Advent Day5: I. Am. The. King.

Man!  You!  I feel an itch!  Nay – not my back – deep inside – like something growing – something bad – for me – something that changes everything – something that changes me!  It’s growing in my bowels – I can feel it – it’s a cancer upon my land!  And.  I.  Will.  Not.  Have.  It.  
I.  Will.  Not

I am the king!  I.  Am.  The.  King.

My body will not be the master of me!  It will not.

I am the king!  I.  Am.  The.  King.

Bring me a doctor!  No.  Bring me a soothsayer.  No prophets – who can stomach their righteous smirks?  Make it a soothsayer.  Quick now.  There’s no time to waste.

Grab those visitors.  I don’t care what time it is!  Bring them to me now!  

I will have what they know.  They cannot deny me!

I am the king!  I.  Am.  The.  King.

What’s this you say?  My itch . . . my cancer . . . my roiling bowels . . . that thing growing inside me is fear?  Get away from me!  I have no fear!  What would I fear?

I am the king!  I.  Am.  The.  King.

I fear I go mad.  No one is in the room, yet I hear the laughter of children.  They are laughing at me!  They cannot!  They must not!  Who are they to laugh at me?  I will kill them all to stop their laughter.  I will not have it.  I.  Will.  Not.

I am the king!  I.  Am.  The.  King.

The Visitors say there is a child and he will be king.  I have no son.  Who is this of whom they speak?  What fool would dare to put forth their own child against me?  Who is this pretender?  There can be – there is – no other king.

I am the king!  I.  Am.  The.  King.

And I will kill him.  That will end this madness growing inside me.  But I do not know who he is.  What good are soothsayers if they cannot tell me who he is?!?  Where is this child?  This son of infamy?  This child who plots against me even from the womb?  Bring him to me and I will eat him for supper!  No.  I must not be seen doing this thing.  Yet how can I not be?  I must kill him.  I will say the parents plotted against me and this is their punishment.  I won’t just kill him.  I will kill them all.  It is my right.

I am the king!  I.  Am.  The.  King.

All was silence as the king’s cancer spread itself upon the land.  And the silence was rent by the keening of Rachel, her children no more.

Matthew 2.1-18

Of Wooly Worms and Such

Last Sunday I was in West Virginia for a family reunion, which reminded me of another like gathering I hosted back when my grandson Rowen was just a tiny little guy.

He was fascinated by a wooly worm.  He pointed at it and laughed.  He put his finger close to it, almost touching it, then he’d pull back and laugh some more.

But when I picked up the furry critter and put it in his hand, he threw it down and burst into tears, only a few moments later to start the whole thing over . . . pointing, almost touching, laughing.

Rowen was flirting with the wooly worm . . . like many of us when it comes to God, Rowen liked the idea of the wooly worm much more than he liked the wooly worm himself.

Like many of us when it comes to God, Rowen wanted to get close to the wooly worm, but not too close . . .

The question begs to be asked, what is it that we so fear from something or someone we instinctively know is inviting, interesting, even fun?

Why do we pull back . . . from wooly worms?  From God?

14 Things I Want to Tell Folks About to Be Married

I'm performing a marriage ceremony this afternoon.  The weather doesn't look promising for the planned outdoor event, but no worries, we have a back-up plan.  But these days of such promise always get me to thinking about what makes a marriage work.  We hear so often about the failures.  But there are many success stories out there as well.  

Here, then, are some of the things I hope people entering into the grand adventure of marriage know, take on board and keep:

1. No, I cannot tell whether you will succeed or fail as a couple.  Chance are neither can you.  The  

one thing that seems to mark the difference is that both people are people who keep commitments, for the fact is that there will be days when it’s easy to stay together, but there will be just as many when it’s the hardest thing you’ll ever do.  Sometimes the promise is the only thing that holds.*

2. There are three rings rather than two.  Visualizing the covenant aspect of marriage, where God is the other party to the compact, friend Jim White pointed yesterday to three wagon wheels fused together as his vision of marriage – there are three rings, not two, he observed.  Jim’s right.  God is in the mix.  Always.  Forgetting that is costly.

3. Be sure you like each other.  Love and desire are fine things.  But if you do not, cannot, like the person, you cannot, you will not, last.

4. Matching values matter.  You don’t have to be identical.  You can even be very different.  But your values, the core things you hold dear, should match.  It’s a pretty painful life to spend with someone who thinks what you hold dear or sacred even is silly, foolish, unimportant or something to be daily trounced.

5. You can’t cure each other.  If there are blindingly obvious problems, they will not get better.  They will, in fact, get worse.  Neither of you are the cure for the other.  Marriage is not a hospital.  

6. Don’t forget to dance – often.  Have fun together.  Laugh together.  Dance together.

7. Don’t make the other person your ‘half’ of anything.  If you are not already whole, they cannot, contrary to Jerry Maguire, complete you.  It isn’t their job, it isn’t within their ability and it’s a recipe for disaster to expect.

8. Your failures are no one else’s fault.  Never blame each other for what you have done or failed to do.  Regardless of circumstances or context, your choices are just that: yours.  Own them.

9. Words matter.  Use them wisely, lovingly, judiciously, always.  Ditto for refraining from using them.  Keeping silent is the best option when all you’ve got to say is hurtful.

10. Money doesn’t.  Unless you let it.  Fights about money are always about something else:  power, control, security, felt needs, fear.  Respect, mutuality, shared values, these are what you’re really searching for when you fight about money.

11. Only God can be your god.  No one person can fulfill all your expectations, desires, wishes, needs.  So have other friends.  And do not make of your spouse an idol, for he or she will surely disappoint if you do.

12. Trust is something given as well as something earned.  Actually, trust is more about grace than it is about merit.  We trust not because someone is trustworthy.  We trust because we are trusting.  If there is no trust, if there is jealousy, insecurity, questioning of every motive, every action, there is no trust.  And the absence of trust is a killer of any relationship, especially a marriage.

13. Believe, desire and work for the best for your mate as well as for yourself.  Always.

14.  Forgive often.





___________________
*I am speaking here not of abusive or extreme situations, but of ordinary marriages with ordinary challenges.  For even then, living side-by-side with the same person, year in and year out, is hard.  Really hard.

Fear Makes the Wolf Bigger Than He Is 2.0

This, then, is addressed (primarily) to people of faith.  In Christianity, Jesus says quite directly and specifically,

fear not.  

So do angelic messengers.  So does God.

In other traditions, there are exhortations away from fear as well.

God does not fear.  God, as we would understand, can and does, mourn, repent, rejoice, laugh.  But God does not fear.  And God exhorts us not to – fear – but notice what is said and what is not said.

What is not said is that there is nothing to be afraid of.

There are wolves.  

Next to God, they just aren’t all that big.

And that, perhaps, is how the saints among us, ancient and modern, can stand up against their own fears with calm and even with joy – because next to God, a wolf is a small thing indeed.

Or maybe even more accurately, they simply see with a clarity the rest of us lack – the clarity that recognizes the wolf for what he is, but never, ever, ever, for more than what he is.

When I am frozen like a deer in the headlights, I am focused on the object of my fear to the exclusion of all else.  Literally, I can see nothing but that fear.

When, however, I am focused on God, I can see nothing else, including my fears.  And because I do not see them do they evaporate.

I may well be in real danger.

But I do not have to be afraid.

Wolves walk the land – every day.  But they do not, they cannot, dictate my actions, my responses, unless I allow it – unless I stop looking at God and look only at them.

For when I awaken and direct my gaze to my Lord, it turns out that a wolf is just . . . merely . . . only . . . a wolf.

No less.

But no more.

Fear Makes the Wolf Bigger Than He Is

Fear makes the wolf bigger than he is.  –German proverb

So today does the news continue . . . !EBOLA! . . . ISIS . . . !EBOLA! . . . Hong Kong . . . !EBOLA! . . . stock market plummets . . . !EBOLA! . . . mid-term elections . . . !EBOLA! . . .

I do not intend to dismiss the very real health concerns raised by ebola.  Nor would I dismiss the very real sorrows and pains of those or their loved ones who have suffered this dread disease.

The point of the German proverb about wolves, however, comes to mind: there actually is a wolf.  And wolves are dangerous.  There’s nothing to be gained, however, by making the wolf bigger than he already is within the confines of our minds.

Heart-freezing fear turns we human beings into our lower, primal selves, where reason and logic do not hold much sway.  And it’s all well and good to suggest that the primal protects us.  But the primal cannot accurately interpret data.  Just ask any deer foolish enough to get ‘caught’ (frozen like a . . .) in the headlights of an oncoming car.  Two steps to the left and the deer is fine.  Standing frozen in place is just a primordial recipe for sure disaster and certain death, because the deer is freezing to blend in with its habitation.  Its primordial self seeks to avoid the predator.  But a car isn’t a predator.  And there is no blending in on the highway.

All over the United States, I suspect, conversations like a recent random bridge-table remark I chanced upon, are happening, where someone will suggest that we quarantine pretty much all of Africa, at least from coming here, with no awareness of irony at all when confronted with the virus-ridden children of the United States and the question of whether Africa should insist on their quarantine as well.

There are wolves.  And they are dangerous.  But most of the time, they aren’t nearly so large as we would make them in the shadow-puppetry of our minds.  And we would do well to remember that and just calm down.

Frightened people are foolish people.  They overreact rather than merely react.  They stand stuck, frozen in place in the face of their oncoming annihilation, when a step or two to the left (or right, lest someone read a political intention into my choice of direction) would make all the difference.  They destroy the thing feared, as if that would destroy the fear.

And fears continue to walk the lands.  And all is not well.  Nor will it be, so long as we continue to allow the wolf to grow into a monster on the wall, forgetting that he is a mere wolf, after all.

Conquering Our Fears

A little boy stands on the boat deck with increasing numbers of his loved ones in the water below shouting encouragement for him to take the last step and get in the raft below.

In the process of hours, he has moved from wrapping himself mid-ship to the nearest human or inanimate anchor to taking step after tentative step to the edge.  At one point, he even extends his leg as if to step out, only to run back to the safety of leaving the raft out of his line of sight.

After a few minutes, the process begins again.  Adults aboard ship offer to make it even easier by lifting him in to the raft – no go, that one.

Back to safety.

But there is that haunted, yearning look in his eyes.  And I hope with all my heart that he will find the courage or determination or desperation to take that last step – because I recall that feeling from my own childhood so vividly – the feeling of wanting to do something so very badly and not having the ability to take that very last step – the disappointment in self larger even than the loss of the moment – and I silently root for him for all the times I didn't take the leap.

An aunt jumps in the water and gets in the raft, saying nothing to the wee boy.  She splashes and floats and laughs and then pretends to notice the boy standing wistfully watching her and asks almost casually, Do you want to come in?  

He nods, silently.  His Dad lowers him in and all is well and within the hour he will float alone with confidence and even get into the lake water whose depths had so frightened him before.

Sometimes all it takes is an invitation.

Sometimes a welcoming aunt showing you the way.

Or a dad standing behind you.

But at the last, it always takes the willingness to take that very last step – the leap of faith.

Existential Threat

Oh no . . . I might cease to exist . . . Help me!  I’m melting!  What do you mean you disagree?  How could you possibly disagree with me and all my rightness?  Really?  Life is a circle?  And all this time, I thought it was a square?  Nooooooooooooooo!  Say it isn’t soooooooooooo!  Stop existentialing me!  I can’t take it anymore!

What on earth is an ‘existential threat’ and how can a nation possibly experience one?

I don’t know about you, but popular jargon sometimes drives me to distraction, if not distinction or worse, extinction.

‘Existential threat’ is one of those jargon-esque phrases that means little but sounds like you’re smart, as best I can tell.

Turns out an existential threat isn’t existential at all – which means it’s probably not much of a threat, either.

ex·is·ten·tial – adjective

1. of, relating to, or affirming existence <existential propositions>
2. a. grounded in existence or the experience of existence :  empirical
b. having being in time and space
Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary

According to Jargon Database.Com, an existential threat is:

Surprisingly NOT something one finds covered in a college philosophy textbook, this is regarded as a military or terrorist threat to the existence of something, usually the United States. Usually involves nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons.

Perhaps, to be kind, the reason the term “usually” refers to the United States is that only military and intelligence folk working for the United States government use the term.  To be kind.

Or perhaps, the coiners and users of the phrase misapprehend the distinction between self- and universal-interest.

Or, more likely, the astute coiners and users understand that talking points beginning with: “threat to the United States” has, perhaps understandably of late, been understood at home and abroad as an excuse for military adventuring around the globe and a new phrase was needed to conceal or soften or make vague (my personal vote) the exact nature of the threat involved.

To illustrate: had President Franklin Roosevelt declared on December 7, 1941, that the United States faced an “existential threat”, Congress and the American people would have, at best, been confused and at worst, downright angry at their leader’s inability to state the simple fact that we had been attacked and action was called for in response.

When clear and present danger exists, it is, as President Roosevelt himself noted, self-evident.

It is only when the possibilities of threat, the fears of dangers yet determined, the ephemera of the mind sure of a world bent on hostility toward it (there’s a word for that in psychology and it’s not ‘health’) are the narrative of the day that language becomes cloudy and vague, couched in terms which largely have no meaning.

For the fact is, that if taken literally, the world itself is an ‘existential threat’ to me – my existence is in perpetual danger for the most simple of reasons: I am finite, mortal, limited.  And one day, I will cease, as will all the other I’s on the planet with me.  The how and the when remain unknown to me, but the fact of is a certainty.

So please, please, oh please, my nation’s shapers of dialogue, won’t you please stop the language of perpetual existential threat?  Perhaps if you spent more time with your kids; hung out more with your neighbors and friends; read more good literature; strolled more places of art; inhabited more of the natural beauty surrounding you, you would be less afraid.  Perhaps.

I know it’s your job to ‘threat assess’.  I get it.  Really, I do.  But language shapes reality and not merely our perception of it.  If you truly grasped this, perhaps you would spend less time trying to convince me how dangerous the world is and more in choosing your words wisely.

Just a thought.

So maybe next time you’re in a meeting and someone’s struggling to find the right word or phrase, you might remember the power of words and the law of unintended consequences.  Because when you went all existential on me, you didn’t make me feel or be safe.  You made me (or tried to) afraid.  Of you.

Because, you see, when it comes to threats existential, the only enemy I see before me is you.  And I don’t want you as my enemy, for you are my brother.  Truly.

When Did Barboursville, West Virginia Turn Into Baghdad?

In Baghdad, one of the innocent bystander victims of the violence there was a man on his roof (the roof is like an extra room to the house).  He peered over the roof to sneak a peek as U. S. soldiers on patrol were ‘sweeping’ the streets (I always thought that an odd turn-of-phrase) and one of them shot him, fearing, I suppose, he was a sniper.  He wasn’t.  He was just a man on a roof and he is dead.

This past weekend, in Barboursville, West Virginia, two brothers were killed as one showed the other the piece of property he had just bought in order to build a home for his family one.  As the property-owning brother unlocked the shed, his ‘neighbor’ shot and killed them both with a long gun of some sort from his own bedroom window.  The shooter told the police the men were on his property, entering his shed.  But they weren’t.  They weren’t on his property and it wasn’t his shed.  WSAZ

But even if it had been, when did Barboursville, West Virginia become Baghdad, where the order of the day was shoot first and ask questions later?

Our mistrust of others is a problem worth considering that I think is actually (or should be) part of the gun conversation in these United States.

What is wrong with us (or at least some of us) that we think our assumptions about people are so certain that we are 'free' to take deadly force to act out those assumptions?

When did we approve a world in which shoot first is even a possibility?

What on earth are we so afraid of? Statistics actually show crime rates going down.

Barbooursville, WV (like a lot of other places where this happens) isn't a particularly dangerous place. Why on earth have we nurtured a grudge-culture that assumes we are under attack all the time? When did the crazy lie become our defining reality? I know all the usual suspects. What I'm curious about is what we, the so-called ordinary citizens are doing to either feed or squelch the beast?

For the fact is that we do not live in Baghdad.  So why do so many act as if we do?

Ah Lord . . .

How Do You Live in the Mountains When You’re Afraid of Heights?

How we accommodate ourselves to our reality - what to do if you’re an Incan who’s terrified of heights?

From Smithsonian on Incan bridge-building

 The Andes is definitely not for you in such straits.  But what to do?

Well, you probably don’t marry the boy across the rope bridge from the other mountain.

I wonder how many of our choices as humans are governed by our fear of what’s on the other side of the mountain?  Or having leaders who fear heights?

10 Things I'd Like to Tell My Kids

1. Time flies faster – faster than words . . . faster than time itself – hold onto all of it, this life, real tight.

2. Don’t run from your own tears.  Revel in them, for they, too, are life.

3. You are loved.  More than you may ever know, you are loved.

4. It all matters.  There is no small stuff.  Every single bit of it matters.

5. You make me laugh – all of you – and that’s a rare gift.

6. I am blessed among women for each and all of you in my life.

7. I am so jealous that I will most likely not know you in your old age – there’s that time thing again.

8. Wisdom is the pay-off for age and I love that each of you love and value the old.

9. The world is a different place because you are in it.  Different and better.  You matter.

10. There really is nothing to be afraid of.

BethRant: HEY WHITE FOLK

HEY WHITE FOLK . . . and yeah, I’m one of you – of us, I should say.

Now that I have your attention . . .

Please read this article by an American woman physician about her ill treatment based only on the color of her skin.  Please.  Read.  It.  Please.

And when you’re tempted to argue, to disagree, to distinguish, please, please, take your fingers away from the keyboard and consider, if you will, for just a moment . . .

When you walk down a city street, have you ever noticed that the young men of color will often not look you in the eye?  Have you ever thought that maybe it’s not about them, but about you?  Have you ever considered how it must hurt them to see fear, suspicion, contempt or loathing in your eyes?  Have you?

When you sit and listen to that joke, that remark – yeah, that one – and don’t pretend you don’t know what I mean – we both know better, don’t we? – does it occur to you that in the mere listening, you and your own attitudes are being changed?  That your ‘tolerance’ for the intolerable is being built up?  That you are gradually, oh so gradually, becoming one with the one telling the joke, making the remark?  That there is a cost to us all when you are silent?

When you demand that brown people apologize for acts of terrorism around the world in order to make it clear to you that they do not agree, has it occurred to you that no one expects you to apologize for Timothy McVeigh?  For David Koresh?  For Jim Jones?  For Adolph Hitler?  For Joseph Stalin?  For the white person down the street who just broke into the house of your neighbor of color?  Did it ever even occur to you to go that neighbor and apologize for your kind?  Of course not.  Why, then, should it occur to ‘them’ to apologize to you – for something they did not do and with which they do not agree?

And to all the white women who passed by so easily, did it not occur to you not to pass by?  To stand with a sister in trouble?  To show your solidarity in rejection of this ill-treatment?

Because, you see, it isn’t just the one act that hurts so much.  That’s bad enough.  But when the privileged keep walking by as if it were our right, we reinforce the ugly.  We say it’s perfectly fine with us.  And it shouldn’t be.  But as Dr. Jilani points out from her own life experiences, unfortunately, it is.  It is fine with ‘us’.

If that does not sicken you, then I fear for us all.  A woman’s spirit was being annihilated.  And no one stopped to help.  Who taught ‘us’ that it is permissible to be so numbed, so indifferent, so afraid, perhaps, to the suffering of another happening right before our eyes that we could just walk on by as if it weren’t happening?  Shame on them.  Shame on us.

So some practical advice to the white folk:

1. Cut out the racism and the bigotry, the jokes.  Check your fears at the door and don’t make your fears someone else’s problem.  If you’re a Christian, remember that Jesus doesn’t like it.  Really.

2. Take up for other people when they’re being treated badly.  As a human being, it is your job.

3. Do not listen to the jokes and cracks.  I don’t care who's doing the telling.  Do not listen to them.  Say you will not listen to them.  If they do not stop, leave the room.

4. Stop complaining about how hard it is to be white.  It isn’t.  It’s hard to be human.

5. The Golden Rule has all kinds of applications.  Consider this: the next time you’re afraid of someone because they’re different than you, ask yourself why they might be afraid of you.  Put yourself in their shoes and act accordingly.  It is, after all, the Rule.

6. The idea that if one person of a group acts in a certain way means that they all do is just foolish.  Think not?  Well, if we’re to follow that line of thinking, every woman on the planet must hate, fear and suspect all men, because virtually every woman on the planet has been endangered at some point in her life by a man – not all men, but a man.  Does that mean no man can be trusted?  Of course not.  Does that mean you men must apologize to we women for your kind?  No.

7. It is not the job of the one suffering to explain themselves to you.  Don’t ask them to.  It hurts too much.

8. Stop thinking, acting, believing, as if we’re better than everyone else.  We’re not.  Nor are ‘they’ worse than we.  Life is not a contest and the ‘who’s better’ game is a destructive waste of time.  Consider that those you fear and hate the most are probably more like you than you can imagine – wanting simply to live in peace, provide for their families, have enough to survive.

9. Mom wasn’t wrong.  If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.

RantEnd

Things are as bad as they seem . . .

The economy continues to reel.  Cause and effect and effect and cause are continuously debated while behind the statistics and the arguments, real people search for real work and real meaning.

The earth seems to make war upon itself as disaster upon disaster are heaped one upon the other, with no relief in sight.

Things really are as bad as they seem.

Thus it has ever been; and thus, I suspect, it will ever be.

Things are as bad as they seem.  And I wonder why we are surprised.  We spend so much time preparing for the rainy day, never seeming to grasp that the very nature of the rainy day is its unexpectedness.  We prepare for floods and get droughts . . . stock up on food only to find that it’s water we need . . . set aside money only to have the value of the money turn to ash.

Things are as bad as they seem.  But so what?

It’s not Pollyanna speaking to say that acknowledging reality is not the same as being held captive to it.

We in the United States seem to be spoiling for a fight with we know not who for reasons we know not why.  I’m thinking it’s because we the people somehow believe that we were promised something we cannot recognize by someone we cannot name.  We name that something ‘happiness’ and God protect the one who would get in our way of its pursuit.

We so proudly proclaim that we are a ‘God-fearing nation’, as if that were a good thing.  Maybe, just maybe, we would do better to be God-relying, God-trusting, God-embracing.  For surely what we need is more trust in the source of our true security.  More trust and less fear, even, and perhaps especially, of God.

After all, Fear not! wasn’t a suggestion.