Musings Part 7

A Journey Into Self Awareness

In the depths of one of the valleys along the River Dart is Rowbrook Farm where unknown to me I was to take a journey of a rather different sort. About 2 PM on a leaden English Tuesday we went down to Rowbrook Farm, where I expected to have an interesting experience that would be a curiosity because of the previously described eccentricity of the place but nothing more. We left our car high up on the hill with our dog Tip in it, so as to not arouse the ire of twenty dogs down at the farm. We hiked down in a light drizzle to the farm where we penetrated the black and white canine security perimeter. The vast cacophony of dogs was truly daunting. For some unclear reason I never really felt threatened by any of these collie dogs.

After what I had been told of this place, I was quite astounded to see that one exterior wall of the house was white washed and that many hanging baskets of brilliant flowers were enjoying the light rain.

We were invited to enter into a pitch dark passageway, through which we then groped our way into a room at the far end that had a dull leaden light coming in through the windows. What Leon and Sylvia had told me about this place was not overstated. The sense of squalor, decay, sadness, and abandonment were compelling and poignant. The filth and hard-to-described grunge that caked everything is hard to put to words. It is clear that many of the things in this house were once very very fine but their fineness appears to have been repudiated along with the life style from which they came. It is my understanding that the eighty-some year old woman, Jean, living in this house and her deceased husband, Argie, were from high society and decades ago repudiated that life. Argie made it know that when life got too hard he would go out in the barn and end it. He did exactly this some years ago in the manner he had indicated years earlier.

A fellow named Stuart happened onto this place some four years ago and is a titled Viscount, living off an allowance of some sort. Today what I saw of this Viscount was a profane assertive fellow with a pot belly in filthy rags gaining his courage from being stoned. Stuart made it a point to carry on at length about the various paintings, drawings, and etchings that were on the walls, attached thereon mostly by large concretions of rust-colored cob webs. To aid in our viewing he would use his spittle to rub off the soot and webs that had accreted to the fronts of these once beautiful objects. Some of these museum grade paintings are (were) quite grand and would easily finance several of our retirements if restored and auctioned. I was totally mystified how people could knowingly allow such magnificent things to disintegrate, allowing their artistic and financial value to sublimate into sooty flakes of dust.

I found it a bit of an enigma that my friends Leon and Sylvia would hold this place almost in awe. They describe it as where they began their spiritual journey some twenty five years ago. There return here is nearly a sacred experience and I feel a strong need to not cause them any kind of offense during their time here. My opinions or feelings about the place or the people here are essentially irrelevant and certainly less important than Leon and Sylvia getting whatever it is they get when they do come here. It would be so easy to have let my impressions of this place be nothing more than a blanket negative reaction to the filth, disrespect for fine objects, the total abandon of so many of the sensibilities that, when laminated together, give an illusion of civilization.

Yet fairly soon I had my sensibilities and as-yet-uncrystallized criticisms challenged. In this absolute squalor we were offered afternoon tea consisting of an amazingly well-prepared pizza, fresh fruits, and wine. What was remarkable is that the pizza was served on fine bone china plates, spotlessly clean and pre-warmed. The wine was served in delicate lead crystal glasses, again absolutely clean. The white wine was properly chilled. The red wine was properly served at cool room temperature. The fruit was fresh, chilled, and well washed. I was a bit mystified at how this could have been pulled off in this house. Leon assures me that what I saw today in this house represents a hard twenty-four-hour effort at cleaning up and that the house is usually far far worse. I can't even imagine.

My sensibilities were further challenged by the graciousness with which this afternoon tea was served. Jean showed an attentiveness and graciousness that reflected a privileged upper-class upbringing. This graciousness seemed even more of an anachronism coming from a lady that looks like she had just hopped off an east-bound broom. Jean fits the witch stereo-type to the T; wearing layers of disintegrating clothes over leggings and sporting a single eye tooth that frequently dropped out of its socket. It took everything in my being to not stare at this tooth I so desperately wanted to super glue back into place. Jean deftly popped it back into place with her lower lip as she spoke absolutely perfect articulate English, free of any kind of affectation. If only I could speak so well and have as good of a mind as Jean's at my age, let alone eighty-five.

Stuart emerged from his fog to wax surprising passionate about environmental issues. He proved most indignant about the abuses in Indonesia that have resulted in the loss of so much of the magnificent rain forests there. He was amazed that I had been to these forests. It seems a waste to me that these people with good minds, passionate ideas, and some potential material resources have simply dropped out and disengaged from the larger world. It is my understanding that primary contact with the outside consists of Friday runs into Ashburton for supplies by Jean's niece, Marie; perhaps some dealings with vendors and the like as Rowbrook seems to be a working farm. Marie is a powerful woman with a curious admixture of femininity and gentleness mixed in.

After a couple of hours of too much wine we rose to leave. I was quite taken aback in a positive way when both Marie and Jean kissed me good bye. The sincerity in both of them was breath-taking. I realized that inside that toothy old woman is a gracious soul that somehow derailed in a curious way. I don't know what happened to her that caused her to repudiate a privileged life but somehow her graciousness survived intact. Marie obviously has lived a hard life but the spark has survived in her as well. In an instant I learned that even the most tempting of stereo-types and the most horrific circumstances can lead to false conclusions about what a person really is like. I recall the scriptures that remind us that man only sees others from the outside but that He sees what's in the heart. I left that house so grateful that humans aren't yet so very good at mind-reading.

My sensibilities are much further challenged when I realize that this place, be it squalid or not, has functioned as a place of refuge for a number of people over many years, including the two that I count as my best friends. Jean and Argie provided refuge to Leon and Sylvia at a low point in their life when they were essentially destitute after having struck out to follow their dreams years ago. Stuart was himself given a safe place to live out a simple life when he found the world too much to deal with.

Some years ago Argie and Jean were up on the road, that I have now walked several times, when they found a naked man in his car with one end of a hose in his exhaust pipe and the other end routed in through a window. In a matter-of-fact manner, ignoring his nakedness, Jean suggested that he ought to come down to the house for afternoon tea. It turns out this would-be-suicide had no clothes and walked all the way down to the farm with a yellow pages directory as his only covering. He was shown the same gracious hospitality I was shown. He spent the night at the farm. Several years later a letter from him revealed this man to be doing well and he expressed his gratitude for an example of love that gave him some faith in humanity and life, enough to want to live.

This crazy farm challenges most all of my sensibilities. I have always seen it as important to be a good steward of my possessions, to have order, to be connected with the larger world in significant ways. Is it perhaps more important to save a man from suicide than to save a painting from disintegration? To provide safe haven? Refuge? I still can't but ask if it is not possible to do both. What constitutes civilization? Clean dishes? Conversation? Clean floors? Good teeth? Salvaging people? Refraining from criticism? Looking for new possibilities?


Above Ground

The past several years have been witness to the loss of many of my friends and family members to the sentinel of time. Each morning when I get up and get out of bed, I open my shutters onto the priceless gift of another day of life. Even if it's dark, cold, and rainy I marvel at the fact that I'm pain free, functional, and sentient. For years I've offered many people the mantra "When you have your health, you have it all". I have tried hard to live consciously, especially since having a near miss ten years ago with potentially fatal neurologic disease. Somehow I've had the idea that conscious gratitude for health would magically make me less likely to experience an unexpected loss of it.

Today is Monday, a bright sunny one at that. Brilliant cerulean and abnormal temperatures make it seem much more like early October than an early February. At 7:30 AM I arose as usual, and opened the shutters with some expectation of how my day would transpire, anticipating some rewarding encounters in my work. Predictably, I went to the shower at 8 AM, always anticipating the delicious semi-decadent and environmentally irresponsible practice of staying in until the hot water run out. Forty-five minutes later I was naked on an operating table.

In seconds I crossed the vast gulf between equanimity and stark terror. No warning signs, no blinking yellow lights; just a ten-G wrenching across the canyon of an acute medical crisis. Shimmering fear sucked the wind out of me. Sudden and abrupt disruption of my health left detonated craters of apprehension in my soul. In an instant I crossed ten years and am back in that place of learning I found once before.

Extreme trials are the ultimate teachers. In mere seconds we learn what really matters in life; that which is worth embracing and that which we must let go of. As I learned ten years ago, most of what I give my emotional energy and soul to does not really matter a bit in the grand scheme of things. I find those things that cause me daily irritation suddenly matter not. It doesn't matter if the red lights are not synchronized properly. If I get stopped by one I can be certain I'm above ground, not interred two meters below, beyond eternity. It doesn't matter if my hair has mostly fallen out. I still have good eyes and good ears. Some of my parts have now been called into question but most of the important ones seem to be working and it seems the others are still repairable.

When that day comes where I do end up below grade, which it surely will, I won't be lamenting the fact that traffic lights are not synchronized or that I didn't spend more time working. I won't wish I had spent more time pre-occupied with achieving my investment objectives. What I will lament is having not loved enough or given enough to those in my world. Then it will be too late. But for the moment I am above grade and can do those things I know to be right for me to do.


"Come now, you who say, 'Today or tomorrow, we shall go to such and such a city, and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit.' Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears or a little while and then vanishes away. Instead you ought to say, 'If the Lord wills, we shall live and also do this or that.' But as it is you boast in your arrogance; all such boasting is evil. Therefore, to one who knows the right thing to do, and does not do it, to him it is sin."


Oasis

It seems that rail lines often pass through the worst parts of town. It is uncertain to me if railroad barons selected bad parts of town for rights of way because they were cheaper to buy or if railroads themselves contributed to some peculiar disintegration of once attractive American city scapes. Railroads often act like topographic lines on a three-dimensional map of our sociologic terrain, indicating quantum changes in altitude of social hierarchy. People often refer to living on the right or wrong side of the tracks or up on the hill.

Having spent six hours on a train today, I had opportunity to see the back side of small town America across three states; not often a pretty sight. I think Rockwell usually liked to paint frontal views of towns in his depictions of a bucolic America. No doubt, he got a better view from the street than I did from the tracks.

I have often wondered why it is that the poorest parts of many towns have to be corrupted and congested with the discarded slag of American consumerism. It seems one can frequently find veritable mountains of discarded appliances, toys, cars, and furniture competing with ambitious weeds for dominance. I have often wondered if the poor parts of town would be so poor if the poor people in them didn't take such poor care of their appliances, toys, cars, and furniture. A number of bankrupt people I know have untold thousands of dollars invested in the rusting American dream clogging their houses and yards. A minimum wage Wal-Mart cashier I know, living in a disintegrating house, threw out her microwave oven and bought a new one because she didn't want to clean the old one! It now lives its resurrected life in my kitchen, working just fine.

Today, an unknown denizen living in a small anonymous town provided me a compelling example of a higher way; of what can be had with a bit of imagination. In the midst of what was probably one of the largest archives of throw-away culture I saw all day, a small pristine house with a tiny patio next to it caught my fancy. What captured my attention in the brief two seconds I had for viewing this miniaturized mecca, as it flashed by my window, was what wasn't there. The rusting cars, collapsing couches, rotting lumber, broken toys, fallen-in dreams, and crashing hopes surrounding this island of content were held at bay by a vision of vibrant possibility.

On the postage-stamp sized patio were four assorted chairs, freshly painted in bright white, flanking a small table of comparable brightness. Amazingly, within view of that ferrous ocean of oxidized dreams, a large vibrant arrangement of cut flowers dominated that small sanctuary and shouted down the disorder from without. Myriad other pots of spectral wonders shouted out their botanic promise to the legions of unknown pilgrims riding the thin rails of hope just within earshot. Happily, I am one of them. Joining in the expectant chorus was a small emerald patch of perfect lawn.


Pray for things that are not, as though they already were.


Wagner's Pool

I did not have a happy childhood; alcohol, drugs, and tobacco having stolen the imagination and eventually the lives of my parents. One of the rare happy memories of my childhood came from long summer afternoons in Wagner's Pool. For only a quarter I was able to stay in Paradise for hours. The last time I saw Wagner's Pool, the pools had long since sublimated to weed-infested concrete depressions with rotten pool furniture having succumbed to the insults of neglect, vandalism, and time. A rusty fence told me it had been many years since any other youthful dreamers had been to Paradise. Eventually, yet another California freeway was built, obliterating all traces of the Elysian Fields, excepting those buried in the memories of an ever-shrinking group of aging baby-boomers.

I never knew who Wagner was but I know he cared about kids. He kept his three swimming pools filled with sparkling cerulean waters and his snack stand had the most wondrous snacks and treats in it. I don't remember that I ever once got to buy any of those wonders, but I could sure smell Wagner's popcorn. I do remember on those rare occasions when I was able to bum a handful from someone, that it was always so much better when eaten with small wet wrinkled hands smelling of pool chlorine.

I learned to swim in the shallow baby pool in the back of Wagner's place. Those days when I knew I could go down to Wagner's for swimming lessons, the world was as it's supposed to be. I graduated to the middle pool and then eventually got to go into the big pool, even being allowed to jettison myself into free fall from the high dive. For a time, my alcoholic worries were forgotten, submerged in Wagner's healing waters. I often wondered how it was that I ever even made it to them.

Childhood ended, mostly with a whimper. Somehow I survived to go on to college and make my own uncertain way in the world. Today, I was on my way to Alabama by train to visit friends I had not seen in a year or more. While gazing out the window, I was reminded of Wagner's cool blue oasis that had refreshed me in the desert of an alcoholic childhood. There baking in the Georgia countryside on a hot steamy summer day were the ruins of a swimming pool, filled in with rotting patio furniture. The waters had long since evaporated.

It seems to be an unfortunate reality of the universe that "stuff" seems to go bad. Wood rots, iron rusts, rock turns to dust, pets die, neighborhoods deteriorate, water turns into oppressive humidity, and dreams shatter. The laws of thermodynamics tell us with academic precision that such is the natural order of things and to "get a life." Much easier said than done.

For unknown reasons, I am one of those who is cursed with an intuitive sensing nature and is easily dismayed by observations of the thermodynamic nature of the universe and mankind. I experience great pain in my soul when I see a once-dynamic neighborhood in steep decline with once-vibrant shops silenced by muzzles of delaminating plywood. Perhaps most haunting to me is to see a once radiantly beautiful woman now confined to a shriveled up body in the back waters of a nursing home. Even her mind has become scattered as the laws of thermodynamics tell us to expect.

Three thousand years ago Israel was having a rather hard time of its own. There were no Wagner Pools. The minor prophet Joel reported that many fields were ruined, oil supplies had run out, most fruit trees had failed to yield, fire had destroyed most other trees, and all the streams had dried up. As if this was not enough, four kinds of locusts swarmed through this suffering land and scoured and consumed every last remnant of grain and leaf. A locust swarm can completely strip a field in a matter of minutes. Large locust swarms can darken the sky, creating the illusion of night. My alcoholic childhood pales into insignificance. The laws of decay seemed on track.

The image of Joel is one of complete and total desolation and loss. Four swarms of locusts leave absolutely nothing behind. There was nothing left for the future of Israel. Wagner's Pool filled with thorny weeds and that Georgia pool filled with rotting furniture were no different, only on a smaller scale. Nothing was left for the children of the future who lived near those pools and needed a cool refuge from life's desert.

If the Second and Third Laws of Thermodynamics were, indeed the last words, then it might just be better to go out into the desert and die and be done with it. Life would be too bleak to bear. To the great relief of the Israelites three thousand years ago and to one uncertain child three thousand years later, who saw Wagner's Pool filled in with rubble, the last Word reads quite differently than the thermodynamics texts.

"Then I will make up to you for the years that the swarming locust has eaten, the creeping locust, the stripping locust, and the gnawing locust, my great army which I sent among you, and you shall have plenty to eat and be satisfied."

We all know the angst of soul that stems from traumatic loss. We wonder if we will ever get past it. Can we ever recover from vast loss? It seems it's possible. An ancient promise comes to us from the distant past assuring us it is always good to Hope. Whether we are mourning the loss of our youth, safety in our cities, a life-long dream, or a beloved life partner, we can take solace in knowing that one day we will no longer be subject to the laws of thermodynamics.


A Consumer's Theology

With the horrific high school killings in Littleton marring the advent of spring, Americans have stopped their pursuit of consumer living long enough to ask themselves "What's wrong with us and who's to blame for what happened?" What has become evident to this observer is that there is a major shortage of wisdom and understanding about those things that cause a culture and its people to slip into the abyss. The most compelling aspect of the public debate is the seeming lack of rational observation and awareness of the processes that may have contributed to this catastrophic event in a privileged Denver suburb.

There is a schizophrenic duality in the responses of people to this calamity. Gun rights people push through legislation to make concealed weapons the order of the day. Allow people to shoot back, they say. Gun control advocates push to ban all guns and imprison parents whose children do nasty things to others. Child-raising experts have made it impossible for parents to discipline their children without risk of being reported to child abuse agencies and having their children taken away from them.

It has been easy to assume for some years that there is a reservoir of Godly wisdom and knowledge in the conservative Christian segment of the population that would ultimately save the day. I am beginning to wonder if this is really true. It would seem that a religious sub culture that is driven by a prosperity gospel rather than principle is going to come up short on consistent responses to societal challenges. We seem to find schizophrenic responses within single individuals as well as among heterogeneous groups. To wit:

Several of the women working the help desk in the data center present themselves as conservative Christians; keeping an array of study bibles, devotional guides, and Christian music about their desks. Some time ago one of these women once expressed grave offense at my boss making use of the word 'hell' and filed a complaint. One day recently I observed on her desk a shock rocker CD with an 'explicit lyrics' warning on the case. Upon inquiry as to who owned this, the woman so offended at an earlier time by my boss admitted to owning it.

It was with surprise that I was summoned to their shared office to view two pieces of software these women had acquired. One of these programs displayed a fancy-tailed goldfish in a glass bowl. The right side of the screen had icons alternately labeled 'boil', 'freeze', 'jostle', 'electrocute', and 'detonate with land mine'. Clicking on each icon produced a graphic representation of what would happen to a hapless fish subjected to the various experimental conditions. The Nazi doctors have already shown us the effects of such stimuli on humans. The 'land mine' icon resulted in the fish bowl shattering and the computer screen turning blood red with bits of bone, fish meat, and other parts plastered to the screen.

The other program displayed a frog in a ten-speed blender. When clicking on progressively greater speeds the frog expressed increasing concern about his plight and he had progressively more difficulty keeping his feet out of the blender blades. On the highest speed, the blender suddenly turned bright red and all the contents were instantly ejected upward. Bit of bone, entrails, eyeballs, and the like were clearly displayed in the ejecta. After some delay, the eyeballs fell back into view on the counter and ruptured.

I wonder how it is that a Christian woman who has just experienced the violent injury and death of her father can a mere three days after the Littleton massacre be so callous about portrayals of animal torture. More importantly I wonder what it is in me that made these women think I would be amazed by these obscene depictions of animal abuse. Do I give off dual messages at an unconscious level? There is some kind of disconnect operative here that permits going so easily from devotions to virtual land mines.

The logical failure of our thinking and moral framework was made even more compelling a couple of days ago. A radio commercial for Family Christian Stores had as its motto "The More You Spend, The More You Save." Since when does spending more money enable me to save more money? I always thought that one saved more money by spending less. Those that live below their means end up saving more. I can't help but wondering about the disconnect that would enable an ostensibly Christian business to encourage people to maximize their spending, knowing that this would be to their long-term disadvantage.

Recently I was at a friend's house at which time I noticed that she had bought a new and expensive high-performance computer with all the currently available bells and whistles. I also know that she has really done nothing with her other perfectly good computer other than send rudimentary text e-mail and play solitaire card games; both of which her previous computer did rather well. I asked her today what she planned to do with this new computer that her 'old' one could not do. She said she did not know. A retired woman has spent thousands for something she does not know what she is going to do with. It is reported that more than a million perfectly good computers are discarded every month in this country. We as a culture have come to the irrational point of buying something simply because it exists. It doesn't matter if we need it or even know what we are going to do with it.

Consumerism can be so very insane. I saw this last night in a depression support group I was facilitating. A woman insisted she wanted a $100,000 car even if it could be shown a $20,000 car was safer, more reliable, and equally comfortable. American egos are so keyed into having 'stuff' especially stuff considered high status. It is not OK to borrow it or lease it. The key seems to be able to say that one owns it even if it doesn't do anything new or even if we don't know what it will do. Consumerism is so profoundly empty and it explains a lot of the depression I see.

Recently the wire services carried the celebrated story of a 79-year old forklift operator who has given more than a million dollars to various colleges and scholarship funds during a six- year period. He saved more by not spending more and thus was able to give most abundantly. He elected to create a legacy that will last for generations rather than accumulating short-lived consumer rubble for next year's garage sale. He did this despite being black, old, and uneducated as the world counts education. He has more wisdom than most of us.

One measure of insanity is to keep on doing the same thing and expecting a different result. If we want to move beyond the growing problem of school massacres, epidemic divorce, environmental degradation that is putting the whole world at risk, and wide spread discontent, perhaps we out to take to heart the example of an old-fork life operator and move beyond consumption to investment in those things that last for eternity. It just might cure the cultural schizophrenia that has engulfed us.

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of instruction. Fools despise wisdom and instruction. But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in and steal; for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.