Tag Archives: meaning

Aug 20 2020
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Acceptance, Impermanence, Service to Others, Wisdom

A Macro View

These days, it’s so easy to get “sucked in” by the bad news of the day. One counter measure we can employ to help protect our souls during times like these is to take a more macro view of our lives. The following portion of a prayer by Oscar Romero, a Catholic Bishop in El Salvador who was martyred in 1980, is a great example of considering the longer view.

It helps, now and then, to step back and take a long view.
The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts, it is even beyond our vision.
We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is God’s work.
Nothing we do is complete, which is a way of saying that the Kingdom always lies beyond us.

No statement says all that could be said.
No prayer fully expresses our faith.
No confession brings perfection.
No pastoral visit brings wholeness.
No program accomplishes the Church’s mission.
No set of goals and objectives includes everything.

This is what we are about.
We plant the seeds that one day will grow.
We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise.
We lay foundations that will need further development.
We provide yeast that produces far beyond our capabilities.
We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that.
This enables us to do something, and to do it very well.

It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord’s grace to enter and do the rest.

We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker.
We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs.
We are prophets of a future not our own.

May peace surround you, grace guide you, and joy surprise you today as you work to help make our world a better place to live in.

Blessings, Fred

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Aug 02 2020
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God's love, Meaning, Prayer, Riches, Service to Others, Soul

What’s Your Net Worth?

As I was sitting with Frank at the Memory Care Facility waiting for my laptop to boot up so I could get an electronic signature from a facility care giver to prove to my boss and the Medicare folks that I really was sitting next to Frank at said Memory Care Facility, I received an ominous message from the Universe on the screen: “FATAL ERROR—YOUR LAPTOP WILL NOT COME OUT OF HIBERNATION.”

On one level those words meant another ten minutes in the discomforting Memory Care Facility (after a manual shutdown of the damn laptop) waiting for the re-boot so I could obtain the coveted signature proving I really was with Frank.

On another, I wondered if this was some sort of divine commentary on my situation as I was with a terminal patient whose memory was certainly in permanent hibernation.

Regardless of the message’s intent, I simply sat with this hard-of-hearing, severely demented, and uncommunicative little man with the wavy white hair in a wheelchair. As I sat, I really started to look at him. To truly see him.

Underneath the bright green and yellow Oregon Ducks sweatshirt covered with crumbs from the morning’s breakfast and the matching green and yellow Ducks hat, sat a peaceful little man clutching a soft pillow to his face. Frank had been a devout Baptist for most of his life, serving as an elder and deacon for more than 50 years.

While Frank’s heart beat just fine, his memories and his soul had vanished nearly seven years before. As a result, this little man with the wavy white hair has little value in our culture. Oh, his biological organism is safe and well cared for, but for the most part Frank’s just put off to the side, out of sight, in a memory care unit with many other breathing, vacant bodies.

So, as I was sitting with Frank, silently praying for him as the laptop sorted through its millions of codes to restart, I heard a deep male voice (emanating from the little boom box in the common room) begin to sing, “Jesus loves the little children…”

I recognized the song—and as I sat praying for Frank I was serenaded by the words,

Everything is beautiful in its own way.
Like the starry summer night, or a snow-covered winter’s day.
And everybody’s beautiful in their own way.
Under God’s heaven, the world’s gonna find the way.

I began to wonder if in some crazy way Frank’s dementia was a gift? Did it protect him from the suffering so many of the folks I visit endure?

In our materialized, capitalist culture we have turned human beings into commodities. A person has value and worth so long as they can produce and purchase. We esteem people based on their ability to make money, spend money, or both. For example, a person can be a big jerk, but if they make or spend a ton of money we give them great respect, honor, and attention. On the other hand, someone who can do neither we ignore. Consider the plight of the homeless, the disabled, those on welfare, or the financially destitute dying—we make them invisible.

Many of the folks I visit who realize they are no longer productive and useful suffer terribly— feeling as though they are leeches to their family and friends. Did Frank’s dementia shield him from this existential and societal pain?

I left these thoughts that had sidetracked me once again from my assigned task and began praying for Frank. Lately, when I’ve been with uncommunicative folks warehoused out of sight from our highly productive world, I have taken to praying the last Beatitude taught by Jesus. A reading of the text from Matthew 5.11–12 I particularly feel a closeness to what it says:

Blessed are you when your life is sucked out, you’re dislocated, and classified as a waste of time for my sake… Rejoice and be glad for great is your reward in the Heavens. It is a sign of the prophets to intensely feel the disunity around them. 

Seems Jesus values a human being’s net worth differently than we do. I wonder who’s right?

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Jul 25 2020
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Acceptance, Death, Forgiveness, Grace

Looking for a Place to Fit

Looking for a Place to Fit

Sitting next to Jake’s bed as he lay dying, watching his fitful sleep, I noticed the framed sign on the wall near his bed in the adult foster home. It read: “When I was a kid, I prayed every night for a bicycle, but then I found out this isn’t the way God works. So then I stole one and asked Him for forgiveness.”

A hard life of drugs, alcohol, and rock-n-roll had taken its toll on Jake’s forty-something-year-old body. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, living fast and dying young doesn’t always leave a good-looking corpse. Nearly all of Jake’s teeth had rotted out, save the bicuspid on his upper right side. His abdomen was greatly distended (bloated) from terminal liver disease. And Jake was painfully afraid of death.

Jake had some sort of a Baptist background and had loved to play the drums. Years before, as a result of his addictions, Jake had deserted his wife and daughter. When I first met him, he told me that all he wanted was to see them again, to be given a last chance to “make things right.” Mercifully, his ex-wife and daughter did come to see him, brining along a newborn grandson whom Jake had never seen. It was a beautiful reunion with a lot of love and grace. Before they left, Jake’s family made a collage of family pictures and mounted it on the wall next to the framed sign. Jake was so proud of his family. He would lie for hours on his side, simply looking at the collage and delighting in the pictures of his grandson.

But now, weeks later, he was dying, and I was sitting there praying for him. Several times he woke up in pain. His care giver, Joe, and I repositioned him to ease his way. I moistened his lips and mouth with one of those pink sponge swabs soaked in water.
Looking at the pictures of his daughter and grandson, I thought of how much Jake had missed out on as he wandered the world looking for his place to fit. What if everything his thirsty soul had longed for was right there at home the whole time?

Earlier that morning, I’d read some lines from Antony the Great, the first of the desert fathers. “What must one do in order to please God? Pay attention to what I tell you. Whoever you may be, always have God before your eyes. Whatever you do, do according to the testimony of the Holy Scriptures. Wherever you live, do not easily leave it. Keep these three precepts, and you will be saved.”
We’re all looking for a place to fit. We’re all looking for a meta-narrative, a grand story that helps explain our lives, makes sense of our existence, and provides a source of meaning to our days. Often, we don’t need to travel to discover that story. I think that’s why St. Antony tells us that, if we find that place, we should not easily leave it.

I was still lost in these thoughts, when Joe the care giver’s two young daughters arrived home from school and went running down the hallway outside of Jake’s door fighting about something. I said a short benediction for Jake and bade him Godspeed.

As I pulled out of the driveway, I noticed in the rearview mirror two young Mormon missionaries cresting the hill behind me. Their starched white shirts and black ties were a sharp contrast to the gray overcast November sky behind them. Two more pilgrims searching for a place to fit, I thought. Aren’t we all? Aren’t we all …

 

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Jul 15 2020
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Beliefs, Death, Freedom, Meaning, Peace, Riches, Uncategorized, Wisdom

A Requiem for Rudy

Rudy was a devout atheist who regularly attended the First Presbyterian Church. Actually, that’s where we met, sort of. It’s not that Rudy was looking to convert from atheism—he just loved to sing, and being in the Presbyterian choir gave him a chance to share the beauty of his deep bass voice.

The pastor was out of town one Sunday and had asked me to preach for her. The next day Rudy knocked on my office door at the hospital. After a brief introduction I thought he had come because he had been captivated by the brilliance of my sermon. I soon discovered he was on a mission and this interview was a test.

During the sermon I had mentioned I was a hospice chaplain. Rudy had come to check out my views on advance directives and set me straight if I didn’t see things as he did. His wife had died after years of dementia and the toll it had taken on him and his children (both emotionally and financially) caring for her body long after her mind, memories, and anima had vacated was devastating. After retiring from a distinguished career of psychiatry, Rudy now spent his days working to help people plan for their death. He had experienced firsthand the importance of making your preferences known about the kind of medical care you would and would not want to have done if you could no longer communicate for yourself. I passed Rudy’s test.

He became a dear friend and mentor. Rudy was one of those rare individuals who seemed to have shed his ego and passionately enjoyed his living. Well into his nineties, he continued to learn, to read, to sing, to travel, and to enjoy his beloved partner. Rudy was simply alive while always having his dying in view.

The week before he died he called me to his home and asked if I would give the eulogy at his memorial service. After pointing out the incongruity of praising an atheist in a Presbyterian church—I humbly agreed. He chuckled and handed me a file folder containing what he wanted me to say. The folder contained the distilled data of his richly lived life: his resume, his accolades, and his distinguished achievements. All facts. But what was missing from the folder was the delight he exuded when learning new discoveries about how the brain works, the passion in his eyes as he shared his thoughts about living and dying, the joy on his face while singing in a choir. What was missing from the folder was the way he made you feel special when you were with him.

Early on in our relationship Rudy sent me a letter in which he quoted Johannes Brahms from one of the pieces he loved to sing, “The German Requiem.” Words Rudy’s life made very real –

“Lord, make me to know the measure of my days on earth,
to consider my frailty that I must perish.”

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