Understanding: Depression or Acedia?

Yesterday I posted on the "crisis" of the past year. In some ways I feel quite shy about it. I have no intention of giving specifics, or describing the triggers, or speculating on what I think may be the underlying personal stuff from which the crisis grew. But I do want to say a bit more generally.

My first thought was that I had walked up to the edge of possibly a major depression. Since then I've read a book recommended by a friend: Kathleen Norris, Acedia and Me. Acedia is the sin of sloth, one of the seven deadly sins. You can check Wikipedia's definition here.

Norris suggests that one test for whether one is experiencing acedia (the lack of caring; a sort of massive indifference) or depression is to see what helps. Acedia, she suggests, is not amenable to therapeutic counselling, but does respond to spiritual care. Depression, she states, is not helped by spiritual care, but does respond to therapeutic counselling.

Some bits of what I walked through fit her description of acedia; other bits fit what I know of depression. Certainly the two, acedia and depression, mimic each other. And certainly, whichever one a person experiences, the body, mind, and soul are all involved. But my own journey as I reflect on it was a spiritual journey, not a therapeutic one (in a counselling sense). Healing there was, but healing that came through prayer and an experience of God's grace.

I have walked closely enough with clinical depression to know that it does not yield to advice from well-meaning friends to "pray more." This brush with acedia suggests that for some of us -- Kathleen Norris and I share at least this much -- acedia is a lifelong companion, and spiritual discipline is a necessary part of life lived in defiance of such torpor.

It is a good journey, and at this stage I am glad to be on it.

Dreams and a Voice

Prologue
In some sense the six months at the end of 2008 and the beginning of 2009 were the most difficult of my life. In objective terms I see no reason to have experienced a particular crisis. There were professional pressures of working in a tight economy. There are the personal pressures of living in one's 59th year. But many around me have had more real difficulties to deal with than I. But for whatever reason I came to the edge of some sort of crisis in February, which found the beginning of resolution in March. Lent was a season with more than usual meaning this year.

Resolution began with two dreams and with a voice in the silence. The following lines describe something of the experience -- a journey into darkness to find God's limitless love, patience, and grace. I do not yet understand what happened, or why. This record of the path through the undergrowth (of my life) to the cliff overlooking a pit, the cross beside the road, the sea, and the circle around the ashes is an effort to keep the whole in mind long enough for it to form the journey of the coming months and years.

One: The Path
The path wandered through the undergrowth,
A pathless way deeper into the darkness.
Wandering unwilling, compelled, pressed, constrained
I stumble like a sloth into the dark.
It did not seem so dark at first,
this crosspath; but as I walk on
Through under-undergrowth, the need grows
To break clear, escape
Some cataclysm, a burning.
Wandering aimless and looking for freedom
I, trapped in fear.

Relentless the pathless path wanders down
The growth of many year, shapeless fears
Forming in the darkling gloom.
So many years of growth underfoot
Obstructing, clutching, pulling.
At last I break free into a clearing
At the edge of a cliff, and find
Only darkness burning deep within the pit of myself.
A pathless path balanced on the edge of time.

Two: The Cross
Beside the road stands a cross, unheeded, unneeded.
People hurry past, hardly looking.
I stand, lending my weakness to keep the cross
From falling.
I am not needed, not heeded -- let me go!
A building close by beckons, offering safety, privacy,
A chance to slip out of the light, a place to hide.
Stay!
I cannot leave.
Unnoticed, unneeded, I want only to go and change.
I promise to return ....
Stay!
There is no escape,
Compelled to stay, to stand by the cross beside the road.

"I want nothing between us."
Immediate fervent assent
To live at the cross by the side of the road.

Three: The Sea
A dream
Floating in a dream
Floating in the sea.
Completely secure, endlessly rocking
Floating in the calm and stormy sea of love.

Four: A Voice in Silence
Circled around the ashes
Waiting for a sign,
We sat in silence, ritual simplicity.
My friend gave up coffee for Lent,
Waiting for a sign.
My friend gave up wheat and wine,
Waiting for a sign.
We sat in silence, ritual simplicity.
Circled round the ashes I heard (can I say "heard")
A voice in silence.
"There is no more. I have done all. Receive."
The imposition of the ashes.


Epilogue
To put divine encounters in words, no matter how couched in imagery, gives the impression that I think I have found more than I have. As I said, I do not understand what happened -- except to say that I became a person again when I stood on the edge of losing myself. In this life to find ourselves, however briefly, is a gift from God.

An Even Bigger Birthday!

Four weeks ago we travelled to Pennsylvania for our son's graduation from Messiah College. My Dad has made it to all of his grandchildrens' graduations (I think). This one was easier in a way: the venue was 10 minutes from his front door. But today we see what makes it more remarkable, as he celebrates his 90th birthday.

I remember well the day that my mother died, and Dad was left alone. Eighteen years and one month ago she left us. I remember Dad saying to me of her death: "I didn't know you could hurt this bad, but I know I'm going to be okay." Over the next two years he learned to care for himself, without his lifelong companion who had helped him so much in so many ways.

I remember Dad's wedding, 16 years and two weeks ago, to Verna Mae. The have been married now longer than many much younger couples, a relationship that has grown richer as they have grown older.

And today I remember Dad. He has walked with God throughout his life -- in Zambia and Zimbabwe, in Pennsylvania and California, in Indiana and in Ontario. When we talked today he referred to some of his favourite verses from 2 Corinthians 4: 16 Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. 17 For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.

C.S. Lewis preached a sermon (during the second world war) called "The Weight of Glory", in which we celebrated the eternal glory that we are becoming. On his 90th birthday I celebrate seeing glimpses of that glory in my Dad's life.

Happy Birthday!

Unless I got my dates mixed up (which I may have -- see below), today is my step-mother's birthday. I have borrowed a picture of her from my sister's blog.

Verna Mae's Birthday: May 28. Dad and Verna Mae's Anniversary: May 29. My birthday: May 30. A full week! At least, if we lived close by it would be a full week.

Anyway, Happy Birthday Verna Mae! You are a wonderful part of our family, so good for all of us!

Birthday Reflecting

One trouble with blogging is deciding what to put in so public a forum. The past six months have been among the most spiritually significant of my life, but I'm not sure that this is the right venue for what I have written about that. But my 59th birthday is approaching in just over a week, so here are some lines reflecting.

This doesn't rise to the level of poetry, but does provide me for a medium to think on paper.

Birthday Reflecting

At nine I climbed rocks
The hills of Matopo:
Into the crack between the rocks;
Up to the bell that called to us all.
School there was, with memories;
But over and under all were Rocks,
Ancient and lasting Matopo Hills.

A young man in a new school,
Fourth school in four years.
A year later I remember myself,
Nineteen, second-year student, in and out of my element.
My first girlfriend;
Lost alone in the woods;
Soccer and theatre – more play than work.
Becoming so slowly a man.

Three years of teaching; four more running a folder
(Constant clatter of machine: paper and ink gets in your blood),
Now at twenty-nine a man: back in school, and far more
Married; Wife and Friend and Lover,
Still too new to know.

Father, a role to learn and discover;
At thirty-nine two sons call me
Father, and other names.
I remember, but memories slide away,
Too shy to let me see them clearly.
What at that moment was important?
Many roles – husband, father, friend;
Pastor, teacher, print shop labourer:
What really mattered?
Memories slide around the corner
When I look at them. I remember
Anticipating forty, the angst of aging.
I remember preaching, teaching, caring,
Loving, fighting, living: memories slide.
What matters? I did them.

Forty-nine. A new country, new job;
A new life as fifty looms.
The path led back to school at forty-one,
That bend ended two years later;
Back to pastor, church in a cornfield;
And after four years in the cornfield
With trains sawing back and forth:
Again a teacher, back to the present.

I come to now.
Fifty-nine.
A number.
What matters?

God. Above all, beneath all, around all, in all. God.
Family: dearest companion; children grown.
Community: sometimes at school;
In the coffee shop and living room;
On the soccer field, across the chess board.

What matters?
Family, students, colleagues, friends,
Gathered community of people,
Bound together by the search for
Truth and life.
Truth, the Good, matters:
Family, friends, colleagues, students
Relationships make life.

Fifty-nine. I remember, and
Memories slide
Leaving a trace, a shape,
A desire for more
Life, and Truth, and Good, and
What matters.

21 May 2009

Mother's Day

I know that Mother's Day was on Sunday. I liked the blog that my sister wrote for our step-mother and aunt on Sunday. Verna Mae has been a wonderful blessing to my Dad and to our family, and Aunt Leoda is wonderful. I remember staying with Aunt Leoda in Manhattan over 30 years ago: just a few days, but memorable, and good.

But Mother's Day is also always May 12 for us. On this day in 1991 our mother died, and we don't forget. We were blessed to have her as our mother, even if her time feels as though it was cut short (as my younger sister wrote to me). Memories are clear, as they should be: mother standing on a ladder at around age 50, hanging something in the church basement, and falling off the ladder in a kind of somersault. Scared everyone around; but she was fine. Mother inviting the woman who became my wife to lunch -- before we had started dating. Mother boxing with me when I was a moody teenager: you can't stay moody when your 5 ft. tall mother starts boxing with you.

Today is Mother's Day every year, alongside the Sunday celebration. We don't forget.

Deer Strike!

Last Saturday Lois and I went in to visit Kim and S'kha, taking our Zimbabwean friend, Mike, along. Mike had taught Kim over 20 years ago. now Kim is professor of African history with a double PhD. Mike still lives in Zimbabwe, dealing with power cuts and a lack of running water. He came over for his son's college graduation, giving us a chance to visit in the city and renew old friendships.

We had a good evening, and headed home as the sun set. North of the 49th parallel, on a Spring evening (or in what passes for Spring in Manitoba) that means driving around 9:30, so that we approached our home town after dark.

Two or three miles north of home Lois suddenly yelled, "Stop!" Now she has called out surprising things sometimes, such as the other morning when she told me to get something from the car outside. Turned out she was still asleep and the request was part of her dream. Not this request, however. I hit the brakes, and a deer passed lightly in front of us. I thought we had dodged the danger, but then we saw a second deer and felt a significant thump. The sound of the impact was enough by itself to shake us all up.

I kept going. After 10, so close to home, one dead deer (I thought): why stop? At home we checked the damage, which was remarkably slight. The passenger side mirror was gone, and there was some slight scoring of the passenger side doors. The repairs come to $1,200; but the damage was less than I could have expected based on the sight and sound of the unfortunate deer.

We're glad to be home and grateful for so little harm. I hope that the deer just bounced, and went on his way a bit startled. But I'm afraid: a snapped neck seems more likely.

School Days

We have a snow day today: hazardous driving conditions from about six inches of Spring snow. With extra time available I looked through a series of pictures from one of my facebook groups: Hamilton High School. I attended Hamilton from January 1963 to April 1965 -- two years and one school term.

I remember the school, although not nearly as well as some in the facebook group. I wore a grey uniform with a blue and maroon striped tie, grey knee high socks, maroon cap, and black shoes.

I was in Form Three (Grade 10) when we left, and entered Grade 11 in Pennsylvania that September. But Hamilton is the place where I really began to grow up, and the facebook pictures called back many memories. Pictures of the school fields recalled hours spent during school walking over the ground that would one day be a rugby field, picking up stones to clear the field for planting grass. Not a particular punishment: just an activity by which all students participated in upgrading the school. Today the rugby field has virtually returned to the bush from which it came.

Other pictures showed the way that an all boys school puts on musicals. The girls chorus was populated by boys wearing dresses and singing the girls' parts -- which we could do because our voices had not yet broken. I was Ellen in Oklahoma, a minor part with three lines. I still know the women's music in Oklahoma better than the men's.

The pictures recalled a day when girls from nearby Montrose school studied with the boys of Hamilton, until they had enough students in the upper forms to fill their own classes. We were an all-boys school, and the sight of girls on our grounds filled us with fear. Some of the comments under the pictures (posted both by girls from Montrose and boys from Hamilton) recalled how strange and desired the experience was for both. Little wonder that my Grade 11 in Pennsylvania was a bit frightening: too many girls in the classroom!

Most of all the pictures recalled a day when the vast majority of the country's education was directed towards the White minority. I benefited with a superior education unavailable to most Rhodesians of the day. Now the school grounds and buildings are in disrepair. The Thistle on the school gate (Hamilton is a Scottish clan; the Thistle is the Scottish emblem) is faded and pockmarked. Pictures from an old boy who had visited Hamilton recently showed the decay.

I know that Zimbabwe is necessary, and that Rhodesia was an unjust monstrosity. But I mourn the passing of what was good in the old, and its death in the new. They say you can't go back. Except I suppose in our memories. Pictures of a time past, in a country that no longer exists, of people that I haven't seen for over 30 years and don't expect to see again. Even on facebook.

Driving Again

I should take pictures like my sister does, then illustrating narratives would be so much easier! But I am not the photographer in our family; and Lois was sick on Sunday. So I drove down to Minnesota alone.

There was a lot of water out. The Red River is filling up with water, and the Red River valley is on full flood alert. When I candidated at Providence in 1997, the crest of that year's flood was moving through Winnipeg: The Flood of the Century. Now people are talking about a repeat. It doesn't look quite as bad here in Manitoba; but in Minnesota and North Dakota the danger is real.

I saw fields full of water, fields that needed a skiff more than a tractor. They aren't as bad yet as they might become, but they're bad enough. I was preaching at a Covenant church in a small northern Minnesota town -- mostly farmer families. Not everyone was there: at least one family was sandbagging their yard to keep the place safe from rising water.

Meanwhile we wait. Tonight we're supposed to get two or three inches of rain (or its equivalent in snow). That's the fear -- that a major storm will add to the frozen or waterlogged ground and run off into the Red. Then ice jams downriver closer to Lake Winnipeg can add to the problem.

The Red flows north, an unusual thought for most Americans. usually it is a placid, mild stream. Now we're watching it grow and praying that it doesn't get too high.

Updating Spiders

Last October we thought we were infested with spiders. I wrote about our adventures here and here. A lot has happened since then. We bought a new mattress (first one in 30 plus years). We sprayed for the little critters. I slept on my own while we took measures to clear the house.

Now I know that I killed a spider on my ear at 2 am or so, just after the doctor told me that my swellings looked like a spider bite. So our actions were more or less rational. Besides, we found several friends with similar stories. Maybe there was a spider or two involved!

But long after we were sure that the spiders were gone, the apparent bites continued. Finally I had to conclude that some sort of allergic reaction was under way. I tried avoiding peanuts, milk, msg, all the usual suspects. The effort brought no more relief from the swellings than sleeping in another room far away from my sweetie had.

Finally I ended up at the allergist's office, where my arm was swabbed and pricked with 30 or so substances. Only the histamine prick formed a reaction, which said that I was normal. But my arm was itchy the next day where they pricked and smeared me! Blood tests ruled out any other underlying cause, and the reactions continued unabated.

Finally two weeks ago they did start to abate, and finally I am more or less clear of reactions. They may return, but for the moment they have receded. The most likely culprit seems to be some low level allergic reaction, exacerbated by stress. Well, it has been a stressful six months, harder perhaps than any similar period that I've been through. But spider bites? I ask you!

Anyway, they are gone for a bit now. Some time I may try to describe what stress feels like, besides just itchy!

Edmonton

I went to Edmonton last week. I thought that maybe I had visited Alberta's capital before, but consulting my father, I learned that on the previous trip (in 1954) we drove from Saskatoon to Leithbridge, avoiding both Edmonton and Calgary and proceeding to Vancouver. So after over eleven years in Manitoba, I have finally visited beyond Saskatchewan.

John and I flew from Winnipeg to Calgary, and thence to Edmonton. A tight schedule gave us ten minutes in the Calgary airport, time enough to leave WestJet and re-enter at the gate next door. Thursday afternoon we arrived in Edmonton, where we met Bill, who had rented a car. He took us on to Taylor, where the conference was held.

The meetings were good; time spent in conversation, learning and thinking: on some other occasion I may pursue some of the thoughts generated there. But when they were over the next day, I had a new experience. For the first time in many years I met another Climenhaga, one I have corresponded with but never met.

Dave lives in Edmonton, close to my age; and he gave John and me a tour around the city before going back to the airport. Our grandfathers were brothers, and our fathers first cousins.

The conversation as we drove and then sat at the airport was wide-ranging and enjoyable; recounting it would be tedious and unenjoyable. Enough to say that I saw Edmonton for the first time, and connected with a delightful person there. I gather that I have four or so more second cousins in Edmonton. I'll have to go back again!

My Sister

She is my sister, five years older than I.

When I was born, she waited in the dark of a vanette in the African night,

Waiting for a brother,

Waiting for me.

When I came on the scene, she left.

Went to boarding school almost as soon as I appeared.

Seven years later, I followed.

Hillside hostel -- so close, so far from Landon House, Evelyn School.

She came by bus on weekends to visit,

Renew friendship, sibling bond in a strange city,

Alone among the Rhodesians.

Soon she went on ahead of all of us.

Fifteen years old, left behind, gone on ahead.

We went to Bulawayo; she went to Woodbury.

We had the African sun; she had the seasons of Bedford County.

We returned, and found that she had gone further ahead,

A young woman of twenty, with varied experiences.

No longer just my sister, now so much more.

I went to college, and she was already there.

I took mathematics to avoid her, a dreary failure.

Embraced English and found her there,

My teacher as well as my sister for the next two years.

"Put that down, you'll drop it!

Why are you always fidgeting?"

I found her office a refuge,

Which made it less of a refuge for her.

Then graduation for me;

My sister was married,

Her son, my nephew, followed the month I left school and headed

Back to Africa.

My sister put down roots; I travelled to Africa and back.

There and back again several times, as her roots grew deeper.

Growing and changing in marriage, and children --

New career in journalism, administration, government

While roots went deep into the Pennsylvania soil.

In my travels I found my wife, my sons, my family.

My sisters both, and I, also lost family.

Dearest mother, took her own journey home.

The Christmas after a box arrived.

Shortbread that had always come from mother

Now came from sister.

I'm putting down my own roots now in far away Manitoba,

But she has gone on ahead,

And I never can quite catch up.

Even if I take the last journey before her,

In some sense I never will catch up.

Happy birthday to my sister,

Dearly loved and never forgotten.

Winter 1978

The pictures set the theme of snow. We really have more cold than snow here, but I wanted a particular ambience. I must look for old pictures and see if I can scan them! Story follows.

We have so much winter in Manitoba that it reminds me of our first winter together. Lois and I were married in July 1977. The following January she was teaching Grade 2 in Nappanee, I was working at Evangel Press (running a folding machine), and we lived in Nappanee. And it snowed and snowed and snowed.

Lois had more snow days than any other month of her school life. Of course I walked back and forth to the press regardless. Towards the end of the month we had a major blizzard on top of all the snow we'd had that far. My memory says that about two feet of snow came on a Thursday. A google search reveals that in nearby South Bend three feet of snow fell on January 26, 1978. That was indeed a Thursday.

I worked my usual 7:30 to 4, with a half hour for lunch. Running a folder is another story: proof that even the radically non-mechanical can run a machine. But back to the snow. Just before 4 pm Lois called from home. She had had another snow day. After 31 plus of being married to her, I wonder what she did or if she felt cooped up. In any case, she had decided to shovel a path from our front door through the four feet of snow in the driveway out to the road, to let me into the house. (True love runs true!)

Well, there was too much snow. When she opened the main door, which opened inwards, she found that the outer storm door was fast closed in by the snow. It wouldn't move, and she was stuck inside. So she called and warned me.

When work was over I walked home, where I found the snow piled against me. Lois stood inside the storm door, and I stood outside on the road, and we just laughed at the ludicrous situation. Eventually I waded in, floundering up to my chest in four feet of snow. The snow shovel was propped against the wall just outside the door, and I dug out a patch in front of the door, just enough to open the door and go inside. Supper was wonderful, and the house was warm and a wonderful place to be.

The next morning we heard how thoroughly the snow had covered the state. Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio had been blanketed, and the northern half of Indiana had been completely shut down. In our town of Nappanee, the police had posted themselves at the four roads by which people could come and go, and were stopping anyone who tried to leave town. People out in the country were snowed in for days -- friends of ours were stranded in their home for six days until the oil truck broke through to replace their oil supply.

So far as we could tell all of the businesses in town were closed -- except for mine. Lois had no school. The shops were closed. Factories shut. But two good men walked into the press, opened up, and called the rest of us. I could walk too, so I had to admit that I could make it. But first I shovelled our driveway out properly: six feet of snow piled straight across. That took a good hour or two. Then I shovelled a path from the road to our neighbour's door. She was a widow, and another widow lived across the street. So of course I had to shovel her out too. Finally after lunch I walked on into work.

It was a most amazing snowfall. One of our friends used the packed snow to build and igloo in his backyard and sleep in it. Lois and I had the impression that we had settled in a winter wonderland where it would snow forever.

Years later (15 years later) we brought our sons back to Indiana from Kentucky. We made sure that they knew this was the land of snow; but of course there was little snow. The blizzard of the century came only once in the century. So we moved further north to Manitoba, looking for snow. We have found cold, more than enough; and although it doesn't snow like that one incredible blizzard in 1978, the snow we get stays and stays, clear and bright and sparkling. And Lois and I can look across and laugh for the delight of winter.

New Year 2009

I have been trying to put my feelings and thoughts at the New Year into words -- a harder task than sometimes. Last night our son called to say that he was okay after the accident (wiped on on I-79 on icy roads), and again I realized that all of the good that we experience can change in the briefest of moments. The past semester in my teaching was filled with stress, and I realize that I do not enjoy change the way that I once did. So the words below: an effort to grasp some security within the constant change of life.

New Year 2009

We had a dachshund, loyal, loving;
I remember too clearly
A warm summer day,
The dog seemed more weary
Than usual. Dogs die.

Deep roots diving deep into the earth.
I had friends when I was young;
we went to school together,
Talked, played, ran, and sang;
the bond we shared was real and strong.
Now years and miles between.

He held his blanket, grasped it tight
As it hung on the line to dry.
Life was real and life was right
When he had wrapped it so;
It answered his possessive cry
And calmed the ebb and flow.

At midnight we circled round the game
Our glasses lifted in a toast;
The past poured out, an empty night
A day begun, shaken roots still holding.

I need my friend, my dog, my love
(I have not even tried to speak of her),
Comfort and strength to grasp what's now, what's new.

6 January 2009

A Christmas Drive

Twenty-six years ago, Christmas Eve was on Saturday. I finished preparing the Christmas sermon for the congregation. Lois did last minute packing. Vaughn enjoyed the world as only a six month old baby can. It was unusually cold for Pennsylvania, a real white Christmas.

Our VW Beetle was giving trouble starting. So that night I parked it at the top of the hill leading down to a our house. There were a good hundred yards of fairly steep hill coming down to our driveway, so I thought for sure I could start the car by rolling, if the battery was dead.

Christmas morning was about minus 25 Celsius. The engine did not respond at all to the key: not even a click. Fine. I turned the key to on, pushed in the clutch, and let the car roll down the hill, popping the clutch several time3s as I gained speed. At the bottom of the hill I rolled into our neighbour's driveway, no closer to starting the car. Not a cough; not a hiccup; not a sign of turbo charged life in the frigid morning air.

Our neighbour Jay came out and helped me with jumper cables. It took a good 10 minutes of charging to get the car going. We did not turn it off again!

I love Christmas on a Sunday. We went to Speedwell for the Christmas morning service. Then piled into the VW, which started, mercifully, and drove off to Wilmer and Velma/s for Christmas dinner. They have been friends with my folks and Lois' family for many years, and their children are among our best friends (and cousins); so we had a wonderful dinner and time together, visiting, singing, celebrating.

About 4 pm we started on the next and final part of our day -- driving from Lancaster County to New Madison, Ohio, about an eight hour drive. As we neared Pittsburgh, daylight was fading fast, and the temperature started to drop. By the time we reached Zanesville in eastern Ohio, where I filled up the car with gas, it was minus 30 Celsius.

The car very nearly did not start again after I filled it up: the cold was too much for a dying battery. We started off through the Ohio night, with the old VW forced air heater doing its best. we had no fan to push the air in faster, just the speed of the car. A thin layer of frost formed all around the windows so that we could see only out of the windshield through a small arc kept clear by the defroster. Vaughn slept happily in his car seat, surrounded by enough luggage to keep him safe even if he wasn't seat belted in! His parents were less happy. I have never been so aware of how thin the car body is: a few inches of metal between us and the coldest weather we had ever experienced.

The last stretch from Zanesville to Mom and Dad's (Lois' parents) was about four hours; but we were not stopping for anything. Now I would have to stop for some sort of break, but we were young enough to keep going and foolish enough to have started without replacing the old battery! So we kept going. We got into New Madison about midnight. Mom and Dad were waiting for us and helped take everything inside, including their grandson snug in his car seat.

The next day (Boxing Day) we tried starting the car. Nothing. That battery was dead and needed to be buried. Dad took me to the store and bought me a new battery. He didn't say so, but I think he may have been worried that I might take his daughter back into the Winter's cold and get her stranded this time! Not to mention his new grandson. Now that I have sons close to the age I was then I understand him better, I think!

We have minus 30 temperatures regularly here in Manitoba, and it no longer seems so cold. Cold enough, but you learn to deal with it. We have a blanket in the car in case of emergency, and keep batteries and tires well checked, and make sure that we're safe when we go outside. In any case, I love Christmas. And I love family. And I'm grateful that God kept us safe 26 years ago so that I can remember that drive through the bitter Ohio night.

Belonging

We joined the church today. Many gave warm congratulations, welcoming us back. We had been members from late 1997 to 2005, when we helped start a church plant nearby. That is its own story, worth telling; but it closed in May 2007. For two years we were committed to outreach in a small community. The end felt abrupt, although one could see it coming from some distance away. For the past year we have been back at SMC, and today we renewed our membership there. Sometimes I wonder why: what does the gesture mean? Anything?

Not everyone sees membership as important. I am (I think) in a minority in the value I place on it. Many attend a large church and never consider any more formal step. Others participate in smaller fellowships where they feel fully at home, welcomed, belonging; no formal membership seems necessary. Our society prizes flexibility, choice, freedom; and membership can become a cumbersome obstacle. Why not define membership by attendance? If you come here, you belong. If you don't you don't.

I can speak only for myself, knowing that others whose judgment I respect do not share my impulse to make a public declaration for the thing itself to be real and true.

So first, for myself, I note the sound sense contained in our societal reflex. Formal membership can become formalism all too easily. Some substitute a public display for a real relationship, whether in a failed marriage or in a disappointing church experience. My first commitment, then, is to truth, to be true -- to God, to myself, to my family. Formal membership must grow out of real belonging. Public witness grows out of, comes out of, springs from real, lived, dynamic relationships. If the formal outer display exists alone, hypocrisy results. I'm a child of the Sixties: I commit myself to be true!

But I do not only reflect my age; I follow the beat of God's drum. Family requires commitment, not just liking and feeling good. A man and woman grow together and fall deeply in love. No formal commitment seems necessary. We sang so many years ago, "Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I'm 64?" No formal commitment; just stay with me! Of course, she didn't. Wedding vows help one keep one's deep inner desire to love forever. The promise means something, not just at that moment, but in the work and joy that follows.

So also in my church family. I belong at a deeper level than the formal commitment; but I make the promise to belong and act like I belong for at least two reasons: 1) I know that I will not always like SMC. But the longer I keep my commitment as a member, the greater the space to feel the greatest joy of belonging. 2) I know that I feel the sense of family that we have at SMC. I want others to know it too. Just as baptism functions to witness to the people around us that God is at work in our lives, formal membership is a witness to the community and to the church that we are God's family.

My reasons are not profound, deeper than thought. They are surface, I think, and somewhat trite. But they are real; they are mine; I belong here and now to God's family at SMC.

Preaching

I preach quite often. Once or twice a month I help usually in churches that are engaged in a pastoral search. Some thoughts based on the experiences.

I use words professionally.
Use: employ; manipulate; try to use, an unsatisfactory thought.
Professional: paid; paid to use --
Sounds almost obscene, a prostitution of the gift of words.

"In the beginning was the Word."
"I opened my mouth to speak, and the word is there:
formed by the lips, the tongue, the organ of voice."

Should I be an amateur instead?
An amateur wordsmith,
playing with words like an incompetent Shakespeare.
I could not, cannot,
Have not the wit, the skill to play such art.

Should I be the servant?
Beg the words to do their work,
Then sit and wait for words to form themselves,
To make sense, make nonsense integrate and coinhere,
become The Word before me, commanding me.

Perhaps. I could.

Word, Spirit, some mystery magic
Takes control when I preach teach make sense
Beyond my own understanding.
"Don't try to understand mystery," my African teacher said.
"Stand under mystery."

I use words as
Words take me and do their work.

20 December 2008

Sifting

Accumulated piles of life
Laid out, scattered across the floor.
She sits, quiet -- almost serene among the debris;
Flotsam and jetsam: Thirty plus years

I helped to make.
"Whose is this?"
"What is that?"
Simple profound questions that question
our lives.

Music in the air more peaceful
Than the scattered pastiche:
Song reflects and magnifies jewels, diamonds
Thrown out of the rubble.
An old letter, a fragment of life
four decades old.
Pictures, reminders of that long past;
Some pitched without remorse,
Hesitating, Gone. So many sermons.

"We should do this more often."

We did once.

14 December 2008

Christmas and Students and

I just finished putting together our Christmas tree. "Putting together" signals that we did not forage through the forest and find the perfect "real" tree and cut it down. Rather I assembled 9with the usual stops and starts that such processes engender for me) the tree we have had for quite a number of years. Then Lois fluffed it out, and wrapped some presents, and put them under the tree. No decorations yet, except for some stray tinsel left over from last year. "It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas ..."

In the background "The Fellowship of the Ring" played (extended edition). We have had Christmas music on for some weeks, so I didn't mind something different. I enjoy the weeks before Christmas: Advent, we call it. Anticipation. Hope of Christ's Return, and memory of the baby's birth. "All poor men and humble, All lame men who stumble, Come haste, nor feel ye afraid." But that's only one side of life for a teacher.

At the same time the semester winds down. The rhythm is similar each year. A frenzy of final assignments leaves students pressing, almost gasping, and all of us praying for strength. Then papers are done, exams are written, and faculty endure the pressure to finish grading and assessment for the semester.

I deal with those pressures easily enough. But there's another part of Advent that I find more difficult. Each semester ending means that people leave, and I walk up and down the empty corridors. The end of the second semester is much worse. The hardest day of the year for me is the day after graduation, when I go in to a school empty of students. Advent, and Easter, have their specific Christian meanings, to which I add the meaning of leaving.

Last night we met with our pastor to talk about the process of renewing our membership at SMC. (We had moved to a church plant in town for a couple of years; with its passing, we have moved back to SMC.) As seven of us talked about what church membership means to each of us, one stated that she has been part of four churches in her life. I sat there thinking through the churches I have belonged to (or attended regularly): 13, I think. It's hard to keep track.

Perhaps my peripatetic past leaves me more sensitive to the transitory nature of the school year's rhythm. It is not a bad thing. It is, I believe, a profoundly good thing. The past is passing, and the Return comes nearer. But transitions still leave me feeling shaky.

Happenings

I posted pictures and thoughts on mortality on the 25th. A week has passed, full of happenings. The next day was our younger son's birthday. Twenty-two years ago he joined us after a day spent in the Baptist Memorial Hospital in Lexington, Kentucky. I remember Lois hooked up to a monitor after the doctor had done an exam during a routine pre-natal visit, "You're having a contraction now. Don't you feel it?" "Well, I feel a sort of tightening. is that it?" "If that's all you feel, I'm not letting you go home. You won't know you're in labour until it's too late!"

So we spent the day with Lois hooked up to a monitor. Every so often she would say, "Am I having a contraction?" And I would look at the monitor and say, "Yes." Nevin has not always been so unobtrusive; but for 22 years he has been a joy and delight in our lives. Two sons, and both wonderful men today.

The next day (the 27th) was Thanksgiving. We're in Canada, and most people here ignored American Thanksgiving. Considering how little attention Americans pay to our Thanksgiving celebration in October, one understands. the pictures I posted last time, reminding myself of what Lois and I looked like 32 years ago, are cause enough for thanks. I am sometimes simply surprised at my good fortune, to be in my 32nd year of marriage to a wonderful woman.

Then Sunday began the Advent season. "Lo, He comes with clouds descending, once for favoured sinners slain. Thousand, thousand saints attending swell the triumph of his train." Remembering our Lord's first coming in weakness, and anticipating his return in power and great glory.

When I think of these things, I think also of Zimbabwe -- or any place where injustice has a grip on people's lives. "All will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of things shall be well." Was that Julian of Norwich? I'm not sure. But the truth is there. Our world is in a mess -- ecologically, morally, politically -- but the prayer, "Your kingdom come on earth as in Heaven" holds true, and I can give thanks. Always.

Such language falls into sermonizing too easily; but I need strong hope for the pessimism that lies just beneath the surface. Family and faith in God: these are sources of strong hope indeed.