Kirkepiscatoid

Job 37: 14-18:

“Hear this, O Job; stop and consider the wondrous works of God. ¹⁵Do you know how God lays his command upon them, and causes the lightning of his cloud to shine? ¹⁶Do you know the balancings of the clouds, the wondrous works of the one whose knowledge is perfect, ¹⁷you whose garments are hot when the earth is still because of the south wind? ¹⁸Can you, like him, spread out the skies, hard as a molten mirror?"

Perfection. God is making it pretty clear to Job in this passage that the only place around the joint capable of perfection is God.

Yet...how many times do we personally get hung up on "Being perfect?"

I will be the first to tell you that I spent a lot of my younger years shooting for perfection.

I wanted to be the valedictorian of my high school class. (I wasn't. I was #4 in a class of 113. This was because I had to make a value judgement a couple times in school to take the "harder" class because I needed it, vs. an "easier" one to pad my grade. I discovered years later that the "real" valedictorian in our class often deliberately chose the latter over the former. I at least had the satisfaction I had made the "gutsy" choice, even if I "lost" as a result of it.)

I wanted to graduate summa cum laude from college. I didn't. (Magna cum laude.)

In the middle of my family's codependent dysfunction, I strove to be "the perfect child," "the family favorite" to avoid ridicule, shame, and abuse. (It didn't work.)

Guess what? I survived anyway, despite being imperfect, sometimes even thriving despite imperfection living next to me.

Yet, I catch myself, at times when I am not feeling so comfortable in my own skin, trying to be "perfect" in an attempt to self-justify I'm okay. I still like being the first person to tell someone "Happy birthday/Merry Christmas/Happy New Year." I shovel the church sidewalks in the winter, and suddenly it's not about just shoveling the sidewalks, it's about ours looking better than First Methodist and First Christian churches. I still like making the "big diagnosis."

Now, sometimes I get that way just for sheer entertainment. But when I am not totally feeling up to snuff about myself, I catch myself doing it because I NEED to feel that way.

This is a tad paradoxical. I'm perfectly content with my physical imperfections. I don't mind my minimally chipped tooth (even had my crown deliberately chipped a hair to match the real one), being gray doesn't bother me the least, being a plain dresser and having very plain looks doesn't faze me. My attitude about these things is "Screw it. If you don't like me the way I am, you can just go to Hell."

But my PSYCHOLOGICAL imperfections or my COGNITIVE imperfections...now that's another story.

I confess I sort of like being "the smartest person in the room" or "the toughest person in the room," or the "most serious person in the room," or the "funniest person in the room," depending on the venue. When I am in a room full of people where there seems to be no real line of control or authority, it is my tendency to assume that control, or assert that authority.

These things are not all bad. The good side of it is that is what we sort of look for in "natural born leaders." But the flip side can be devastating. It can create lines of control when none is really needed. It can start the chain reaction to what I find is one of my most repeatable sins...the sin of how "pervasive perfection"--a need to control a situation in a way that conceals the secrets of our own flaws--takes over and replaces our true selves with a myth of ourselves--and we start to think we are "disappointing others." We can no longer live up to our self-imposed expectations. We often blame others for that imperfection within ourselves, when in reality we are mostly fearful of disappointing the myth we created for ourselves.

Those lines get a little blurry in the day-to-day of real life. We all do it. Something's not right about us, and our need is to be a little more loved by those around us. So we try to be "perfect" in some way, in the hopes that will get us noticed and positively stroked. Taken to an unhealthy degree, it's the currency of codependency. Even in a healthy venue, it's simply a way we create a persona that we think has the potential to be loved better than our normal flawed one.

But here is one of those Very Big Realizations I have now and then (that I never ever call "epiphanies", because, as you know, I don't have epiphanies, only prophets have epiphanies ): The people who love us--TRULY love us--love us not because of our perfection, but because of our IMperfections. The love comes from our flaws in our own secret hearts linking to the flaws in the secret hearts of others. When we are the angels in the lives of others, we are not loved for our wings and white robes. We're loved for our rusty, bent halos. We're loved for the things we did DESPITE our nature. We're loved for that moment of "Aw, shucks, you got me." We're loved for our changes of heart when we had no reason to change them but sheer grace.

This might be the part we never quite get, when we try to have a loving relationship with God. We get hung up on God's perfection and our lack of it. Sure, God digs it when we try to imitate him. But when we actually start to think we can actually ATTAIN it, that actually separates us from God. We forget that He comes to where we live, and to who we are--flaws and all. He MADE us flawed. He KNEW that from the get-go...and he's okay with it.

I always think about how we have the Genesis story all screwed up about that tree of knowledge of good and evil. The standard version of the story is we were all perfect till Eve screwed us all over because she was beguiled by a serpent. I think the story is more about the things we all know are inside ourselves and are going to take a bite of sooner or later--that this tree just simply represents a branch of our own humanity. We eat from a lot of trees. The tree of "self vs. others." The tree of "happy vs. sad." The tree of "hungry/thirsty vs. sated."

In that, God--and those who matter to us--love us for as much of what we're not as for what we are.

(Photo courtesy Dallas Arts Review)

I've been doing something this morning that is very atypical for me. It's Labor Day, not Easter, and I have been thinking about the Resurrection. For me, that is kind of like leaving my Christmas lights on the house until July. I basically don't think about the Resurrection much, although I would be the first to tell you we are "constantly resurrected people." But the truth is, my mind does not bend well in the theological sense of any of those words like "Transformation," "Transfiguration," "Resurrection," and "Ascension." Sure, I know their theological definitions, but I'll be the first to tell you that my brain can only deal with them when I see the effect of these words on the lives of others, or in my own life. True scientist that I am, I can only fully understand what I can put under direct observation.

Yet, that expanding mystic in me is becoming more and more okay with believing IN the Resurrection, even if I do not understand the wheres, hows, and whys of the theological details of it. Sometimes you smell it in the air, like popcorn at a movie theater. Sometimes you witness its effect in the answering of someone's prayer, or your own. Sometimes you only see a faint light at the end of a long dark passageway, but know that as you continue forward, the dark will fade and the light will emerge. But it does not change the fact that resurrection cannot be trapped like a lightning bug in a jar, studied for a while, then let loose to fly where it will.

But there is no doubt...for resurrection to occur, there has to be a trial, a crucifixion, a death, and a burial. You can't resurrect what ain't dead. You can revive it, but you can't resurrect it.

For some reason today, I thought a lot about the things in my life that fall under the category of Life's Big Uncertainties. It must be the synchronicity of the liturgical season again--we are now in the doldrums of the "long green season" of Ordinary Time/Time after Pentecost--with Advent still a good 2 1/2 plus months away--and it seems so many of my blogfriends are wrestling with one or more of Life's Big Uncertainties. Fran is answering all the hard questions of her life, Renz is trying to make sense of his recent onset of middle-aged medical maladies, Elizabeth is watching the gears start to shift in the progression of her brother's dementia, and Ruth continues to exist daily on financial manna, instead of the security of a regular paycheck. Mimi asks, "How did I end up here?", Jonathan continues to wonder if a parish will ever take him as their own, and Lisa seems...well...kinda quiet, which is not typical for a person who has a lot of passion about social issues.

I know I've left some of my blogfriends out, and I apologize if you didn't make the short list. (This is why I hate making lists--I always leave someone out, and feel crappy when I do.)

But with the concept of "thinking about rebirth" almost a season away, it creates a lot of room for us all to become enmeshed in our various funks. Mine, I guess, is just that I moved here nine years ago, with the idea that the move would make my life more "stable" (and believe me, in many ways it has) but with that stability, also came a running string of one after the other of Life's Big Uncertainties. The things you thought you knew, you didn't. The things you thought "would always be there" are not. The things you came with are not the things you leave with. People die, remarry, suddenly end up with custody of their grandkids, get dementia, move away, get divorced, or simply shuffle their decks and start to play different cards in the hands that make up the poker game of their lives. It's not even that they are all "bad" changes. They're just changes.

Figuring out where I fit in this grand shuffle is not always easy. I have a tendency to make sure everyone else at the table has enough to eat before I feed myself. Some of that is for healthy reasons, some of that is for unhealthy reasons. The healthy reason is because I really do have a desire "to treat everyone like Christ" in true Benedictine fashion. The unhealthy reason is because I was taught, a long time ago, to take care of other people's unhealthy, dysfunctional needs, so learning the borders of what "normal" vs. "dysfunctional" is, well...it hasn't been one of my "Life's better lessons."

So, what tends to happen is, instead of being dormant and "revived", I end up having to go through trials, be crucified, die to it, and bury it in the hopes of a resurrection--not trusting in a "sure thing." Some of these things have, honestly, so far, remained dead. Sometimes, I have to wake up with the acrid taste of blood in my mouth, or smell the putrefaction of unburied dead things in my nostrils before I even recognize it's being crucified or has already died.

But here's what I have discovered: When I think about all the times in my life I have weathered Very Big Uncertainties, no matter what they are--life, work, love, family, church, friends, avocations--if a resurrection has occurred, it is almost always a surprise, and when it's least expected. You also will never recognize the resurrection if you are not visiting the tomb. The first emotion when people see resurrection is often not joy, but fear. It might take a while to realize it's a resurrection vs. a theft. We know what we have when something's dead. But do we know what we have when it is suddenly "gone?" Usually not.

It takes the recognition of that "resurrected thing" in its transformed state, to see it for what it is. It takes the prior tears of grief for its death. it takes the pain of its crucifixion, and it takes the time necessary for the trial to play out. In real life, the resurrections of these things seldom take three days. They might take weeks, months, years. Yet we time and time again short circuit the processes of our secret hearts by putting time clocks on our lives, and expectations of performance.

I watch the lives of my blogfriends play out on my computer. I watch my own life play out day by day, moment by moment. I so often want to hit either the "rewind" or the "fast forward" button on the DVD player of my life and theirs. But we simply don't have the access code to make our remotes work. Only God has the code. The buttons are merely placebos. We can only trust, pray, and hope. Yet we see empty linens and shrouded used facecloths everywhere. Miraculous.

<sup>Mark 24-30:

24</sup>From there he set out and went away to the region of Tyre. He entered a house and did not want anyone to know he was there. Yet he could not escape notice, ²⁵but a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit immediately heard about him, and she came and bowed down at his feet. ²⁶Now the woman was a Gentile, of Syrophoenician origin. She begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. ²⁷He said to her, “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” ²⁸But she answered him, “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” ²⁹Then he said to her, “For saying that, you may go—the demon has left your daughter.” ³⁰So she went home, found the child lying on the bed, and the demon gone.

I have an odd visual in this story that is the parallel in my own life. My house, as you know, is a ways out. It is about a 15 minute drive from my house to church, about a 20 minute drive from my house to work, and about a 30 minute drive from my house to the south edge of Kirksville. Basically, people do not hop in the car and run over to my house without calling and first seeing if I'm home. When I lived in Columbia, I also lived a ways out of town, and it was a similar time frame to get to my house.

So, for the fourteen years I lived there, and the nine years I have lived here--a grand total of twenty-three years--I think back, and at most, there were probably no more than three dozen times anyone ever came out to my house unannounced. But when they did, it was almost always bad or stressful in some way. Someone had died, someone had left someone, someone had a financial crisis, or someone was just in a tremendous amount of stress and "had to talk to me." The other odd thing was, more often than not, I was not in the greatest of moods when it happened, or was tired, or half-sick, or busy with something. These episodes hardly ever happen when I am in a more "ready" or "receptive" mood. My first thought was more often than not, "Oh, man...why are you coming to ME with this?"

Yet, somehow, I always found the "where-with-all", as we say in these parts, to deal with it.

I look back on those times, and honestly, most of them, I did not do my best. I still can turn my mind back and fret that I didn't "do it as well as I should." Yet I have this odd feeling if you asked the people who had shown up unannounced, they might tell you I might have been better than I thought I was. Maybe I am not totally being fair to myself.

But I do know that when I think about those episodes as individual episodes, I can recall I felt myself becoming strangely calm in the face of these other people's desperation. I might have simply "known enough not to be harsh." Maybe it was merely the "lack of harshness" they were counting on in me...not advice, not affirmation, not agreement. Many times I could NOT agree with them. Sometimes my answer was, "yeah, you screwed up." But yet I became filled with the sense that, "for some reason, they've come to me, and I have to honor that act."

But when I read this part of the Gospel today in preparation for my worship at church, I can feel how Jesus must have felt. I also tag-teamed and read the Matthew version of this. I imagine Jesus and the disciples were tired. They were holing up and wanting to rest before heading out and about, down the road. So here comes this woman. I am betting money Jesus was thinking...well...um..."Oh, lady...why are you coming to me with THIS right now? I'm tired. I just don't have it in me to go traipsing over to your house or risk being seen by the crowds and dealing with all these friggin' people."

But the woman is so humble, so earnest, that she puts herself at the level of crumb-snatching dogs. She'd take a bread crust, a wayward scrambled egg-let, a crumb of bacon, a blot of jelly. I can kind of feel what must have come over Jesus--that very same quiet resignation I've felt when people come out unannounced with their crisis, that turned into a desire on my part to "simply be kind." In his turning around of his own resignation to kindness, her child is healed. I can see him kind of wearily saying, "Go home...she's fine," and maybe smiling and patting her shoulder or her face.

I think back to my own episodes like this. I almost always start out acting badly. I'm irritated, I'm annoyed, I'm fed up, I'm angry. But...eventually, I looked at the people who were so stressed and said something like, "It'll all work out how it is to work out somehow," or "I'm glad you came to talk to me about this," or "Yeah, you screwed up, but I'm not going to badger you. You're going to be your own worst enemy on this, and I won't add to that," or "I am mad as hell, but I'm not going to act on my anger, because you came to me because you trusted me, and we'll get through this somehow."

In other words, even the times I felt I didn't "do it right" in these episodes, I somehow still managed to "act like Jesus, at least a little bit." Maybe not as well as I could, me being a terribly flawed human being and all, but at least I was in the ballpark. That's pretty humbling.

I am starting to learn the power of just "simply being kind" when every part of me wants to blow up. There is no doubt, I'm a volcanic sort of personality at times. I have always had trouble "holding it in" when I reach my limit. But I am realizing a change in me over time. (My "conversion of life," perhaps?) In thinking back about some of the most desperate moments that other people have come to me, they seemed to know I possessed something I did not know I had myself. They were willing to "weather my storm" anyway to get to that good part.

But I am learning that part of the way to cool my own volcano is rather than rage against the forces that are bottled up inside me, to open the vent of "simply being kind." To try to hear their burden as best I can under the circumstances and be kind in terms of recognizing their burden, no matter how I personally feel about their burden or its impact on me.

Plato probably said all this better and more succinctly than I have..."Be kind; for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle."

Ok, there is no doubt, come College Football season and College Basketball season, I bleed black and gold.

I grew up with Mizzou football in the Dan Devine era, and Mizzou basketball in the Norm Stewart era. Norm grew up one county away from me in Shelbyville, MO. If there is any "religion" that competes with my Christianity, it is Mizzou football/basketball, and St. Louis Cardinal baseball.

In fact, I chose Mizzou for medical school simply for that prospect of good season tickets as a student. My career in medicine had nothing to do with it. I turned down an acceptance where I presently work, the Kirksville College of Osteopathic Medicine, because I had also been accepted at Mizzou. Ten thousand dollars less tuition and season tickets won me over.

I dearly love the Mizzou fight song. It was also the fight song of my high school, Macon High. I bet if you cornered me, I can hum every part in the fight song--the melody AND the countermelody as played by the trombones (one of my high school beaus was a trombone player.)

So why post this on a blog that is mostly about spirituality?

My friends, it's all about LOYALTY.

Sometimes I think about the concept if I could be as loyal to God as I am to Mizzou football, I would not have half the worries I have.

You know, I know EXACTLY when the Mizzou football season starts and ends. I know every Saturday, for several weeks, my boys are going to be locked in conflict with another mortal enemy (Kansas, Nebraska, and Oklahoma being the most mortal of them all.)

But when do I know God is going to show up? That's the hard part.

Back in the day, when I was a Lutheran, I used to joke that the song "This is the feast" was the "Lutheran fight song"....



We sing this once in a while in our church now, but I'm sorry, Episcopalians doing it...well, as they say on the LOLcats and dogs, "Ur not doin it rite."

It needs to be sung with a more "in your face, Devil!" attitude. We do okay, but we just don't quite "get it right."

However, I do laugh. You can look around the sanctuary and see who's "expatriate Lutheran." They don't look at the hymnal.

So....I ask you, dear readers...

What's your "fight song for God?"

Proverbs 16:16:

"How much better to get wisdom than gold!
To get understanding is to be chosen rather than silver."

This morning, I took a nice quiet "weed walk" down my dirt road, and I realized...my weeds have now moved into "The golden season."

In July, my roadside was an ocean of blue, from the chicory, which gave way to a little white from the Queen Anne's Lace and the beginnings of gold from the sunflowers. But we are in full bore golden along the roadside now, which, in few weeks will give way to just a bit of purple as the fall New England Heath Asters make their annual appearance.

But both sides of my road this morning waved a brilliant golden path, and sang a voice that said, "Fall is coming...but not quite just yet. See me now, and feel rich. Take me in, before I begin to slumber for the winter."

So I got to thinking...

Where is the "gold" in my life?

OMG. I'm richer than Solomon, if we are not including bank accounts.

So here is my list of the "golden" things I can think of this morning...

I have never gone without my first cup of coffee in the morning for over a year. That first swallow is definitely golden.

I live in a place that is filled with as much solitude and quiet as I desire, should I choose not to invade it with noise.

I have views of open fields, green pastures, and a night sky in which I can still see the Milky Way.

I have two wonderful dogs, who frustrate me to no end at times, and turn around and shower love on me when I least expect it.

I have friends, real and cyber, who sometimes humble me with statements that I would never ascribe to myself. Yesterday, one called me "an angel with muddy feet." It is a little hard for me to accept being any kind of angel at all, but to call me an angel in that particular way, I can kind of handle, because it speaks to the flawed human-ness that dogs me at times. I so sometimes don't want to be quite so human. But that statement reminded me it is precisely my human-ness that makes me lovable to others. As we say in golf, "It's not your best shots that make a great round; it's how you play your bad shots."

I have a job I love, even though I realize at this point in my life, I will not have the stamina or the mental energy to do it forever at the level I am presently doing it. In some ways, I feel as "at the top of my game" in my job as I ever will. But I am starting to feel the loss of my ability to multitask, I am starting to feel the annoyances with "the system," and I know to enjoy this part of my career NOW, and begin to explore what "the next great thing" is for me.

I have a sense of purpose, even though I am not always sure exactly what that purpose IS.

I have enough money in the bank that I can live happily below my means and have money on the side to give away some to whatever or whomever I choose to help. It is a blessing to be able to write a $250 check "on a whim." When the Kirksville Tornado hit in May, a medical student I'm a little closer to than the others, lost all the contents of her house. I was able to whip out my checkbook, write her a check, and say, "Go buy some stuff. Don't say a word, except 'Thank you.' You don't owe me a dime, just remember this someday and do exactly what I am doing for you."

I have a sense of loss. Loss for those who have passed on before me. Loss for the things I wish I could have done differently. Loss for those close to me, who are still close, but moved away, and we don't have the same level of interaction that we used to. If I did not have that sense of loss, I would never know the things in my life that are the true riches in it.

I have a growing sense that time "bends." It teaches me what "living in the moment" really means.

I have the spectacle of a mini-microcosm of local nature--bugs, bees, hummingbirds, hawks, owls, possums, deer, raccoons, mice, moles, voles, butterflies, toads, and ticks. All I have to do is sit in my yard, be still, and let the show unfold around me.

I have the ability to "entertain myself" by observing. Being alone is almost never boring for me, unless I just get in "a mood." I crawl outside of myself and observe nature and people, and time can literally fly in those moments.

I am blessed with this strange "dual brain" of mine. One half of it is intelligent and practical. It analyzes, dissects, sees the world in a no-nonsense sort of way, and takes no prisoners when it comes to "real" vs. "fake." The other half is incredibly perceptive and absorptive. It is the dreamer, the poet, the imagineer in me. It finds the things that lie behind all the things the other half of my brain dissected. It tells me the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. I think these halves of my brain often squabble, and the practical half might be a little jealous of the perceptive half. The perceptive half feels a little dependent on the practical half to make a living, and feels a little subdued now and then.

At this very moment, while I'm composing this, I'm in the yard, and above my computer screen, in the hazy sky, is a turkey vulture riding the drafts. No one is ever going to give a turkey vulture a blue ribbon in a beauty contest. But as it lazily rides the currents, it circles and glides and seems content with the beauty of its own ability to ride the wind effortlessly.

It's telling me that this weekend is not about packing as much activity as I can muster on this three day weekend, it's about simply riding the currents and only adjusting my wings enough to enjoy the ride.

This is as golden as it gets.

Once again, I have to tip my hat to our dear Elizabeth. She's done it again.

I have many blog friends, and I continue to marvel at their brilliance, their insight, and their intimate views of their world, as well as their ability to share these gifts with no fear. But Elizabeth seems to have the unique ability to throw a post out there now and then that reaches through my chest wall, grabs my heart, and twists and squeezes till the tears come out. She managed to outline the paradox of "Christian values," She lays out several examples that illustrate the dichotomy that has permeated my own spiritual quest--the quest to become "fully human" in spite of all the seeming "opposites" that exist in our world, each flanked by its own moral value.

In fact, go read her post first (linked above) and THEN come back and read me. I won't mind.

Okay, you're back. Thanks for returning!

You know, we tend to think that each moral value we know as a "good" value stands alone, that the only opposing value to a "good" moral value would be an "evil" value. Alas, such is not the case. "Good" values can stand in opposition to each other.

For instance, one could argue that releasing the "Lockerbie bomber" on compassionate grounds so he can die of his metastatic prostate cancer in his homeland is a good and compassionate thing. However, to some of the families, this is an insult, to allow the man who killed their loved ones to roam freely, despite his sentence. Each of those positions is flanked by something we Christians would call a "Christian value." Compassion for a dying man, no matter what his sins, on one hand. The understanding of the need for victims to have a sense of safety and reconciliation on the other hand.

There's no way, unless we chose to live under a rock, and never think, that we can live without this paradox of values. To quote Mark Twain, "There's a little bit of larceny in all of us." Truly good people episodically do bad things. Good people bend on their taxes a little, they cheat on their spouses now and then, they become hard-hearted when they shouldn't, things can make them feel mean, spiteful, and jealous. The list is endless.

We do a constant dance between our woundedness and our own abilities to wound. But somewhere in the middle of that are all our best qualities...our compassion, our ability to love, empathy, mercy, forgiveness...this list is also endless.

Often, as Christians, we sense that we need to "become more like Jesus." But we tend to be thinking of that in terms of "we think we should become more like 'divine' Jesus." We sort of forget about "human" Jesus.

"Divine" Jesus would never speak a cross word, would heal everyone he saw, would always turn the other cheek, and would suffer all the slings and arrows dealt him without even a peep of disapproval and with all the composure of a true martyr. We start thinking we ought to be like that guy.

But we forget this is the same Jesus who wept at the grave of Lazarus one day and opened a can of whoopass on the moneychangers in the temple on another. "Human" Jesus was capable of being fully sad AND thoroughly pissed.

I am learning in my own life, as I plunge headlong into middle age, the answer is NOT to be this spiritual version of Mr. Spock--human on the "good" human parts, divine on the "good" divine parts. It denies the fullness of "me." It's about accepting ALL my humanness--warts and all, as well as accepting ALL of my "spark of the divine." I, like a lot of people, tend to think I am not worthy of my own divine spark. Well, that is such bull, isn't it? It's denying my greatest gift from God!

It doesn't make this labyrinth of our values any less convoluted, but what it does do is teach us to accept the dead ends, the dark corners, and the blind passageways, knowing God is in the mystery of it, and we are as much a part of that mystery as He is.