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.

Truth...

I admit two things about what follows:
I have often wondered just how much of what we think we know about the Jesus story is anywhere near the truth of the Jesus story...and,
I don't think those closest to Jesus in real life knew what the truth of the Jesus story was (almost) anymore than folks in our time and place do.

And so, I wonder if someday we will unearth written documents that go something like this:



Just a few short weeks ago, the man named Jesus was killed on a cross outside the city wall of Jerusalem. This is not rumor nor fantasy, it is true. Yet, while he is gone, he remains the hope of those who were his closest friends and followers. 
Many in Jerusalem and perhaps in some nearby villages and towns, are reportedly heartbroken.
Too much has happened to fully explain, let alone fully understand. Almost none of it makes sense.
No doubt there will be reports spreading that he was a fool, a liar, a flim-flam man.  There is no doubt that what he spoke of and what he promised has all gone, all disappeared.

Many of those who were in Jesus' inner circle are now being hunted by the authorities. If they are not all caught and dealt the same death sentence as Jesus, they will most likely have to lay low for the foreseeable future.  No doubt they will have some great stories to tell about their three years of being in his company. 
If Jesus' message is to be believed, these followers will probably defend and promote his life through living peaceably and lovingly wherever life takes them. The truth is that almost all that is known about the man named Jesus is that he cared little for what others believed to be true, but cared supremely for what he believed God declared to be true: That loving others was the only way forward.

Stuff I Shoulda Known Sooner...and Said More Often

For 41 years I delivered sermons from pulpits and spoke in leadership roles of various sorts...leading workshops and training events , addressing district and conference meetings, answering questions in official settings, etc.

It came with the job.  Pastor/Preacher.  Executive Director of an Urban Ministry agency. District Superintendent.

There are some stories to tell.  I made some genuine flubs.  I said some funny stuff (not always meaning it to be funny...it just came out that way).  I might have spoken some wise words on occasion. 

These last six years of serving a local church...after serving in administrative roles for the previous 16 years...have left me with some regrets that I could have spoken more wisely and more directly in my younger years.  In fact I now find that there was Stuff I Should Known Sooner...and Said More Often.

But, I didn't know it sooner and did not say it often enough.

With age comes wisdom.  Here is some of the stuff I shoulda known sooner...and said more often:

-Don't settle for skimming the surface of life...all the Good Stuff is below that.
-This world is a very tough place...tougher than you think.
-Each of us is pretty much like all the rest of us...in some very significant ways.
-That Kingdom Jesus spoke about is now (and always was) within us.
-God is a living mystery...never anything less.
-If it ain't patient, it ain't love.
-From Here-to-There just may be the longest, hardest journey we will ever take.
-Serendipity could turn spiritual in unguarded moments.
-"In-Between" is one of the most gnarly, dark places in life.
-God is always...or at the very least, almost always...at work among us.
-Our ideas about God and Life are too small...seriously, way too small.
-Our doubts and fears about God and Life are too big...seriously, way too big.
-We must love like our lives depend on it...because they do.
-Love is just a word until someone comes along and gives it meaning.
-If we take new paths, there will be new possibilities.
-The four actions of God that may best describe the Divine One are these: God Creates, God Loves, God Redeems, God Continues.

There's other Stuff...I may get to a recounting of that at another time.