When Tiny Tim Can’t Ditch the Crutch: Other Sorts of Stories

The serious but nonfatal illness story that people most enjoy telling and hearing about starts with someone heading down a wrong path in life. A serious illness or accident intervenes, shaking the person up. He or she then recovers physically as well as spiritually.

It’s a wonderful story and people are highly receptive to hearing it. Illness or accident, however, can strike people at any stage of life and sometimes take forms from which physical recovery is impossible.

For me, disease onset came in the prime of life. At age thirty-seven, I was old enough to be mature but young enough to be physically active and feel great. In sum, I was very happy and had been for many years.

So for me, the story wasn't about being snapped out of mental unwellness by disease but of learning not to endlessly grieve the loss of a way of life that I'd truly loved and the shutting down of possibilities I’d hoped for – to keep on keeping on until "my way became easy and my burden light.” I don't often quote scripture, but that line feels about right for what I've experienced.

My physical status is still a burden, and with disease progression, an ever-increasing one. Physically, the right word for my day to day life is “grueling.” I can’t gloss that over. Yet in some very real and critically important sense – critical to my sanity – I’ve been carrying this burden lightly for years.

Thanks to folks who extended holiday greetings via email, Facebook, and comments threads and Happy Holidays to all…

Spiritual Sense or Nonsense? Ritual...

When the Tao is lost, there is goodness.
When goodness is lost, there is morality.
When morality is lost, there is ritual.
Ritual is the husk of true faith, the beginning of chaos.

From Verse 38 of the Tao Te Ching

I like this passage and wanted to focus on ritual, a topic that I’ve never posted on. Ritual hasn’t played a large role in my spirituality.

When I was a young child, every Sunday I received communion at church services. Coming down the aisle with the wafer in my mouth (you weren’t supposed to chew) I’d feel very holy. It felt like my soul was becoming white, an organ that I pictured as maybe ten to twelve inches long and an inch wide with a vertical orientation and standing about halfway between my back and chest. In-between communions it picked up dark spots that were whitened-away every Sunday.

In divinity school I remember seeing a sacrament defined as “a medium of grace.” Symbolic church activities that are official sacraments are thought to be conduits of grace from God to humans. Personally, I’m not convinced that grace reliably flows through bureaucratically established channels.

My most meaningful experiences of ritual occurred in childhood and youth, but weren’t especially religious – unless you could call it the religion of home and family. For example, Christmas was about decorating our tree, the gathering at my grandmother’s, my mom playing Christmas music on the piano there…

But that soon came to an end. By the time I was nineteen my grandparents were dead; my parents owned no property. Before I'd graduated from college all the sacred places had been sold, including the house where I grew up, which was owned by my maternal grandmother’s second husband.

As an adult, my experience of “ritual” probably doesn’t really qualify for that designation. But certainly I did find enjoyment in the repetition involved in the round of activities that were part of my ordinary routine and that brought me a great deal of happiness – things like jogging, meditating, writing, and some of the little tasks surrounding these things like washing my hands fifty times a day.

Anyway, it seems to me – maybe as a “ritually challenged” individual (no... the hand-washing thing was just to see if you were paying attention) – that rituals would work best when connected to corresponding beliefs. So if you believe that the wafer and wine really are the body and blood of Christ, then for you the act of eating and drinking is an act of communion.

What spiritual sense have you made of ritual?

The Copenhagen Ritual

End result...

Each nation developed a list of things they’ve volunteered to do – but the list is non-binding.

The stated goal is to prevent global temperature from rising more than two degree Celsius above pre-industrial levels – but what they’ve got on their to-do lists won’t accomplish this.

So it’s not a real agreement. However, I’ve heard it referred to twice now as a “roadmap to an agreement.” I guess we can file it right next to the “roadmap to peace” in the Mideast.

Blessed Are Those Who Don't Care Much?

God created us to be a short-lived species that would die choking on its waste products while snuffing out numerous other life forms along the way. This was to usher in an end-time that will see a loving Messiah sail in on a (greenhouse gas) cloud to rescue us from the mess we got ourselves into because we didn’t love one another all that much.

I don’t know…

As a species we’re brand-new. It’s hard for me to believe that we weren’t intended to participate in creation rather than self-destruct. At this point, this would require shifting gears.

When Homo sapiens was a small group of primates trying to survive in an all-wild world, boundless greed along with a limited aptitude for cooperation and caring about each other is what allowed us to survive and flourish. But from here on out, we need greater cooperation than ever before and an enhanced social consciousness that includes caring about future generations beyond the stretch of our own lifetimes – along with the ability to recognize and reign in our grasping and hoarding tendencies.

I wonder if we’re up to the challenge. In any case, the jungle we now have to negotiate contains a lot more people than trees, with the disparity growing every day.

I met a girl who sang the blues
And I asked her for some happy news,
But she just smiled and turned away.

From “American Pie”
By Don McLean

As Time Allows – My illness is progressive and bedridden time has risen; I’m no longer able to reply to most comments and emails. I do read everything I get and sometimes this gives me ideas for posts. So please keep them coming and I’ll reply as time allows.

Embracing the Unwelcome Other: Peace on Earth, Good Will Toward Spammers

This is a time of year that finds charitable donations up, neighborliness on the rise, and connections with family and friends reestablished. Yet how many of us exclude spammers as a group from our holiday charity and good cheer, treating each and all of them as the Unwelcome Other?

Spammers come to us from around the world, struggling to attract our attention by way of improbable messages. They are people just like you and me except for spamming and other illicit activities.

In the spirit of the season, I’ve devoted this comments thread to several spam messages received on this blog over recent weeks that struck me as especially sincere.

Spammed Me but Not Included Here?

Dear Excluded Spammer,

I hated to do it! But if your spam was just URLs without enough words to make out a sentence or phrase, I did not include it in this thread. I knew you wouldn’t have wanted folks to think you were just trying to use a random blog to sell stuff!

Also, very frankly, many of your messages were repetitive and, well, pretty boring.

Next time you contact me may I suggest something like the following Sample Spam.

Sincerely yours,

Paul

Sample Spam

Dear Mr. Martin,

If you’ll check your last month’s sales figures, you’ll notice that you’ve sold 100 copies more of Original Faith than your monthly average.

I was so deeply moved by your book and life’s story that I laughed, I cried – I sang Maureen McGovern’s “There’s Got to Be a Morning After” in the shower.

Then I went out and bought copies of OF for friends, family, colleagues, and anyone I knew with cruise ship plans.

Sorry for any inconvenience due to the sudden upsurge in orders!

Sincerely,

Full Name Including Middle Initial

PS Regular Readers

Please feel free to leave a normal comment – or try your hand at spamming! It doesn't need to be exactly like my sample, which was only to give a general idea…

As Time Allows – My illness is progressive and bedridden time has risen; I’m no longer able to reply to most comments and emails. I do read everything I get and sometimes this gives me ideas for posts. So please keep them coming and I’ll reply as time allows.