the prophet sensed fiery longing in him.

Samuel wearily let the moment pass. The boy toasted flat bread in the flames and spread the cheese for him. Beth lehem, house of bread, the old man thought; moments later, he fell asleep.

Cold that lies in wait

When he woke, stars filled the sky like flowers in a spring meadow. The fire had died to a bed of embers; beyond it the bone-numbing cold lay in wait like a wild thing. The boy’s high clear voice rang out:

The God of life tends me, there’s nothing that I need,

he makes me lie in soft green grass,

he waters me in still pools.

The sound pierced Samuel’s heart. He remembered a night many years ago, when he first heard the Voice, calling “Samuel! Samuel!” He’d answered as only a child can, simply giving his whole heart: “Speak, Lord, for your servant hears.” He wished he could be a child again, knowing nothing of Agag, nothing of warfare and murderous kings, nothing of the cold within that comes of too many battles, too many buried memories. Cold of soul not even the most beautiful virgin in Israel could warm.

He chuckled, the gloom evaporated. He hadn’t thought of beautiful virgins in some time! Listening to the child’s innocent voice, he felt glad. If that mountain lion or its ilk was the worst he ever faced, he’d be blessed.

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 2008

Mind if I sound off?

There’s apparently a new TV show about spirituality: a man has a vision of George Michaels singing in his living room. It pisses me off that our culture thinks it’s discovered spirit ex nihilo. A doctor investigates prayer. He begins by going into his office and shaking prayer gourds. Wonder what would happen if I investigated medicine by taking a knife to my neighbor?

It’s as if Lao Tzu, the Buddha, Brother Lawrence, John Woolman, St. Francis, Evelyn Underhill, William James, Gustavo Gutierrez, Malcomb X, Mother Teresa never existed.

So here are some TV pilots I recommend to the networks and studios:

• adventures in tithing
• neighbors study the Bible together
• politician tells truth
• young person enters religious vocation
• Muslim, Christian and Jew seek peace teachings in their scriptures
• tobacco company quits, gives assets to cancer research
• corporation refuses military contract
• gringos learn Spanish to worship with undocumented workers

Wonder what shows you’d recommend?

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 1, 2008

The race for the American Presidency reminds me of that contest in England, where people launch home-built flying machines off a pier and splash into the water. You know they’re going down; the only question is, how far they get before doing so.

George Bush’s flying machine has crashed in a mushroom cloud worthy of the Apocalypse; the only question is, how much will go up in flames with him?

He came to office, literally anointed with oil by religious conservatives, standing in that long line of succession we used to call “the divine right of kings.” In the US, of course, we don’t have kings; we just have the federal government, at its head, the successor to George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and John F. Kennedy.

The presidency of George Bush constitutes, not a failure of an individual or a party, but of an entire system which has lost its way, has bowed down to idols of power and money, and is sacrificing chunks of its own body in vain hope of supremacy.

Here no Moses stands on holy ground, only a Bush burning in effigy; I confess, those of us who dance around the flames offer unholy fire like Nadab and Abihu.

Buber diagnosed our situation keenly: we are a vast amalgamation of Its-the economy and the state, the It-district of material hoarding and the I-district of emotional emptiness-being manipulated by whirring machinery which we mistake for civilization.

The solution? Harry Potter calls it remorse; the Bible, repentance; Buber, returning.

Feeding husks to the swine, the runaway boy came to himself and decided to go home. While he was still a long way off, the waiting Father saw him, ran and embraced him and welcomed him home. Returning, coming home-nothing less can redeem our culture from its suicidal course; returning, not by “the other guys” who are responsible for the mess in Washington, not by religious extremists who have hijacked our faith, not by liberals and secular humanists who will be left behind, not by everybody else.

But by me.

Just as I am, without one plea,

but that thy blood was shed for me,

oh lamb of God, I come.

“Every great culture that embraces more than one people rests upon an original encounter, an event at the source when a response was made to a You, an essential act of the spirit… But only as long as [man] possesses the essential act in his own life, acting and suffering, only as long as he himself enters into the relation is he free and thus creative.” I and Thou, p. 103.

Buber conceives of culture as arising from moments when one human being stands before the countenance, or when one person relates to the Presence at the heart of Being-another way of referring to an I-You encounter between human and God.

Life is a melancholy alteration between the actuality of the I-You mode of existence and, at best, those moments when life takes a deep breath, the latency of I-It. When actuality fades in a more lasting way, however, a demonic power usurps the place of the hovering Spirit, shoving matter and people about in an It-world without a soul.

Cultures escape from this zombie-like state only when a human being again steps before the countenance. The human stands without possession, without even clothing, like St. Francis in the marketplace of Assisi renouncing his father’s goods, called to build Christ’s church.. The Spirit hovers over the relation, empowering the human to fashion a human cosmos of houses of worship and dwelling places. The culture escapes from its sarcophagus, the person from her chrysalis, and the I-You of Being emerges, wet and trembling in newness of life.

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 2008

Now and Here

If we had power over the ends of the earth, it would not

give us that fulfillment of existence which a quiet devoted

relationship to nearby life can give us. If we knew the

secrets of the upper worlds, they would not allow us so much

actual participation in true existence as we can achieve by

performing, with holy intent, a task belonging to our daily

duties. Our treasure is hidden beneath the hearth of our

own home.

Martin Buber, “The Way of Man”

SUNDAY FEBRUARY 3, 2008

Yetzer Superbowl

On Sunday night Sandy, Jim and I watched the Superbowl. A rather dull game gathered interest in the fourth quarter with the New York Giants drive, which climaxed in the game-winning touchdown. Before that, the zest of the evening had come from queso and chips, ribs with black beans and baked apples, Sandy’s home-made potato salad, and Ukrop’s key lime pie. Yes, I confess-I choked down my slice, just so the others would not feel guilty about eating theirs.

For me watching sports with Jim is more than a father-son ritual. In me, heaven swindled my dad; he wanted a football hero like he’d been in high school. Instead, to my mother’s delight, he got a cripple who wrote poetry, played the piano, and reviled football. Every tv game indicted me for being a weakling, and him for being distant. Only as an adult in years of therapy did I figure out that Mom and Dad were opposing players in the real game, and my sisters and I were the trophies they won or lost. Nothing’s more damaging to a child than such games, except a custody fight in a messy divorce.

So when Jim and I watch a game, and I manage to follow along, even ask intelligent questions here and there, I’m finding something I lost in childhood as well as having a hell of a good time in the present moment.

Sandy and I had spent most of Saturday and Sunday pulling data together for a grant application on behalf of the African Counseling Center; our African family have to file online from Africa in a language foreign to them. By grace alone will they find their way through that bureaucratic maze.

After resting my hands several hours, I re-read Buber’s essay “The Way of Man According to the Teachings of Hasidism,” written in 1948 and published online in 2002 by Pendle Hill pamphlets here:

http://www.pendlehill.org/resources/files/pdf%20files/php106.pdf.

Maurice Friedman, translator of many of Buber’s works into English, calls it a “remarkable distillation” of Buber’s wisdom; more important, it’s clear and simple in contrast to the difficult and obscure I and Thou. Perhaps knowing it will clarify Ich und Du.

In everything there is a divine spark, often encrusted by an ungodly shell. The divine in humans, however, sometimes is expressed by the evil impulse (yetzer ha-ra), which they can transform by directing the whole of their life force to God through “turning” teshubah. (In the New Testament this is metanoia, repentance.) The Way has six steps.

1. Search the heart. As God asked Adam, “Where are you?” so God asks us all. To escape responsibility, we turn existence into a series of hideouts. If we heed the decisive heart-searching of “the still small voice,” we begin the way. (Jesus calls it the steep, narrow way that leads to life.) If not, we hide deeper and deeper, not from God, but from our true self. Godly searching leads to a changed life; demonic searching, however, persuades us there’s no way out, leaves us endlessly raking the muck of our unrighteousness and in despair.

2. Find our unique way. After godly searching, each of us finds that unique particular way in which God created us to serve God and the world. Rabbi Zusya said, “In the world to come I will not be asked, ‘Why weren’t you Moses?’ I’ll be asked, ‘Why weren’t you Zusya?’”

3. Unify the soul = the body-spirit. God helps us to be unified, not wavering or divided, so that we may pursue our particular way with resolution. But unification of the body-spirit, the soul, is never final; it is continual but progressive.

4. Begin with self. When there is an external concern or conflict, persons begin with themselves as a whole, neither analyzing self into psychological drives, and so on, nor blaming others. To do this, however, they must relinquish the false narcissistic ego shell and choose instead the deeper true self in which the whole of their being resides.

5. Leaving yourself in the hands of God, focus on serving God and neighbor. Ask “What for?” Why have we done the previous four things? Not to save self, but to be able to forego self and seek the salvation of the world. Here Buber describes Christianity as being concerned with salvation of the individual. While this is a factor, and in some traditions nearly the whole, Christianity is also about saving the world: “God so loved the world…” Brian McLaren points out that evangelism can be self-centered; he levels the same critique that Buber does. Therefore, we search the heart, find our particular way, unify the body-spirit, and begin with self so that we may abandon the self to God’s grace, and get on with the love of God and neighbor.

6. Serve God and neighbor now and here. Finally, we walk in our way, we fulfill our particular vocation, here where we stand-not in some exotic other where, other when, but now and here. Thus, the world to come and this world are one. If there is more to come, well and good. Nevertheless, the world to come is now and here; God is where we let God in.

I can spend another fortune in therapy, struggling with the impact that parenting had on me. Or, spurred on by the good impulse (yetzer ha-tov) I can spend a little less on some good ribs and enjoy the Superbowl now and here with Sandy and Jim.

Hmmm…which will I choose?

TUESDAY, JANUARY 29, 2008

Bard byte

Falstaff

Can honour set to a leg? no: or

an arm? no: or take away the grief of a wound? no.

Honour hath no skill in surgery, then? no. What is

honour? a word. What is in that word honour? what

is that honour? air. A trim reckoning! Who hath it?

he that died o’ Wednesday.

1 Henry IV, Act 5, Scene 1

MONDAY, JANUARY 28, 2008

You pick up an international calling card at colorful shops here and there, to get the best calling rate. There are more efficient methods, but they require computer hookups you can’t always count on. You scratch off the coating that conceals a number which translates into a few minutes of heaven.

Jean-Emile–minister, pastoral counselor, Protestant leader–alternates performing extraordinary duties on behalf of the Protestant churches and the African Counseling Center in Yaoundé with being exhausted due to lifelong health issues. When we called Saturday, we heard the weariness in his voice. For about 20 minutes, Sandy and he discussed plans for the Center to receive donations through the United Methodist Church. Since 9/11, anti-terrorist regulations make transferring funds overseas much more complicated and expensive. Using existing channels will ensure all the funds will go to the cause they were donated to, not siphoned off as fees to third party money handlers.

While it’s an exciting concept, the details could choke whales. I proposed that we sing!

I moved to the piano, hung my phone set on intercom on my T-shirt, and began to play. Before Jean-Emile left the States, we loved to sing from the Lead Me, Guide Me Hymnal; he took a copy home with him. We sang the title hymn: Lead Me, Guide Me, page 168; Spirit Song, page 271; and, I love the Lord, page 238. In the film The Preacher’s Wife Whitney Houston sings that beautifully. The sentiment is, “I won’t complain as long as I have breath to pray.” I always pray for her spiritual journey when we watch that DVD or sing the hymn.

According to Acts 16.25-26, Paul and Silas were imprisoned, probably chained to the wall, lying in muck. At midnight, they were praying and singing hymns to God; an earthquake occurred, shaking the prison foundatons, opening the doors , and smashing everyone’s chains. Now that’s what a little rock ‘n roll can do for worship!

Sophie–Jean-Emile’s wife, hostess, mother, and church leader in her own right–requested Peace! Be Still! page 296 in the Voice of Praise Hymnal, which I used as a child. The disciples are bailing water from the sinking boat, while Jesus sleeps. They cry, “Master, don’t you care, we are about to perish?” The music imitates the storm, as the lyrics state:

Whether the wrath of the storm-tossed sea,

or demons, or men, or whatever it be,

no water can swallow the ship where lies

the Master of ocean and earth and skies;

they all shall sweetly obey my will;

peace, be still! Peace, be still!

They all shall sweetly obey my will,

Peace, peace, be still!

The kid in me still gets wonky hearing the storm boil over, then quietly resolve into harmony at the keyboard.

JRR Tolkien wrote about the “eucatastrophe,” eu- being a positive prefix; the word means a positive turning point in the story. One eucatastrophe in the Lord of the Rings occurs when Sam climbs the tower in Mordor, only to find an empty room. He’s looking for Frodo, whom the orcs captured after Shelob the spider stung him. Now Sam hasn’t got a clue what to do next.

“And then softly, to his own surprise, there at the vain end of his long journey and his grief, moved by what thought in his heart he could not tell, Sam began to sing…. and suddenly new strength rose in him, and his voice rang out, while words of his own came unbidden to fit the simple tune.

Though here at journey’s end, I lie.

In darkness buried deep,

beyond all towers strong and high,

beyond all mountains steep,

above all shadows rides the Sun

and Stars forever dwell:

I will not say the Day is done.

Nor bid the Stars farewell,” (pp. 887-888 LOTR)

Some weird kink in my cervical spine took about 50% use of my hands last year, so I don’t to play Dave Brubeck anymore. (That’s also why I have a Dragon stenographer!) But I can stumble through hymns well enough to play for a family sing along.

We used two calling cards; the second worth 50 minutes ended after 38 minutes. The computer came online: “You have one minute remaining,” said the mechanical voice.

I doubt the Powers That Be, political or otherwise, took note of four unremarkable voices singing across the Atlantic Ocean.

But foundations shook!

FRIDAY, JANUARY 25, 2008

I sometimes look into the eyes of a house cat….[it asks,] “Can it be that you mean me? Do you actually want that I should not merely do tricks for you? Do I concern you? Am I there for you?”… No other event has made me so deeply aware of the evanescent actuality in all relationships to other beings, the sublime melancholy of our lot, the faded lapse into It of every single You…. Every actual relationship in the world alternates between actuality and latency; every individual You has to disappear into the chrysalis of the It in order to grow wings again. In the pure relationship, however, latency is merely actuality drawing a deep breath during which the You remains present.” (pp. 145-148)

If you’re a cat fancier, you have to chuckle at the thought of the philosopher longing for an enduring relationship with a cat. The joke goes, dogs come when you call them; cats say, leave a message and I’ll get back to you.

My two cats have distinct personalities. Jazzi is a lover. Provided I keep the Kitty Commandments, she’ll spend time in my lap:

I. Thou shall not move.

II. Thou shalt make no noise.

III. Thou shalt have a blanket for me to lie on.

IV. Thou shalt have no other kitty before me.

I’m sure there are more rules. We make them up as we go along.

The other cat, a survivor of the hard knock life on the streets–named Nasha, Hebrew for “miracle,” by the Jewish family who rescued her–is always focused on food; any opportunity to beg treats finds her on duty. It took months before she’d leave food in her dish, confident she’d always have food.

Rarely, Jazzi’s eyes will melt with tenderness. I can only imagine what is going through her mind at that moment–some sort of primal connection with mother, I suppose. We got her to be my companion following orthopedic surgery. She has delighted me, comforted me, exasperated me, and shared with me the long isolation of recovery.

In CS Lewis’s The Horse and His Boy the runaway Shasta waits for his friends at the tombs. When he is frightened, a big cat appears and snuggles close to him, comforting him through the long night. Later he learns this cat was the great cat Aslan, the Christ in Lewis’s work.

Jonah is a sour prophet, angry at God for having compassion on his political enemies. “Why shouldn’t I?” God asks. “There are 120,000 people in Nineveh, who don’t know their right hand from their left, and many animals besides.”

Psalm 104 describes God’s care for creation, including animals. It says,

When you send forth your spirit, they are created;

and you renew the face of the ground. Psalms 104:30 (NRSV)

I know there are exceptions, but I believe animals exist in the immediate Presence.

Also from the animal world comes the other image in the quotation above: a caterpillar emerging from its chrysalis as a butterfly.

Buber uses the metaphor of the rainbow, too. The I and the You form the two anchors; the hyphen, the bow. This is visually consistent with Buber’s idea that spirit flows between partners in relation. Would that jive with the doctrine that the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son?

I also think of string theory, with the I and the You being the ends and the relation, the vibration between them.

I continue reading I and Thou aloud, about my fifth read. This morning I had an epiphany. I realized I was reading to gain power through mastery over the material, rather than to enter relation with the You abiding in Buber’s work.

In the prologue to the gospel of John it says, “Light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not mastered it.” (John 1.5) It occurred to me that, although we need to master some things, like our ABCs, the will to master belongs to the It-world. What I really want occurs by grace instead, in moments of actualization: not mastery but relation and dialog.

As a veteran of graduate school, I know that knowledge is power, especially comprehension of an obscure German masterpiece like I and Thou! But,”if you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him!” Right? He’s a phony–nobody has mastery but God alone!

In the actuality of body-spirit, a Buber-like phrase that means standing in I-You relation with all three spheres of being (material-animal below human, human, spirit above human) mastery pertains to the It-world; mystery, to the You-world. Even in glory, we won’t master the light. We’ll simply dance in it.