Posted by: rhasper | November 4, 2009

Discipline Thy Self

 

Rowing Toward GodSelf-discipline

I grew up reading. I read over one hundred books in the 4th grade. I loved to read.

One day in high school, in my English class my teacher asked me to read out loud a section of the literature we were studying. I remember it well. I was sitting on the right side, along the wall trying to blend into the paint.

I was a reader, but when she said my name, my mouth went into a draught. My heart began to protrude through the veins in my neck. I forgot my mother’s maiden name. I lost control of my lips. I had to read so I began. On one particular aspirated consonant I think I spit on the girl in front of me. I died twice in the next three minutes.

I have never told anyone how afraid I felt that day until writing this. But I’m in good company. More than 90 percent of Americans say they have been shy at some time in their lives. Almost half say they’re shy now. Many feel weak, not powerful, shy not confident.

2 Timothy 1:7  For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love and of self-discipline.

 It wasn’t until half way through my eleventh grade I realized high school was not going to last forever. I also came to the awareness that my teachers were keeping records. It came as a shock. Grades matter? They will follow me into the next stage of life?

 I had invited Jesus to be my savior when I was eight. I wasn’t living my life for God in high-school, but now I know that I that is when I heard a whisper inside. It was as if someone said, “Get ready.” Someone  was moving an awareness in me. I Began to sense that I had a spirit of power and self-discipline inside me.

 I decided to aim high. I took typing. I learned the keyboard.

 To be disciplined means to adhere to a certain “order.” Discipline refers to systematic, orderly instruction given to a disciple. Self-discipline refers to the regular training that one gives one’s self to accomplish a certain task.

 Hit those keys without looking. Learn the keyboard.

 Self-discipline isn’t one choice, it’s a million choices in the same direction. In late high school, I began to make that choice again and again, the choice to try.

 Ben Franklin was the master of self-discipline. But it was different than Christian self-discipline. The beginning point for Ben was self and the motivation was self-improvement. “Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.”

 But for us God followers, the beginning point of all order and discipline in our lives is not “early” but it is God, his voice, his plan, not ours.

 Before you know it, after high school, I landed in college.  I majored in English. Over the next five years I read hundreds of books and papers, almost every one at the last minute. I took a credential in teaching, and an  MA in literature. I began a life of scholarly discipline.

 I remember a moment of few years ago of exquisite beauty. It was a moment of identity, of fulfillment. I got a phone call. It was from one of the editors at Leadership Journal, Christianity Today’s magazine for pastors. They wanted  to publish the article I wrote and sent them on reading groups. It was entitled,  ”It’s Not Ophra’s Book Club.”

 Someone else would read what I wrote. Other leaders and pastors would benefit from these ideas. It wasn’t something everybody cares about, strives for. But for me it was a beautifully satisfying moment. It was a moment I had been looking forward to for a long time. The high school kid who didn’t study and who was afraid to read, who took typing, had finally typed what others would read.

 2 Timothy 1:7  For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love and of self-discipline.

 I remember sitting in Starbucks in Eastlake in the spring of 2006. I sat with my coffee looked out window at the tall, ornamental grass glowing in the sun.   A friend of mine had just told me that he wanted to go back to South Africa. And then he said something surprising. He wanted to know if I wanted to go with him.

 He had taught school their in the 1980’s and worked for Campus Crusade for Christ. He wanted to go to Johannesburg and Soweto and to Swaziland.  There was much need there to train and encourage pastors.

I have never really wanted to go to South Africa. I looked out over pampas grass growing outside Starbucks. It was beautiful in the sun. I thought of the veld, of the beauty I had seen in pictures of Africa. Every so faintly, not a voice, but in my mind, God whispered again, “Get ready. I have people for you.”

 Over the next few months I got shots, bought malaria medicine, had my passport renewed, prepared sermons, bought clothes, read books on Africa, prayed, went to planning meetings, spoke to pastors in Africa on the phone to see what they needed, wrote letters to  raise money.  And I went to a lawyer and had my estate put  in a trust.

 With much self-discipline, I prepared myself. And then we flew, for two days.

 I’ll never forget one Sunday morning in Soweto. My wife and travelers and I were the only whites in church. I stood in a tent on a dirt floor in a suit.  I looked out at pain of Africa, at the people God was sharing with me, and I remembered  the pain in my own family and  my own heart and all hard things God had taken me through.

In front of me was the pain of AIDS and death and loss of children and loss of dreams. I preached a message called “Pain Gain,” translated into Swahili. It was as if my whole life led up to that moment, all the pain of loss and all the study and all the risks of coming to Africa met.

 At the end, half of the church came forward, crying, praying, looking for healing. Then they prayed for us. I cried. It was a moment. It was a moment.

 2 Timothy 1:7  For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love and of self-discipline.

 When I was little, my parents moved to Missouri where my dad took the job of running a Christian campground. We built a home there, for economy put in a wood burning furnace in the basement. It was a fire breathing dragon; it ate big logs and kept us toasty warm.

 My job, as a small boy, was to split and haul wood into the basement. I had to bring the stacked wood up to the red line my dad had marked on the wall. I spent many afternoons in  the winter, snow and cold, splitting big logs with an ax and a chisel.  I remember so clearly the “thunk” as the wood I threw it up hit and it the wall.  

It was the sound was the sound of  self-discipline, and in this manner I learned to work with my hands, and with tools.  It was regular, it was systematic, it was required – by my dad. And God whispered, although I didn’t hear it then. “You may be headed out into life to be a brain worker, but I am going to need you to know how to use your hands.”

 After I married and had first daughter my wife  and I bought a house. We bought work. It had been built in the 1940’s. Again I took  up tools.

 I tore off old dark wood paneling and  I sheet rocked the kitchen.  I took out an old sink in the bathroom and put in a new one. I peeled  back a flat roof and repaired it.

 In the last few weeks I have and a lot to do. I have counseled  people; I have studied, I have written, I have taught classes. I have done brain work, and people work.

 But also, in my spare time, I have gone about my church and I have gotten down on my knees on the floor in  the preschool room and scrapped dirt off the floor with a razor blade. I with a screwdriver and I have fixed door handles. I have climbed up on the roof of one of the buildings and checked it out for repairs. I have worked on bids to replace the awnings. I know how to work and I have worked, like l learned to work throwing up wood against a  wall.

And I have had some moments, while working, when God whispered again. He said, although I didn’t hear an audible voice:  ”I taught you years ago how to work, how to work hard. I taught you how to use your hands in a disciplined way. Now may passion for my  house consume you.” 

“You’ve fixed your own houses. Now renew my house. And don’t want you to do it alone.”

 2 Timothy 1:7  For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love and of self-discipline.

 1 Cor. 9:26-27 says this in the Message version, “I don’t know about you, but I’m running hard for the finish line. I’m giving it everything I’ve got. No sloppy living for me! I’m staying alert and in top condition. “

 God has put in us the ability to control ourrselves, to discipline ourselves.  We are not by nature lazy, afraid, or uncaring.

 God has put his spirit in you, he has given you power and control over your impulses, bodies, thoughts.

 God is currently speaking to you, whispering your next adventure to you, gently tell you, “Get ready.  Get self-disciplined. ” And if you listen to his prompting something new will begin. Within your borders self, a you, a unique personality will begin to be formed by the work you discipline yourself to do. A being will be freed and personage empowered. We change through self-discipline, initiated by God.

 We are a people following a voice. We are a people living within God, infused with God,  a God who himself puts a spirit of self-discipline in us. It is a God directed, God empowered self-discipline.  

 It changes us: it changes the world.

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Posted by: rhasper | November 2, 2009

Not Alone

David CookWe love the idea of the last person standing. Our most popular TV shows end with one person: This year, David Cook won American Idol. Melissa Rycroft won on The Bachelor. JT won Survivor. Gymnast Shawn Johnson won Dancing with The Stars.

If you knew none of that, you are a superior person.

We have a love affair with the winner, the best. We dig Wyatt Earp, left standing at the OK corral when the smoke and dust settles.

I still remember winning the ping pong tournament in my high school gym class. Ten feet back from the table, I slammed my way to victory while the cheerleaders went wild. Wait, there were no cheer leaders at ping pong games, and I was close to the table. Never mind, I was still euphoric. I also won a monopoly game once.  I have never forgotten the flush of power as my stacks of fake cash grew in front of me. Donald T. Winner. 

 It’s socialized, this get-one-dollar-above-the-rest thing. In school, we graduate ranked, A’s received diplomas first, flags brought up the rear. In history class, we studied mostly risen-to-the-top American men and women, mostly men.

Columbus discovered America. Jedediah Smith opened the West. Harriet Tubman saved the slaves. FDR fixed the Depression. Colby Bryant saved the Lakers,  Billy Graham saved America, or was it Bono?

Forget the fact that none of this discovering and saving happened because of one person. We Americans love rugged individualism, the Horatio Algers rags-to-riches myth, Emersonian self-reliance, to thine own pickup truck be true, if you want it done right, do it yourself.

Admittedly there is reason in this view. Competition motivates. People excel. Individualist should take responsibility for their actions. If you do nothing, nothing will happen.

“Yes” to personal responsibility, but the superior person at the top thing, it is really a myth. Every person on earth is held up everyday by an army of supporters. Someone grew the breakfast you ate today, made the shoes you walk in.

Melissa All the celebs and heroes of history won a place with a virtual network of support and co-contributers with them: everyone was gifted by God, taught by teachers, nurtured by a parental adults, carried along by their following or voting fans. FDR didn’t stop the depression, all hard working Americans contributed, but we love to trumpet the lone hero with the office and the trophy. Melissa Rycroft dances well with Tony, her professional guide.

In reality, life doesn’t nicely fit in the individualistic groove. Life is not lone heroes, self-reliance, individualistic identities. There is a deep connectedness, interdependence and unity to all living things. And as we struggle for the best life, we find that it isn’t about beating anyone else to the top, nor about creating rank, nor about making superior distinctions.

P1000709

We painted the high windows on the exterior of our church recently. With my camera, I caught the painter framed in the windows,  him outside painting, me inside shooting, him distorted in the glass, a glowing solo figure. The picture doesn’t represent reality. There was a team behind the man in the glass.  A historic building specialist recommended the right color. An artist chose the exact hue. At the paint company, a person mixed the color. A friend prepared the surface of the wood.  One man, in the glass? A whole team renewed the church.  

In the Bible there is a verse that radically undercuts the distinctions that keep us apart.

Galatians 3:28 says, There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

For Christians, this blows up the individualistic, better-than-thou, hold-some-down, rise-to-the-podium, super competitive living thing.  Galatians 3:28 is the emancipation proclamation of New Testament.

Boom, no race, no Greek nor Jew. Boom, no class, no slave nor free. Boom, no gender, no male or female. Boom, no division, no exclusion, no discrimination, no stand-apart individualism – in Jesus. Just liberating, freeing, thriving-together life.

This Christian truth smashes national prejudice, social domination, and gender exclusion.  In Christ the only real nationality is humanity. The only social class is the forgiven class. Gender? We are equal inheritors of God’s promises.  

Freedom from oppressive restrictions or divisions is the essence of the gospel of Christ.

The women in leadership question? I believe the restrictions placed on women in other parts of the Bible were addressed to specific problems, but here we find the universal Christian perspective.  Women are in no way spiritually less than men. Men and women are free to serve side-by-side, at all levels. Christ empowers women.

The race issue? True Christianity equally accepts all races.  The bride of Christ is not racially defined. She, the church, is Mexican and Black and Asian and Anglo and Middle Eastern, all family, all wonderfully racially intermarried, one in Christ.

Does this bother anyone? Then they may want to pick a religion that discriminates.  Christianity doesn’t.

Rich and poor? White collar and blue collar? Slave and master? In true Christianity, there are no collars, only various imitations of Jesus. There is no class but the forgiven class. Homeless and homed sit and serve side-by-side. 

Recently I made chicken soup for party. I cut up onions, carrots, celery, chicken. I threw in rice. Then I put in my secret ingredient, the spice Cumin. Bam! It kicked the soup up two notches.

Try Cumin straight. You won’t go for much. Spices, alone are not very palatable. Try Cayenne pepper straight.  But put it in soup, on chicken? You’ll want to go back for seconds.

Each one of us is a spice. Thrown in the pot together, something very good, very desirable, very life-giving comes out. 

American Idol begins a new season soon. The goal will be to find out who gets to the top. But real life begins right now, and the best goal is to see who can be included next in the mix. 

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Posted by: rhasper | October 27, 2009

Fly

break through momentThere is a moment, when there is no going back.

You are in the air. You are falling down a cliff. You are falling for thousands of feet. 

How do you get into such a no-going-back position? You hike to a really high spot and jump off.

There are people who jump off huge cliffs wearing wing suits.  When they reach a speed of 140 miles per hour, they fly, kind of.  But it is not flying, as much as it is controlled falling, fun falling! They fall two feet for every one foot they travel forwards. Then before death, they pull a parachute.

flying menThese “bird men” are crazy, risking, adventure lovers. They are thriving, and having a great time besides. After 60 Minutes filmed one of their jumps in Norway, one of them remarked: “Nobody on the planet, had more fun than us today.”

I love to fly. My favorite plane ride was in a Cessna in Alaska, up a glacier and over Glacier Bay. But, I’ve noticed one subtle thing about adventure flying; if you want to fly, then you have to get on the plane. In Alaska, there is a lot of flying and quite a few plane crashes. If this scares you, then to fly, you have to have a break through moment. You may be afraid, but you do it anyway.

I remember my first jump off a high dive into a pool when I was a kid. I thought, “This might kill me.” I died in the air. I came back to life in the water, “Whoohoo!”

History is full of cliff jumpers.  Moses killed a man in Egypt and fled. Then he went back to Egypt and liberated his people. His decision to come out of hiding and confront a Pharaoh was a brake through moment.

Ester, a totally unknown Jewish beauty,  became a Persian queen. She had never been a queen. It was dangerous. But she had a break through moment when she went before the king, uncalled, and pleaded for her people’s lives.

This inexperienced, unknown gorgeous girl wanted to fly, so she jumped off a political cliff.

Some people have a past that has makes them afraid of the cliff. But history has been made by people who went past their pasts and jumped.

When Jesus was walking beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw some good Jewish boys, Simon and his brother Andrew fishing.

“Come, follow me,” Jesus said. The historical record says that at once they left their family business and went after him. Peter and Andrew made a major life decision quickly. They didn’t take years at the edge of the cliff.

They didn’t follow the family business to their own fortune. They emancipated themselves. Perhaps as good Jews they had been told in various ways, “Don’t do anything rash.” But when they went after Jesus they were rash. The history books are full of  rashly successful people.

As a little girl, Drew Barrymore was our ET star. She charmed America. She believed and we did too.

Then came the clubs her mom took her too, the alcohol, the drugs. She was in rehab by 15. It came to her that she shouldn’t  keep living with parents who took her to clubs and let her use drugs. In a legal process, she was emancipated from her parents. Then came more successful movies, Never Been Kissed, Ever After, Charlie’s Angels. Now she is a director.  Her emancipation was a break through moment. After that, she  was able to fly on her own.

Peter and John did the same, leaving the family business. Peter,  in making this jump, became the leader of a movement, a director in a new film that would sweep the world. “Can I do this?” he must have asked himself. And then he stood and delivered. He switched identities in a rash way, “at once,”  without delay.

Why do some people come to edge of a fun, adventurous, life-changing cliff, and not jump? Perhaps they have been playing it safe for so long, jumping isn’t an option.  Perhaps they are afraid to be successful.  Perhaps they are tired, depressed, hurt.  

Thrive? Fly? They have to jump.

The bird men, Moses, Esther, Peter had had amazing lives. They made the turn, walked to the edge and leaned into the air.

How did that happen? Each one had a break through experience, a moment when they chose to move past the past and risked something new. The best  life includes a willingness to respond to a possible adventure, to go into action when the opportunity arises.

Here is truth: Believing something can happen and doing nothing to make it happen is worthless.

At certain moments in life, I believe that we hear a voice saying, this is it, your time, take the jump, surrender to this experience. Then we have a  chance to fall and fly. By risking, we can set in play a momentum, created by a decision, and something fast and good can flow from that.

Some jumps matter more than others. I believe that the best jumps come down to catapulting ourselves in sync, in formation, in conjunction with others.  Every person who has changed the world in a good way has jumped with someone and toward someone. I think the best jump isn’t the lunge into thin, existential  air, but the purposeful drop toward someone else’s benefit.

Antonio Stradivarius was a great violin maker.  After Stradivarius died in 1737, no more great Stradivarius violins were produced. Why? He left no apprentices in his workshop. He didn’t pass on the secrets. 

Each one of us is a Stradivarius,  a unique, cultural, idiosyncratic expression of something that  can inspire, help and change the world. But it dies with us if we don’t pass it on.

I went to Mexicali  recently with friends. Mexicali is a town of a million peoples south of El Centro. We drove from San Diego for two and one-half hours to get there.  Mexico was in the 90’s that day in October.  Friends navigated; once in Mexico, I had  no idea where we were. I was flying.

P1000675We arrived at an escuela. We were there to help, and so we were given the job of painting a classroom.  When I was about to pour paint, ten Mexican teenagers showed up to help. It is a dangerous thing to give ten teens  paint rollers and a continuous supply of  paint. They painted themselves, each other, the floor and all the walls. They did a beautiful job. And then they cleaned the spilled paint off the floor.  What a pleasure, seeing gentle, beautiful altruistic young people give, serve, care.

And it wasn’t all work. When we finished we celebrated what was right with the world. We ate huge, grilled slices of carne assada in the shade of a bean tree.  Rocking music, played by a band from a San Diego church, filled the spaces between us.

It was good. And then we headed for home.  Up the El Centro valley and into the hills, the sunset flamed on the electrical wires strung along the road. Once in the mountains, we passed through a land of glowing rocks, twisting Ocotillo, and stately barrel cactus. 

It was a spectacular ending to an international, friendship adventure. Nobody on the planet that day had more fun than my friends and I who went to Mexicali. Why? We broke through. We jumped. And we flew.

The best life is no arm chair life. Sitting at the cliff’s edge is missing the fun. Jump life, risk life, reach life, fly life is the best life. Cliff jumping is emancipating.

Yet for some people, as they hear this, voices counter in frantic, parental whispers … be careful, be responsible, preserve resources, be cautious.

Of course, this is the wise parental voice, working in so many of our heads.  To be sure, safety is a consideration in every choice. Certain things should not be done by certain people at certain times. Responsibility, caution, calculated risk, all beautiful things.

But know this. If you live a life of fear, then you will on reap a life of fear. And fear? It is one of the worst crops you can ever hope to pack into your mental barn.  Fear is the absolutely worst motivator in the universe. Fear opened Pandora’s box. Out of fear came and continues to come self-torture,  oppression of others, apathy, isolation and paralysis.

Get a grip. You were made for more. There is a Moses in you, an Esther, a crazy successful Peter. Bird men circle inside you waiting for their time.   

Make a choice. Emancipate. Break through. Share your secret.  Thrive. Jump. Fly. Now!

 

 

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Posted by: rhasper | October 20, 2009

The Carotenoids That Heal

fall leafLast October we flew to Maine to see if the carotenoids and anthocyanins might heal us.

We arrived at night, driving from Portland, Maine down to South Berwick. Our hosts, Ralph and Donna said they loved to take the back roads and avoid the turnpike, so we did. I leaned against the dark car window on Fox Ridge Drive.  In the headlights, I could just see the trees starting to blush. We hadn’t come too early.

The pigments were at work. The same pigments that color the bright yellow squashes in our back yard gardens, the purple lupines along our roads, and the red strawberries in our bowls, color the trees in Maine. The carotenoids and and anthocyanins  mix with sunlight and rain, heat and cold, place and genetics — and who knows what else — to fuel and astonish us with color. They are a gift.

We went to Maine to experience this in the maples and the birches. We also went because of the postcard. “Please come visit. Ralph will take off work and we’ll go around with you. We’d love to have you as guests at our home. Donna and Ralph.” I don’t think I’ve ever received such a gracious invitation. But perhaps the context, the timing, the things that have just happened in our lives, affect how we read our invitations.

I ran into a friend at a party recently, given by our mutual friend Ashley who had just gotten back from a summer in Kenya. Ashley was showing her pictures. I’ve been to South Africa. I have friends there, and Ashley’s pictures reminded me of them. With photos of giraffes, AID’s orphans and dancing African teenagers scrolling on a flat screen behind her, my friend asked how I was doing. I paused, an African child squatting over her shoulder, and said, “I’m recovering. I really like my new job. We are working on social justice stuff, feeding homeless people here in town, helping Burmese refugees in City Heights, working with foster children. I’m moving on, but it takes time, to get over what happened.”

It is awkward, the thing about moving on. I didn’t really want to talk about it. It was way too painful. I didn’t have to. She began telling me about the church in town she didn’t go to anymore. She had just been to a reunion. Certain people were there. She didn’t elaborate. I didn’t really know what she was talking about. Her voice quieted as she said, “It brought up some feelings I thought I’d worked through.”  Her eyes suddenly moistened.

At that moment I didn’t see the African orphans behind her anymore, just her face near me, looking up at me. I stood there processing the emotional narrative that she was laying down in front of me, the story I did know within the story I didn’t know, and then I said to her, “It’s okay.”  I touched her shoulder. I was formulating words. “It’s okay, to have people you don’t want to see. I have a couple of people like that, from what happened to me. Perhaps, in time…”

She nodded, silently, looking straight at me. I wasn’t sure what she was thinking. Then she wiped her eyes with the skin on the tops of her knuckles. “Thank you,” she said with a slight smile, “I needed that.”

When my wife and I flew to Maine, it was something we both knew that we needed.  I remember standing there in Ralph and Donna’s yard watching the leaves fall. It was just what I’d hoped for. The wind gusted in the big tree in the center of the meadow, a flurry of golden leaves wobbled down with papery sounds. They fell in slow flutters and occasional arcs toward the ground. Donna told me that when it is quiet in the woods, you can hear the leaves snap off the trees.

The next day, Donna and Ralph drove us over to the White Mountains in New Hampshire. There is a photo album on the end table where I read. It has pictures of our trip to the Maine and New Hampshire in it, one of a blue stream full of yellow leaves,  one of a smooth lake mirrored with vermilion, gold and lime colored trees, one of hill after hued hill, piled up to the horizon with a dusting of orange, brown, green, red and yellow. They strike me as some of the softest and most therapeutic color tones I have ever seen. There is something about the miles and miles of color.  I remember now, looking at these pictures, that the days Ralph and Donna escorted us through the wonders, every turn in the road made me glad to be alive.

Back at their house,  after our day in  the White Mountains,  I remember sitting at their kitchen table.  Donna put a big casserole of shepherd’s pie in front of us. Fluffy mashed potatoes crowned the dish in a flurry of peaks, paprika accenting them with a dusting of red. Tall glasses of white milk sat in front of the plates. We ate and talked.

Ralph and Donna talked about the accident. I had heard them speak about this before. But it was sacred, listening to them again. Their feelings, thoughts and words arced down deep inside of me. As they took turns talking, I listened with the intensity of a soldier with a gaping wound, hanging on every word from the field doctors bent over him.

Their son Josh died in a motorcycle accident. It happened when he was on a trip with their church. He got on a bike in a parking lot for fun, zoomed off down the street, and then they didn’t have their son to hug anymore. His room was upstairs, across the hall from the room where we were sleeping. Some of his things were still there. There were stars on the ceiling.

There isn’t simply one thing that gets at it. The leaves don’t change colors simply because the days get shorter. There aren’t any certain lines by which all leaves must fall, neither are there any perfect lines that end our discussions of things. Questions have a way of leading to more questions.  But as I watched Donna and Ralph talk about the accident, I was struck by a soft shade of gentleness. After all that happened, yet remains, a dusted hue of kindness. I noticed that Sunday, when they took us to their church, as they spoke to friends there, they were as tender with them as they were with us.

On that day that we went driving in the White Mountains we came to where the “old man” had fallen down above Profile Lake. The old man had been a series of five granite ledges, that when viewed from the right angle, looked like a man’s face. He was a state emblem, but a fragile one at best. During much of the 20th Century he was held in place by cables and spikes.

Between midnight and 2 am on May 3, 2003, with a rocky roar, the old man just slid down the mountain. People were so dismayed they left flowers at the bottom of the cliff.

The time goes so quickly. We are back from Maine. I am of the opinion that carotenoids and anthocyanins are among the things that heal us. When I go shopping at the grocery store, I pick out orange and red and yellow peppers. At lunch, I sometimes edge my plate with them. But I know that they aren’t a spike or a cable, certain to hold the rest of me up. The bottom of the cliff waits.

But so do other things — places yet to surprise, conversations yet to unfold. We have been through a few things that have changed us very much, my African friends, Donna and Ralph, Jean and me.  And for some of us, there may be places we are not quite ready to visit and people that for now are perhaps best not seen.  

But in the fall, the hills change. They brighten with theraputic pigments. And lately, I have been hearing stories of loss that sound, at the emotional core of the narrative, similar to mine. I lean toward the voices that tell them and hope to grow more gentle, like some others who I know.

This helps.

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Posted by: rhasper | October 19, 2009

It’s Good!

puff ballThe second-longest  running  Off Broadway musical comedy is called I Love You, You’re Perfect … Now Change.

Murphy’s law tells us: “If anything can go wrong, it will.” Someone added: “And it will be your fault, and everyone will know it.”

Mark Twain famously quipped, “If man could be crossed with the cat, it would improve man but deteriorate the cat.” For starters, the cat would stop purring.

It’s easy to carp, and kind of fun to pick on our species. I was negative, once in my life. Or was it twice.  I enjoyed it.  Sometimes I even enjoy being negative about being negative.

To be honest, many of us incline toward the gloomy. Foreclosures, bankruptcies, corporate greed, natural disasters, terrorist attacks, and declining moral values – a negative outlook is simply the downside of being informed. People shouldn’t have taken financial risks, our country shouldn’t bail people out, our leaders shouldn’t…

Yes, perhaps, but I say, beware, the naysay. Don’t … shouldn’t … too much.

 Last week I found my red and yellow peppers had molded in the refrigerator. Proof: it’s a spoiled world.  But Friday night I ate a large slice of spice cake. It was moist and sweet, a sticky cake with a rich, creamy, smooth frosting. Times may be hard, but the spice cake is still lip smacking good.

I’m a Christian, and I believe that Christianity, at its core, is a positive-narrative. Christians aren’t the financial police, the social police or the food police of the world. We aren’t the moral scolds either. We are happy, good news reporters. In the worst of times, we always have good news.

In the ancient days of Noah, there was a large retributive flood; but there was also a rescuing ark-zoo. The ancient Hebrew God-lovers were enslaved in Egypt – but they were liberated by Moses.

 For every negative, in the Bible, there is a leaning into something positive. For every failure, there is a contrasting redemption.

Calvinism is making a comeback in Christian circles. Famed reformation scholar John Calvin held that the Bible teaches a doctrine of “total depravity?” Yes, I agree, I’m depraved. I have a penchant for forbidden, harmful cake. For anyone else to recognize this requires a look no further than the edges of their own unhealthy thinking.

But the Bible also teaches a doctrine of total forgiveness. We taste Christ, and we are good again.

The cynical nursery rhyme says, “All the kings’ horses and all the kings’ men can’t put Humpty together again.”  But the Bible counters that there is a king who can put Humpty together again.

Shakespeare quipped that life is a “tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”  The Bible says life is a tale told by an artist, full of symbols and meaning, signifying everything.

Do you want to thrive?  Repent from being negative and celebrate what is right with the world.  

What is right with the world?

“In the beginning God created the heavens and earth …” and after each brush stroke, each God breathed event,  the Bible records that God paused and saw that “it was good.”

Light, pause, good; land and sea, pause, good; plants, pause, “good;” creatures, pause, good.

The pause was in the “saw,”   “Check out that spiral galaxy, 100 million light years across. That’s good.”

“Love that pink rose with the yellow center, good.”

“The kids are going to go crazy over those pandas and striped zebras, very good.”

Good? How good? Good as in beautiful. And it still is beautifully good.  

 I was out walking the other day, and I saw little circles on the ground. It was the sun, shining through the leaves, reproduced, by the solar pinhole effect. 386 billion megawatts of energy was projected on the ground in a tiny, me-sized image!  Good!

 Dewitt Jones is a renown National Geographic photographer tells of  how he once he traveled to the British Columbia on assignment. Out in the field, he decided to photograph a field of dandelions. But then not into it, he packed up and with a mind to return later. Several weeks passed before he got back. The field had turned to puff balls. 

About to leave again, Dewitt instead began to move in a more positive direction. With his camera he was suddenly over the puff balls, eye level with puff balls, under the buff balls, and there it was – an award winning shot!

We live in a God kissed world.

 Psalm 24:1 says, “The earth is the LORD’S, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it.”

 And yet even as we claim this, less positive images come to mind.

 I have several friends who work in hospitals. The hospital presents a 360 degree view of life. One of my hospital buddies told me that this week a man with diabetes had his leg cut off.  I grieve for that man. But on the same day, in the same hospital, a baby was born with all its fingers and toes.

 The good is always framed by the tragic. This doesn’t take from good’s intrinsic goodness.

A man named Jud came to my office recently. He is a devastated person. He has vacant eyes. He has little contact with his family. His spirit is broken by an alcohol addiction. What can I do? In 30 minutes can I fix 50 years? I invited him to use the phone.

 I watched as he called his parole officer. I watched as he called a detox program. I watched a man digging himself out of his own grave. I invited him to come back the next day, sober, to call again. He came back. He made more calls. He left for the trolley, to go downtown to the detox center. I watched his back as he left, a man on a mission.  It was good.

 How good? Good in being one step back toward beauty in the form of order. This is what good means –order out of a depraved mess.

 I striped a parking lot recently, laying down new white parking space lines in measured, chalked and then sprayed rows. When I was done, I paused, the divine  pause, and enjoyed. I thought, this is how God must have felt after making the zebra. Striped is good. For me, striped is a mirror image of some kind of mysterious divine order.

 Perhaps we have been busy without pausing. Perhaps we should eat more spice cake and buy more paint.

 Life isn’t just a bunch of shouldn’ts and didn’ts. Certainly it is tragic, but certainly it is also framed in wonderments and full of astonishing possibilities.

 Look around. Life is good.   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Posted by: rhasper | October 5, 2009

Remember To Forget

Press on!Press On!

In the Disney movie Hercules, Hades hair busts into flames when he gets angry. But it isn’t just the god of the underworld who spontaneously combusts.

We all have fire in us. We all house residual emotional embers. We all carry incendiary memories. All heads occasionally flame.

Friends turned out not to be friends. Financial losses beyond our control occur. People close to us die. We fail to parent or spouse as we should. Embers smolder in the rubble.

But there is an extinguisher for this. We can still thrive.  To do this, we must learn to forget some things. The remedy for a firey past is to let some fires go out, to put them behind us.

Forget it. Forget it? That’s problematic. What does forget mean? It can’t mean erase completely or permanently from memory. Short of brain damage, and we don’t want that, we can’t and won’t forget loved ones lost. We can’t and won’t forget former friends who stabbed us in the back.

Traumatic, difficult things are not forgotten, and really shouldn’t be forgotten, a lost son, a betrayal, a mistake. The Apostle Paul never forgot that he persecuted Christians, referring to it in writing. The fire in his past was often on his mind. But he also spoke of “forgetting what lies behind.”

I remember driving to work one day when I was in high school. It was a two lane road. I came up behind a slow car. I accelerated to pass. Then I saw, another car coming straight at me.  I couldn’t make it around the car I was passing. I braked, hard. My car went into a slide. Off the road, spinning around — I came to a stop in a cloud of dust. I was shaking. I drove to work, very carefully. I continued to drive carefully — for about two weeks.  But I haven’t forgotten. I am informed by my driving memories.

Recently, a friend came to dinner in her sports car. She offered to let me take it for a spin. I did. I felt a calling to explore the potential of the turbo-charged engine. It was a caged beast. It needed to be let out. I went fast but not too fast. My right foot, it knows.

Fortunately, there is no wipe for driving memories. If there were, we wouldn’t learn from our mistakes. We couldn’t identify with others pain.

Then what does it mean to forget what lies behind?

To forget means not call to mind in a way that will hold us back  “Forget” means to not let the past drag us down, burn us down, keep us from the future God has for us. It means to not fall into a disabling grief. This is a choice we can and should make.

There is a need to say, “I am getting on with my life. I am living post-crash, post-fire!”

Clara Barton, founder of Red Cross, was once hurt by a friend. When she seemed unaffected, later, someone asked her, “Don’t you remember that?” She replied, “I distinctly remember forgetting that.”

How does one do that? To forget, first remember. This may seem counter intuitive. It is not. To forget a hurt, take it out and feel it, for a time. Say out loud what you feel. Write it out in a journal.  Find a safe person to tell.

It is okay to remember losses, to cry, to feel sad for a time, to grieve. But then, to be healthy, we must put them away. We call this the compartmentalization of grief. Hold it, then put it away in a mental drawer.

In other words, remember to forget.

There are 2.5 million annual deaths in the United States. Each directly affects four other people, on an average. For most of these people, the suffering is finite — painful and lasting, of course, but not  disabling

Skip to next paragraphSome people, however — an estimated 15 percent of the bereaved population, or more than a million people a year — fall into  “a loop of suffering.”  They go back, around and around. They can barely function.

This extreme form of grieving is called “complicated grief disorder.”  It has no redeeming value. It steals the present and the future.

Perhaps, we all get stuck at times in a loop of remembering, suffering our loses and mistakes over and over again. Then our heads are on fire, with the past.  We are suffering from a complicated grief disorder. To break out, we must put a psychological foot down. We must choose to set aside what we remember and press on.

Say we have a lost relationship. It is wise to look forward to the new relationships ahead for us. Say we have made a mistake. We can look forward to choosing not to do that again. Say we have been sick. This can purge us of our focus on things and center us on the core of life, relationships, God.

Want to thrive? Press on. Press forward. Keep driving. Occupy yourself with new plans, school, work, church. Don’t loop back very much. Loop forward. Remember to forget.

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Posted by: rhasper | September 21, 2009

What To Do Most

happy personThe People Priority

Life is a priority making event. We eat; we shop; we work; we eat. We sleep; we make things, we break things, we fix things, we eat things.  We surf the internet, we exercise, we watch TV; we eat while watching TV; we eat after we watch TV. There is a pattern. Certain things stand out.

When it comes to priorities, I recommend eating, often, all day, and half the night, in your sleep. I ate in the shower recently. Eating is my priority, but eating is not the main thing.

People are. People are the soul’s food. I recommend three to four large servings of small to medium sized people per day.

Nothing on earth is more nourishing to your psyche than small people,  friends,  family, grandchildren, your people. Other things — cars, houses, TVs are a mere sugar coating on life. People are protein.

Your career accomplishments, will be forgotten. Too much food will make you fat, but family and friends and grandparents and children and new acquaintances — they are the sweet spot, the core, the elixir of good living.

Think Jesus. He owned nothing, but relationships, and his life was replete with meaning! Want to thrive? Socialize. Drive fast, toward people. Put your social pedal to the floor. Shift into relational fifth gear, motor toward people at top speed.

 “Love your neighbor.” It’s top priority.

 There are several simple ways to do this. 

Take risks.

If you are invited to a party, go. Jesus did his first miracle at a party. If you are never get invited to parties, take a class at the community college; they often end with a party. My wife and I took a dance class  at the college.  It was like constant party; every night I danced with a different girl, and stepped on her toes. It was a risk; it was fun; it was scary. I’m glad I did it. I won’t do it again.

But you don’t have to go to a party or take a class to risk socially, to have the adventure of new relationship. Church works. Go often. Join a group there. It is the best way to get deeper with people. Jesus’s closest followers joined his group. You need homies, groupies, buddies, cronies, confidantes, side kicks.

I remember my first small group experience at a church I was terrified. I was afraid to say anything in outloud in the group. When I did risk and speak, I trembled and my heart pounded. I was so shy. It was painful. I’ve gotten over that. How? I’ve been a small group continuously for the last 30 years. Just do it, until in feels natural!

All of ature knows to collect. Flies swarm, fish school, sheep flock. The crows group in a murder, the cobras in a quiver, the seals form a harem. What about you? Who is in your quiver? Who is in your murder? Who makes up your harem? Well, you might not do the harem thing.

Spiritually seeking people have always grouped. Moses left his isolation in the peaceful desert to join his people in Egypt. Ruth left her people to join her mother-in-laws people in Palestine. Peter left his fishing buddies to be a part of Jesus’ small group. 

Follow suite. Don’t isolate, don’t cocoon or hide. Get out of the house. Find  your people.

Samoans make good football players. Think Jr. Seau.  In the NFL he has had over 1,500 career tackles. Samoans have a warrior tradition. So do Christian.  Our Christian ancestors are Joshua, David, Paul. Live like them. Capture your people.

Reveal yourself

Once you are with people, to really be with them you must reveal who you are. Create safe space. Safe space is space where we are all free to be imperfect, where we give people our permission to be imperfect too.

Jesus created safe space everywhere he went. There was a  woman caught in adultery.  Religious people wanted to stone her. Jesus said to them “He who is without sin, throw the first stone.”

Jesus protected her by getting everyone there to admit that they weren’t perfect. The secret to good relating is that there are no secrets. Safety exists in the truth that wea are all failures.

In John 8:32, Jesus says, “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

The truth he is talking about is the truth that we aren’t perfect, and that we need him to help  us be free, to admit that, to be open to be right and good.

To live in truth, I engage in intentional openess. I often share with people something imperfect about myself. It’s easy. There are so many things to choose from.

I once shot my big brother, with a BB gun. I once totaled my car. I am an addict. Addicted, to what? To every food ever grown, cut, cooked, fried, broiled, boiled or burned, but especially to cold cereal.  While laughing, I once snorted super sugar crisps. I like to inhale — my cereal.

Want to thrive in relationships. Tell on yourself. It makes people laugh, or cry, for you. It connects you. It’s liberating to be honest. It opens up the conversation to revelations of criminal activity and other juicy topics. Baptize your conversations with honesty. You’ll draw out interesting confessions.

Some people won’t go to church. Why? They think they have to act holy. If only they knew! I tell them. Come to my church. You’ll meet so many people who are more messed up than you that it will make you feel great about yourself.

Be human. Jesus was, fully God, fully man. If you are free to be what you are, other people will be free to be who  they are and always will be — gloriously and imperfectly and shockingly,  human.

Be stingy — with criticism

Jesus was so different from the other religious people of his day. They were critical of other people, full of rules, judgments. That is so unattractive, so antisocial.

Jesus went around accepting people, lepers, beggars, prostitutes, tax collectors.

Some Christians go around doing the opposite, expressing judgment and intolerance. They are intolerant of falling moral standards, of political liberals or conservatives, of other denominations, of other religions, of slipping family values, of people who don’t believe in miracles. But is that an effective strategy to draw people to Jesus? Is it like Jesus?

Come join us and you can be judgmental and angry like us!

Be cautious with criticism. Jesus primarily defined his followers by what they were for, not what they were against. We are for people, not against them. We are for forgiveness. We are for mercy. Samuel Johnson said, “God doesn’t judge a man until his life is over. Why should I?” We are for compassion. We are for peace.

William James said that the “deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated.” James used the word, “craving.” Meet the craving. Tell people good things about themselves.

To thrive relationally you must be winsomely positive.

Express warmth.

Jesus was always touching the people he healed. Babies that are regularly touched gain weight faster, develop stronger immune systems, crawl and walk sooner, sleep more soundly and cry less than babies deprived of close physical contact.

Touch the people you love, hug them, pre-hug them, re-hug them, post-hug them, kiss them. Jesus touched the blind man’s eyes, he brought the children near; he put his hands on people he healed.

Affirm people. People are 50% more likely to feel close to family members who frequently express affection than to those who rarely do so. Tell people, “I love you.” 

When the preschoolers I know see me, they run and hug my leg. They tell me they love me. They adore me, and aren’t afraid to show it. We would do well not to lose such enthusiasm for people.

Why are we reluctant to tell people we care about them?  Are we afraid it will be misinterpreted as manipulative, as weak, as sexual? Well, if the last is an issue for you, be careful, but still find words or actions to glow with holy warmth.

Express warmth. It creates a magnetic attraction, what Rollo May calls a “field of emotion.”

Go after it. It’s the priority. It’s people. To love them, take risks, reveal yourself, be stingy with criticism, glow with social warmth.

Remember Philippians 4:13.  “I can do everything in him who gives me strength.”

Draw energy, inspiration, a field of warm emotion, from Jesus. He made people his top priority; he was warm, honest, and positive.  If you follow him, he lives in you, he speaks through you. He connects through you.

You might say, “It doesn’t feel natural.” Love? Of course not, it’s of God, it’s supernatural.

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Posted by: rhasper | August 29, 2009

Listening More

homeless girl

When I met Thomas, he was sitting on the steps. From a distance – he was scruffy cool, in jeans and a t-shirt. Up close –  he was denim and cotton and psyche beat to pieces. He was with his new friend Robert who had been living on the street for a long time. As we talked Robert drifted off.

Thomas’s story came out in oddly connected pieces. He was sleeping behind the grocery store on E Street and showering at his girlfriend’s house. Her mom wouldn’t let him sleep at the house. He was recently out of prison, and he needed  money to attend a program that helps ex-cons get a job. Sometime back he had been diagnosed by doctors as bipolar, but he was smoking pot regularly. He had been smoking it pretty much nonstop since he was thirteen. He said it like someone saying, “I’ve pretty much been eating vegetarian food since I was thirteen.”

He told me his mom wanted him to come home so she could take him to a doctor for prescription medication. She would pay for the flight, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to do that. He didn’t think he would like the side effects of medication.

Then he blurted out something I didn’t see coming. Neither had he. A few years ago, he told me, looking down at his shoes, “I was driving a car, and there was an accident. My brother was killed.”

I heard him say that, and then we were in one of those moments when it doesn’t seem possible to say anything  remotely appropriate. I have a brother. We talk on the phone. My brother is part of my sense of connectedness to something like me, but bigger than me, my parents and my other brother and their kids and our sense of family that we go through life with.  “How does one convey …”

I looked at the deep lines of anguish twisted across his cheeks. I’ve never seen so much pain compressed so deeply into one human being. The force of it almost drowned both of us on the spot. But at the same time, in that raw, open moment there was this – brutal, honest connection between us. The  space between us felt insanely holy. I was staring at him, and he was looking down at the steps and crying and saying, “After my brother died, I kind of went crazy. “  I got it, a little, as in waves.  I hated that this had happened to him.

Thomas kept talking. When he woke up, in the mornings, lying behind a dumpster, he didn’t want to be alive. But he didn’t want to kill himself; he just didn’t want to be here. It was good to be out of prison. He had a girlfriend, and he desperately didn’t want to disappoint her, but if things kept going like this she might get tired of him. He wanted so badly to get it together for her, and them. He had just applied for a cooking job, but he didn’t get the job. He told me, “It’s hard to get a job when you don’t have your own phone number. People expect to have a place to reach you.” He wanted to get a cell phone.  

 Then he told me that he had recently had an interview at a restaurant. He thought he had done well, and he said he knew he had the credentials. He heard nothing back for weeks at the phone at his girl friend’s house for weeks.

He went down to the restaurant and found one of the supervisors and  asked if he knew anything about why he didn’t get the job. All the supervisor would say was that he heard that the boss who interviewed Thomas had said, “He wouldn’t look me in the eyes.”  

I wanted to fix Thomas’s eyes, right there, but I knew I couldn’t.  He looked up from the steps at me; I looked at him. The moment felt like an invocation. I haven’t seen him since then. I hope he went home.

I eat my lunch today. I cut up the fresh red tomatoes, the bright green cilantro, the orange peppers, dark romaine. I cook a crispy brown turkey burger and put the vegetables beside it on a white plate.  I blend a shake from strawberries, blue berries, soy milk and Splenda. I pour it into a clear glass. It is purple, with dark flecks of blue in it. I’m starving.  I’m taking care of myself. But I’m thinking about Thomas. I wonder where he is. One loses track of such new friends so easily.

I think of him sometimes when I feel afraid and uncertain what to do next. There is something in him that is a copy of something in me, a profound need to be connected to family, to someone to love. I think of Thomas when I meet other people who are living on the street. My street friends are beginning to collect in my thoughts. Now there is Carla.

I first heard about her on the phone. I’ve never met her, but I know her. It’s possible, to know someone without having met them. I’ve been listening to her, through other people.  

Pat,  a substitute teacher, called me about Carla. She met Carla while giving out food to people here in town.  Pat told me that Carla had left her apartment because her boyfriend was abusing her, and that Carla was living in her car.  She called to ask me what she should do for Carla. On the phone, tired and kind of empty myself, I didn’t really know what to say.

Several days later, Carla surfaced again, though my wife.  My wife met Carla through our friend and  told me that she offered to take Carla to a battered women’s shelter. Carla refused. She said, “The shelter won’t take my dog, and I’m not leaving my dog.” My wife and I talked about it. We understood, but we didn’t. Maybe the dog was Carla’s safest relationship, but Carla herself needed to be safe. My wife called the shelter to see what they had to say about the dog.  They had seen this before and had a tougher point of view: The dog might be an excuse to avoid getting help.

We gave Carla more food. The last I heard, she was headed down to the weedy area by the bay to find her own form of refuge. We thought of her as we went to bed that night, wondering aloud to each other if she was safe. We almost went down to look for her. We didn’t.

I don’t know what to do for Carla. She hovers in the back of my mind like a shadowy part of me that I want to bring closer. She is trying to protect herself.  I know what that feels like; I know that sometimes as you try to protect yourself, other people have no mercy and they attack you harder. I’ve been witness to that. I’ve never personally met Carla, but I don’t want to not know what is happening to Carla. There is one more.

A few weeks ago George came to the door of my office.  He needed food. I gave him some. He is newly homeless. He has been living in a home with an older lady the last 16 years, but she just kicked him out. She found him smoking pot. He defended himself saying that he didn’t drink and only smoked a little to calm himself down.

He was anxious, disturbed. He explained that he was not used to sleeping behind a shed on Third Avenue  and eating hot dogs from 7-11. But he said he wasn’t very hungry. He noted, with the coolness of a psychologist looking at a text book case, When you are afraid, you lose your appetite.”

He explained to me that he had been homeless before.  ”But it’s harder now,” he said, “in the recession, out on the street, being older.”  He told me. “A while back some people roughed me up and took $150 of my social security money. I was drinking with them. I’m not going to do that again. “   He is 51. He is bi-polar, he isn’t eating much, and he is afraid.  I asked him if I could pray for him. He said yes. I asked if he would pray for me.  It just didn’t seem like he was the only one who needed prayer. I did too. I’m not so comfortable with relationships where the giving only goes one way. It seems such a paternalistic way of treating adults. Idon’t know what to do with his fears in the same way that sometimes I don’t know what to do with my own fears.

I’ve been listening to people.  I know I can’t solve all their problems. I know I can’t fix their eyes or their hearts. I know one handout doesn’t solve the problem. I know I can’t heal all the damage done to them by what they have done or what other people have done to them. I know I can’t even make them take the next step they need to take to improve their safety or health.

But, nonetheless, I have been listening to people who don’t have safe places to sleep.  I am grieving their losses. I am identifying with their fears. I am holding them with dignity in an inquiring space in my mind. I want to meet more of them.

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Posted by: rhasper | August 24, 2009

How To Thrive!

flower in the wall Love Yourself

Recently, for lunch, I had some delicious chicken tacos with a likeable friend. It was part of my work day. I have a cool job. Basically, I get paid to eat with people.

So, my friend and I were eating tacos and talking and I thought. I like this guy. He is comfortable with himself.  So I said, “You’re pretty relaxed around people. People seem to like you.”

I always compliment the people I eat with. It leads to better digestion. And maybe they’ll pay.

 “I wasn’t always comfortable with people,” he said. “It’s something I’ve worked on.”  “Really,” I said, “It seems natural.”

“Yeah,” he said, “One day I when I was younger, I was bragging on something. A girl walking by overheard me and said to me, “You don’t think much of yourself, do you?” She kept on walking.

I thought, “Is she being sarcastic? Or does she think that I don’t like myself?” It got me to thinking. And after thinking on it, I realized: I didn’t think much of myself. And I decided I’d work on that.”

Looking at my friend, I thought: That worked! He’s transformed himself into a likeable person.

I like the narrative here. It rings real. I’ve noticed that I struggle with self-love, at least at some point or some area.  So do many of my friends. It’s something to work on.

After a making a mistake, I know I’ve said, “I’m so stupid.” Looking at one of my flaws in the mirror, I’ve said, “I hate the way I look.” After a public faux pas, and I’ve made them, I’ve thought, “I am such a social klutz.” Forgetting an appointment, my own inner voice has critiqued me:  “You are seriously losing it!”

Consider however, that many of the great thinkers of the world, those who have transformed history, have counseled self-love. Gandhi was committed to human dignity, self-respect and self-rule for India. Buddhist practice is called the “middle way,” between self-denial and self-aggrandizement. Jesus taught, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” Jesus assumed we love ourselves

In saying, “Love your neighbor as youself,”  Jesus was more specifically saying something like, “ You feed yourself, clean yourself, groom yourself, rest yourself, protect yourself. So feed, groom, rest and protect others in the same way. You overlook you own mistakes. Don’t jump on other people for theirs.”

I was with a person recently. I teased that not everybody in the world loved her. She quipped back, “If they don’t love me, there is something wrong with them.” I think Jesus would approve!

But for many people, self-love is a battlefield. 

A couple of thoughts come to mind. How do we love ourselves in healthy, appropriate ways?

Speak truth.

When tempted to say, “I’m a failure,” it would be more truthful to say, “I made a mistake. “When tempted to think, “I am a social klutz,’ it would be more truthful to say, “No I made a  blunder, but I’m not defined by one interaction.”

Gerald Ford gained a reputation as clumsy after several mishaps, driving his golf cart into a crowd, falling down the steps of Air Force One. Chevy Chase lampooned him for this on Saturday Night Live. The truth? Ford was very athletic.

At the University of Michigan, Ford played on two championship football teams, and he was named to the college all-star team. He turned down offers from the NFL. At one time or another, we will all need to fight for a truthful view of self

I’ve noticed that even seasoned older people have difficulty treating their souls with dignity and kindness.

Recently, I was with a very wise and accomplished lady, who has, in the last few years, lost her husband and a private grade school she helped create and direct. I sat with her in a preschool board meeting. The school is a remnant of her lost grade school. As we discussed a tough decision regarding some cutbacks in the preschool, she began to cry. “I just realized,” she said. “I’ve been so caught up in grieving the loss of my husband, I have never taken the time to grieve the loss of my school.”

Multiple losses – this is one of the signatures of aging. But do we know to give appropriate time and sacred space for recovery? It is a deep truth that we need to make sacred time to love ourselves by allowing ourselves time to grieve our losses.

If any of us saw a baby unattended and crying, we would go pick it up and we would speak soothingly to the baby. So when we cry, why don’t we go gently to ourselves, pick ourselves up, speaking soothing words of understanding and comfort?

Backing my SUV up a few years ago, I jarringly realized that a telephone pole had jumped out of its place and slammed into the back of my car.  $900 in damage resulted. I felt  stupid! “Why didn’t I see it coming?”  At home that day, not one harsh or critical word came from my wife. “We’ll just get it fixed. That’s why we have insurance,” she said. Her gentleness was theraputic for me. I dropped the complaint against myself that was beginning to breed something ugly in my mind.

But let’s take this further. Loving yourself isn’t an end in itself; it is a beginning. It is the beginning of loving others.  A healthy, true self, is a self that can love other selves. Thinking gently is  excellent, but being gentle with others is supreme.

In the United States in the 1980’s, there was a massive self-esteem school campaign. At its worst, everybody got an award certificate, whether they had done the work or not! The general consensus by the experts? That didn’t work.

Why? A proper sense of self must be based in part on real accomplishments. Remember: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Love yourself and don’t love your neighbor, and you’ve got some kind of nasty form of selfishness and ego-centrism. It will rot the self.

Why do we feed ourselves? So we can feed others. Why do we need to get comfortable with ourselves? So we can be comfortable with others, so we will know how to help them be comfortable with themselves.

Last week I watched a woman giving away food. She glowed! Last week I saw a man pray for another man. They were living deeply in that moment. Last week, I saw a lady pick up a child and kiss it. It doesn’t get any better than that.

It is self-loving to love others. We all must end with this. We are a self to love another self.

Want to really make progress in self-respect? Go do something worthy of self-respect.

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Posted by: rhasper | August 17, 2009

Change The World

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Let The Children Change the World

I love kids and teens and young adults. Kids are smart. Young people are resilient.  Young people rock, even when life is hard.

 Rodney Dangerfield, remarking on childhood trauma said,  “When I was a kid my parents moved a lot, but I always found them.”

Rodney Dangerfield and the Bible and have something in common; they both narrate accounts of tough childhoods. But the Bible goes further than Mr. Dangerfield. It finishes the childhood narratives with fine endings.

Moses was abandoned in a basket in a river, but he became the ruler of Egypt. David, a mere boy, faced an abusive adult, and using simple technology, defeated him.  Young Ruth’s husband died, but Ruth found another man to love her, and she had a baby boy, an ancestor of Jesus.

 Mary, pregnant and unmarried, suffered the social judgment of her community, but she gave birth to Jesus.  Paul had a narrow, legalistic childhood education, but he wrote a lion’s share of a very radical and liberating text, the New Testament.

 Kids survive tough stuff and thrive! Many people in history and today are proof of that. Many of us have enter adulthood as survivors, having overcome illness, dislocation, abandonment,  losses of all kinds.

 Once my brothers and I were playing baseball with a golf ball. We thought it was a good idea. It wasn’t. A golf ball goes hard when hit with a wooden bat.   I hit a line drive. It hit my brother in the mouth. He is still sending me the dental bills. I still regret the mistake.

 Early years can be tough; but young people can be tougher.

Childhood resilience? Our modern, cultural narratives often celebrate it.  In Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events,Count Olaf is trying to kill the three Baudelaire orphans for their inheritance. The villain, Olaf, played by Jim Carrey, leaves the children in a car on the railroad tracks. Young Violet makes a spring loaded, bobble-headed track switcher and the children escape harm with ingenuity and resolve. Fiction? Consider this. 

Laurence Gonzales, in his well-researched book Deep Survival, asks the question:  Who has most chance of surviving in a wilderness crisis, exposed to the elements? Answer: Children six and under have one of the highest survival rates. Gonzales writes, “They often survive in the same conditions better than experienced hunters, better than physically fit hikers, better than former members of the military or skilled sailors. “If they get cold, reports Gonzales,  they find a warm place. If they tire, they rest. “They try to make themselves comfortable, and staying comfortable helps keep the alive.”

Jesus himself thought so highly of kids, he put them up as the world’s top model! 

 The people brought children to Jesus, hoping he might touch them. The disciples shooed them off. 

 But Jesus was irate and let them know it: “Don’t push these children away. Don’t ever get between them and me. These children are at the very center of life in the kingdom.

 Mark this: Unless you accept God’s kingdom in the simplicity of a child, you’ll never get in.” Then, gathering the children up in his arms, he laid his hands of blessing on them.

 Jesus was crazy about children! Jesus bragged on children. Jesus said children owned the kingdom! Jesus said we should learn from children. Learn what? We should learn to be simple, receptive and open.   

 Life is hard. People hurt people.  They make bad decisions. Then, too often, a parent-like voice within a person’s pschye chides:  “What is wrong with you? Grow up. Pull yourself together. Your future is up to you.”

 But Jesus says, “Don’t grow up in every way. Remain like the children in their simple trust. They know they need help. They know they can’t control and fix everything. They come near for help. Children model appropriate and wise dependence; it is with a simple childlike faith that we come into God’s peaceable kingdom.

 Robert Coles, Harvard Child psychiatrist, in his studies, Children of Crisis, shows us that children in difficult circumstances — poverty, loss,  family break-up — often exhibit “authority, dignity, fragility, and rock-bottom strength.”  And there is frequently a trust in God present.

Ruby Bridges, was the first African-American child to attend an all-white school in the South in 1960. In the face of violent, resistance, little Ruby stood up, and marched to class each day. She helped bring about school desegregation in New Orleans. Her mother told Robert Coles, Ruby’s counselor, that Ruby prayed for those in the mob who threatened and harassed her.

 Ruby had an inner moral compass. She looked to God to deal with evil. This is not untypical. Children, as Coles showed in his book The Spiritual Life of Children, often try to figure out life by tapping into spirituality.

 Again, we see this reality portrayed in our culture’s popular stories. In the movie, Bridge to Terabithia, a young girl named Leslie goes to church for the first time with her friend Jeff. On the ride home in the back of a pickup, Leslie grapples with  deep theological issues. Jess and his little sister have grown up in church, but they focus on the fearful prospect of God damning people to hell.  Leslie is just hearing the spiritual narrative for the first time, and she sees the vibrant life in it. She thinks the Jesus narrative is beautiful. She revels in the goodness of God surrounding her; she lifts her hands to the trees and sun as the children in the back of the truck glide home through the splendor!

 Kids think about God, and not just in movie life. Many children, like adults, try to make sense out of the idea of a loving God in an evil world. Children need adults to teach them and to dialogue with them, but adults should also encourage children to think, wonder, ask questions and try to make their own expressions of wonder and faith. By opening a discussion with children, adults are helping develop thinkers and doers. Remember again, that Jesus himself made children the model of true spirituality.

 And let’s take it further than talk. Life rcries out for collaboration and action.  We need, and the children need, to struggle together over what to do with tough issues, issues that touch deeply,  like poverty and loss of parents. Really, sitting at the core of all this,  is the truth that we need to include children in helping us solve life’s big problems.

 When five thousand people needed to be fed, who offered a loaf of bread and five fish to Jesus disciples? A child did! Only a child had the good sense to bring a lunch that day, and give it away.

In my community, last Easter, children from several churches helped make almost 300 Easter baskets for homeless children and under-resourced children. In the spring these children helped make 150 birthday boxes for foster children. Then in the summer they helped put together 200 backpacks, full of school supplies, for foster and refugee children. Children in our community, are changing the world.

 A teacher in our preschool lost her mom this year. One of her three year olds, Taylor, asked her: “Did your mommy die?”

 “Yes, she did,” answered the teacher.

 Then three-year old Taylor said, “I have a mommy. And my mommy can be your mommy too.”

 Children get it right. Children want to be part of the solution. Children will share their lunch, their mommy, with others.

 There is extreme value in children serving children.

 It exposes children to the needs of their peers.

 My daughter just got back from a mission’s trip to La Paz. She told me, “Now I have a place in my heat for Mexico.”

 It expands their confidence that needs can be met.

 Ruby Bridges is now chairwoman of her foundation that promotes toleration of differences.

  It shapes them into future world changers.

 After David killed Goliath, he went on to become king.

 I have a friend, Rich, who is a highway patrol officer. He is also a fantastic volley ball player. Rich just got back from a Volley Ball tournament in Vancouver. He took his two grade school daughters, and they did a mountain climb. The climbed up a couple miles of switch backs. Rich is in good shape, but he was panting at the top. Then Rich bragged to me, “My littlest daughter, skinny little Kristin, she never broke a sweat. She never even breathed hard!”

 Children have energy! We tout the energy in wind power. We know the potential of solar power. We keep tapping the polluting energy of fossil fuel power.

 What about kid power? Jesus believed in it. So should we. Let the children change the world!

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