Awakening

We cannot buy life without end
or avoid going to the grave...
This is the lot of those who trust in themselves...
Like sheep they are driven to the grave.
- Psalm 49

It seems almost trite in this modern world to say that we will die. Of course we will die. Death becomes us. Yet, our avoidance is so complete and compelling that in all things we seek not to die but to maintain, not to live but to hold on. People have said they never felt so alive as when they were at death's doorstep - that in that moment when they were held at the very precipice they felt the exhilaration of stepping off into.......what?

If you believe in the promise of eternity your expectation is for something better, greater, and more than what life has given. You believe in new life, life made complete, life beyond life. And so these eternalists look forward to the grave, trusting that in dying they will live. But what of those who are more firmly rooted in the ground of the earth they inhabit. Their letting go is not so determined or ordained perhaps.

In the Catholic church when you die you aren't necessarily knocking on those pearly gates in that moment of letting go - you may go to a waiting room, a purgatory of sorts, where you wait. No one seems to know for how long you wait or what you do while you wait but there does seem to be some consensus of Catholic opinion on the fact that you will wait. I don't know if you wait for a final determination of up or down or if you are just waiting for Peter's call to come. The Protestants decided to simplify the choices, you die, you go up or you go down. No one even prays for you after you die because your fate is decided, no waiting time, no need for prayer. And of course, many of us are not of the Catholic persuasion or even of the Christian so perhaps in these other belief systems after-death is a different after-life. What seems to be a generally held opinion is that whatever comes next is either better or deserved.

So, if like sheep, our lot is to be driven to the grave then it would seem natural that our curiosity about the other side would compel us to keep the grave in sight. But typically, we do not do so. In fact, the opposite seems to be the case, it being more exciting to contemplate the t.v. guide than the hereafter? Is it a failure of imagination or intelligence that leaves us blinded by the light of t.v. not eternity? Or is that light so bright that it stuns us into sheep like complacency as we stumble ever onwards towards it? So we slumber on as we lumber on knowing what we do not want to know and hoping that in the end there is resurrection.

Grief

Lately, it seems that loss is part of my landscape. Not big loss, death of family or friends, but the little losses that keep adding up. Loss of health, loss of activity, loss of friendship, loss of abilities. When I listen to what others are saying I hear so much grief over these little losses, sadness and anger over the letting go of things that have meant much. I wonder if we are all just practicing for the ultimate loss of our own lives. As we get older I think it is harder to ignore the impact of loss in our lives. We aren't able to outrun, outthink, or outdrink it anymore. If we do a mental inventory of gain and loss, over time loss wins. And littles losses add up. And big losses become more frequent. And eventually if we are still alive we live with loss as a pretty constant companion.

When I speak to my Mother she talks about her failing eyesight, her inability to drive, her difficulty following recipes. My Mother in Law talks about her loss of her ability to walk, her loss of her husband's companionship due to dementia, her sorrow over friends who have passed on. My friends talk about the joints that remind them everyday that they ain't as good as they used to be, their concern about losing their jobs, pensions, security etc. My children talk about losing boyfriends, familiar homes, security.

And I sense with all of them the sorrow and anger just below the surface and the weary resignation of knowing that there is more to come. Is there any better reason to believe in God? If hope springs eternal it must spring from some well. Loss may be part of life but is it part of resurrection? Is heaven a place where the lonely find comfort and solace or is heaven a place where no memory exists of the losses of living? I didn't always believe in heaven. I thought it was a place conveniently dreamt up to pacify losers. Now I think that heaven must exist or else none of us would continue on. If loss is our lot in life why do we all keep moving forward, striving on, making the best of it, hoping for more? Maybe we don't believe it, maybe we don't think about it, but every action we take is fueled by some inkling of it's reality or we would stop acting. Heaven is so much a place in our hearts and souls that even when we forget it we don't lose it. Because heaven is home - our home - the place where we can resume living without loss. We may not open our hearts to God but God is in our hearts, urging us towards spirithood, even as we are bogged down in messy, sad life.

This is why we don't all fall down in a puddle of tears and sorrow every day. God is with us, heaven is open, we are preparing. In life we can't escape loss, in death we will overcome it.

Depression

Delicate humor is the crowning virtue of the saints.
Evelyn Underhill

There is a national mood that is captured by the imagination of 200+ million people experiencing the events of the day at the same time and in living color. Lately, the pundits say the mood is depressed. We are in a tailspin of worry; over gas prices, hurricanes, homeless family and friends, poverty, credit card debt, and a dying real estate market. And in a mass act of withdrawal we are starting to stay home, use less gas, spend less, turn the heat lower and the a/c higher, wear the same clothes more often, eat out less, and sigh more.

The pundits notice - the markets react. We are gripped by an anxiety that events are out of our control, that our spending spree is coming to an end, that the SUV will have to be garaged. We have no appreciation of the gifts we are blessed with, the extraordinary position we occupy in relation to the rest of the world. We obsess about terrorism while other people are blown up by it. Four years without a terrorist incident on our own soil and we still wait for the other shoe to drop. Meantime our foreign neighbors in Irag are experiencing 500 terrorist incidents a week. And rising.

We shake our heads over the lack of gas, it's high price, the specter of shortages. We drive less and buy more videos. We hope the winter will be kind, knowing that we may spend double for the heat we buy. We cannot conceive of a world where most people still walk, or bike, or ride animals to work. Our imagination does not extend to a world where people jam into the cities to be in close proximity to their work, supplies, relatives. And only Hurricane Katrina reminds us that our suburbs may be more vulnerable than we had once thought. And in 50 years, 75% of us will live on the coasts of this country.

The pundits notice - the markets react. Events spin out of control, no one seems to be in charge. The president suggests that the military should be in charge in times of national disaster and the governors, at least 38 of them, say no way. Mayor Nagin blames Governor Blanco who blames FEMA's Brown who blames Mayor Nagin and Governor Blanco who blame the president who blames the Democrats who blame the Republicans who blame Brown who resigns. Meantime we watch on t.v. as helpless, old, disabled people float in oily water on top of doors waving for help, stand on rooftops as the water creeps higher, die in the streets lying in grocery carts. And the anti-war crowd gears up to press for our boys to come home soon. Who knows whether that idea has merit, our anxiety feeds our need to withdraw, pull in, give up. And who do we trust to make such a decision, Bush? Cheney? The Republicans? The Democrats? Mayor Nagin? Governor Blanco? Who is in charge?

We try to do what's right, take care of our own, go to church, say the pledge, raise our kids and pay our way. We have the outlines of what it takes but do we have the soul? The courage? The spirit? Are we leading or led? Up or down? Spirited or disspirited? Can we shake off our malaise long enough to lead with gentle humor, call down the spirit of the saints we pray to, take responsibility for our choices, make a difference? Can we? We are not lemmings rushing to the sea, social relationships do not define us, we can say no or yes or maybe. And no one else has to agree. All we need is gentle humor, sacrificing spirit, responsible action, saintliness.

KATRINA

Please go to the website: www.umcor.org to find out how to donate money, supplies, and volunteer through the United Methodist Committee on Relief. Every dollar donated goes to victims not administration. OR donate to any legitimate charitable organization

Also, check out the national food bank network through www.secondharvest.org, this network of food banks already has distribution centers and food bank networks set up and can quickly mobilize resources.

Send letters, emails, and phone calls to our government asking why they are not doing everything possible to move people out of New Orleans - this effort appears stymied by bureaucracy. The poor, black, young, and elderly need our voices rising louder and louder until they are heard. Do not let your voice be stifled by inertia or a sense that this is too overwhelming. We can do something and we need to do everything we can - this situation can be improved immediately by overwhelming demand and pressure from each and every one of us.

Do not go out and top off your gas tank - GO OUT AND DO EVERYTHING YOU CAN TO HELP THE PEOPLE WHO DON'T HAVE FOOD, WATER, OR A ROOF OVER THEIR HEADS. YOUR GASOLINE NEEDS ARE NOT PRIMARY NOW.

Finally, pray for the victims of this tragedy. Our combined voices can make a difference.

"I understand her position"

(A response to George Bush regarding Cindy Sheehan's request to talk with him)

With those words our president lost me. Does he really understand "Mrs. Sheehan's" position? Does he really understand that she has no position - that her role as the mother of a son killed in Iraq - is a position of so little importance that he doesn't have to acknowledge her demand with anything more than the words dreamed up by some top level advisor to make the issue one of politics and not of pain. She is not asking to talk to him because she is a democrat, or a war protester, or a liberal who disagrees with his policies. She's asking to talk to him so that he can explain how her son's life contributed to the betterment of the world. She wants to hear the president explain what her child's life was ultimately worth. Of course, since he is the president, he has the ability to refuse to meet with her, the power to ignore her request, the audacity to say, "I understand her position." Well, Mr. President, she doesn't understand yours and she wants you to explain it to her.

Also, Mr. President, you don't have the first clue what her position is. You have never sent a child to fight in a war. You haven't had one of your daughters die an untimely and lonely death in a place so far away you never got to hold her in your arms as the life ran out of her. You haven't had to live with the pain of losing a child to a war you disagree with and policies that you only support because you are trying to be a good citizen. You have never experienced the "position" of losing a loved child to a war not of your own making and that you don't believe can justify that loss of life. So, no Mr. Bush, you don't understand her position. You haven't carried a child under your breast for 9 months. And, taking nothing away from fatherhood here, you have never had the personal responsibility for incubating life.

Therefore, Mr. Bush, this is my position. Bet you won't understand it but try. My position is that mother's should have the vote on when, why, and where we go to war. That mother's on both sides of any escalating conflict should be the determiners of the common good. That mother's will then be able to bear more stoically the results of sending their own children off to be killed if they decide in favor of war. Because you see, Mr. Bush, your vision is clouded by your need to win, your need to succeed, your need to pay back. You, Sir, are ruled by your emotions and hormones, no less than we are. And in the case of war, Sir, you are not capable of making an accurate and honest assessment of the pain that is being caused by you, because for you the pain is a side issue, peripheral, a "position."

Are you too afraid that you don't have the words to soothe this mother's heart? That even in your own ears the explanations ring with a hollowness that you cannot hide. You have tried to hide the reality of our children's deaths in this war behind the curtain of justice, and right, and freedom, and terror, and WMD's. It is cowardly enough to wage war on an entire country from behind a desk and through others. But it is more cowardly to refuse a mother the explanation of why it was worth it for her son to die in your war. You, Sir, should be ashamed of yourself.

It is time for mother's to stand up and say NO to this war. To save those children who have not yet been killed by the hatred we have fueled with our moral superiority. No mother can watch this mother on t.v. and not feel the anguish of loss. She may become a political symbol or be one already but that's o.k. too because we need to be reminded that their are people in this world who's grief is the result of these painful "positions" of our President. I hope she stays there until he agrees to meet with her or hell freezes over and at this point the latter is sure to happen before the former.

Beer for My Horses

I am not a beer drinker. In my youth I was. I could drink beer until I became beer. We would frequent a local pub where you got a free pitcher for every four you bought. Lots of nights we would end up with 20 pitchers on the table, empty. Hard to imagine now. And I actually thought I could drive home - whoa. Time does change one's perspective. Of course in those days I don't know if anyone was ever completely sober so there were a lot of accidents out there waiting to happen. And some did. Few of us grew to be 50 something without knowing someone in our social circle or neighborhood or high school who was a victim of their own bad choices. One friend of mine died in a bathtub with a needle in his arm - whoa. Another died in an accident with a blood alcohol of 3.8, legal limit now is .8 - whoa. Another decided to fly out a 4th story window and forgot to flap - whoa. None of this is funny but 3 decades later it's not nearly as tragic as it was then either. None of these people deserved to die and certainly none of them was doing anything much different than their friends were. And yet they suffered the most serious consequences imaginable for bad behavior - death. I wonder sometimes about what they would have done, or who they would have been, or what their children would have looked like if they had lived. No answer.

So today I'm reading a Time article about a Jihadist. This is a 19 year old in training to die for his religious beliefs and take out a few infidels as he goes. He describes his training, his prayers, his focus, his isolation. He has a family, friends, a life. He doesn't give it a second thought though. He is totally resolute in his desire to die killing others. He believes he will earn a place in heaven through this action. He is eager to be called. He has friends who have already taken their turn at the wheel of a car with explosives strapped on their bodies. He plans to reunite with them in heaven. He isn't sure he wants to kill innocent bystanders and hopes his target will be military or police related but he will kill bystanders if he must, innocent or not. He is ashamed of the one vice he has, smoking, and assures the reporter that before his time he will stop and complete his purification to insure when he takes his last drive, or walk, he will be completely ready for Allah. Whoa.

The irony of feeling bad about smoking as you contemplate murder - whoa. The irony of a new generation of almost adults who don't drink or use drugs and are totally clearheaded in their desire to murder and die themselves - whoa. What world do we live in now? I sometimes feel like the worst acid trip imaginable could not compare to a world like this one. We mourn the deaths of friends, family, acquaintances who die not because of their bad choices but because today they chose to get up in the morning and board a bus or train or plane. We mourn the deaths of friends, family, acquaintances who think their duty is to try to fight back, to wage war on these misguided youth, the soldiers of Allah. We mourn that the world we live in is a world of hatred, where power is sought through any means possible by people who send these youngsters to die. And what if they win? Will the world of our children's children be dominated by fanatics, zealots? And if they lose? Will the world of our children's children be dominated by fanatics, zealots? Will we wonder about all the lives cut short by this war - what would have become of these young people if they had lived and grown old? Would they have made the world better by living? No answer. They believe they are making it better by dying.

I think I grew up in the wrong world. In the world of my youth we didn't want to die, we wanted to live. We didn't want to wage war, we wanted peace. We didn't want to take up arms, we handed out flowers. Where did we go? Was it too much beer, or pot, or cocaine that flung us into this nightmare? We watched our bravest young men go to war and die and we stood up and said NO, this isn't right. Now we watch people blown up on an almost daily basis and we are numb, and sober. Sober?

What can we offer these young men so intent on dying that compares with a promise of heaven? They see a world that is without hope or promise or security. They don't believe in pacifism, in capitalism, in our madison avenue promise that "we try harder." They think we are bloodsucking, ransacking, muckraking plunderers. They believe that we would sell our own souls to possess theirs. They compare us to the devil.

It will take minds greater, hearts stronger, and souls braver than the ones we are showing to come to grips with this brave new world. It will take more than we've got to find the path through this nightmarish maze. We will need not only to be sober, but strong, and clear, and certain. We will need to be like them. With one important difference. The path to heaven is not littered with the bodies of the innocent.

High Test

Before the days of unleaded premium gasoline if you wanted the most expensive stuff at the pump you asked for high test (that was also in the days when someone pumped the gas for you, washed your windshields, and checked the oil while you sat behind the wheel). High test was the gas with the highest octane and many cars used it because back then most of them had V-8 engines and lots of get up and go. High test was the gasoline of champions.

Today I was thinking about high test but it came to me in another train of thought. I met a friend in a coffee shop and she was talking about an ex-husband who had been mean, manipulative, and philandering when they were married, back in her 20's. She ditched him after 2 years which certainly sounded like the right choice. I drifted into a reverie about our 20's and the hormonal excesses we were subject to in those days. We females were constantly complaining about the mood swings, irritability, bloating, and just plain uncomfortable days before, during, and sometimes even after we menstruated. This lament continued as we aged, changing from PMS due to youth, to PMS due to post partum readjustment, and then the worst PMS of all, PMS associated with peri-menopause. If you are a woman you can relate to this. You remember all the conversations that have taken place over the years between you and your female friends, sisters, daughters, and mothers concerning the woes of hormonal fluctuations.

I was wondering if men have these conversations and I realized that was a really stupid thing to wonder about. Of course they don't. Men don't sit around and relate their irritability, competiveness, anger, weight gain, and philandering to hormonal fluctuations. I am inclined to think that men don't even know they have hormones. They know they have penises, which of course, they think about a lot but I don't think they talk to other men about that. Do you know any men intimately who tell you tales about their penises, the names they have for them, their pride in them? yYoung sons will regale you with tales about this stuff but my guess is they don't quit thinking about it they just don't talk about it after a certain point, at least not to other guys. So, the point here is that even though they are very familiar with their equipment they don't tend to understand that underlying not only it's functioning, but also in many case their moods are those ubiquitous hormones. As my friend was discussing her ex-husband of years ago it struck me that that guy had too much high test(osterone). He was afflicted with too much hormone and too little sense.

Would we live in a gentler world if men could acknowledge their hormonal afflictions? Would we be better off if they sat around bending each other's ears with their tales of woe? Could we relate more compassionately to male hormone madness if they could confess their complete lack of control over the surges of high test(osterone)? Any woman will admit to moments of utter insanity brought on by hormonal changes. We know what it's like to feel out of control and irrational and we know what causes it. And knowing what it is makes it easier to talk to other women, and men, about it, to seek rest, solitude, or drugs, or massage to ease it. We know we aren't always mistresses of our own fate. But perhaps the key is that linked to raging male hormone is the desire to dominate, control, and copulate without thought. Face it, when men are in the throes of hormonal excess the last thing they want to do is seek solitude or chat. They want to take on the world.

Fortunately, hormones, both male and female, eventually level out or peter out (no pun intended). That's why those 50 and 60 year old guys seem so much gentler and kinder. And I hope that it's also true of us. The real irony here is that as our estrogen abates we get more high test(osterone). The most obvious manifestation being those chin hairs that appear at the most inopportune times. But of course, being women, we won't be going through this change without relating this new hormonal woe to every friend. As my husband becomes the man I always knew he could be (sweet, gentle, kind) I am looking for new worlds to dominate. I'm looking forward to having a little bit of Tony the Tiger in my tank. So look out world, here I come - and oh by the way fella's - talking really does help to tame the savage beast.