What If?

Who?
What?
When?
Where?
Why?


If I had been a reporter during my working years, those five "W"s would have been the tools of my trade.


Maybe I could have been like the fictional character created by friend, John Riggs, in his Garth Ryland mystery series.  I believe John has now published 17 or 18 of these really good novels...all featuring Garth Ryland, a newspaper reporter in the town of Oakalla, Wisconsin. I could have poked my nose into the dark goings-on of small town Midwestern America...could have solved great mysteries like "Cold Hearts and Gentle People," "The Lost Scout," and "Snow on the Roses." But, such a glamorous and sleuthful life was not mine to experience.

I wasn't a reporter, I was a pastor/preacher.  I didn't so much deal with the five "W"s listed above...I dealt more often with "What If..."


I was allowed to ask people questions like:


What if anything is possible?
What if there is nothing stopping you?
What if every day is the best "today" that it can be?
What if life is as Tigger says: Not about how fast you run or how high you climb but how well you bounce?
What if you could not ultimately fail?
What if the mythical constructs of  heaven and hell were not in play?
What if your hopes became reality?
What if you have everything you really need?
What if you have been created perfect in God's eyes?
What if there really is nothing to fear but fear itself?
What if you could just decide to be happy?
What if, like Jim Mulholland and Philip Gulley suggested in their two books, God Is Love and Grace Is True?


I think I like the What If approach to life.


I am reminded of this story by Carter Heyward:
Once there was a wise old woman who lived in a small village. The children of the village were puzzled by her—her wisdom, her gentleness, her strength.
One day several of the older children decided to fool her.
No one could be as wise as everyone said she was, and they set out to prove it.
One of them said to the others, “I’ll ask her whether the bird I have in my hands is dead or alive. If she says it is dead, I will open my hands and let it fly away. If she says it’s alive, I’ll crush it and she’ll see that it’s dead.”
So they went to the woman and presented her with this puzzle.
“Old woman,” the boy asked, “this bird in my hands—is it dead or alive?” The old woman became very still, studied the boy’s hands, then looked carefully into his eyes.
“It’s in your hands,” she said.           




 

Don't Step in the Stuff!

I remember the time I was asked to be the chaplain for a session of the Indiana Legislature.  I was living in Greencastle at the time, and this would have been May of 1991. It had been a cantankerous session in the days leading up to this, the final day of the session for the year.  I offered the opening prayer (didn't close using the words "in Jesus name," and was both thanked and questioned by about equal numbers of people for doing so), and was preparing to leave when the House Speaker asked if I could stay to open the next session...it was obvious that the current session was going to be brought to a close sometime in the morning hours and an extended "Special Session" was going to be convened not long after.  There would be a free lunch in it for me. I said, "Sure."
In the hours between my opening prayer and the close of that Session, I listened as legislators repeatedly said to each other (in not so quiet conversations), "Let's just get the hell out of here!"

Following lunch, I stood to offer an opening prayer for the Special Session.  I remember saying something like," Dear God, before all of us get the...(long pause)...heck out of here, might some heavenly work be done.  Amen."  The floor broke out first in laughter and then in applause.  Almost everyone there knew that my word "heck" really meant their word "hell," as in "get the hell out of here."

A friend of mine who lived in Galena, Indiana called me the next day to say that my prayer, and the response, had made the front page of the Louisville Courier Journal newspaper.  My goodness...must have been a very slow news day.

Now on to the topic of this posting.
I have found that, if you say the word "stuff" slowly, with the accent on the "s," most people will know that you really mean another word that begins with that same letter but is one letter shorter and ends in "t."

I know this from having used the word "stuff" in just such a way in quite a number of sermons.

People have a pretty good handle on what "stuff" can refer to when used this way.

My advice to us all is that as we journey thru life, we shouldn't Step in the Stuff.

That's what I mean by "S....tuff."

I suggest we can avoid stepping in the stuff if we are Wise...if we are Careful...if we are Prudent.
 
Wise enough to:

-Know how to include, instead of exclude.
-Trust that peace, not war, is the only ultimate was forward.
-Believe that grace and redemption are given to all.

Careful enough to:
-Forgive and to seek forgiveness…even in…maybe most especially in
our most near and common relationships.
-Let go of resentments…release grievances, self-pities and jealousies that only weigh down our souls.
-Release our need to control every outcome…realize that we cannot control other people…realize that we can only influence.

Prudent enough to:
-Choose grace over judgment…mercy over a sense of self-justification and entitlement.
-Perceive our complicity and responsibility in the basic survival of millions far away and neighbors nearby.
-Value gratitude over complaint, peace over disharmony, hope over despair, and life-giving over death-dealing.

Hey...Don't Step in the Stuff!

You Live Way More Times Than Just Once...

YOLO!
You Only Live Once...that's what they say.

I understand what they are going for with this slogan.  Everyone lives just one life, so live it well...live it with purpose...live this one life as if its the only one you get...because it is.

My life began on March 12, 1945.  Its still going...obviously.
70 years, 9 months and some-odd days.
With some luck and continued good health, my life could keep going for...well, who knows.
According to the YOLO principle, this is the only life I get.  The one I have been living since I arrived on the earthly scene at Memorial Hospital in South Bend, Indiana...all those years ago.

BTW: On that Monday when I arrived on the scene this is how things were...
F.D.R was President...serving in his fourth term;
"The House of Fear," "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn," and "Objective, Burma" were playing in movie houses.
The Tigers would beat the Cubs in the World Series later that year, 4-3; and in the Negro World Series the Cleveland Buckeyes would sweep the Homestead Grays, 4-0.
In college football, Army was declared the National Champion.
The Rams (then in Cleveland) beat the Redskins in the NFL Championship.
And the Fort Wayne Zollner Pistons beat the Sheboygan Redskins to win the National Basketball League Championship.
Gas cost 15 cents per gallon.
The average new house in America cost $4,600; and the average wage was about half that much ($2,400).
The average price for a brand new car (if you could find one) was barely north of one-thousand dollars.
Anne Frank died of typhus in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp on the day I was born to John and Patricia Steele of Lydick, Indiana.

But.  But I don't really agree with YOLO.

I think we all live many lives.  Consecutive lives. Each one of those lives we live requires different skills, emotions, and energies.  Each of them can build on the experiences of the ones that have gone before.

I made it thru my childhood life.  I learned to make friends.  Thought small town mid-western life in America was the only and best life to live.  Went to elementary, middle, and high school in the insular towns of Lydick and New Carlisle.  Had developed few if any plans for the lives that would follow.

My next life began with marriage, the soon-arrival of twin boys, and a move across the country to Los Angeles, California.  All within the span of about nine or ten months!  I landed my first "real" job, at the National Screw and Manufacturing Company (which company I have now outlived!).

Next came the return-to-Indiana life...beginning in the late summer of 1968.  We settled in the Indianapolis area.  Another boy-child arrived.  Higher education began in earnest.  Various work experiences...from cleaning out 55-gallon drums to be reused for tomato paste, to supervising the cleaning of office buildings, to managing the inventory of HVAC units, to driving a Charles Chips truck...and then the final two years of college and three years of seminary while serving as an associate pastor of one church and full-time pastor of another church.

There are other lives, too.  Some of them overlap one another; others occur in succession.

The professional religious-person life that lasted 41 years.

Life with good health.

Life with declining health.

Life lived paycheck-to-paycheck.

Life lived with relative financial security.

Divorced life.

Remarried life.

Retirement life.

That's how I see it.  We do live way more times than just once.  And each one of those lives brings new joys (and sorrows), new opportunities (and set-backs), and requires new skills and adaptations.  Each life requires the setting of new goals...and plans for achieving those goals.

Maybe...quite literally...Today is the first day of Your Next Life.

Maybe.

Vonnegut!

I read my first Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. book when I was in college...a friend asked me if I knew about this Hoosier author...some of whose books had been banned...and then let me borrow his copy of "Slaughterhouse Five."

Bingo!  I was hooked.  I quickly...over the next couple years...got every book Vonnegut had written and read it. And I stayed current with Vonnegut over the following years as he wrote even more books.

Attending a panel discussion on "Vonnegut and Religion" at Christian Theological Seminary...and especially listening to Dan Wakefield reminisce about his friendship with Kurt...got me back in touch with why I liked Vonnegut's writing so well.  And as to Vonnegut and religion...mostly Kurt referred to himself as an atheist...but I submit to you that his sermon "Palm Sunday," as written in his book, "Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage" (1981)...and preached in New York City at  St. Clement's Episcopal Church in 1980...is one of the better sermons you will ever read.

At any rate, this blog-post is just an excuse to list some of the better (in my estimation) quotes from Vonnegut's writings.  Let's start:

-We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be.

-Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you’ve got about a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of, babies—God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.

-True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country.

-Science is magic that works.

-That is my principal objection to life, I think: It’s too easy, when alive, to make perfectly horrible mistakes.

-Time is liquid. One moment is no more important than any other and all moments quickly run away.

-Until you die… it’s all life.

- One of the few good things about modern times: If you die horribly on television, you will not have died in vain. You will have entertained us.

- I don’t know about you, but I practice a disorganized religion. I belong to an unholy disorder. We call ourselves ‘Our Lady of Perpetual Astonishment.'

-We are here on Earth to fart around. Don’t let anybody tell you any different.

- Where do I get my ideas from? You might as well have asked that of Beethoven. He was goofing around in Germany like everybody else, and all of a sudden this stuff came gushing out of him. It was music. I was goofing around like everybody else in Indiana, and all of a sudden stuff came gushing out. It was disgust with civilization.

-I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, ‘If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.'

-All persons, living and dead, are purely coincidental.

-Ideas or the lack of them can cause disease.

-Here's what I think the truth is: We are all addicts of fossil fuels in a state of denial, about to face cold turkey.

-Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance.

-If people think nature is their friend, then they sure don't need an enemy.

-How nice… to feel nothing, and still get full credit for being alive.

I'm done here...for now..."And So It Goes."

 

The Deepening Pool of Human Stupidity...

In a former work-assignment experience...serving for eight years as a member of a small group that worked intimately with personnel deployment, supervision and sometimes personnel difficulties...I was introduced to a statement that I have come to believe is true...harsh, but true.  That statement is this: You can't fix stupid.

It gets proven true time after time, of course.

Saying something stupid, by definition, means saying something that lacks understanding, intelligence, reason or sense.

Heraclitus, the Greek philosopher, once said that "Stupidity is better kept a secret than displayed."  Some people just can't help themselves, however...or so it seems.

I read somewhere that the first basic law of human stupidity is that "Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid people in circulation."

Here are some contributions to the Deepening Pool of Human Stupidity:


“You guys line up alphabetically by height.”
- Bill Peterson, Florida State football coach

“The internet is a great way to get on the net.”
- Bob Dole

“I get to go to lots of overseas places, like Canada.”
- Britney Spears

“I owe a lot to my parents, especially my mother and father.”        
- Greg Norman

“I love sports. Whenever I can, I always watch the Detroit Tigers on the radio.”
- Gerald Ford

“If you’re killed, you’ve lost a very important part of your life.”     
- Brooke Shields

“A low voter turnout is an indication of fewer people going to the polls.”
- Dan Quayle

And, of course, pretty much anything Wayne LaPierre says.

All Alone Am I...

Way back in 1963...the year I graduated from New Carlisle High School...Brenda Lee recorded a song that included these lyrics:
All alone am I ever since your goodbye
All alone with just a beat of my heart
People all around but I don't hear a sound
Just the lonely beating of my heart.

All alone...
With just the lonely beating of my heart.

Now that's alone.
Try it...try just being alone...in silence...and listen for that internal sound of "just the lonely beating of your heart."

What do you "hear" beyond the sound of your heartbeat?
What thoughts come to mind...in the absence of the usual background din of everyday life in 21st century America?

Do you "hear" what you couldn't hear before you sat in the (relative) silence?
What thoughts are you having now that you are concentrating on just your heartbeat?

Pretty heavy stuff, this.

Scary...maybe.
Instructive...maybe.

Do you have any sense of peace?
Do events, or the faces of friends come into "view?"
Are you making plans for what will happen when you finish this session of silence. or are you letting this time...and this place...and this experience "speak to you" words that cannot otherwise be spoken?

Well, those are as far as my thoughts take me in this vein...but here are the words of Michele Casella Collier...a lady I know through a FaceBook connection...to me, she is known as "The Yoga Lady," but as you will see in what follows, she has gifts beyond her skill in doing and teaching Yoga.  Her poem is titled "In Stillness."



In stillness
in the silent
expanse
between
the stars
there is
the peace
once lost
now found
and it comes
in quiet calm
that reaches
down
into the space
between
flesh
and bone



Breathing in
Breathing out
it is there
in stillness
where
wholeness
empties
into infinity
and gently floats
in between
each breath
and waits
in stillness
for the soul's
remembrance
and surrender
into the soft
elegant radiance
and fullness
of eternity

Nothing...it ain't easy!

I retired.
I retired at age 70.
I retired after having held some kind of job...either full-time...or part-time while attending college and/or Grad School...since age 18.  The final 41 years of employment were as a pastor or administrator in the United Methodist Church.
I retired as of June 30, 2015.

I now do nothing.
And it ain't easy.

I read two articles on how doing nothing helps one get things done.  Those articles were just nonsensical.  Nothing to them, really.

There is a bit of guilt associated with doing nothing...instead of doing something...but it can be easily overcome if one knows how.

Borrowing the good suggestions of others...and maybe throwing in some of my own thoughts...I have come up with some things I can be doing...or practicing...while I am working out the details of this doing nothing thing.

Here goes.

Even while doing nothing...I can:

Live and Let Live.

Be Positive instead of Negative.

Reflect on the Lessons that Losing offers.

Spend some Time Alone Every Day.

Be Open to Change.

Practice the Presence of Silence.

Live in the Moment.

Advocate for Peace.

Proceed Calmly with Life.

Do No Harm.

And of course...Develop a Healthy Sense of Leisure.