Kevin LaRose

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  • Our Weekend Getaway

    When Sarah and I were married in 2012, a honeymoon was not in the cards for us. We were married in the ICU of St. John’s Hospital, as I was in the middle of a 2-week hospital stay for various ailments. So we never got a honeymoon. That’s been at the back of my mind all this time. Then, with how awful the end of last year was for us, we decided that we needed a little getaway. Just a 2-day stay in a hotel with no distractions, dogs and cats to feed, dog to take out, cleaning up hairbals, even no social media. So, this past weekend, we went to the Hilton Garden Inn in downtown Indy. At the last minute, we decided to upgrade to a suite. I think it was a good decision.

    The suite itself was okay, and the hotel staff couldn’t have been nicer. But there were a few flies in the ointment. First of all, it was 4 degrees outside. The hotel was built in 1915 as an office building, converting to hotel use in the early 2000s. I don’t think the refurbishments took into account the possibility of Arctic temperatures. The heat in our suite could not keep up with the cold, and to get any hot water at all, we had to run the tap for at least 3 minutes, and even then we didn’t get very hot water. So that was certainly a detriment. On the plus side, we got some good time together. The bed was as decent as hotel beds can get. I finally got to experience Shake Shack (in my view the burger lived up to the hype), and I introduced Sarah to First Watch (she is now a fan). So, even though it wasn’t perfect, we finally got our honeymoon.

    I will close with one happening from the weekend, one that was, I might say, a bit humbling. Since, due to the frigid temperatures we decided to not do anything outside of the hotel, I chose to not bring my heavy winter jacket, and just wore my trusty Crisis Text Line hoodie. I figured the big coat would just be excess baggage. My mother-in-law said “what if there’s a fire?” I laughed it off; my mother was the wat-if queen, so while I understood the intent I thought there was minimal chance something like that would happen. Fast forward to Saturday night, around 9 PM. Sarah was working on her computer at the work desk, and I decided there wasn’t any reason to stay up, so I went into the bedroom, climbed under the covers, and fired up Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me. Roughly 3 minutes later, while Peter Sagle was still bantering with the contestant who would take part in “Who’s Bill This Time?”, I was startled by beeping sounds. Following the beeps, a voice said: “May I have your attention please? A potential fire has been reported in the building. While this is being verified, it will be necessary for everyone to leave the building. Please use the stairs. Do not use the elevator.” I rose up, grabbed my pants, put them on, went into the main room, put on my shoes, didn’t get them all the way on before we had to leave. Once out in the hallway, we realized we had no idea where the stairwell was. Between following voices and a very much-appreciated good Samaritan, we found the stairs, and went down, and down, and down. Luckily, we were on the fourth floor; the hotel has sixteen floors. So I’m in my hoodie, it’s 4 degrees ouside, and that’s where we were headed, and standing out there for who knows how long. Very thankfully, just as we reached the lobby, the all-clear was called, so we got right into the first elevator available and went back up to our room, which somehow didn’t seem as cold as before, at least for a while. So, lesson learned: If traveling in the winter, even if I don’t anticipate stepping outside, that winer coat is coming with me always.

  • So Long, Mom, And Thanks For All The Spaghetti

    This entry started its life as a Facebook post, but in the midst of formulating it in my head I decided that it would probably work better as a blog entry. Besides, this poor space really does need more love.

    My mother passed away this past Monday. It was not unexpected; her health had been in steady decline for a while, and in precipitous decline in the past month or so. I made plans to make a quick trip from Indiana to her home in Issaquah, WA, so I could have one last visit and, yes, to say goodbye. I cannot put into words how glad I am that I did this. For one thing, and this was difficult, it gave me a window into how much she was suffering. It was clear to me that she was letting go and based on what I witnessed I completely understood. It also gave us the rare and precious opportunity to say goodbye and to potentially mend any fences that needed mending and clear the air about unresolved things. Only in our case none of that turned out to be necessary. For Mom, it was all in the past, and none of it mattered anymore. That was a hugely immense gift she gave to me, as I had not always been a great son to her, particularly in my adulthood. We could both be bullheaded, and our heads butted on many an occasion. But to her, it was all over, no apology necessary. I have to admit, in a way, it reminded me of God’s grace. And she gave me an even bigger gift besides that one. She told me she was proud of me. For someone like me, who is now on the downslope of middle age, and who made so many mistakes earlier in life, many of which my mother had to bail me out of, to have the hard work I’ve done to turn my life around acknowledged so fully and emphatically…once again, I have no words. So, while of course there is grief, and I’ll have waves for a while to come, my heart is feeling so much peace because of that 2-day visit.

    Sadly, I have precious few memories of Mom and I doing things together. That’s not surprising; growing up I was much closer to Dad. But I know she loved me tremendously. I pretty much spent the first 5 or so years of my life in the hospital, and she was with me every step of the way. This leads to one of the things that many of you may consider kind of oddball. I think of Mom every time I hear the first bars of the opening theme of the Lucy Show. Not I Love Luc, but the show she did in the 60s, with Mr. Mooney and that’s all I remember of it. Channel 5 in San Francisco ran reruns of The Lucy Show at 9 AM weekday mornings, which coincided with the beginning of hospital visiting hours. Inevitably someone in a room close to me would have their TV on at loud enough levels that I heard those first few bars of the theme, and I knew it wouldn’t be long at all before Mom came. And, in my mind, at least, she was always there almost immediately.

    There was something else we shared that, to the best of my knowledge, hardly anyone else shared with us, certainly nobody in the family, immediate or extended. We both loved pickled beets. So, when I got groceries on Tuesday, I made sure to include a jar of pickled beets in the order. I’m not sure if there’s any significance to the fact that, as of this writing, I have been unable to break the vacuum seal to open the jar. But at least I have it, and I will get it open. One of these days.

    One more thing. Mom was a good cook but I always had the sense that, unlike me, she never really enjoyed her time in the kitchen. But, when I was around 12 years old, she got a spaghetti recipe from a friend that became one of my ultimate comfort foods. No spaghetti I’ve ever had tastes like it, actually not even close. I cannot piece enough of the taste together in my head to take a guess at the ingredients, except that it has mushrooms and, maybe, cloves. She made it for me on my birthday on a few ocasions, and the last time she did was when she was out in Indiana for a visit in 2012. There is part of me that desperately wants that spaghetti one last time. But I fear the recipe died with Mom, and I know the friend she got it from has been deceased for a while. But my wife made pasta for me tonight, and it was very comforting. And in the end that’s how it should be. So I can’t think of a better way to wrap this up then to say, as Douglas Adams might have, so long, Mom, and thanks for all the spaghetti.

  • Thoughts On The Chogaffirm Petition

    Last week, I was very pleased and proud to sign a petition at the website www.chogaffirm.com. It calls for the denomination Church of God, Anderson, Indiana, to be affirming of the LGBTQ community, and to apologize for past wrongs. There’s more to it, of course; those interested can go to the website and take a look. My particular church, Park Place Church of God, has ben very affirming for some time now, though it’s my understanding it hasn’t always been this way. On Thursday, as expected, one of the church leadership branches, Indiana Ministries, published a response. I will not link to it here; if you want to read it, google chogaffirm response, and brace yourself. For me reading the response felt like getting punched right in the gut. Between this and the loss of my dear friend earlier this week, my body is having some negative reactions to the trauma I’m feeling. I never expected anything like this response to come from the denomination I have chosen as my own, the first place that has really felt like a church home to me. The extremely contentious and (at least I think) hateful wording is so incongruous to anything I have seen in the past decade. I’m finding it extremely difficult to process.

    As for my feelings on the subject at hand, here is how I see it. How anyone else chooses to live their lives has no impact on me whatsoever. And, if two people of the same sex love one another and want to join together in marriage, who am I to judge that? If anything, to my way of thinking, it strengthens the overall notion of commitment. The more committed couples there are, no matter how it might look, the better off the world will be. Historically the church has done so much damage to the LGBTQ community, between nonacceptance, ostracization, and in some extreme cases the absurd notion of “praying the gay away.” There is no doubt in my mind that Jesus would have been in full fellowship with the LGBTQ community, no restrictions, no caveats. Not only should the church do the same, but it also needs to answer, in any way possible, for the past wrongs it has done. I think the church I have come to know and love would have no problem at all doing this. Or at least that’s what I’ve always thought.

  • Rhonda

    It was the fall of 1987, and I was attending my first convention of the Washington Council Of The Blind (WCB). I had attended the national ACB convention the previous summer, and it hadn’t gone well. In fact, I never even met any people from my own state. I was eating dinner in the hotel restaurant the first night of the state convention, and there was a guy at my table named Terry, who I became good friends with. As we were talking, we realized we had a lot in common. I can’t remember what prompted this, but at some point during our conversation someone from a nearby table put in an aside. Terry said, “Oh hi, Radio Rhonda!” And that is how I was first introduced to Rhonda Nelson.

    Later that night, in the hospitality room over way too many adult beverages, we got better acquainted. We found we had much in common, particularly a love of sports and radio DX’ing. For those who may not be familiar with the term, radio DX’ing simply consists of tuning up and down the AM radio dial, almost always at night, trying to hear stations from as far away as possible. I recently lamented on Facebook about how recent innovations have made this pastime obsolete.

    We kept the friendship alive through occasionally seeing each other at local meetings and also phone calls from time to time. Then, in the summer of 1989, I applied for a job with the Social Security Administration, and I let her know they were hiring. She already had a very well-established job, but she also decided to apply. As it worked out, we were both hired. SSA was not a positive experience for either one of us, to say the very least. We did a lot of venting to each other over the next several years about the working conditions, various policies, difficult people, pretty much everything. She had the good sense to get out 6 years before I did, on her own terms. While I was very happy for her for getting out of that pit, there was also part of me that was angry, angry that I was left behind. But I knew that was selfish anger, that she did what she had to do, and I never showed her that anger when it was with me.

    Another connection we had was Scrabble. Her, me, and my ex wife played countless Scrabble games over the years. For a time she lived less than a mile away from us, so these games were almost a weekly ritual at times. We also spent many weekends at Rhonda’s parent’s place out on Hood Canal. It was, and still is, one of the most peaceful environments I’ve ever been in. I was there the weekend my dad passed away in 2000. He died on Sunday morning, and these were the days before cell service was universal, so my family couldn’t reach me until I got home that night. It had been a beautiful, sunny day, and knowing my dad as I do, I’m 100% convinced he would have approved of spending that day in the peaceful place as opposed to rushing home in abject grief.

    Speaking of grief, that is the state in which I find myself now. When I moved to Indiana 11 years ago we pretty much fell out of touch, though I was able to enjoy a lunch with her at the ACB convention in 2016. I regret my part in not staying in touch. I have learned that she spent the last couple of years in some pain, and I would have liked so much to be able to help her through that however I could have. But unfortunately time only moves one way, forward, and there’s no way to go back. I do hope that she remembered me fondly, as I do her.

    I’ll wrap this up with some thank yous to Rhonda, even though I know she can’t read it, or maybe wi fi has made it to Heaven, who knows? Thanks for everything, Rhonda. Thanks for the Scrabble games, even though I never beat you, not even once. Thanks for all the sports talks. I didn’t share your passion for Washington Husky football, but you were an alum, so I understood, just as you understood about my love for Gonzaga basketball for the same reason. Thanks for being my SSA sounding board so many times when we walked that road together. You’ll never know how much that helped me. Thanks for being there after my dad died. I’ll never forget your kindnesses. Most importantly, thank you for being my friend. You touched my soul in a way only a few others have in my life. As I have said elsewhere over the past few days, there is now a Rhonda-sized hole in my heart. Having said all of that, keep the Scrabble board handy. I’ll be there at some point, and maybe I’ll even have learned more things along the way to give you better competition. Until then, enjoy yourself. You deserve every bit of it.

  • Beyond Words Day 23

    DAY 23
    From the devotional book Beyond Words by Frederick Buechner
    HAVE NO ANXIETY about anything,” Paul writes to the Philippians. In one sense it is like telling a woman with a bad head cold not to sniffle and sneeze so much or a lame man to stop dragging his feet. Or maybe it is more like telling a wino to lay off the booze or a compulsive gambler to stay away from the track.

    Is anxiety a disease or an addiction? Perhaps it is something of both. Partly, perhaps, because you can’t help it, and partly because for some dark reason you choose not to help it, you torment yourself with detailed visions of the worst that can possibly happen. The nagging headache turns out to be a malignant brain tumor. When your teenage son fails to get off the plane you’ve gone to meet, you see his picture being tacked up in the post office among the missing and his disappearance never accounted for. As the latest Mideast crisis boils, you wait for the TV game show to be interrupted by a special bulletin announcing that major cities all over the country are being evacuated in anticipation of a terrorist attack. If Woody Allen were to play your part on the screen, you would roll in the aisles with the rest of them, but you’re not so much as cracking a smile at the screen inside your own head.

    Does the terrible fear of disaster conceal an even more terrible hankering for it? Do the accelerated pulse and the knot in the stomach mean that, beneath whatever their immediate cause, you are acting out some ancient and unresolved drama of childhood? Since the worst things that happen are apt to be the things you don’t see coming, do you think there is a kind of magic whereby, if you only can see them coming, you will be able somehow to prevent them from happening? Who knows the answer? In addition to Novocain and indoor plumbing, one of the few advantages of living in the twenty-first century is the existence of psychotherapists, and if you can locate a good one, maybe one day you will manage to dig up an answer that helps.

    But answer or no answer, the worst things will happen at last even so. “All life is suffering” says the first and truest of the Buddha’s
    Four Noble Truths, by which he means that sorrow, loss, death await us all and everybody we love. Yet “the Lord is at hand. Have no anxiety about anything,” Paul writes, who was evidently in prison at the time and with good reason to be anxious about everything, “but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.”

    He does not deny that the worst things will happen finally to all of us, as indeed he must have had a strong suspicion they were soon to happen to him. He does not try to minimize them. He does not try to explain them away as God’s will or God’s judgment or God’s method of testing our spiritual fiber. He simply tells the Philippians that in spite of them–even in the thick of them–they are to keep in constant touch with the One who unimaginably transcends the worst things and also unimaginably transcends the best.

    “In everything,” Paul says, they are to keep on praying. Come hell or high water, they are to keep on asking, keep on thanking, above all keep on making themselves known. He does not promise them that as a result they will be delivered from the worst things any more than Jesus himself was delivered from them. What he promises them instead is that “the peace of God, which passes all understanding, will keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

    The worst things will surely happen no matter what–that is to be understood–but beyond all our power to understand, he writes, we will have peace both in heart and in mind. We are as sure to be in trouble as the sparks fly upward, but we will also be “in Christ,” as he puts it. Ultimately not even sorrow, loss, or death can get at us there.

    That is the sense in which he dares say without risk of occasioning ironic laughter, “Have no anxiety about anything.” Or, as he puts it a few lines earlier, “Rejoice in the Lord always. Again I will say, Rejoice!” (Philippians 4:4-7).

    my reflections I am a worryer. In way too many situations, the first two words that come to mind are “what if”. What if indeed! There are infinite what-ifs in life, and all of them have a mathematical possibility of happening. This, of course, does not mean that they will. But that doesn’t stop my brain from finding countless what-ifs in any situation. Clearly I don’t have this peace that surpasses all understanding thing down yet. Another phrase I’ve heard frequently throughout my life is let go and let God. Once again, much easier said than done. I wish I was better at all of this. On the other hand, I can’t think of anyone I know who’s great at it either. All I can do is keep trying and maybe someday I’ll get there.

  • Beyond Words Day 21

    Back doing this after a hiatus of over 6 months.

    Beyond Words Day 21
    From the devotional book Beyond Words by Frederick Buechner

    MARY COULDN’T SAY she wasn’t warned. The angel came with an Easter lily in his hand and stood so still he could have been one of the columns in the loggia where they met. Mary had trouble hearing what he said and afterward thought it might have been just a dream. Even so, it troubled her.

    It was not until later that the real trouble came. The real trouble came when what the angel announced would happen happened, but in a way she couldn’t have dreamed: squatting there in the straw with her thighs wrenched apart, while out of her pain she dropped into the howling world something that looked like nothing so much as raw beefsteak: who was the one the angel had said was to be called Holy, the Son of the Most High: who was the Word itself fleshed with–of all flesh–hers.

    my reflection I wouldn’t be surprised if some people would have some issues with this devotional. Describing Our Savior Jesus Christ as a piece of raw meat? Seriously? Yet if he did become flesh of our flesh, the description is quite accurate. Thinking about it, the birthing process is very chaotic, extremely messy, and there’s more than a little ick factor to it. I know, I’ve been there, up close and personal. Yet, even with all of that, I can’t think of a more moving and sanctified event than the beginning of life. And even if Jesus did come out looking worse for wear, it doesn’t matter how you start in life, it’s how you finish.

  • State of the Household

    It’s been a while since I wrote in this venue, so here I am to do so.

    First, an apology. I did not intend to stop my postings of the Beyond Words devotionals. Life just got busy, and I just never got around to restarting it. I will be restarting it soon. Frederick Buechner’s book of devotions is too good to keep languishing.

    Also, I owe you all an update on life in general. For the most part, not much has changed in the past several months. Sarah is continuting to work toward the completion of her PHD program. It really hasn’t been easy, when you factor in health issues and other distractions and annoyances, but she’s getting the job done. As for me, well, I’m beginning the process of seriously pursuing going back to school for a license in mental health counseling. My experience volunteering on the Crisis Text Line over the past six months has clearly shown me that I have a heart for this work. Starting a whole new chapter when I’m on the downslope of middle age seems, well, weird, but I feel like I still have a lot of life left to live and perhaps much to contribute. There are lots of hoops to jump through, and it probably won’t begin to happen until next year, but I’m finding working toward this goal to be a really exciting thought.

    2023 is now well underway. On balance I’d have to say that 2022 was a definite improvement over 2020 and 2021. Neither Sarah nor I spent any time in the hospital, there were no major household mishaps, and toward the end of the year Sarah got a brand new, great-sounding piano. I was joking with someone recently that I’d like to see a bit more boring in 2023. At least, I’m hoping for good things and blessings. May that be true for all of us.

  • Book Review and Miscellany Thoughts

    I cannot recommend the book How Minds Change by David McRaney highly enough. In essence, the book discusses the scientific reasons how, and why, our minds can change. I normally don’t care for scientific books, but this one completely hooked me. If you read this book while keeping in mind the ongoing societal food fight about what is actual truth, I think it will hook you as well.

    Something I came across while reading the book today particularly jumped out at me. McRaney posits that humans are wired to work in collaboration, as opposed to individually. During human evolution, it was safer to live, work and travel in groups. Those woolly mammoths could be murder! Individualism is actually not normal. Putting this in a contemporary perspective, this brought the recent developments at Twitter to my mind. The person who forcibly took over seems to think he can run the whole operation by himself because of his purported genius. Sort of reminiscent of someone else who has been all over the news for the past 7 years. Remember I alone can fix it? Anyway, the person now in charge at Twitter is far from a genius, and even if he was, he alone could never run it solo.

    I’m actually beginning to think the Fediverse model of online social interaction just might be the way to go forward. Initially I was skeptical, to say the least; I looked at a structure with no hierarchy and an infinite number of individual servers and two words came to mind: chaos and anarchy. But I’m beginning to think I just wasn’t thinking out of the box. I’m beginning to see there are ways to deal with bad actors across the whole system, and so long as the collaboration model holds up it should stay safe enough. I do have to admit, it is a better model than they have over at the bird site right now.

    Obviously I’m still in the process of reading the book. I’m hoping that it will cover ways i can talk to people with differing views from me without it becoming toxic, having them shut down, and possibly destroy friendships, as has happened with a few of mine. Honestly, all I have ever wanted to do was try and understand why people think, act, and vote the way they do. But it doesn’t seem possible to get there without the rhetorical boxing gloves getting donned, on all sides. I’m never out to forcibly change anyone’s mind on anything; I don’t think it’s in me to do that. I just want to proverbially sit down over coffee or other beverage of choice and just have a conversation. Sometimes it feels like that might not be possible anymore. I’m hoping this book might show me some ways how to make it possible.

  • Initial Thoughts On My Writing

    I am spending this week attending a writer’s conference put on by a group called Writing For Your Life. The conference itself is called Writing Dangerously, and it features some heavy hitters in the Christian publishing field. Already several times this week I have felt like what James Stockdale, Ross Perot’s running mate in the 1992 Presidential campaign, must have felt like when he said “Who am I? Why am I here?” It’s really easy to feel outclassed in this group. After all, I have never published a word. Yet I have felt a pull to write for a very long time, and these past two days have begun to light a fireunder me.

    I know I want to write. The questions I need to answer are what do I want to write, and to whom? This is what I’m grappling with right now, and I have no idea where it will lead. I know i have a story I want to tell, but what story? And how will I tell it? Will I write a book or keep a blog going? From what I’ve heard so far this week, blogs are now considered kind of old school. But I think there’s still a lot they can offer. For me, it could be a way to tell my story over time, and potentially reshape it into book form later. I know people who have done this. I’m not really looking for monetary gain. I know anything I have to say will probably not sell widely in the mass market, and that’s okay with me. Right now I have the time and the freedom to do whatever I want. In a way this is liberating, but in another way it’s a little scary, honestly. Throughout my life I’ve never been really good at holding myself accountable. It’s time for that to change.

    I guess what I am getting at, when all is said and done, is that my writing is very much a work in progress and wil probably remain so for a while. I have no time limit so I’m thinking I’ll do some playing around to see what works. In any event, like Rachel Maddow says, watch this space.

  • Beyond Words Day 19

    DAY 19
    From the devotional book Beyond Words by Frederick Buechner

    “OF THE SEVEN DEADLY SINS, anger is possibly the most fun. To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come, to savor to the last toothsome morsel both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back–in many ways it is a feast fit for a king. The chief drawback is that what you are wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you.”

    my reflection I have a disagreement with Buechner here. To my way of thinking, there is nothing at all fun about anger. Anger is the most negative of emotions. I fear being on the receiving end of it, but more than that, I fear dishing it out as well. I’ve seen anger modeled negatively by many people throughout my life. It’s only been relatively recently that I’ve come to know that anger, when perceived correctly, can act as a positive motivator. But Buechner is correct when he says the “skeleton of the feast is you”. I’ve heard revenge described as someone taking poison hoping someone else dies. I don’t think there are more corosive emotions than anger and revenge. When not controlled, they can eat you inside out. That is certainly something to avoid. But righteous anger can potentially be channeled to good purposes. The trick, of course, is to discern the difference between righteous anger and corosive anger. And that’s way more easily said than done.

  • Beyond Words Day 18

    DAY 18
    From the devotional book Beyond Words by Frederic Buechner

    “SLEIGHT-OF-HAND MAGIC is based on the demonstrable fact that as a rule people see only what they expect to see. Angels are powerful spirits whom God sends into the world to wish us well. Since we don’t expect to see them, we don’t. An angel spreads its glittering wings over us, and we say things like, “It was one of those days that made you feel good just to be alive,” or “I had a hunch everything was going to turn out all right,” or “I don’t know where I ever found the courage.””

    my reflection More brevity today. I’m actually not sure where I stand regarding angels. In my younger years the thought that there was a guardian angel looking out for us was comforting to me. It was especially comforting to me right after my dad died in 2000. At that time I read many books talking about angels, spirit guides and the like. Ultimately I wound up not feeling comfortable with the concept. It felt too much like leaning into the occult. And yet, Clarence’s interactions with George Bailey in It’s a Wonderful Life are powerful in their own way. Do we all have angels on our shoulders? When push comes to shove, I can’t confirm or deny. But I totally understand why some people are convinced there are.

  • Death of a Queen

    When I first heard that Queen Elizabeth had died yesterday, I have to admit my initial reaction wasn’t reverential. In fact, I posted a little bit of snark on Facebook. I’ve just never been someone who has followed the Royal Family’s doings. In my mind, we fought a war almost 250 years ago to disconnect from the monarchy, and yet a whole lot of people today act like they want to be part of the whole thing. Also, the royals haven’t had any real power for a century or more. I’ve never gone in for pretention of any kind, and it has always seemed to me that the Royal Family basically exist to be pretentious.

    With all that said, I’ve spent the past day or so reflecting. Regardless of how I might feel about it, many people do feel a genuine connection to the Queen and the family. It’s inexplicable to me, but it’s real to them. So this feels like a personal loss to them, and that needs to be respected.
    I have also thought about the longevity of the Queen’s reign. I know of no other sovereign who ruled as long as QE II did. The two that come the closest, at least that I know of, are Hirohito (63 years) and Queen Victoria (64 years). A 70-year reign is mind-blowing. When she ascended to the throne in 1952, Harry Truman was President. Television was still very much the new game in town, and most people still got a majority of their entertainment through radio. McCarthyism was in full swing. The Athletics were still in Philadelphia, the Braves were still in Boston, the St. Louis Browns still existed (thogh not many really cared), and the Dodgers and Giants were still the darlings of Brooklyn and Coogan’s Bluff. In summary, it was a real long time ago. That kind of longevity needs to be celebrated.

    I mentioned how in my view the Royal Family basically exist for pretention. Yet interstingly, much of what I have heard and read over the past 2 days seems to indicate that QE herself wasn’t terribly pretentious. I’ve seen descriptions of her that talk abut how approachable she was, how she was able to interact wit her subjects on their level, I even saw a few references to her being “cool”. So perhaps I judged too harshly.

    I’m just not comfortable with any monarchy, or any government that’s based on inheritance as opposed to competence and/or the choice of the people. But, again, I know a lot of people feel differently than me, and I don’t have a monopoly on right and wrong. And any death is sad, even the death of a 96-year-old who lived an incredibly full life. I think we can all be certain that King Charles won’t last 70 years. So here’s a toast to Queen Elizabeth II, to a life well lived.

  • Beyond Words Day 17

  • The State of Me

    Today was happy birthday to me. I now start my 58th trip around the Sun. 21183 days now behind me. I’m fairly sure I don’t have that many days left to me. I can remember a time when I thought people who were approaching 60 were pretty darn old. Well, Kevin, welcome to pretty darn old.

    So, all things considered, how am I doing? As Facebook has been known to say, it’s complicated. In some ways, things have never been better. My work on the Crisis Text Line has helped me to begin to develop a new perspective on things in general. I don’t feel like I’m just a lump taking up space anymore. I’m beginning to believe, for the first time in a long while, that I have talents and abilities worth sharing, and that it just might be possible to not just constantly tread water and just survive, but actually to thrive. I have begun to entertain thoughts about my future that have lain dormant inside of me for longer than I care to think about. I’m back in the office fulltime after a more or less constant absence that lasted, according to certain things I’ve seen, for over 5 years. I’m reading a bunch and, more important, I’m writing again. If you take a look at this very blog, you’ll see evidence of that. It feels so good to stretch my brain like that again. I really didn’t realize how much I missed writing. Next week, I’m attending a virtual writer’s conference that I’m going to squeeze everything out of that I can. I wouldn’t go as far as to say my future’s so bright I’ve got to wear shades at this point, but I’m at least looking forward more or less positively, and that’s an immense change.

    Now, with all that being said, there are certain parts of my life that aren’t so great. Unfortunately, much of what isn’t great is more or less out of my control to affect. I have done, and will continue to do, what I can to make things better, but I can’t make things happen all by myself. I think it’s time for me to reach the acceptance step in the Seven Stages of Grief, continuing to do whateverI can, but at the same time not letting negative outcomes sap all the positivity away. I apologize for being somewhat cryptic, but these issues involve other people besides me, so I don’t feel free to give details. Needless to say, though, positive thoughts/prayers/vibes are welcome.

    I’d say that overall the state of me is as good as it could be. I still have my blue periods, and I probably always will. But I’m now moving, albeit slowly, in a forward, positive direction. I hope to keep up the positive momentum. One day at a time, one foot in front of the other. No, I probably don’t have 21183 days ahead of me, but I can make the most out of the days I do have. And you know what? Despite the fact that my body has a bit more creak in it, I’m really not that darn old. There’s still a lot of life worth living out there,, and I intend to live it all.

  • Beyond Words Day 16

    DAY 16
    From the devotional book Beyond Words by Frederick Buechner

    “WHEN THE PROPHET AMOS walked down the main drag, it was like a shoot-out in the Old West. Everybody ran for cover. His special target was the “beautiful people,” and shooting from the hip, he never missed his mark. He pictures them sleek and tanned at Palm Beach, Acapulco, St. Tropez. They glisten with Bain de Soleil. The stereo is piped out over the marble terrace. Another tray of Bloody Marys is on the way. A vacationing bishop plunges into the heated pool.

    With one eye cocked on them, he has his other cocked on the unbeautiful people–the varicose veins of the old waiter, the pasty face of the starch-fed child, the Indian winos passed out on the railroad siding, the ragged woman fumbling for food stamps at the check-out counter.

    When justice is finally done, Amos says, there will be hell to pay. The happy hour will be postponed indefinitely, because the sun will never make it over the yardarm. The cashmere sweaters, the tangerine-colored slacks, the flowered Lillys will all fade like grass. Nothing but a few chicken bones will mark the place where once the cold buffet was spread out under the royal palms.

    But according to Amos, it won’t be the shortage of food and fun that will hurt. It will be the shortage “of hearing the words of the Lord” (Amos 8:11). Toward the end, God will make himself so scarce that the world won’t even know what it’s starving to death for.”

    Amos 6-8

    my reflection More Old Testament carnage. The Lord is displeased (to say the least) with the Israelites because they have turned away from Him. As a result, He is going to withdraw His protection over them. This is extremely radical, and the God I studied and learned to venerate from the New Testament would have never gone this far, or so I believe. All that said, I’m not sure I completely blame the Lord for His actions. As Buechner illustrates, the Israelites have lost their way. They appear to have turned their worship to material things, and that hardly ever ends well–or maybe never ends well. I can’t help but see some parallels in our current day. Lots of people are accumulating and hoarding wealth, and many others are coveting it. The culture holds up the uber rich as exemplars worthy of emulating. It feels like we are so far down the wrong road that it isn’t hard to imagine a day of reckoning similar to what the Israelites had to endure. I hope and pray I’m wrong, but if it does hapen society will only have itself to blame.

  • Beyond Words Day 15

    DAY 15
    From the devotional book Beyond Words by Frederick Buechner

    “x + y = z. If you know the value of one of the letters, you know something. If you know the value of two, you can probably figure out the whole thing. If you don’t know the value of any, you don’t know much.

    Preachers tend to forget this. “Accept Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior and be saved from your sins,” or something like that, has meaning and power and relevance only if the congregation has some notion of what, humanly speaking, sin is, or being saved is, or who Jesus is, or what accepting him involves. If preachers make no attempt to flesh out these words in terms of everyday human experience (maybe even their own) but simply repeat with variations the same old formulas week after week, then the congregation might just as well spend Sunday morning at home with the funnies.

    The blood atonement. The communion of saints. The Holy Ghost. If people’s understanding of theological phrases goes little deeper than their dictionary or catechetical definitions, then to believe in them has just about as much effect on their lives as to believe that Columbus discovered America in 1492 or E = mc 2.

    Coming home from church one snowy day, Emerson wrote, “The snow was real but the preacher spectral.” In other words, nothing he heard from the pulpit suggested that the preacher was a human being more or less like everybody else with the same dark secrets and high hopes, the same doubts and passions, the same weaknesses and strengths. Undoubtedly he preached on matters like sin and salvation but without ever alluding to the wretched, lost moments or the glad, liberating moments of his own life or anybody else’s.

    There is perhaps no better proof for the existence of God than that year after year the whole God enterprise survives despite the way the professionally godly promote it. If there are people who remain unconvinced, let them tune in their TVs to almost any of the big-time pulpit pounders almost any Sunday morning of the year.”

    my reflection Reading this made me want to rise from my chair and cheer. What he says in this devotional is oh so true. In my formative years I had significant exposure to the Catholic faith by virtue of me attending Catholic parochial junior high school and then Jesuit high school and college. I wasn’t raised Catholic, in fact my family weren’t really churchgoers at all. While I’m thankful every day for my excellent Jesuit education, I never felt at home in the Catholic church. I remember attending a funeral Mass for a friend several years ago. I hadn’t set foot in a catholic church for more than 20 years before this. I remember being really bothered by the call-and-response pattern of the service. Everyone saying the same thing at the same time put me in mind of something else far removed from religion or spirituality. “We are the Borg.” I finally understood why Catholicism never felt like a good fit to me. There was just way too much rigid ritual. And how many of those people droning those words really, I mean really, understood what they were saying? I know this ritual is meaningful in and of itself for a lot of people, and I’m not trying to minimize that, but it just never was for me. Going to church and mouthing the same words, week after week after week, in perpetuity, just doesn’t do it for me. For me it has the same signifcance as a first-grader dutifully saying the Pledge of Allegiance. They have no clue what the words mean (except in rare instances), so what’s the point? When religion started to cause me to think, to stretch my beliefs and be open to new ideas and notions, is when my faith really began to take flight. And I’m so glad it did!

  • Beyond Words Day 14

    DAY 14
    From the devotional book Beyond Words by Frederick Buechner

    “ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, or A.A., is the name of a group of men and women who acknowledge that addiction to alcohol is ruining their lives. Their purpose in coming together is to give it up and help others do the same. They realize they can’t pull this off by themselves. They believe they need each other, and they believe they need God. The ones who aren’t so sure about God speak instead of their Higher Power.

    When they first start talking at a meeting, they introduce themselves by saying, “I am John. I am an alcoholic,” “I am Mary. I am an alcoholic,” to which the rest of the group answers each time in unison, “Hi, John,” “Hi, Mary.” They are apt to end with the Lord’s Prayer or the Serenity Prayer. Apart from that they have no ritual. They have no hierarchy. They have no dues or budget. They do not advertise or proselytize. Having no buildings of their own, they meet wherever they can.

    Nobody lectures them, and they do not lecture each other. They simply tell their own stories with the candor that anonymity makes possible. They tell where they went wrong and how day by day they are trying to go right. They tell where they find the strength and understanding and hope to keep trying. Sometimes one of them will take special responsibility for another–to be available at any hour of day or night if the need arises. There’s not much more to it than that, and it seems to be enough. Healing happens. Miracles are made.

    You can’t help thinking that something like this is what the church is meant to be and maybe once was before it got to be big business. Sinners Anonymous. “I can will what is right but I cannot do it,” is the way Saint Paul put it, speaking for all of us. “For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do” (Romans 7:19).

    “I am me. I am a sinner.”

    “Hi, you.”

    Hi, every Sadie and Sal. Hi, every Tom, Dick, and Harry. It is the forgiveness of sins, of course. It is what the church is all about.

    No matter what far place alcoholics end up in, either in this country or virtually anywhere else, they know that there will be an A.A. meeting nearby to go to and that at that meeting they will find strangers who are not strangers to help and to heal, to listen to the truth and to tell it. That is what the Body of Christ is all about.

    Would it ever occur to Christians in a far place to turn to a church nearby in hope of finding the same? Would they find it? If not, you wonder what is so big about the church’s business.”

    See also Lord’s Prayer.

    my reflection When I first started contemplating Christianity on a deeper level 20 or so years ago, I had the assumption that churches would actively do whatever they could to facilitate people becoming part of their congregation. I figured all I had to d was call the church’s office, and they would get a ride for me. After all, I was (theoretically, at least) part of their preferred demographic: a seeker wanting, and needing, a place to belong. It took almost no time at all for these assumptions to be proven wrong. It turns out that, while churches are always hoping for more fannies in the pews, they don’t seem to feel any obligation to assist people to get there. And oftentimes it’s still sometimes a struggle to get rides to and from church even when you’re part of the supposed church community. I don’t have any personal experience with AA, but it isn’t hard to believe that such things aren’t as much of an issue with them. No matter what your overall feelings might be about AA, there is no denying that they are a true community. Their whole model is structured on people helping people, being there for one another, trust, and reciprocation. Like Buechner, I believe that the church started out with this model but at some point they lost it. At this point church is indeed big business, marketing to certain demographics as opposed to individuals, way too much emphasis on elaborate appearances, large sanctuaries, pitch perfect music, sermons tailored to certain age groups…in short, the medium has become way more important than the message. The church could, I think, learn some valuable things from AA about the cultivation of community. It’s way past time to start getting back to basics, to focus on individuals other than groups, to become less corporate. I know there are a lot of people who are like I was 20 years ago, having a lot of questions, loking for a place to belong. If I hadn’t gotten some much-needed encouragement at crucial times my initialexperience almost certainly would have wound up with me drifting away from Christianity, never to return. The church is losing people and needs to do better.

  • Beyond Words Day 13

    DAY 13
    From the devotional book Beyond Words by Frederick Buechner

    “WHEREAS JUST ABOUT EVERYBODY has a cross to bear, King Ahab had two. One cross was the prophet Elijah. If, generally speaking, a prophet to a king was like ants at a picnic, Elijah was like a swarm of bees. The other cross was his foreign-born wife, Jezebel, who had gotten religion in a big way back in the old country and was forever trying to palm it off on the Israelites, who had a perfectly good religion of their own. Unfortunately for Ahab, the two of them sometimes got to working on him at the same time, one from one side, the other from the other. A case in point was the Naboth affair.

    To make a sordid story short, Naboth had a vineyard that Ahab wanted so much he could taste it, and when Naboth refused either to sell or to swap, Ahab went into a sulk. “He laid him down upon his bed, and turned away his face, and would eat no food” (1 Kings 21:4). It was the kind of opening Jezebel was always on the lookout for. Was he a king or a cup custard, she asked and proceeded to take charge. Found guilty of a trumped-up charge, Naboth got stoned to death, and Ahab got the vineyard. He also, needless to say, got a visit from Elijah.

    Down through the years they’d kept meeting like that, in secluded places, always at critical moments. Ahab arrived incognito–the dark glasses, the Panama hat, the business suit–and Elijah with a ten-day growth of beard. Ahab addressed him in his usual informal way as a royal pain in the neck (1 Kings 21:20), and then Elijah let him have it with both barrels. When God got through with him, Elijah said, there wouldn’t be enough left of Ahab to scrape off the sidewalk, and what there was the dogs would take care of. As for Jezebel, not only because of Naboth but because of all her imported witch doctors and totem poles, she would end up the same way.

    Ahab at least said he was sorry, and as a result was allowed to die honorably in battle, the part about the dogs coming true only in the sense that they got to lap the water up that his bloody chariot was hosed off with afterward. Jezebel, on the other hand, continued unrepentant to the end. When the time finally came, they threw her out of the window, and when the dogs got finished, all that was left for the undertaker was “the skull and the feet and the palms of her hands” (2 Kings 9:35).

    God is merciful, and if Jezebel and Ahab and Elijah all eventually met up again in paradise, you can only assume that Ahab said if it weren’t for the honor of the thing, he’d as soon take his chances in a warmer climate, and immediately put in for a transfer.”

    1 Kings 21-22; 2 Kings 9:30-36

    my reflection I’m only vaguely familiar with Jezebel and Ahab and Elijah, and even then only in the most basic of ways. Buechner does a good job of tying all of them together. It’s hard for me to feel sorry for Ahab; he wanted what he wanted, and he got it. He could have told Jezebel to forget the whole thing. My modern sensibilities kind of feel on alert. Is it possible that there might be at least a little misogyny at play here? I might need to do a deeper dive into Jezebel’s story, but on the surface it seems to me that she gets the worst of all of it. I think Buechner’s point here is that Ahab was led astray by his desires and his wife encouraged and participated in this. That is really no different than any power couple I can think of. I get the point, we should never let greed get the better of us, but my question remains. Did Jezebel get a raw deal? Perhaps a full reading of 1 and 2 Kings might be in order.

  • A Couple of Odds and Ends

    Many of you are probably aware that I am currently writing in two different places. I write here on WordPress, of course, and recently I created another writing account on Substack, Ramblings and Rumblings. Those of you who recognize that title have been with me for quite a while. I’ve been trying to figure out which direction I want to take these separate enterprises, and I have finally come to a decision. I am going to devote this account, kevinlarose.net, to my personal life journey. This will mean spiritual musings (as you have already recently seen), personal happenings and other deep thoughts. I’m going to use the R&R for musings on current events, politics, ranting and raving about same. I think this will solve the problem some have with not wanting to see posts of a political nature. This arrangement is, of course, as with many other things, subject to change.

    You also may have noticed that my Beyond Words postings have slowed down a bit. When I started the project of posting reflections to the daily devotionals in Buechner’s book, I had in mind to post a reflection a day. Buechner has seen to it that this isn’t possible. I’m finding that I have to sit with many of these devotionals longer than I anticipated I would. so, rather than putting pressure on myself, I’ve decided to just do the devotionals as I write them, even if there are gaps of days in between. And this will also mean that I’ll have more time to reflect and may even have better things to say. Time will tell.

  • Beyond Words Day 12

    DAY 12
    From the devotional book Beyond Words by Frederick Buechner

    “THERE’S SOMETHING A LITTLE SAD about seeing anybody for the last time, even somebody you were never particularly crazy about to begin with. Agrippa, for instance. He was the last of the Herods, and after him that rather unsavory dynasty came to an end.

    When Saint Paul was on his way to Rome to stand trial, King Agrippa granted him a hearing, and Paul, who was seldom at a loss for words, put up a strong defense. He described how on the road to Damascus he had come to believe Jesus was the Messiah and how all he had been doing since was trying to persuade other people to believe he was right. He said the fact the Jews were out to get him showed only that they didn’t understand their own Scriptures, because the whole thing was right there, including the prediction that the Messiah would suffer and rise from the dead just the way Jesus had.

    After Paul finished, Agrippa came out with the only remark he ever made that has gone down in history. “Almost thou persuadest me to become a Christian,” he said (Acts 26:28).

    Almost is apt to be a sad word under the best of circumstances, and here, on the lips of the last of his line the last time you see him, it has a special poignance. If only Paul had been a little more eloquent. If only Agrippa had been a little more receptive, a little braver, a little crazier. If only God weren’t such a stickler for letting people make up their own minds without forcing their hands. But things are what they are, and almost is the closest Agrippa ever got to what might have changed his life. It’s sad enough to miss the boat at all, but to miss it by inches, with a saint right there to hand you aboard, is sadder still.”

    Acts 26:1-28, KJV

    See also Felix, Herod Antipas, Herod the Great, Paul.

    my reflection You may have noticed I didn’t post yesterday. Among other reasons, I was busy chewing on this. As usual with Buechner, there’s a whole lot packed into very few words. To me his main point here is that it’s sad to get so close, oh so close, only to miss the boat. But really, when you think about it, does it really matter how much you miss it by? Whether you lose the football game 14-13 or 63-0, it’s still counted as an L in any event. Paul is obviously a good debater and an experienced persuader, but ultimately you can’t convince anyone of anything they don’t want to be convinced of. Agrippa would have nothing to gain by being persuaded, and everything to lose. At least that’s how he probably would have seen it. This is actually the main reason I’m careful talking about my faith. I love to share it as much as possible, but I never want to force it on anyone or push anyone before they’re ready. I never want to make anyone feel like they want or need to do anything. To go back to my initial analogy, I can let people know where the boat is and how to catch it, but it’s up to them to climb aboard. I never want to bring anyone aboard kicking and screaming, even unintentionally.

  • Beyond Words Day 11

    DAY 11
    From the devotional book Beyond Words by Frederick Buechner

    “AN AGNOSTIC IS SOMEBODY who doesn’t know for sure whether there really is a God. That is some people all of the time and all people some of the time.

    There are some agnostics who don’t know simply because they’ve never taken pains to try to find out–like the bear who didn’t know what was on the other side of the mountain.

    There are other agnostics who have taken many pains. They have climbed over the mountain, and what do you think they saw? Only the other side of the mountain. At least that was all they could be sure of. That faint glimmer on the far horizon could have been just Disneyland.”

    my reflection There Buechner goes, being opaque again. He really makes you think and doesn’t leave many bread crumbs to lead the way. After puzzling over this cryptic entry for quite a while, I think I know what point he’s trying to make here. If one is looking for God, God can be really easy to miss. Many agnostics, not to mention any other seeker, could very easily miss God’s manifestation because they’re looking for some kind of solid proof of God’s existence. You’re not going to find it. That’s where, once again, faith comes into play. Faith, as I think I said in a previous missive, is belief in things not seen. God’s manifestations are way more often than not dismissed as mirages, coincidences, or just random happenings. It takes faith to see God at work in the universe. I’ve seen enough happenings in my life to have that faith.

  • Beyond Words Day 10

    DAY 10
    From the devotional book Beyond Words by Frederick Buechner

    “WHEN YOU HIT SIXTY or so, you start having a new feeling about your own generation. Like you, they can remember the Trilon and Perisphere, Lum and Abner, ancient Civil War veterans riding in open cars at the rear of Memorial Day parades, the Lindbergh kidnapping, cigarettes in flat fifties which nobody believed then could do any more to you than cut your wind. Like you, they know about blackouts, bond rallies, A-stickers, “Kilroy Was Here.” They remember where they were when the news came through that FDR was dead of a stroke in Warm Springs, and they could join you in singing “Bei Mir Bist Du Schön” and “The Last Time I Saw Paris.” They wept at Spencer Tracy with his legs bitten off in Captains Courageous.

    As time goes by, you start picking them out in crowds. There aren’t as many of them around as there used to be. More likely than not, you don’t say anything, and neither do they, but something seems to pass between you anyhow. They have come from the same beginning. They have seen the same sights along the way. They are bound for the same end and will get there about the same time you do. There are some who by the looks of them you wouldn’t invite home for dinner on a bet, but they are your compagnons de voyage even so. You wish them well.

    It is sad to think that it has taken you so many years to reach so obvious a conclusion.”

    My reflection I am rapidly aproaching that certain age Buechner refers to in the first line of this devotional, so this one, like some others before it, truly reonates personally. Of course, being of a different generation, I only know of the things he refers to second-hand. I’m trying to remember some things unique to my age group. Iran hostage crisis. Iran/Contra five years later. Invasion of Grenada. KAL Flight 007. Flashdance. Culture Club. Bang your head. Anyway, you get the idea. If everything breaks right I hope to attend my 40th high school reunion next summer. I’ve never been to one of these, and it’s definitely time. I have to admit to having no desire to attend the 10-year reunion. At that point either everyone is still the exact same as they were in high school, or they’re trying really hard to impress, or both. By the time #40 rolls around none of that matters nearly as much. I think that’s Buechner’s point here. Life is a continual evolution; what comes to mind for me is a building under perpetual construction until termination of the project. I am not the same person I was in 1983, or 1993, or 2003, or for that matter yesterday. And that, to me, is a very good thing. Like I said in a previous post, in some ways I feel like I only attained full adulthood fairly recently. I know I’m not the only one who has changed over the years. It’s kind of exciting to me to think about glimpsing how my classmates those many years ago have changed. Certainly, at this stage of life, our commonalities are far more important than any differences.

  • Beyond Words Day 9

    DAY 9
    From the devotional book Beyond Words by Frederick Buechner

    “ACCORDING TO THE PROPHET SAMUEL, God wanted King Saul to wipe out every last one of the Amalekites–not just the men, but the women and children, the babies and the residents of the old folks home. When he heard that Saul had decided to spare the Amalekite king, Agag, he was so enraged that he tore the royal robe from Saul’s back and told him to consider it a mild fore-taste of how God would tear the kingdom of Israel from him next. He then had them drag out poor Agag, who was quick to size up the situation. With something less than total conviction, he said, “Surely the bitterness of death is past” (1 Samuel 15:32). Within seconds Samuel had personally hacked him to pieces to prove that God meant what Samuel said that he said.

    Since Agag had hacked quite a few people to pieces himself in his day, he may well have been dismayed by the experience, but can hardly have been surprised. What was perhaps new to him was the length to which the friends of God will go to make God enemies.”
    1 Samuel 15

    My reflection Holy genocide, Batman! After reading this devotional I read 1 Samuel 15. It’s my belief that if this chapter were ever made into a movie it would have to have a rating of no less than NC17. It makes the Game of Thrones Red Wedding seem like a fun, festive party by comparison. It also reminds me why I find much of the New Testament pretty much unreadable. Although I hung around the perimeter of Christianity most of my young life, I didn’t actually fully accept it until maybe 20 years ago. So you might say my Christianity has just passed its adolescent stage. The overarching concept that finally pushed me to fully accept Christianity is the concept that God is love. Perfect love casts out fear (1 John 4:18). For someone whose entire fuel of life was fear, this was extremely liberating stuff. Then I read passages like 1 Samuel 15, and it feels like the Star Trek miror universe. Where up is down and left is right. This was not the God I learned about in my high school and college Bible study classes, where the seeds of my faith were planted. In so many instances the God of the Old Testament came across as vengeful, spiteful, cruel. Wipe out an entire nation of people? Down to the last infant? Seriously? Not only would I not wish to worship that God, I’d run away from that God, as fast as my stumpy legs could carry me. But I also learned in those Bible study classes, later reinforced in church, that Jesus issued in a “new covenant” with God and we no longer had to live by the old ways. Yay! Problem solved! Right? Well, apparently, not exactly. Particularly recently, I’ve seen more vestiges of the Old Testament God popping up in today’s Christianity than I am comfortable with. The God I worship is nothing like the monster we see in passages like 1 Samuel 15. In fact, He is very much the polar opposite. And because of the New Covenant we don’t have to live that way anymore. So, I am asking, why do we insist on holding onto potentially toxic ideas we don’t even have to hold onto anymore? This is an earnest question, I have no idea of the answer.

  • Beyond Words Day 8

    DAY 8
    From the devotional book Beyond Words by Frederick Buechner

    “THE HOUSE LIGHTS GO OFF and the footlights come on. Even the chattiest stop chattering as they wait in darkness for the curtain to rise. In the orchestra pit, the violin bows are poised. The conductor has raised the baton.

    In the silence of a midwinter dusk there is far off in the deeps of it somewhere a sound so faint that for all you can tell it may be only the sound of the silence itself. You hold your breath to listen.

    You walk up the steps to the front door. The empty windows at either side of it tell you nothing, or almost nothing. For a second you catch a whiff in the air of some fragrance that reminds you of a place you’ve never been and a time you have no words for. You are aware of the beating of your heart.

    The extraordinary thing that is about to happen is matched only by the extraordinary moment just before it happens. Advent is the name of that moment.

    The Salvation Army Santa Claus clangs his bell. The sidewalks are so crowded you can hardly move. Exhaust fumes are the chief fragrance in the air, and everybody is as bundled up against any sense of what all the fuss is really about as they are bundled up against the windchill factor.

    But if you concentrate just for an instant, far off in the deeps of yourself somewhere you can feel the beating of your heart. For all its madness and lostness, not to mention your own, you can hear the world itself holding its breath.”

    my reflection When I first looked at this devotional this morning, I was completely baffled. To me it looked like so much word salad. In my defense, I started the day a bit on the sleep-deprived side. I showed the devotional to my wife, and she encouraged me to slow down and read it more slowly. And that’s when it came into focus for me. Buechner offered a set o little vignettes with a common theme running through them. One of the hymns sung at the church I attend has the line “I will be still and know you’re my God.” And that’s the theme of this devotional. Be still. Try to catch the little, almost imperceptable, things around you that you often don’t even give any thought to. I find this very difficult to do. Part of the reason for this, I think, is how my brain is wired. It’s hard, well nigh impossible, for me to tune out extraneous figurative noise. As a result, I often miss little things that turn out to be very important. Perhaps it’s time for me to learn how to be still.

  • Beyond Words Day 7

    DAY 7
    From the devotional book Beyond Words by Frederick Buechner

    “THE ANCIENT DRUIDS are said to have taken a special interest in in-between things like mistletoe, which is neither quite a plant nor quite a tree, and mist, which is neither quite rain nor quite air, and dreams, which are neither quite waking nor quite sleep. They believed that in such things as those they were able to glimpse the mystery of two worlds at once.

    Adolescents can have the same glimpse by looking in the full-length mirror on back of the bathroom door. The opaque glance and the pimples. The fancy new nakedness they’re all dressed up in with no place to go. The eyes full of secrets they have a strong hunch everybody is on to. The shadowed brow. Being not quite a child and not quite a grown-up either is hard work, and they look it. Living in two worlds at once is no picnic.

    One of the worlds, of course, is innocence, self-forgetfulness, openness, playing for fun. The other is experience, self-consciousness, guardedness, playing for keeps. Some of us go on straddling them both for years.

    The rich young ruler of the Gospels comes to mind (Matthew 19:16-22). It is with all the recklessness of a child that he asks Jesus what he must do to be perfect. And when Jesus tells him to give everything to the poor, it is with all the prudence of a senior vice-president of Morgan Guaranty that he walks sadly away.

    We become fully and undividedly human, I suppose, when we discover that the ultimate prudence is a kind of holy recklessness, and our passion for having finds peace in our passion for giving, and playing for keeps is itself the greatest fun. Once this has happened and our adolescence is behind us at last, the delight of the child and the sagacity of the Supreme Court justice are largely indistinguishable.

    My reflection I have to say, this devotional really resonated with me. I will turn 58 in two weeks. That seems hardly possible, but we won’t deal with that factor of the equation right now. I remember someone once telling me that you become a full-fledged adult when you turn 30. Come to think of it, that might have been around my thirtieth birthday. Anyway, I always took that to mean that once you become a full-fledged adult you, to heavily paraphrase Paul, put childish ways and things behind you, put on your big boy pants and live your life. In at least some ways, I did just that. While I never had a career, I did hold down a long-term job. I obtained a mortgage. I got married and fathered a child. But, at the same time, a significant part of me was still deeply rooted in adolescence. Ultimately, my adolescent and adult worlds collided, with disastrous results not only for me but for many people I loved. To make a very long story very short, I wound up losing most of the markers of adulthood that I had acquired. But, like the phoenix rising out of the ashes, I’m happy to say I have restabilized my life. I am very contented in a strong, healthy marriage. My health is relatively good. And, yes, I am a mortgage holder again! Many of the things that are still unsettled in my life are out of my control, and in those cases I am still learning to, as they say, let go and let God, doing whatever I can to assist the process along. My inner adolescent still crashes through from time to time, but I think I can safely say that I am no longer caught between two worlds. I’m prayng I live a good long life so I can make up for all the time I wasted. God is good, all the time!