really!

Is it possible to do right by doing wrong?

Is it possible to perform an act of rebellion while participating a quintessentially status quo activity?

Is it possible to purchase truth, honesty, and righteousness?

From the comfort of our 21^st century arm-chair theological quarterbacking, we have pronounced indictment on indulgences as practiced by the pre-reformation church. Smugly!

From the duress of climbing out of these self-same comfortable arm-chairs (look I didn’t say they were Lazyboys), we have raised a fist against our morally degraded society by eating a chicken sandwich. Napkin please!

I lost weight and am trying to re-lose a bunch more – apparently to become a better person. I will not eat a chicken sandwich. I will not be a glutton to self-righteousness again. I am a thinner person than that.

what to tell your son on a rainy day...

Remembering rain drips indeterminate melancholy which is mostly wasted chasing the winter’s dirt off the windows. I turn to Knoffler and his chums. For me, he still knows how to suck the soothing pity that this moment deserves. McLachlan knows a thing or two about this state of mind but Eros is far too near in her voice.

I would line up the tapes one by one – all cued to the spot. The first song always was “We built this city” and the last one usually was left un-played. When mix tapes were actually cassettes compiled far more meticulously from other tapes.

I turn to well-worn pages in The Book of Melancholy. The wrinkled photo of a too-soon gone friend; the mischief still leaping off of his face. The longing for a childhood spent a world away. The trust of a friend broken. The breaking of friend’s trust. And again and again and again. Some pages turn slowly others flop past glommed together. Stop on the page where the man is clutching his throat for the revolution he is about to die for. Stay on that page and see that revolution is elusive. Skip to the picture of yourself on the day when those eyes are just coming to know the foolish dogma that your vigorous ignorance spewed. Shudder just a little.
“Why worry,” he moans, “there should be laughter after pain.”
The Book of Melancholy isn’t light reading for those interested in revving up the depression machine. It’s not about depression. It is about the humbling reflection that comes with the time and space on a damp quiet spring night. It is about recognizing that I am here right now and that is a very fortunate place to be. Melancholy can help you see the light of your circumstance if only because of the shadows that it evokes. Melancholy can remind you that valiant effort, though often unrewarded and even misplaced is still more honorable that feebleness.
“There should be sunshine after rain – these things have always been the same. So why worry now.”

Don’t lose the chance to fastidiously line up these reflections – all cued up ready to line up back to back. They speak a sorrowful narrative that is not easily told. They will haunt.  They will make you wince. But the morning comes to all – but perhaps a little brighter to those who have stared into the night…

time to put an end to the embarrassment

It is time again to hang him up on the cross – and once more we can put an end to how embarrassing it has been to see him walking around with us.

We’ll sing a song about the ‘wonderful cross,’ with nearly child-like glee while the roast simmers away in our kitchens at home. Why wouldn’t we be happy? We’re free! Well sort of…

“Jesus paid it all, all to him I owe,” the song nags and while our crimson stains are being washed white as snow, we are gently reminded of the debt we owe. So we throw a little extra in the plate or we sign up to volunteer at the next Monday’s cheesecake cabaret put on by the Ladies Aid group. Guilt assuaged we can slide gently back into our groove. Our Lenten observance is over so the chocolate, or video games, or whatever other gaudy triviality we have chosen to give up can wiggle its way back out of the closet. We’re done with him – he has fulfilled his purpose once again this year and we are grateful.

Grateful to stop thinking about what God living among us might mean. Let’s be honest. Since those darkest days of winter when we celebrated his birth by tossing trinkets at friends and relatives to appease our own notions of reciprocity, we have been trying to forget what him living with us might mean – how it might beg us to change.

And now we have him up on that tree again. We are relieved. Like recently elected politicians, we erroneously believe that our previous record is forgotten or better yet approved. And like said politician we forget the nature of the game we are playing. It is politics remember?

How easily and willingly we gather up the spectacle that is Easter. Like women assembling before a chic flick with tissues at the ready on every coffee table, we waddle (not that women waddle) into the pew again to have someone describe for us the agony and suffering that our Savior negotiated to accomplish our absolution. We want to feel darkness but only for an hour. Like thousands of Empire State Buildings going dark for an hour on Earth Day, we too go dark for an hour (regardless of how many birds are killed flying into us by mistake). 
It is cathartic. All of our misdeeds completely gone – removed – again. We splash the grace and mercy all over us like children in one of those shallow pools who do not realize that the water they are standing in only reaches their under-developed ankles – oh and it is full of pee. Is this really grace we celebrate? This cheaply fabricated lust for freedom from the dull consciences that barely prick our sensibilities about what is right and wrong – is this really grace?

Or is there a deeper magic than the split stone table upon which the lion once lay – bound and shorn? Can we like Lucy catch glimpses of the good and dangerous beast – now? Today?

The incarnate Christ embarrasses us. He lives simply – within and underneath his means. He lives kindly – healing, feeding the undeserving and even unintentionally. He lives courageously – against corruption, against deception couched in piety, against preconceived notions of what God might do. He lives faithfully – steady inside of darkness, disciplined in communion. These things show us up for the frauds we are. We don’t want him around to expose this any longer. We have suffered his condescension long enough. 
We are not brave enough to stand against injustice – God that would be wearisome. There is too much injustice in the world and we are not convinced that those suffering under its weight may not have deserved it in some way. We are not strong enough to live within our means – we can barely move the knuckles of our hand on the remote to switch off the television at night let alone resist the beckoning of the latest – Schticky? We are not devoted enough to carve out of our preoccupations the space to center ourselves at the feet of the teacher. He shows us up for the inconsistent errant scoundrels that we truly are. So is it any wonder that we relish (if ever so quietly) the reminders of the suffering he faced…

Yet he walks among us with grace afforded a life lived emulating his own. This is not an equation where every one of his actions matches one of ours or vice versa. It is not an accounting system of good deeds balanced off against carelessness or mistake. This is like when my dad taught me how to ride a bike. Demonstrating and then holding the seat and then washing off every scraped knee subsequently.

Instead we’ll haul him off that Roman standard and place him in a tomb. Then when it is over we’ll chuckle silently at Thomas’ doubt – while missing our very own. So glad that we are free…

on the occasion of skiing down a mountain

The balaclava has fused to my face. It’s like my moustache and beard have conspired together with the driving snow, facial sweat and nose drippings to create a new frozen outer shell. I gingerly touch it with the finger of one gloved hand – I don’t want to break it.

I am lying on my back levitating a foot and a half off of the ground thanks in no small part to the layer of snow that blankets this mountain. I am staring up inside the cloud that is unloading white onto the slope. Crowding the corners of my vision are the ever-present mountains. They seem to know that this prairie boy is accustomed to the open horizon where the sky never quits. So these jealous mountains peek in on the edges of my sight. I turn to look. I am a sucker for their tricks. Peaks like the knuckles of a thousand fists poke out across the ridge – a giant from below punching out his frustration. I feel that remote sense that must drive thrill seeking adventurer types to climb these ridges. They call to something inside that I immediately recognize as sheer foolishness. Later, while driving beside a particularly alluring ridge, I off-handedly suggest that reaching the summit might be a fairly easy task. My son snickers, agrees reluctantly and, being the pragmatist that he is, reminds me of the effort and time it would take to scale that mountain. But in this moment on my back between the snow on the slope and the falling snow – I am smitten.

Our skis, speared through the crust of the snow beneath the powdery stuff I have been sliding on, stick up like the fence posts of a lunatic rancher. The three of us have done the same. The boys, anxious to re-establish the burning thigh effect that is a constant companion down this mountain, break the spell I am under. “Let’s go dad!” I am torn. I crave a few more minutes to soak in this slow-motion experience. But adrenaline is calling for another fix. Caught between control and disaster. Skis swing back and forth across the mountain, sitting back on my heels a little (especially in the powdery stuff) but always on the edge of plummeting headlong down an unsuspected icy patch. Its danger and beauty mixed. Who am I kidding? It’s not beautiful when I ski – unless in your mind beauty looks a lot like a short stumpy 40 year old atop an unbroken colt – without any stirrups. It’s ugly and dangerous – but fun.

We are the last off the hill. We convince the lifty to send us up the back side of the mountain just before she shuts it down so that we don’t have to hike the kilometer and a half back to the rental shop.

Later, as the body’s pain mechanism begins to register in the brain I am briefly conscious of curious feeling. As the lactic acid builds in every fiber of my legs, I wonder how we have come to consider this activity recreation. This rigorous exertion of energy to the point of…cursing agony – I am only trying to get out of the hot tub! How did this activity evolve into something we would deem to be invigorating and worthy of spending our leisure (dollars and time)? It is perplexing enough that we would willingly subject our bodies to torturous labor in the name of having fun. It is even more peculiar that we would choose to spend our time doing something that could endanger our ‘productivity’ in the rest of our ‘responsible’ lives. Stranger still is that we would take the financial advantages we have accrued to measure out ecstatic suffering upon our own bodies.

What we spend our leisure on is a signal to us and those around us. It is possibly a message about who we are. It is a descriptor of our vigor perhaps. Maybe it is a disclaimer of our relative wealth. It might not be much more than the sort of thing a dog does in marking its territory – a smelly reminder to us and others of what is our personal ‘territory’. As uncomfortable as these signals make me there is a more redemptive notion that seems important as well.

For me this sliver of time on the side of a mountain has given pause to appreciate the uncrowded spaces that we are afforded in our lives from time to time. These unencumbered moments in the splendor of this exquisite place and the pleasure of spending time with my sons remind me of just how alive I am. My body on the other hand…well…it just might prefer not to be so alive – right now!

on the occasion of taking my son to the airport

The embrace changes

Imperceptibly but unmistakably

He comes to you

Your arms outstretched they invite him in

It’s a call with wrapped arms as celebration

Beckoned he toddles toward the first one you give

The embrace changes

Imperceptibly but unmistakably

She runs to you

Lungs never quite full enough to howl

It’s a comfort squeezing darkness and pain away

Your arms the mop for spilled tears

The embrace changes

Imperceptibly but unmistakably

I hugged you through the new backpack

I hugged you till teasing stopped

I hugged you and monsters under beds disappeared

I hugged you so that standing in the corner meant something other than disdain

I hugged you at first out of wonder

Then out of worry

Then out of compassion

Then responsibility

I hugged you

The embrace changes

Imperceptibly but unmistakably

He limps off the field

Bravery is a thin disguise with his full weight on your shoulder

It’s only one arm and he won’t accept the other

The extent that pride will allow him

The embrace changes

Imperceptibly but unmistakably

The one that I’m used to

Is the one that I give

The one that you give

Is now the way we let go

And it is the one

That I’m not getting used to

The embrace changes

Imperceptibly but unmistakably

He stands at the gate

Blinking you whisper something both will soon forget

But not the recognition

That every next together will end with a hug

Apart

The embrace changes

Imperceptibly but unmistakably