Brainwaves

This is my sixth year working in Elementary School Special Education. Of the ten children currently assigned to our unit, there are two boys who fall somewhere within the wide spectrum of Autism and one little Down Syndrome girl. The others, no doubt, wear labels attached by the medical profession, at large; but, in truth, it’s all above my head. I simply read the instructions provided, adjust to each as an individual, and meet them on a daily basis with a desire to do the best job I can. It is not who they are, their present status, that gives me pause, but a concern for the cause. I’m inclined to believe that there is no cure for most of these kids. You work with what you’ve got, hope for growth as they go, and pray that someone will determine a means of prevention somewhere down the road…….

Annie Dillard, in her book “For the Time Being”, describes a variety of human birth defects, indeed some so bizarre that it’s easy to understand the author’s critique of religion’s approach to the matter. She quotes, for example, a certain blessing the Talmud requires a man to speak upon seeing a person deformed from birth. “Blessed art Thou, O Lord, our God, King of the Universe”, it rigidly declares, “who changes the creatures.” While there may be, within Christendom as well, those who so believe, personally, I’m of the opinion that any deviation from the original blueprint, whether examined from the physical or a mental perspective, probably can be attributed to our own misuse of the gift as given. In rejecting the Creator, society, in general, started down a path of self-destruction……

While the above abnormalities of our human existence, however, can be explained, at least to some degree, as being due to a malfunction in the original design, I’m not so sure it gives us the right to use the excuse for all our faulty thinking. The brain, it seems to me, is much like these computers that we, ourselves, have manufactured. From its initial surge of activity, information processed is stored within its memory banks and simply “pushing a delete button” doesn’t entirely eliminate it from the system. We are, therefore, who and what we are by both that which is issued to us and that which we do with that which is issued to us. The sad part is when what we do hurts other people. Worse, yet, is to realize the situation, but merely ignore, defend, or abet the damage being done. May God forgive us……

Stepping outside my front door the other evening into the crisp, cool winter air that the last few days of rain had brought to us, I noted almost immediately the glow of the full, silvery moon positioned overhead. The cloud covering over our immediate area had parted to give us the heavens in all of God’s created glory and, as I walked through my backyard over to the oldest daughter’s house, it was almost as if some angel on high had thrown a switch to light my way. At some point in the journey, I just stopped, stood there gazing into infinity, and gave thanks for the assurance of His grace. Coincidence? Just a chance happening that occurs under such circumstances? Could be; but, at that particular moment in time, all that mattered to me was the connection…………

In Pentecost, an old axiom put forth from the pulpit states “religion” as being man’s search for God and “Christianity” as being God’s reach for man. Sunday morning at the Detention Center, I told the kids at the Detention Center that perhaps the latter might be better defined as that point where two become one. Within the denominational context of our faith, we are all too often content, as believers, to allow our doctrinal statements to stipulate membership in the club; but when you bring it down to where the rubber meets the road, shouldn’t it be He, not we, who confirms the matter? Not that experience is any more trustworthy than our theology. Just that somewhere in both we ought to find His reality in some form or fashion, His reins in our stumble down the road………..

Warning! Any further penetration into the few continuing paragraphs presented here exposes one to the outer limits of where my mind can go after having consumed a bit of C.S. Lewis’s apologetics. My encounters with the author always seem to leave me in a mental state where his word and my thoughts are ricocheting off the inner walls of my brain like erratic bullets fired into a thick metal cylinder. He’s one writer whose work I cannot rapidly consume. All the more need, then, to bleed my “intellectual” processing onto paper, to “de-pressurize” my cranial cavity through a slower examination of what’s happening in there. Actually, this first paragraph is a pretty good representation of the general thesis Lewis puts forth…..

Aristotle, once upon a time, declared that “Those who wish to succeed must first ask the right preliminary questions” and thus earned for himself the right to introduce the subject matter of a book entitled “Miracles”. I’ve yet to discover how it ends since I’ve never been able to read any farther than a page or two before I’m swimming in water over my head. It remains to me an oasis unto which I return again and again, a meal kept in my backpack that feeds me every now and then along the way. If there’s anybody who can honestly say they’ve arrived, in this journey, at a place where they no longer have any questions, it’s for sure they’ve managed to accomplish more than this old man has achieved, I, myself, being the biggest mystery yet to be solved…..

“All possible knowledge depends on the validity of reasoning,” Mr. Lewis asserts; and then adds: “If certainty merely represents the way our mind happens to work, then we can have no knowledge.” He bases such statements on: (a) “What we learn from experience depends upon the kind of philosophy we bring to the experience”; and (b) “The result of historical enquiries depends on the philosophical views we’ve been holding before we even start to examine the evidence”. If I’m digesting him correctly, I’m inclined to agree, having long maintained that we all develop our own image of the world around us, our own concepts of right and wrong. Even with a “holy, prophetic, inspired” piece of literature to guide us, we are still prejudiced before we start…..

That’s not to say that the Gospels and the Epistles and the Old Testament scripture can’t speak to us, nor to suggest that, via such perusal, life cannot be breathed into our existence. What I’m hungry to know, however, is that “creational implosion” on a regular basis and not just some well-defined, doctrinal totem man has carved for himself out of an enshrined volume. Indeed, it struck me in my current dose of Lewis that God, already known unto the Jews by a number of appellations, when asked by Moses as to which authoritative title he should represent unto Pharaoh, told the chosen leader to identify Him as “I am that I am”. In that same sense He is to me the “I” am, the One who is the reviving of my soul, the One who gives meaning to all else…..

On the school playground Monday afternoon, the unusually warm weather prompted one of the teachers to announce that there WOULD be snow for Christmas because she was already praying for it! When I asked her if she was one of those “name it-claim it” believers, she replied in the negative, but then quickly added: “If the Bible gives me a promise, though, I stand upon it. Do you know what I mean?” I did; but at that point I seen no reason to push the conversation any further. No need in making enemies over our disagreement on the value of Scripture. Who was I to stand in the way of enjoying this year’s festivities being buried in white?.......

Tuesday, then, the school nurse, whose daughters attend a Catholic educational facility, voiced her disapproval of their being graded in their religion classes. Furthermore, she would hear nothing about transferring them into the public system and gave no ground that the Church, regardless of denomination, had a right to so expect of its students. In our dialogue, for whatever reason, I mentioned the significance of the Jewish tradition of Bar Mitzvah; and, when I did, her eyes lit up. “Do they do that with the girls, too?” she asked. My affirmative nod brought the following whispered in my ear: “I thought that was a circumcision ritual and the word was barbiturates”…….

Andy Rooney, this past Sunday evening on “Sixty Minutes”, was trying to make sense of our holidays and, without demanding that we, as a nation, should abandon our love affair with long weekends, suggested that we long ago misplaced all concern for what purpose such occasions are set apart. Labor Day and Independence Day were both put up for examination, but it was his words about Thanksgiving, spoken on national TV, that most surprised me. Stating it to be mostly celebrated nowadays, for the most part, via televised football games and a huge turkey, he said that the trouble with this one is that Americans “can’t decide who to thank”……

I’m not sure I grasp his intent with the barb. It seems to me that the majority of those sitting down at the banquet table this Thursday will not be extending their gratitude to Uncle Sam. We may have a few words of praise for the cooks; but, other than that, our hearts will turn heavenward. It may be a brief, unfamiliar moment for some. No doubt we all do not hold the same image of the Creator in our minds; but if we accomplish no more than a scheduled pit-stop wherein we recognize that there is indeed one Who has all things in His hand, then maybe that, in itself, is a start. Maybe, in spite of all else, He will look down and be pleased……

Architecture has never been some great passion of mine. Science-Fiction, on the other hand, is an old friend; and perhaps that’s why some of these modern structures they’re erecting lately so interest me. There’s a new, rectangular edifice, maybe twelve, maybe twenty stories high (the bottom levels are hidden by the tree line) that they’ve built atop a ridge on the southern side of the Interstate loop. I pass it, almost daily, on my drive to school. Isolated and protruding into the sky, at least from my perspective, each side has what appears to be no more than a singular clear, blue plastic sheet serving for an outer covering even as it also eliminates any need for windows. The highest floor resembles an airport tower controller room and is smaller in dimensions than everything beneath. The “roof” looks to be a huge, flat, cream-colored solar panel, a power source for the whole shebang, no doubt, but giving one the notion that it’s actually a wing, allowing the possibility of sudden flight if necessary. Aliens among us, disguised as ordinary office workers, gathering data for future invasion, and ready to immediately escape should someone discover their true identity……

Actually, if I sound a bit possessed by those old “Twilight Zone” re-runs, while I will confess to a belief in there possibly being more than just us out there, far, far away in another galaxy somewhere, it seems to me the chances of our crossing paths is next to zilch. I’m more inclined to accept that there are, indeed, angels among us; I just don’t take it to the extremes that some do. Personal guardians? Having made it through the Pearly Gates, everybody becomes one? Not in my Book. People are entitled to build their own theologies, their own altars, of course. Of a truth, we all do; but I try to be careful as to what rabbit I chase down what hole. Baal. Molech. Dagon. Angels: It’s not, as far as I can determine, about what name you assign the totem; neither does it matter what image you carve into it or out of what material you bring it forth. What counts is the heart of the individual who chooses to give it homage. For, in truth, the real sin is in following one’s own ego and creating your own salvation. You can do it with the Bible as well as with anything else. This is a stumble down the road, trying to hear the voice of the Holy Ghost through the veil of what it means to be human.…..

E.T phone home……

“When we are alone on a starlit night; when by chance we see the migrating birds in autumn descending on a grove of junipers to rest and eat; when we see children in a moment when they are really children; when we know love in our own hearts; or when, like the Japanese poet Basho, we hear an old frog land in a quiet pond with a solitary splash - at such times the awakening, the turning inside out of all values, the newness, the emptiness and the purity of vision that make themselves evident, provide a glimpse of the cosmic dance."
-Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation

The above quote was found on a friend’s site, my having visited there but a few minutes after reading Frederick Buechner’s thoughts on the chemistry of time. According to him, the Greeks possessed two words for it: “Chronos”-expressing it in a quantitative sense, able to be divided into segments, the kind you mean when you ask “What time is it?” or “How much time have I left?”; and “Kairos”-putting it into a qualitative sense such as “the time is ripe” to act now, or maybe noting the fact that you “had a good time”, the Ecclesiastes statement of there being “a time” to weep, to laugh, to mourn, to dance. No matter which perspective one takes, however, in truth, it gains an identity only in the distinction that we assign to it. Does it have a genesis? Did it exist beFORE “the Big Bang”? Is there a point where eventually the cosmos falls in or out and the whole kit and caboodle simply vanishes as if it never was? Or is God, Himself, all that there is and what we think of as “life” actually just a slice of “I am”?.....

Solomon, for me at least, had it quite right. Not just in the “Vanity, vanity, all is vanity” point, but also in his theology of “There is no new thing under the sun”. Sure; technology ever makes us appear to get smarter. We’ve reached the moon and are shooting for the stars. Men can now microwave a cup of hot coffee and talk to each other across the Atlantic via some sort of video hook-up. We also, however, both individually and as a people, continue to murder one another, mistreat and abuse our women and our children, and, in several other ways, give me reason to ponder just how much progress we’ve really made since our beginning. The clock on the wall continues to click, we live, we blink, children become grandchildren, society moves forward, but the human condition remains the human condition and where you find yourself, at my age, is wondering if you, yourself, made any difference or merely added to the mess. Where you go, where you find peace–is in returning to such moments of which Merton speaks…..

Along the way there are those events when heaven and earth are transfused, connecting you to Him and breathing hope into your heart; and in Him, that space makes all the difference……

Tuesday afternoon someone Beth and I knew when, as a teenager she came to Christ in the old church, came by to visit. Whether her poor home environment hindered growth or if our version of “holiness” legalism just proved too much to endure, I know not, but she went her own way a year or so into her conversion, popping up from time to time to talk of faith, yet never strong in her realization of what it promised. We had bought a rather expensive Bible for her, back there in the beginning. I consider it money well-spent. She showed us its pages, aged and worn, a reflection, somewhat, of her own existence. In her forties now, in spite of a marriage undone and a present battle with prescription drugs that no doubt cost her custody of her young son, she remains our friend. Within her words I yet hear a good heart confused by a Gospel message polluted with every wind of doctrine out there, a mind admittedly in a fog, but taken there by our failure as well as hers…….

It’s not so much the ones still stumbling down the path who give me reason to ponder, as it is those who occupy the pew, seemingly unable to see their own walk along this journey we refer to as “life”. Wednesday morning, the two co-hosts on my radio were attempting to fill the space between songs with news-item bits deemed interesting enough to share. It seems that, in a certain subdivision somewhere, the populace on one particular street thought their thoroughfare’s name, “Brenda Lee Drive”, sounding a bit too indicative of a “trailer camp”, so they petitioned to change it. Worse yet, this was a Christian station airing such story and the female side of such duo remarked that she understood their plight because she, too, had an address worthy of the same description. Did she not realize that her testimony might be, at that very moment, reaching some currently residing in mobile homes, bearing witness to but one more believer puffed up in their own self-righteousness?.......

I’ve long said that “sin” is not something we do, rather it is who we are. Not all, of course, agree with me, since it’s a whole lot easier to simply compile a list of Biblical “Thou shalt not”s, adjust it to meet your personal theology, and then hold others accountable for any transgressions. Recognizing the term as a condition of rebellion against God and admitting that we all fall victim to it, at least to some degree, is humbling to accept. In truth, though, the flesh really is weaker than the spirit and who among us doesn’t wrestle with it here and there as we go? The real question is: Are we willing to involve Christ into such part of our identity? Not to simply extend grace and ignore the deeds we do, but to help us face the guy in the mirror, deal with the problem, and find peace in the process. Once we, in Him, see ourselves, through Him we can begin to find compassion for the other guy's struggle. This isn't so much about how sanctified I am, but about how surrendered I am to He Who lives within me.......

Beth and I saw a modern-day miracle Sunday afternoon: an adult movie with not one vulgar word in it, plus a story that warmed your heart enough to again believe in the human race. It was called “Martian Child” and stars John Cusack as a widowed, successful Science-Fiction writer who decides to adopt a little boy, no small challenge when you consider the kid hides in a box, claiming to be an alien on a mission in this world. Escape mechanism to avoid life as it is? Dad, at one point, attempts to connect with his son by speaking to him in such terms as follows: We live on a globe that circles its one source of existence at the staggering speed of 67,000 miles per second, while we and other solar systems hurtle through everything else out there at an even greater speed of over 600,000 miles per second, making some wonder if the entire universe isn’t doing anything other than chasing its own tail; yet, in knowing death is part of the facts and awaiting all of us somewhere down the road, we still reach out to each other, expecting nothing in return; and that, my friend, is the mystery……

It must also be said, of course, in respect to the latter part of that statement, that it is no less an enigma how we, as a people, as individuals, can inflict such unthinkable horror upon each other. In exploring the minds of men, the well is as deep and as dark as the galaxy is infinite; and, in seeking answers, you walk away from either expedition with but more questions. If there be a Creator, then what are the terms that establish His being? Is He, Himself, all that there is or does He walk beyond the limits of time and space? How can that be? If I can find peace and purpose and fulfillment by coming into harmony with myself and everything else around me, then am I not actually forging my own salvation? Is there more to this than what the Book says, more than what I, myself, believe? If not, then maybe this is, indeed, all there is. Eat, drink, and be merry; for tomorrow we die. Thank God that when nothing makes sense and there are no explanations, there is a connection given through Christ. Sometimes, when I least expect it, the wind begins to blow and the river takes me through the veil…..

In the middle of putting this post together, I took a break, trying to clear my head, gather my thoughts, and discovered these words on another friend’s site: “But the key to that appearing lay not with some external source. It lies within each human heart, just as it did then. Without searching for the kingdom within herself or himself, each person will look outside and never be successful, for the kingdom is like a pearl, like a mustard seed. The kingdom is there in common stuff, uncommonly found within us.”

Wednesday evening my pastor, in expressing his belief that our journeys are somehow divinely orchestrated, asked if there was anybody within the sanctuary who didn’t agree. “After all, it’s the Word of God!” he concluded; and then offered as if to settle the issue, “The steps of a righteous man are ordered by the Lord!” The number of audible “amen”s gave me reason to think myself possibly the only one there hesitant to pledge allegiance; but the years have taught me well that one verse of Scripture doesn’t necessarily enforce a doctrinal truth. Indeed, though I’ve long heard that particular Biblical “assurance” thus quoted, in later searching it out it came as no surprise to me discovering “righteous” not even part of the text. The Psalmist refers to a “good” man and merely in the sense that such an individual attempts to follow, as he goes, his Creator’s directional input…..

With the time change occurring last night, I was up much earlier than usual this morning and occupied myself working on the last of three written “heritage” journals, one for each of my daughters. “What,” it asked on consecutive pages, “is something you learned from (a) an especially difficult time in your life and (b) an especially happy time?” It was easy enough to single out points in my existence that fit the request, but whether looking back at my father’s death or my entrance into Christ, I am convinced that neither provided me any immediate educational input in the sense of “lesson learned”. Both experiences were like being handed different pieces of the puzzle and then told to “figure it out as you go”. In the case of the latter, the gift was alive, of course, but that doesn’t mean I grasped the event in its entirety, particularly with so many voices trying to sell you their version…..

Thirty-five plus years down the road it’s still a day-by-day process following Him …..

I just turned sixty-six the thirteenth of October and, other than an off-and-on dance with Rheumatic Fever between 2nd and 7th Grade, the only occasion I can recall for putting myself into a doctor’s care is a tonsillectomy somewhere around the age of seven. Aspirin, for the most part, are the only medication kept on hand; that, and a jar of either Polish or garlic dill pickles, mainly refrigerated for an every-now-and-then glass of the juice therein. The brine is guaranteed to kill any intestinal bug one might encounter. Then, again, being raised with a huge finger full of Vick’s salve being shoved down my throat every time I complained of sore throat or suffered a cold probably has my insides well greased and petrified by now. It even got so it didn’t taste all that bad and I was well into adulthood before a perusal of the label enlightened me of its “not to be taken internally!”……….

Just three days ago, then, my wife added to my education of the product. A doctor on the radio claimed the best way to take advantage of the rub is to smear it on the soles of your feet before retiring. Wearing wool socks will complete the treatment, holding in the medication and preventing it from staining the sheets. Supposedly, that part of your body where “the rubber meets the road” has the greatest potential to absorb the menthol, deliver it to your blood stream, and indeed accomplish that which it was created to accomplish. Does it work? I can only testify to two of the best night’s sleep I’ve had in awhile, no coughing due to nasal drainage, and with no need to “dose myself up” on Nyquil. Whether merely a mental placebo or not may be debatable; but, of a truth, I’ve certainly felt better of a day and have been less stressed at school. I hope I’m not addicted……….