I-YOUniverse

You dig out of a hole many different ways. The truth is, often it’s somebody else who gives you a hand up. In Lord of the Rings, the movies, a hand up is an important symbol. Frodo gives Sam a hand up into the boat (in contrast to Isildur who drowns at the beginning); then Aragorn offers Wormtongue a hand up, which he spurns. Galadriel offers Frodo a hand up as he struggles beyond Shelob’s cave. Of course, it’s Sam who gives Frodo the ultimate hand up by carrying him toward the crack of doom, when he’s totally out of juice.

Counting my blessings is an antidote for the blues. Here’s a sampling:

I am

… grateful for my wife, who loves me in spite of my faults. It’s her nature to love. We’ll celebrate 38 years of marriage this anniversary.

… grateful for my son, who showed up at 7:30 a.m. last week so that I could get to church. Sandy had to be there all day, and Jim made it possible for me to go for one hour. We also had pancakes and real maple syrup. My son is a man of integrity. I’m grateful he’s part of my life.

… grateful for God’s good gifts of a functioning brain, good eyesight, hearing, the ability to move about. (If you’re young and able-bodied, you may not get it. But one of the secrets of successful aging is to focus on the things you have, not the things you don’t have.) This is something I learned in the retirement center. People ate themselves alive by dwelling on the negatives, and overlooked many positive gifts they had.

… grateful for the scripture. The 90^th, 130^th psalms to name just two.

 … grateful for friends who come to the house every Tuesday evening, every Thursday morning (at 7 a.m.) to study the Bible. Bible study is so much richer when in a small group.

… grateful for Bible study tools like the New Interpreter’s Bible. What a commentary!

…grateful for my African friends’ safety and well-being.

… grateful for a peaceful home, full of goodness.

…grateful for the riches of literature. As I do when I hit a bump in the road, I returned to Tolkien. I haven’t  read LOTR in a couple years, and it always renews and refreshes my spirit.

… grateful for a cat who curls up in my lap in the wee morning hours.

… grateful for the chance to write a blog, and for you who take time to read it.

My first 20 years I lived at the foot of the Franklin Mountains in El Paso, Texas. But the past 40 years I’ve lived in Kentucky, Indiana and Virginia. I still feel drawn to the quiet darkness of the Socorro mission and the shimmering bluegrass of rural Kentucky, however.

Working 40 years in the church, feeling more and more alienated, today I don’t belong to any church.

An American, I disavow policies in Iraq as well as the economic hegemony of American multinationals. No individual President, no matter how enlightened and determined, can overcome bureaucracy and vested interests to change all that needs to be changed.

So where do I call home? About three weeks from my 60^th birthday, how do I sum up my life?

Before I start, I have to acknowledge the extent to which my culture has suckered me into believing youth and physical beauty are the best. Age is trashy. Wisdom? These days you get 15 seconds of fame, and the gong sounds before wisdom even gets its breath.

Looking for answers

Psalm 90 is a good place to go for some answers.

You can discern a structure in the psalter, briefly stated: the rise and fall of the Davidic monarchy (pss 3-89) followed by the rule of Yahweh (pss 90-150). In 586 BCE the Babylonians destroyed Israel, carried the people into exile, which becomes a fundamental theological metaphor.

Ps 90 faces some harsh realities: the brevity and sinfulness of human life, the wrath of God. But it nests these in the mothering of God, and in God’s compassion, steadfast love and favor.

Beginning and End

It begins with the primeval fact: God, you have been our dwelling place, our refuge, in all generations. You transcend the birth of mountains, the evolution of species. You shatter time. You are God. By using the metaphor of a mother giving birth, the psalm softens and makes incredibly intimate the Big Bang.

Then, the psalm rolls to its conclusion, appealing to God to turn (the great Hebrew word for repentance, shuv) from wrath and anger to compassion, steadfast love, favor.

Nestled in between the immensities of creation and compassion is human life, a momentary flowering marred by iniquity and secret sin, marked by toil and trouble. A life may last no longer than from morning to evening. But time in this psalm is elastic; a thousand years are like yesterday.

Is one lifetime enough?

If one lifetime seems way too short, that’s no surprise.

Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in one lifetime; therefore, we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore, we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore, we are saved by love. No virtuous act is quite so virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from our standpoint. Therefore, we must be saved by the final form of love, which is forgiveness.

Reinhold Niebuhr, quoted in New Interpreter’s BIble, IV pp. 1044-1045.

Summing Up

If I were to sum up my life at the end of my 60^th year, I might say something like this:

I loved God, my wife and my son.

I loved the Word.

I served the people of God.

I endured.

Not perfectly, not even close.

Or I might not say anything. For, silence holds truth that words cannot conceive of.

Is it enough?

As Gandhi once said in response to a reporter, “It’s a bad question.”