Musings Part 1

Below Grade

At one time I lived in Chicago for some six years. Each day I walked about eight blocks from the subway station to my laboratory in a high-rise research tower. The short journey on foot was made most interesting for about eighteen months by the fact my route took me past the construction site of what was to become the tallest reinforced-concrete building in the world. For many months it seemed armies of construction workers were building in the wrong direction, if their goal was to build a structure reaching to the clouds. For months the site was nothing but a progressively deeper pit which was warmed by the sun only at the height of mid-day. In mid-winter the depths of that abyss remained in permanent frigid shadow. It seemed these workers were going to a vast amount of trouble and expense to build something that did not add any height to the structure and would be quite unseen in the finished spire.

One day I observed that there seemed to be a turning point at the site. Suddenly, a rather gangly set of steel reinforcing rods began to emerge from that vast chasm in the earth. Eventually, those ferrous towers began to pierce the low-lying cloud often shrouding the shores of Lake Michigan. With time, all those iron rods were well hidden inside footings, caissons, piles, columns. A prickly crown of plywood and steel forms slowly inched its way towards Heaven. About once every week to ten days another concrete floor was added about eleven feet above the previous one. In the end, more than seventy-five floors rose nearly nine hundred feet above street level.

In the past twenty-three years that tower has been buffeted many times by hundred-mile-an-hour gale force winds, shaken by myriad unnoticed earth tremors, struck by lightning hundreds of times, and punished by the unrelenting cycles of searing heat of summer and brittle cold of midwestern winter. Yet, today that concrete and glass tower continues to safely harbor luxurious homes in the sky and a virtual hanging garden of Babylon in a seven-level atrium lobby, all because more than two decades ago those many arduous months were spent in preparation, doing un-glamorous unseen work below ground.

I recall that work went on day and night, year round during the construction of that vast monolith. At $200 million and counting, one does not wait for a nice day to work. Its builders knew intimately what the long-term challenges would be. Iron walkers balancing on an eight-inch beam a fifth of a mile up knew intimately the potential hazards of strong winds in view of the unrelenting pull of gravity. Cement finishers understood the power of sub-zero temperatures to destroy concrete. Fabricators knew the power of intense sun to warp and distort finely crafted, close fitting structural elements. Glaziers discovered the potency of gales to knock out glass walls and send deadly shards raining down.

Building a successful life of faith is much like the erection of a modern skyscraper. It takes a long time, often has a high price attached to it, requires building a solid foundation, and demands a willingness to persevere in adverse conditions. For a long time, the life builder can expect to see few visible results above grade.

We are promised that days will come in which the winds of life will howl, the rains will lash, and our very foundations will be challenged. Gentle May days are forgotten. Death, divorce, illness, unemployment, and financial failures are part of life's recipe. Hearing your boss say "We don't need you any longer" can make one feel exactly like an iron walker, seventy floors up, who walked eight inches too far to one side or the other. Anyone who has been told by a physician "I'm sorry, there's nothing we can do" instantly knows what his foundation is made of.

If we have taken the time in decades past to build our spiritual foundations on bedrock, we need not fear. If we instead cut costs and failed to dig deeply enough, building quickly on shifting sand, seeking short term results, we can expect a calamitous failure of our faith. I once heard a physician tell me horrendous words of doom. I found out the hard way that sand is good for little more than sandboxes. I discovered that I was on the wind-swept end of an I-beam looking down into a vast abyss, without benefit of a safety line.

Yet, we are told the very adversities of life can work to our benefit, actually enabling us to retrofit a solid foundation under our lives. In the New Testament, we find a short letter James wrote to his brethren promising them that if they persevered under the hardships of life they would receive the Crown of Life, not a man-made one of splintered plywood and rusted pipes. He further promised them that by living a life of faith in the difficult times, they would be lacking in nothing. St. Paul cited the example of Abraham who, by faith, knew to be "looking for the city which has foundations, whose architect and builder is God."

The winds of adversity blow for but a season, if we but have faith. The Crown of Life includes a deed to a home far above the clouds where we no longer need fear the winds of adversity.

"Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. For by it the men of old gained approval. By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible."


End of the Road

Have you ever gotten caught in a massive traffic jam at an unusual time of day and had curiosity nearly kill you as to what calamity had occurred beyond the horizon? As to what it was that was costing you time away from ESPN or Mystery theater?

When returning home this summer from an inspiring week-long series of meetings on personal empowerment at Radford University, exactly this occurred for me. It was a fine cerulean Saturday afternoon, unusually cool and refreshing for a August day in the deep South. I was flying with the breeze. Suddenly, the emerald Shennandoah world ground to a halt. A shimmering wave of red brake lights disrupted my revere. I came to an immediate stop and for thirty minutes wondered what could have disrupted such a splendid day.

A sobering answer soon presented itself to me. A large motor home and a car had intersected in Einstein's space-time continuum at exactly the wrong time and space. The quantum result was a spectacular fiery immolation of both, leaving only smoldering burnt ruins and having turned the future dreams of several travellers to ashen death. For them, the emerald wonders of the Shennandoah were no more. With ample discretion of spirit, I pressed the accelerator when officials advised it was permissible to continue my journey towards my aureate future.

I completed the journey home in safety. In fact, I have been granted opportunities to continue my learning on further journeys. On Friday I was walking through the large cemetery near the Queen Elizabeth Hospitals in Halifax, Nova Scotia. It's one of those grand old cemeteries with a vast forest of granite and marble obelisks and spires in myriad shades of gray, white, and pink. I couldn't but help wondering what all of those thousands of silent people now residing there would tell me about their lives and motivations, if by some miraculous means, they could suddenly do so. Would they tell me the same things the helpless people in the Virginia motor home might have said just a bit earlier on that last Saturday?

In the center of that vast Halifax cemetery is a view to the south east that gives clear vision of a very busy boulevard. As I stood among those silent sentinels of stone, it suddenly occurred to me that all roads don't lead to Sears; rather, they all lead here to this silent stone forest, or others just like it. Would we make different choices in charting our life courses, in choosing our itineraries, our goals, if we really knew where all roads lead? It's not likely those home-bound evening commuters were thinking of the cemetery or what it represents. Most likely, their thoughts were focused on traffic signals and what was for dinner.

Today, one of the most glamorous ever of the world's women, one who had it all, joined the silent ranks of those forever consigned to the cold granite forest. She will forever remain in a frigid granite crypt, in a small lonely church, never again seeing the autumn sun of her beloved Wales, never experiencing the joys of her sons growing into their own. A mere week before, dancing with the ultra rich in the City of Lights, all possibilities before her, profound darkness descended on Princess Diana. In a moment, which will be the most documented speck of time in decades, Diana's world was irrevocably shattered. She died at the hands of her out-of-control drunk driver who slammed her Mercedes limousine into eternity. Would she have made different choices in life if she had but known her future? We can only conjecture.

Another of the most famous of the world's women also journeyed into the granite forest this week. Her passing was eclipsed by the passing of the glamorous princess and none of the tabloids paid the paparazzi to capture her moment of departure. Mother Theresa quietly left this world in far better condition that she found it when she arrived eighty-seven years before. Her life of selfless service was an inspiration without peer and her award of the Nobel Peace Prize is one of the great satisfactions for the Stockholm prize committee. I suspect Mother Theresa died without regrets. She probably would have done nothing different with her life, if the facts be known.

While walking in the Halifax cemetery, leaden clouds parted to reveal a brilliant late afternoon sun in the northwest, far beyond that marble and granite forest. In a moment, I realized that all our roads in life do lead to this cold stone grove, yet there is a single road leading out of the forest on the far side; a Road of Hope, promising more than a frigid crypt for those that wish to embrace it, a Road paved by the ultimate Sacrifice, one that Mother Theresa understood better than most.

Christian tradition teaches that when Jesus returns to Earth for the Second Coming he will appear at the Eastern Gate of the old walled city of Jerusalem. Just east of the walled city and this gate is a very large cemetery, much larger and older than the Halifax burial ground. In late afternoon, standing in this ancient ossuary, one sees the sun in exactly the same orientation as one does standing here in the Halifax cemetery. Perhaps it is not an Einsteinian accident that if we look with the right kind of Light, we will be able to see the Son on the far side of the granite spires, with outstretched hands, guiding us to an unseen narrow Road, beyond death, paved with transparent gold.

The mere pavement of this slender Way is beyond purchase with even the vast riches of Royalty, yet a free gift to those who will simply receive it.


Cleaning

Today I had one of those relatively rare opportunities to be under bright lights and be the complete center of attention. I did not like it at all. No, those bright orbs were not glowing Kleig lights hanging over a magical stage set in the community theater where I often work, rather they were harsh bright white operating room lights in a dental operatory. Every six months I go and actually pay someone to do something to me that I find really quite unpleasant; allowing someone who is almost a complete stranger to put me in a position of nearly complete vulnerability.

Sherry 'invites' me to sit in the reclining chair in her windowless cell and using hands-free foot controls, she tilts me head down. Having then turned on several power supplies, the hum of Sherry's ominous machines reminds me that she is in a position to cause me true pain, if she elected to do so. I have to trust that she has my well-being at heart, even if it hurts in the near term. I have to exercise faith. I open up.

Using some new-fangled electrical cavitator, she proceeds to explore the depths of every root in my head. I feel like I have stuck my tongue into an electrical socket and started sucking out the electricity in it. And I pay for the privilege of doing this? Sherry insists electrocution really does produce a better and faster cleaning job than the old style ultrasonic microwave cleaning I have had in the past. I think the operative word here is 'faster', not 'better'. It allows more victims to pass through her chamber of horrors in a given period of time.

Finally, this is over and she takes very sharp, very pointy dagger-like things and picks up with them where my electrocution left off. I have no uncertainty as to the fact that my supra-alveolar nerves are in truly excellent condition and able to inform me of even the slightest of insults with those stainless steel and titanium weapons. At last, this punishment passes and I think purgatory is nearly over for another six months.

Alas, I have yet to be sand blasted. Another one of Sherry's humming machines has the ability to fire glass micro beads embedded in a jet of cold water into my head and provide me with yet another opportunity for me to use up some more neurotransmitters. Fortunately, Sherry got a new chair with arms with her new torture equipment. I can hang on with white knuckles. Finally, at last, a quick floss. I'm done. I'm declared clean. Once again, time moves forward.

Actually, I am grateful for the opportunity to live in a time and place where I can get proper dental care; expecting that I will be able to keep all of my teeth well into old age. My father was not so fortunate, and he had lost all his teeth by the time he was thirty. In my field hospital work in the Third World we often saw the tragic consequences of poor dental hygiene; occasionally putting beautiful young women to sleep and pulling out a mouthful of rotting stubs so as to spare them a catastrophic septicemia that could easily kill them.

There is another kind of hygiene that is far more essential to our well-being, that of the soul. In the scheme of things we humans seem to get into some pretty deep stuff and fairly often at that. We so easily contaminate our souls with the likes of "immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions,, factions, envyings, drunkenness, carousings, and things like these." We are told "that those who practice such things shall not inherit the Kingdom of God." I understand Heaven is supposed to be a really clean place and that people can't go there if they are soiled with the likes of this stuff. Halitosis of the soul just doesn't play well there.

Repentance is more than a bit like going to the dentist or the hygienist. First we have to admit we have a need and are soiled. I don't get my teeth cleaned unless they need to be cleaned and I don't get them cleaned unless I first acknowledge they are crusted up with plaque and other rock-like concretions. In repentance, I first acknowledge that my soul has concretions all over it and is in need of ultrasonic forgiveness. It is rather unpleasant to review our failings, weaknesses, and contradictions. This can be overwhelming. But it is a necessary step in the soul-cleansing process which will ultimately declare "It is finished!"

Repentance is a turning about, a going back in a different direction. I have to turn around and get in the chair for an hour to get my teeth cleaned. But in the case of soul cleansing, it is a bit easier on our part. Jesus turned around and was nailed down on two crossed pieces of splintery wood for three hours and from there was able to say on our behalf "It is finished!" For certain, Roman spikes are a whole lot harder to take than Sherry's electric cavitators.

One day we will all be in a position of complete spiritual vulnerability. For we shall "all stand before the judgement seat of God." It is written "that at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow, of those who are in heaven, and on earth, and under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." Wouldn't we rather do this as Children of God who can confidently take our places in the Kingdom of God, knowing we have been through the ultimate cleaning?


does
dies

The difference is minuscule; one vowel for another. An accidental typo on a standard key board. But, what totally different meanings. To do. To die. A single mistrike and one dies instead of does. Does the universe do the same thing to us; giving us death instead of the opportunity to do, to live?

One hears of people who are killed by the most unlikely events. A teenage girl just beginning to live her dreams died when she sat down in a hot tub and the suction of the return drain held her to the bottom and she could not get back to the surface for air. No one could figure out how to turn off the pumps that held her down. The assistant fire chief here in my city was electrocuted a few weeks ago when a water heater he was repairing in his basement suddenly released it water and shorted him to a portable work light. A mother who recently left Texas for a fresh start in Florida was just found murdered with her twenty-month old quadruplets crawling about in her blood.

Last week a construction worker in North Carolina fell off a roof and dropped thirty feet, only to be impaled on a two by four sticking straight up from the ground. The board went entirely through his mid section. He survived to tell about it and is expected to make a full recovery. Many years ago a stewardess fell 35,000 from a disintegrating Russian jet liner and survived by landing on a steep mountain slope covered with deep snow. An American man has been struck by lightning some six times and is still living to tell about it.

These stories are haunting for their impossibility, for their unlikeliness. People die who it seems shouldn't be dying. Others beat absolutely impossible odds. One might almost get a sense that the outcomes are rigged in advance. Life has some truly tortuous twists and turns to it, sometimes ending in premature death, other times ending in stupendous miracles.

If we are to believe that the universe is nothing but the decay products of a random big bang, life could be truly frightening. Indeed, one could easily become driven by fear of a misstep, a mistrike; of being cast into free fall without a snow bank to ease the hard landing. A secular concept of the universe views everything as a big crap shoot, a stochastic process where 'stuff' just happens, some of it good, some of it bad. There is little comfort to those of us trying to hit on the 'o' instead of the 'i'.

Albert Camus won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1958. Why? In his visceral, often haunting stories, Camus had captured a vision of the angst that had begun settling heavily on the soul of European man in the 1930s and 1940s. Europeans had just been through the horrors of The Great War and then the deprivations of the Great Depression. Then the atrocities of the Second World War shattered the soul of Europe. A crisis of meaning had befallen much of Europe. The political and financial worlds had ruptured and there was nothing to fill the void.

For most of human history, mankind had a theological interpretation of his world. Personal tragedies, miracles, natural disasters, life, and death were nearly always re-interpreted as acts of an array of capricious and sometimes benevolent gods. Even if gods were capricious, humanity felt it possible to appease these gods in a variety of ways. At least there was a psychological relief valve in place. In much of the Western world, these events were often viewed as the overt or covert acts of a single benevolent God who had our best interests at heart.

In the mid 19th century Charles Darwin developed his theories of natural selection and evolution. About the same time in some of the leading seminaries of western Europe, a School of Higher Criticism developed which generated massive suspicion about the reliability of the Christian scriptures. A massive paradigm shift occurred in the natural sciences while at the same time, erosion of theological foundations was beginning to take place. Prior to this time, any variance between scriptures and science was viewed as resulting from a defect in the experimental methods of science rather than a failing of scriptures. With the growing erosion of confidence in scriptures, variance between science and scripture came to be viewed as a failure of the religious mythological documents rather than any flaw in experimental design.

In the early 20th century Albert Einstein came up with his General Theory of Relativity. It was not very long before the scientific community was experimenting with atomic weapons and Hitler was exterminating God's chosen people. The explosion of theories and experimental data in quantum mechanics has only reinforced a secular view of a godless universe that is little more than a cosmic crap shoot. Complexity science and chaos theory do suggest that the universe, or parts of it, can be blindly self-organizing and give rise to stuff like life on earth. This is not much consolation to man in search for his soul and ultimate meaning. Camus had no shortage of material to write about.

Anxiety, panic attacks, depression, fear, and meaninglessness seem to be endemic and of epidemic proportions throughout much of the Western World. It would seem that science in its grandiose quest for the Grand Unified Theory has not helped man find his soul or the meaning to life.

Does science explain why some people die and some people live? Sure. Some win. Some lose. It's all probability they say. This writer suggests otherwise. I have been spared death nine times that I know about and have far exceeded the scientific probabilities of survival. Science cannot explain how I survived a 2,000 year flood in the French Alps AND the all-time worst hotel fire disaster AND being hit by lightning while in a plane AND three cars being totalled AND a diagnosis of fatal disease by a neurologist AND other incidents involving fighter planes, rifles, tractor-trailer rigs, and lethal infections.

Archeological research during the past forty years is beginning to create a re-emergence of respect for Christian scriptures and the wisdom contained in them. In the past few weeks, several highly significant archeological finds have contributed to an ever increasing body of evidence, suggesting the scriptures might be just what they claim to be; a message, from a Creator who is outside the constraints of the Big Bang, with assurance that the outcomes of life are not determined by the roll of cosmic dice.

In the book of Ecclesiastes, we are told there is a time and a season for everything; a time to give birth, a time to die, a time to plant, a time to uproot what is planted, a time to tear down, a time to build up, a time for war, a time for peace. The Gospel of John tells us that there is an appointed time in which "an hour is coming in which all who are in the tombs shall hear His voice, and shall come forth: those who did the good deeds, to a resurrection of life."

Physicists describe the creation of the universe as little more that a stellar accident on the carpet of the cosmos. With the certainty of His eternal promises, I can transcend the uncertain fear of getting dealt a bad hand by the quantum universe. I can rest in the greater assurance that before the foundations of time He was and I will be.