It has been almost 20 days since I last posted and my mind has been turning over several issues. I've started writing this blog several times and then deleted it. Even when I'm sitting at home trying to unwind my mind is still working on some issue. If it isn't how to make some piece of scenery work, its on how to develop a better funding base or how to make meaning out of life in the world. One of adult performers at the theatre told me she was reading Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus. She made the comment that sometimes she complains about a problem but doesn't want her husband to try to fix it. Is it genetic that men want to fix things? I can't help but try to find a solution to the problems that are placed in front of me. Part of my engineering brain wants to find a workable technical solution. Part of my creative brain is looking for a conceptual idea that will make a breakthrough. As a director/designer/and artist I look for ways to translate words, ideas and thoughts into physical realities that produce and emotional response and physical response from others.
I have finished up my last class in the final year in my Education for Ministry course. This course was originally designed for people to be able to move into ministry without having to go away to seminary. The creators of the course soon discovered that there was a large group of people who were ready for this educational experience but didn't want to go into the priesthood. They had reached a point in life that they wanted to find answers to the meaning of life and the meaning of death. I have to laugh as I write this because I don't consider myself a "religious" guy. I'm always worried that if I write about faith or about religion people will think I'm some kind of zealot who is out to convert the world. Nothing could be farther from the truth. I've always been the kind of doubting skeptic at the side who says "if this is the truth then prove it to me". "Why does any of this have any relevance in my life?" Last night I spent a couple of hours working on what I will say on June 7th when I've been asked to give the sermon about EFM. That is the Sunday right after Wizard of Oz opens. It is the final month of the current fiscal year for the theatre and we wrap up the 45th Anniversary Season. All these things keep moving back and forth in my head as I try to write my thoughts.
Isaiah's scripture passage of "Here am I; send me" is one that will be read on June 7th. I've been thinking about that passage. I think that this applies to so many things in life. The other phrase that comes to mind is "I can't do this." As I think about several of the great kids that have grown up at the theatre who are graduating from High School this year I want to pass on something to them. To give them something to help them on their path. Here is a tiny piece of wisdom I have learned. "Here am I; send me."
Several points in my life I have been at a crossroads. I've been called to do something that was not easy. That meant sacrifice and accepting a challenge that made me risk failure. I've been forced to make life changes when I found myself having to make a choice that was in conflict with my core beliefs. I've said to myself "how did I ever end up here?" For me I've found that I had to walk away from the easier choice towards a more difficult and sometimes a much more painful path in order to move forward. "I have to do this no matter how much it hurts even though part of me is yelling loudly "I can't do this" and dragging my feet. I once got a compliment from a friend that has stayed with me for many years. They told me how much they admired me because I was willing to go to the difficult places in life that they couldn't.
Maybe it is that stubborn streak in me that says I will not be defeated by this challenge. Maybe it is part of me that believes in integrity and says I can't change what I believe in even though it is going to cost me. The sign on my cabinet behind my desk says "having integrity is always painful. It is always much harder to act with integrity." I always thought that the phrase "Here am I; send me" was said in a loud clear voice like a soldier going off to war. A person filled with the spirit of God. now I believe that more often it is said just a few moments after "I just can't do that." "Here am I; send me" is said with a quiet voice, a resigned voice that you cannot turn away from what you are called to do, it is said from that point in the core of who you are when you know you can't walk away from difficult decision. It is said with a knowledge that this is going to be painful and not going to be easy, it is said with the courage of faith that somehow this is the right thing to do and you put yourself in God's hands and hope that the strength to do it will come, it is said with the hope that you will survive the ordeal. When God asked Moses to go to Egypt he begged God to send someone else. Throughout the story of God those who history has labeled giants of faith have been called and have all said, "I' can't do this." Then after a sigh said, "Here am I; send me".
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Thursday, May 7, 2009
universal versus unique
I had a discussion with a friend yesterday. A topic in our conversation came up and I told my friend that I had just finished reading a chapter on the poet John Donne. Some of the things he wrote about in his suffering are lessons for me in how I deal pain or suffering. My friend told me that it was impossible to apply somebody elses lessons learned to another person's life. They said because each life is so unique it doesn't work. I agree that each person is a unique individual and you can't apply a one size fits all solution to life's problems. However, I have found over the years that we are all so much more alike than we are different. We each will deal with pain and suffering in some form during our lives. We each seek love and compassion from others. We each want to know that our life has meaning and that the world is not just full of arbitrary moments without a greater meaning.
In the conversations I've had with my friend, they always use the response that there is no universal truth. That each person's truth is just an opinion that isn't any more valid than anyone elses. That no religious or philosophical truth is any more important than any other. Somehow I can't believe that. My idea of the truth may be different from someone elses, that is true. But my striving to find the truth is universal. My friend Nick has a plumb bob that he had hanging in his office for many years. It always hangs straight up and down. It is used by builders to find a straight up and down line. He would always say that we all stand at different points looking at that line and measure our truths against that line. That line represents God. Another person who is a modern writer wrote a book about the universal theory of everything. He says that we each come from four quadrants and that universal truth will hold up from all perspectives. Like a scientific theory it may be true that a+b+c=d when looked at from one point. However if b+a+c does not equal d from a different point then it is not a universal truth. Each faith tradition has found a path that seems to be true for its followers- some feel more connected by becoming more involved in physical activities, others feel more connected by separation from the everyday world and meditation. Which is more true? Some feel that what is morally right from a religious perspective should be the legal law. Others feel that laws should not be based on religious morality. (The Taliban and the Inquisition come to mind.) Some want to return to the values and traditions of 50 years ago and fight against a world that doesn't want to return.
The only answer that seems to make sense to me in this complicated, globally connected, multi-tasking world of ours is to guide our lives by certain universal principles learned from many others who have gone before us.
These are the lessons that I've learned from others that I try to apply to my life:
We don't hold the complete truth- we only know the truth from our vantage point in time and relative to others.
We all are striving towards something. It may be striving to be loved, to find God, to make a difference in the world, and to create something lasting, etc... For me it is better to believe in some universal redeeming truth than to believe there isn't one. Ultimately the only thing we create that is lasting is how we deal with others. Each life touches another, who will then touch another and on forever. We are connected all the way back through time and all the way forward into the future. This is how I can understand the faith idea of being present at the beginning of time, now and at the end of time. Each life is connected to another.
What I do today changes the world. I'm reminded of all the things that my mother and father did on a daily basis when I was a child. Childhood friends of mine will tell me stories about how my parents did something that they remember from their childhood. My parents and community formed who I am. They were formed by their parents and those they met growing up, and so on. We will each treat others and ourselves badly at some time during our lives. We will each feel pain and loss. But there is something that calls us to become more than a collection of life experiences. As Mother's Day approaches this weekend I think about the lifetime of giving to her family, her church, and her community that shaped my mother's life. She instilled in me by her daily actions that life is precious and has meaning. Her life proves to me that there are universal truths.
Yes it may only be my universal truth, but it seems to pass the plumb bob test and the universal theory test.
In the conversations I've had with my friend, they always use the response that there is no universal truth. That each person's truth is just an opinion that isn't any more valid than anyone elses. That no religious or philosophical truth is any more important than any other. Somehow I can't believe that. My idea of the truth may be different from someone elses, that is true. But my striving to find the truth is universal. My friend Nick has a plumb bob that he had hanging in his office for many years. It always hangs straight up and down. It is used by builders to find a straight up and down line. He would always say that we all stand at different points looking at that line and measure our truths against that line. That line represents God. Another person who is a modern writer wrote a book about the universal theory of everything. He says that we each come from four quadrants and that universal truth will hold up from all perspectives. Like a scientific theory it may be true that a+b+c=d when looked at from one point. However if b+a+c does not equal d from a different point then it is not a universal truth. Each faith tradition has found a path that seems to be true for its followers- some feel more connected by becoming more involved in physical activities, others feel more connected by separation from the everyday world and meditation. Which is more true? Some feel that what is morally right from a religious perspective should be the legal law. Others feel that laws should not be based on religious morality. (The Taliban and the Inquisition come to mind.) Some want to return to the values and traditions of 50 years ago and fight against a world that doesn't want to return.
The only answer that seems to make sense to me in this complicated, globally connected, multi-tasking world of ours is to guide our lives by certain universal principles learned from many others who have gone before us.
These are the lessons that I've learned from others that I try to apply to my life:
We don't hold the complete truth- we only know the truth from our vantage point in time and relative to others.
We all are striving towards something. It may be striving to be loved, to find God, to make a difference in the world, and to create something lasting, etc... For me it is better to believe in some universal redeeming truth than to believe there isn't one. Ultimately the only thing we create that is lasting is how we deal with others. Each life touches another, who will then touch another and on forever. We are connected all the way back through time and all the way forward into the future. This is how I can understand the faith idea of being present at the beginning of time, now and at the end of time. Each life is connected to another.
What I do today changes the world. I'm reminded of all the things that my mother and father did on a daily basis when I was a child. Childhood friends of mine will tell me stories about how my parents did something that they remember from their childhood. My parents and community formed who I am. They were formed by their parents and those they met growing up, and so on. We will each treat others and ourselves badly at some time during our lives. We will each feel pain and loss. But there is something that calls us to become more than a collection of life experiences. As Mother's Day approaches this weekend I think about the lifetime of giving to her family, her church, and her community that shaped my mother's life. She instilled in me by her daily actions that life is precious and has meaning. Her life proves to me that there are universal truths.
Yes it may only be my universal truth, but it seems to pass the plumb bob test and the universal theory test.
Saturday, May 2, 2009
Simple life
I just finished reading a chapter about Gandhi in a book by Phillip Yancey. The principles he lived by are an incredible example to the world of a man who had "soul" power. In several books about him it is documented that he began as a lawyer with the fancy suit and the top hat and tried to become part of the successful society. His journey led him down path in which he tried to teach simplicity as a core virtue. The amazing thing is that he never asked anyone to do anything that he personally was not willing to do. There is a story about a woman who came to Gandhi to ask him to tell her young son to stop eating sugar. He told her to come back in a week. When she came back Gandhi simply told the boy to stop eating sugar. The mother asked Gandhi why she had to wait a week for him to tell her son that. He told her that when she first asked, he was still eating sugar.
I can understand more clearly the principle of giving up the world in order to gain your life. The more things that we have the more that we are owned by them and the more we lose our own sense of who we are. I've witnessed it happening every time a child grows up and we tell them to go out and see the world and to do things with their life before they get tied down to a house payment, insurance, car payments, utilities, etc....
The man who has everything, is a servant to his possessions. The man who has little hasn't much to lose. It is advice that I think is very relevant to the our current time. As I think about all the things I have to support in order to do my job and provide for my family. Our way of life depends on us continually buying more stuff, going to more events and staying connected to the world in more ways. In watching Tilghman's Fiddler on the Roof last night, one of Tevye's lines says "if being rich is a sin, may God smite with it and may I never recover" swirled around the back of my brain all night. I dream of winning the lottery and doing great things with the money. Supporting my family so they can live in comfort, giving to charities that mean a great deal to me, helping my friends and community with the money. I dream of a world in which I have everything that I want. But when hard times come and I have to give up the things that I've accumulated or taken for granted, I feel the loss even deeper.
Gandhi cut his weekly expenses in half. Then he cut them in half again and again. Finally all he had was a loin cloth, his glasses, a watch, and a spoon which had broken that he mended with a string. The man wasn't a "saint" when it came to family and friends and the way he treated them. But his simple life, which changed the second most populous country on the face of the earth, calls to mind another man who died with only a robe to his name nailed on a cross whose message still resonates today. I'm not trying to say that Gandhi is a reincarnation of Jesus. But both men practiced a simple life devoted to non violence and the dignity of all.
As I struggle to budget for my personal life I think of the cell phones, Internet, cable TV, newspapers, magazines, house payments, utilities, insurance payments for life-health-property, retirement funds, college funds, donations to the charities, in short all those things that I work to pay for. Our food comes from a microwave ready at a moments notice, or from a drive through window because we are working to pay for the things that we have and don't have time to cook anymore. My daughter's idea of cooking is to put something in the microwave and punch in the time for cooking.
For the theatre I think of online ticketing, credit card acceptance, glossy programs, bigger sets, more lavish costumes and lights, more musicals with bigger royalties which require more marketing which require more tickets sold which requires more staff and support, etc...
I think I'll go back and reread the chapter on Gandhi again. The lessons of his life can be as valuable to me today as they were to his nation 50 years ago.
I can understand more clearly the principle of giving up the world in order to gain your life. The more things that we have the more that we are owned by them and the more we lose our own sense of who we are. I've witnessed it happening every time a child grows up and we tell them to go out and see the world and to do things with their life before they get tied down to a house payment, insurance, car payments, utilities, etc....
The man who has everything, is a servant to his possessions. The man who has little hasn't much to lose. It is advice that I think is very relevant to the our current time. As I think about all the things I have to support in order to do my job and provide for my family. Our way of life depends on us continually buying more stuff, going to more events and staying connected to the world in more ways. In watching Tilghman's Fiddler on the Roof last night, one of Tevye's lines says "if being rich is a sin, may God smite with it and may I never recover" swirled around the back of my brain all night. I dream of winning the lottery and doing great things with the money. Supporting my family so they can live in comfort, giving to charities that mean a great deal to me, helping my friends and community with the money. I dream of a world in which I have everything that I want. But when hard times come and I have to give up the things that I've accumulated or taken for granted, I feel the loss even deeper.
Gandhi cut his weekly expenses in half. Then he cut them in half again and again. Finally all he had was a loin cloth, his glasses, a watch, and a spoon which had broken that he mended with a string. The man wasn't a "saint" when it came to family and friends and the way he treated them. But his simple life, which changed the second most populous country on the face of the earth, calls to mind another man who died with only a robe to his name nailed on a cross whose message still resonates today. I'm not trying to say that Gandhi is a reincarnation of Jesus. But both men practiced a simple life devoted to non violence and the dignity of all.
As I struggle to budget for my personal life I think of the cell phones, Internet, cable TV, newspapers, magazines, house payments, utilities, insurance payments for life-health-property, retirement funds, college funds, donations to the charities, in short all those things that I work to pay for. Our food comes from a microwave ready at a moments notice, or from a drive through window because we are working to pay for the things that we have and don't have time to cook anymore. My daughter's idea of cooking is to put something in the microwave and punch in the time for cooking.
For the theatre I think of online ticketing, credit card acceptance, glossy programs, bigger sets, more lavish costumes and lights, more musicals with bigger royalties which require more marketing which require more tickets sold which requires more staff and support, etc...
I think I'll go back and reread the chapter on Gandhi again. The lessons of his life can be as valuable to me today as they were to his nation 50 years ago.
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