Where am I going next–and does it really matter?

About the shortness of my time remaining, the failure of my life thus far, priorities, how Don Quixote, the Serenity Prayer and Ponce de Leon fit, love is always passionate, and passion always hurts, and proudly wearing the craters on my heart.

A few days ago I looked up my life expectancy. According to current actuarial tables, I probably have 5.1 years left on this planet. Of course, I have living relatives who are in their 90s. On the other hand, I outlived both of my parents two years ago. And I could be gone tonight.

So, I know I’ve already had 69.3 years to accomplish something. What have I accomplished? A list of failures and a heart that resembles the cratered surface of the far side of the moon!

Addendum After A Conversation At Home

I have been convinced that, when I say all that I have is a list of failures, I have limited my definition of an accomplishment too strictly. My wife consistently sees me in a much more positive light than I see myself, as I tend to focus on my failures and the harm they have caused.

Just staying married 47 years is an accomplishment some would envy.

We have four sons who all believe in Jesus–even, most thankfully, the one we won’t see again until we see Jesus.

We have many friends in two sister churches, who help us and who say we have helped them.

I still have almost my whole small high school graduating class as friends! (I understand that is very rare).

I was able to retire before I became too sick to enjoy it.

And there are some people in my life who come to me with questions, because they think of me as someone who probably knows the answer.

What I Have Never Seen

I have never seen anyone or anything fully succeed while clinging to an association with me!

I have seen employers stagnate even though they said I was doing good work–and even though my work produced some transient, superficial successes. I have also watched places flourish shortly after I left.

The story is similar with churches. In my long life, I’ve seen two churches–loyal to me–die out from under me. For those that haven’t shriveled away completely, there seems to be a glass ceiling, a limit on their success while I am there. They then flourish after I leave.

Friends succeed after they leave me.

Even among my children, the most successful are those who have distanced themselves from me the farthest.

And my attempts to cling to others, in my pain, invariably bring them failure unless forcefully rejected.

To My Wife

I love you!

You could have succeeded without me, and I think you have known that all along.

But you chose to stay with me through 47 years of failure and pain, because you love me.

Thank you. I love you, too, more than anything on Earth!

Doing What Only I Can Do–even though it cannot succeed

As I consider what to do with the rest of my brief life, I know I need to carefully consider the fact that I can’t do everything. In fact, I probably can’t finish everything I’ve already started. There just won’t be time enough!

So it seems to me right now–though God may change my mind later–that I need to draw fairly sharp lines between six groups of activities:

1. Activities that are important to the mending of my family.
2. The things I’m doing on my own that, at the present, only I can do.
3. The things I have been doing on my own that are far enough developed that others can now complete them (with or without my participation), should God ever choose to have them completed. A list of these is found on the page in this link.
4. Collective activities, such as in church or Celebrate Recovery, in which I have something unique or important to contribute or in which formation of real bonds with people is possible.
5. Collective activities in which my only role is quiet attendance. (I put regular worship in category #4).
6. Things I know are to be discontinued now.

Except for category 6, these aren’t in any final order of priority, though I think things in categories 1, 2 and 4 will usually come before things in categories 3 and 5.

Don Quixote and I at the Beginning of the Serenity Prayer

God, grant me the serenity
To accept the things I cannot change
The courage to change the things I can
And the wisdom to know the difference

Reinhold Niebuhr – Prayer for Serenity, first four lines

I have failed throughout my life on all three points of this prayer.  But there was a particularly large failure recently.

But what does this have to do with Cervantes’ Don Quixote? 

Quite a bit, really.  Now that I look carefully, I see myself in Cervantes’ protagonist.

I admit that it has been a while since I read this novel.  It was—in an English translation—an assignment in a high school literature class.  So I read it something like 52 or 53 years ago.  And, until I started thinking about my present quandary, I mostly remembered that it was very long, a lot of reading!

The unfortunate man who converted himself into Don Quixote de la Mancha was an older man who had enough wealth to live comfortably but otherwise was totally obsolete. A lot like me, really.  His world had changed and passed him by.  He really mattered to no one and he felt his meaninglessness.  But he apparently had some ancestor who had been a knight errant back in the “good old days,” as he had weapons, armor and a coat of arms in his house.  So he immersed himself in reading books about knight errantry.  He eventually became so entangled in his books that he decided he really was an old-fashioned knight errant.  Then, he put on his armor, got himself knighted by someone who in fact had no authority to knight him, got on his horse, and rode off on three long series of adventures.  He was trying to become important to someone—anyone—by turning the clock back to the (mostly fictitious) glory days of chivalry.

Of course, the clock can’t be turned back.  His “modern era,” like my modern era, was established by forces beyond his understanding. He was trying to change things he could not change, and, ultimately, killing himself trying. He didn’t even really understand the era in which he lived, so how could he change it?

Much of what I have been attempting on this blog and elsewhere for years has attempted to change things in my own era—not by going back to the past, like Don Quixote, but by suggesting something that looks to me, in my own puny wisdom, like something better.  And I’ve been trying to do this mostly solo, while those who read it at all likely usually yawn.  And all the while I wish someone would pay some attention to me. In all of this, I appear to be a true disciple of Don Quixote—the character, not the novel—rather than Jesus!

And then there is the phantom character Dulcinea del Toboso, the noble, virtuous and beautiful Lady for whom Don Quixote went on his adventures.  I’ve had some of these in my life, too. Mind you, I don’t recall that Don Quixote ever actually meets Dulcinea anywhere in the novel. He heard something about her and built an imaginary Princess around what he had heard.  And Cervantes’ narrator tells us early on that Dulcinea was a commoner, and that her reputation was not for her virtue and beauty, but for her cooking.  She was the finest meat-smoker in all Toboso! (So she probably didn’t even smell very good, in the days before frequent bathing.)   A real knight might go to her place for dinner.  But would he offer to fight anyone who insulted her honor or beauty?  No.    

Fortunately, I have also had some Sancho Panzas, who came along for the ride and tried to keep me out of trouble.  Their job has often been quite difficult!

The only main characters in Don Quixote to which there seem to be no counterparts in my life are the Duke and Duchess and their friends.  Upon meeting Don Quixote, the Duke and Duchess quickly surmise that they are dealing with a man trapped in delusions, pretend to be his friends, and then manipulate him using those delusions. They send him on many of his adventures so they can watch the outcome for their own entertainment. 

But I don’t think anyone is being entertained by my problems. They are, at best, annoying to everyone.  No one is laughing.

Back to the serenity prayer now, with the observations from Don Quixote added.   

1. Serenity has to come from God—but I must be willing to request and receive it. Recently I have been anything but serene!
2. Accepting the things I cannot change: I can’t turn back the clock.  I am old and mostly obsolete. I can’t make myself important, in any positive way, at least, to anyone who has decided I’m no longer worthy of any attention.  I can’t change the way any large piece of the world around me works (and this includes the church).
3. The courage to change the things I can:  which is mostly only myself and the way I treat the people who choose to be around me.  I can, of course, change the things I study and the output of things I write, and some of that may have effects outside that circle.  But when I decide how to do this on my own, it is either ignored or does more harm than good. I must, of course, continue to present the truth. But what truth is to be spoken when can’t be my choice.
4. And the wisdom to know the difference.  This is my great weakness. When something can and should be done, I’m too timid.  But there are other times when I should sit still and be quiet but jump boldly in where angels fear to tread.  I have to wait for God to give me this wisdom, before I jump in.   

I Don’t Look Good in a Cape and Tights

My high school’s motto was “Proba Te Dignus”–Prove Yourself Worthy. But I had been trying very hard to do that, and failing, ever since I was diagnosed as mentally retarded in Kindergarten, in front of the whole class. No matter how hard I tried or how well I did in the areas in which I was good, my deficiencies in other areas seemed (at least in my mind) to make respect impossible.

So I learned to amuse myself with fantasies in which I was a superhero. I imagined I could get respect by doing something great. And this continued, in modified and subtler ways, as I grew up and into adulthood. It also branched out into most all areas of my life. Things I was too timid to ask or to do, and things in which I was receiving rejection, could pour into a fantasy in which I did something great and made everyone happy and everything right. Remember poor Don Quixote?

I even have a costume picked out for my most recent episode! It’s a bright yellow cape and tights with a large purple letter “P” affixed front and back. The yellow is symbolic of the sunlight I like, the lemons it seems I keep being given, my general cowardice, and a certain liquid to which people keep comparing me (usually followed by the word “off”). And the “P” is short for my moniker: Pityman!

All seriousness aside, I need to face the facts.

I’m old, oversized, infirm and weak. I’m also usually a coward.

I just do not look good in a cape and tights!

Ponce de León Failed

Actually, he failed twice. The second time, in 1521, he died trying, unsuccessfully, to conquer part of Florida for colonization. But here I’m really more interested in the first failure–the exploration he made of part of southern Florida in 1513 looking for gold–and, some almost contemporary sources say, the Fountain of Youth. He found neither the gold nor the Fountain.

Older men–and here I mean particularly males like me–have been looking for the Fountain, or something like it, since antiquity. Indeed, we have probably been looking for it ever since Adam first noticed he was aging,

But most of us can’t go exploring other parts of the world looking for a mythical Fountain, and most of us are not cell biologists or geneticists (in the really modern era). So we go looking for youth the way old men always have–by associating with much younger people, hoping to absorb some of their youth.

And you know what? It really DOES make us FEEL younger, temporarily. Maybe this is good, maybe this is bad, maybe it just happens, you can be the judge of that. We–older men–certainly perceive it as good, usually. And, yes, younger women do seem to have a stronger effect than younger men, at least for me. (Some older rich men with “trophy brides” didn’t marry them mostly to show off, but as an attempt to find the Fountain of Youth. This is pretty well attested.).

There is only one catch. As my aching neck is reminding me now, it is only an illusion. It is a feeling, and it is temporary.

So, dear friend, if you catch me doing this, please remind me:

There is a resurrection. But I have to die first.

There is a tree of life. But it is in the New Jerusalem, not here.

There is no Fountain of Youth. And I can’t have yours.

Ponce de León failed.

Are There Really THAT Many Lice on that Chimp’s Back?

It is interesting to watch the way groups of non-human social higher primates–such as the chimpanzees that are in many zoos–interact with each other. You will very quickly notice that they spend a LOT of time “grooming” each other.

When I was young, guides at zoos always told us that the apes did this for hygienic reasons–to pick lice and other parasites off of each other. This made the natural behavior of the apes nicely agree with modern, civilized human practice, in which extensive touching is usually allowed only as strictly necessary for medical or hygienic purposes, or for purposes a zookeeper wouldn’t talk about in front of a group of children.

But wait a minute! (Or 30 or 45 minutes!)

Are there REALLY enough lice on a chimp’s back to require an hour of grooming to remove them all?

The answer is “no.”

The real main reason apes groom each other is for social bonding and emotional comfort. They take way longer at it than would be needed if they were only trying to remove parasites. In fact, the removal of parasites is only a side benefit of staying bonded. The zookeepers probably actually knew this when I was young, but would never have said so, because they would be afraid of encouraging bad behavior in a culture which was even then rapidly becoming deliberately “unbonded.”

Now, surprise!, humans long for this, too. I don’t mean chimpanzee-style grooming. I mean social bonding that includes large components of warm, caring physical contact and just plain in person listening time. The exact two things our modern culture tries its hardest to prohibit.

Yes, all through the dark years 2018 to the beginning of this year, I had my wife with me.

Other than that, my caring physical contact was limited to a few people at church sporadically, and one much younger friend who was very consistent about it. And I became dependent on her.

But the best response to this revelation is not to immediately break the dependency, but to receive her love with thanks and recognize that I really wasn’t designed to have only one close contact in my “tribe.” Then consider how to safely “branch out” so I won’t need to depend on just one friend. Which leads to the TED Talk:

The TED Talk on Depression, Anxiety and Connectedness

One of my Colorado Johnson cousins recently posted a link to a series of TED Talks on mental health, mental illness and addiction. The talk which most captivated my attention was the one on depression, anxiety, and connectedness. Here is a link to it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MB5IX-np5fE .

Most important points:

1. There are presently 9 different known causes of depression and anxiety.
2. Only 2 of these 9 causes are biological. So for the other 7, we really shouldn’t say the condition is caused by a “chemical imbalance.”
3. The other 7 factors involve “the way we live”–but usually social conditions and collective choices rather than individual choices.
4. Example: If you’re lonely, you’re more likely to be depressed. But loneliness usually isn’t a personal choice.
5. Example: If you have no control over your work, you’re more likely to be depressed.
6. Example: If you very rarely get out into nature, you’re more likely to be depressed.
7. The one thing that unites many causes of depression is that people’s basic psychological needs (belonging, meaning, purpose, sense of control, etc.) are not getting met, and our culture seems designed to guarantee they won’t be met. When this causes problems, we substitute pills.
8. Example of traditional medicine in some less “developed” countries: instead of pushing pills, they spend time, a lot of it, listening to people and then give them the things they need to have hope. Example of a man who was depressed after being crippled accidentally–after listening to him, they bought him a cow. It worked. And it usually does.
9. “We are the loneliest society in human history.” In one US survey, 39% said they had no close human contacts.
10. We were made to live in tribes. And we are the first society in human history that has completely disbanded its tribes. And we are miserable.
11. Forming a tribe–even an artificial tribe, not genetically related to each other–that really care for each other and are free to go check on each other, usually prevents and relieves depression.
12. The more you believe you can buy, eat, display, etc,. your way out of sadness, the more likely you are to be depressed. And this is exactly the “solution” our whole commercial culture has been “pushing” for years.
13. Just like junk food doesn’t meet your physical needs, “junk values” don’t meet your psychological needs. !!!!!
14. We don’t lie on our beds at night thinking about our retweets; we lie on our beds thinking about moments of love, meaning and purpose.
15. “We live in a machine that is designed to get us to neglect what is important about life.” !!!!!
16. QUESTION: How can you get yourself to devote more of your life to pursuing the moments of meaning and purpose and less on the other stuff? !!!!!
17. Simply getting people to meet regularly to ask each other this question–and answer it to each other–was effective against depression. [My addition: so since my “earthquake” in February, I have really been trying to do the right thing. I WAS ASKING THE RIGHT QUESTION! But I was clumsy about it, and only two other people had any understanding of what I was trying to do].
18. Depression is a signal. It is telling me something. I need to start listening to this signal, honoring it, and learning what it is telling me, not insulting it. Anxiety the same.

The Greatest Commandment Made Distressingly Practical

34 But when the Pharisees heard that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. 35 And one of them, a lawyer, asked Him a question, testing Him: 36 “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” 37 And He said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the great and foremost commandment. 39 The second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 Upon these two commandments hang the whole Law and the Prophets.”

Matthew 22:34-40 (NASB)

16 We know love by this, that He laid down His life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers and sisters. 17 But whoever has worldly goods and sees his brother or sister in need, and closes his heart against him, how does the love of God remain in him? 18 Little children, let’s not love with word or with tongue, but in deed and truth.

1 John 3:16-18 (NASB)

But what if the need isn’t goods, but something as simple, inexpensive, costly and dangerous as affection? Or just listening time?

11 Finally, brothers and sisters, rejoice, mend your ways, be comforted, be like-minded, live in peace; and the God of love and peace will be with you. 12 Greet one another with a holy kiss.

2 Corinthians 13:11-12 (NASB)

12 And because lawlessness is increased, most people’s love will become cold. 13 But the one who endures to the end is the one who will be saved.

Matthew 24:12-13 (NASB)

Lord, keep my love hot, even though hot love always eventually hurts!

Can Love Be Dispassionate?

I’ve heard it said that caring about people without feeling pain can be accomplished if only I would learn to love “dispassionately… the way God does.”

This is certainly the way our culture prefers to think about love–except for the romantic kind, which is said to be an entirely different animal. I can show my “love” by giving a few surplus dollars to a charity, which will then distribute them to faceless “needy” people according to impersonal eligibility formulas. My donation hurts me very little and returns a warm feeling of having “helped” and social brownie points, so I’m out nothing, net. And I helped without ever risking any painful emotional attachment to any faceless recipient! Nifty, isn’t it!

The problem with this approach is that it assumes God is not subject to human passions, and therefore must love dispassionately, giving us what we “need” according to rules very much like our eligibility formulas. Or perhaps even more like Karl Marx’ maxim “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs?”

But does sweating drops of blood sound like being dispassionate?

Does dying by crucifixion–the most painful method of execution then known–for his loved ones sound like something that would be done by a Savior who has no passion, no feelings toward us?

If God loves us like this, I’ll risk loving too much, or foolishly, all over again the next time.

I’ll keep my craters, thanks!

Is Romantic Love an Entirely Different Animal?

No, it isn’t. It’s exactly the same passionate love given us by a God who loves passionately, and which we are to show each other, applied in a special context. It does imply a special level of commitment, but even that commitment flows from God’s love for us and his plan for us. It’s not a different and separate flavor of love.

I only reached this conclusion quite recently.

Our cultural idea that romantic love is a separate beast–which is not shared by every culture!–flows from a confusion of personal “chemistry” or sexual attraction for “love.” But warm feelings, which can change to cold indifference or hate overnight, are not “love,” not at all like God’s undying love. And lust, which is even more fickle, is also not “love.” Love comes in only one flavor, though what it requires of me depends on the setting in which it is to be shown.

If I am close enough to anyone–male or female–that I can truthfully say that I can appreciate God’s love is flowing between us, there will be passion. I may deny it or try to hide it, thinking it to be inappropriate, but it will be there. Passion is a part of love. It’s unavoidable.

Now I’m not saying that God has emotions like ours. I’m saying that we have emotions like God’s–they are a part of his image in us. Though corrupted by sin, they still bear his image. And when restored by the Holy Spirit living in me, my emotions come increasingly to function like his. And passionate love is at the heart of God. If I am after God’s heart, I will feel passion!

There may be, in some but not all cases, special dangers when I as a man am close enough to a woman to whom I’m not married to appreciate love flowing between us. (There are three women I’ve known and loved for more than 50 years, with whom there are no dangers at all, because we know and respect each other so well. But they all live in distant states, so our actual physical presence in the same place is quite rare). And the risks increase, of course, if there is physical attraction or “chemistry” present. But risk is also usually an unavoidable part of love. It means only that I need to be aware of the risk, not that I need to avoid the relationship altogether, or to run away scared at the first sign of passion.

I used to think that what God expects me to maintain is a drab, passionless existence that other people can look at approvingly because I’m just like them. I no longer think that. God expects me to maintain my purity, which is not the same as the absence of all passion. (Indeed, purity and passionlessness can be enemies of each other, but I won’t get into that here).

Taking the risk invites another crater. And in this world, I always receive the craters I invite.

But the benefits are so great, on balance, I’ll take the risk again–and again–and again, if necessary, and keep my craters. It wasn’t always this way. But there is no longer any doubt.

Name My Curse

So it remains that I seem to be affected by some sort of curse, which keeps me and anyone who is closely associated with me from achieving success in this world. To succeed, you must separate yourself from me!

And I have tried to remove from my life the things that might invite such a curse. Yet, it still seems to be present.

So, a question for you: can you name my curse?

I can’t.

But wait, Jesus appeared to be a failure, too, hanging on the Cross. Cursed is the one who is hung on a tree. He still appears to be a failure to those who don’t believe in his resurrection.

And he tells me to take up his cross and follow him.

So at least I’m not in bad company?

Being Loved to Death–Or to Life?

People I cling to, and who let me cling past a certain time, come to be affected by my curse of failure, it seems. This could be called me loving them to death.

But I have to question whether my insecure clinging is really love, though it possibly may coexist with love (I certainly can have a divided heart!). God isn’t insecure, and he says I can be secure in his love. I suspect I’ll be asking, answering, and re-asking this question about each of the people I’ve been trying to cling to, and the internal debate will probably last quite some time. It won’t be over and done with tomorrow!

On the other hand, there are people around me who have loved me to life. Some of them are people you might expect–my wife, family members or solid brothers in Christ.

But they have not all been people our Christian culture would tell me to expect. Some of them have been men from odd backgrounds. And six of them have been women. Three of them are the friends I mentioned before, who I have known for a very long time (two of them since 8th grade!). One was an Iranian refugee who stayed in our house for 9 months and changed my whole attitude toward Islamic people (I now love them and try to understand where they are coming from). One is still with me, for now. And the last is my largest and most productive crater.

Regina, who I have written about before, came to us when my life was approaching its lowest point, loved us–and sacrificed her summer in 1985 to preserve our marriage (she was committed to BOTH of us). She taught me a great deal about what love is. A fire at our house in 1991 burned up her address–in Brazil–and there has been no contact since.

But Regina’s crater in my life is still full of passion 39 years later–so much so that I posted a letter to her on this blog (warning–it’s in very bad Portuguese!) a few months ago on the off chance she may still be alive and see it.

But these craters seem to have an odd quality about them: if I don’t pump them out in an attempt to relieve the pain or make other people more comfortable, they neither stagnate nor run dry. The passion from Regina’s crater has been feeding slow growth in many areas of my life for 39 years, yet the crater is just as full as it was back then. If she were to respond to my letter–which I certainly don’t expect–I, for my part, would be ready to pick up again with the same passion I had then, and with a more mature life to develop it from.

I certainly have no plans to pump out Regina’s crater and cover it with a parking lot.

Besides, who would ever use a parking lot on the far side of the moon?

Is It Better to Have Loved and Lost? Is that Even Possible?

In a funerary poem for a friend who died suddenly at age 22, Alfred, Lord Tennyson wrote the well-known adage: “Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.”

Is this even possible?

Is it possible to have loved and lost? How?

By loving the wrong THING? But if I’m loving a thing it isn’t God’s love.

By loving in the wrong way? There is, again, only one flavor of love. If I say I love you, but it is not God’s love flowing between us, it is a counterfeit (there are many), not true love.

But when God’s love flows between us, there is no way to love and lose–even if that love sends one of us to a cross. Jesus did not lose me. He won me.

One More Gaping Crater?

When God sends a messenger who arouses deep passion in me, he also sems to take that person away rather promptly when the lesson is completed. I don’t fully understand this, as the pain it causes is extreme, but it is his way. He did it with Regina, and he seems about to do it again.

I seem likely to develop another crater not long from now–very likely well within my life expectancy–just because of the normal process of people moving on with their lives. I still hope it will not be as abrupt or so complete and permanent as Regina’s crater. But I don’t control that. Just like Regina’s crater, I’m sure it will be with me for the rest of my life.

I respectfully decline to pump it out and cover it with a parking lot so that it won’t bother anyone.

Instead, I plan to wear it as a badge of honor.

Tears Are Unavoidable

3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne, saying, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is among the people, and He will dwell among them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself will be among them, 4 and He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed away.”

Revelation 21:3-4 (NASB)

If I will have no tears, what will he wipe away?

White Flag

Not a white flag of truce.

A white flag of unconditional surrender.

Index to the New Series / Índice de la nueva serie