PUNISH ME WITH A KISS

Most of us, truly all of us, every human being, are hardwired to do what is right and good and just. It is part of our DNA, children/creatures of our all-loving God that we are. The Old Testament, filled as it is with one law, one regulation after another commanding and demanding what to do and what not to do, nevertheless puts it very simply: when push comes to shove and we ask ourselves what we are to do, we already know the answer. We do not need any law. The answer is already written in our hearts; the words we are to say are already on our lips. We simply have to do and say what is there.

When we say or do otherwise, when we say or do that which we know in our hearts is wrong, when we commit a sin, we know it immediately. In fact, even before we act, we know we will be doing wrong. Sinful and selfish acts are never accidental. They are always intentional, knowingly intentional. No one has to tell us that we have gone against who we are, against who we were created to be. No laws are needed. We know in our hearts and heads even before we act.

Even more, after we have gone against the grain, if you will, after we have done what we knew ahead of time we should not, afterwards there is no running away from or denying the truth. Our conscience will not allow that to happen even as much as we wish it would. What happens next, often almost immediately, is that guilt sets in. We ask ourselves why we were so selfish to act that way, why we were so foolish to say what we should not have said. We feel terrible.

We cannot undo the harm that we have done. We cannot take back the deed or the words. Redress and apology may soften the hurt but won’t make it not to have happened. That only worsens the pain. What we long for, even if we are reluctant to admit it, is some form of punishment. Somehow we seem to believe that if we are punished for our sinfulness, for our selfish and hurtful words and actions, we can be relieved of the guilt and forgiven for our sins.

In fact, the greater the sin, the greater the punishment we seem to desire, not just for our own sins but for those of others. Our civil laws set standards of punishment according to the crime committed. Yet, even after we have paid for our crimes, the punishment did not undo the crime that was the cause for our punishment. The internal punishment that a guilty conscience imposes does not remove the sin.

The truth is that often the harshest punishment another can inflict on us and we can inflict on another seems like no punishment at all. Saint Therese of Lisieux, small-timer sinner that she was, used to pray to God to, as she said, “punish me with a kiss”. The harshest punishment a convicted and admitted criminal receives is to be forgiven by the victim or the victim’s family, to be, as it were, punished with a kiss.

To give or be given that kiss of forgiveness is often the most difficult action for us to bestow on another or for another to bestow on us. It is indeed and in deed a very hard way to learn a lesson but often the only way as well. Pucker up!

IT’S THE DOOR’S FAULT

Ever walk into a room with some purpose in mind, only to completely forget what that purpose was? Turns out, doors themselves are to blame for these strange memory lapses. Psychologists at the University of Notre Dame have discovered that passing through a doorway triggers what's known as an event boundary in the mind, separating one set of thoughts and memories from the next. Your brain files away the thoughts you had in the previous room and prepares a blank slate for the new locale. It's not aging, it's the door! Thank goodness for studies like this.

The above paragraph was sent to me by a close friend. We share the same birth year and the same proclivity to walk into a room and immediately forget why we were entering that room in the first place. When we do that often enough as we are now doing, our first thought is Alzheimer’s or the onset of some type of dementia. To allay my fears I often start going through the multiplication tables just to prove to myself that I am not losing it and that there has to be some other explanation for this sudden loss of memory. Now that I know that it is the door’s fault, I can rest a little easier.

But what about those times when I am in a conversation with my wife while driving down the road or sitting at the kitchen table and a thought comes to mind that I want to share; but by the time it is my turn to speak, I have forgotten just what it was that was so important for me to impart? The car door has been closed for a while and there is no door in the kitchen. Whom do I now blame in order to calm my fears of losing my mind as I am growing older?

Actually I have found an excuse for my forgetfulness: information overload. Because I am so intelligent, because I have read so many books and articles, because I have absorbed so many facts and figures over the years, the computer in my brain is slowing down because it has amassed so much knowledge. I am not a six-year-old whose brain is quite empty and who can learn a new song in five minutes. It takes me five days because my brain is so full. No wonder I forget so quickly sometimes.

Works for me, does that explanation. In fact any explanation for my sometimes forgetfulness works. But no explanation, no matter how farfetched, sets aside the truth that I am growing older and that the end of my life draws closer and closer with every passing breathe and every fading memory and forgotten thought. It’s not dementia that frightens us so much it is death, or certainly the awareness that I am closer to death every day.

Fortunately those forgetful moments, at least in the present, even though they arrive more and more, do not dominant my life. For that I am thankful even as it is embarrassing when I have to admit that I forgot what I wanted to say or why I walked into that room. Perhaps if those moments were more and more frequent, as they are for so many of my contemporaries, I might not be so flippant as I now am. Perhaps I would really be worried and would look for the truth rather than some made-up excuse even if I did not want to know the truth. As they say, ageing is not for the timid or the faint of heart.

UNDER CONSTRUCTION

For as long as I have been alive, or at least for as long as I can remember, and that is a very long time, Route 28 North from New Kensington, where I grew up, to Pittsburgh has been under construction. It still is and, at the present time, massively so. For that matter, so has the Pennsylvania Turnpike. None of this is to complain, except, of course, when I am in a hurry and have to travel one of those roads and am delayed when I come upon one of those “Road Under Construction” signs.

Roads under construction are part of life; but, then, too, so is life itself. Life is a process of construction, of building, repairing, fixing-up. Some would also say that life is also a process of destruction, especially as we grow older and the body wears out and no amount of transplanting and grafting and plastic surgery and Botoxing will stem the tide of  disease, decay and, eventually, death.

Not only is our physical life constantly under some form of construction (destruction, for those of us who feel the pains and limitations of aging), but so is every other part of our life. No one of us comes out of the womb a mature human being – not physically, not mentally, not emotionally, not spiritually. Every part of our life is in constant flux, is constantly changing, as long as we have life and breath in us.

Sometimes, just knowing this truth, or at least in grudgingly acknowledging it, we find some peace of mind. As children there were times when we were angry because we could not do what our older siblings or acquaintances could do simply because they were older and bigger and stronger. But we were assured by our parents that someday we could and would and that knowledge allayed some of our anger and frustration.

Life is always, at any and every age, a work in process, a time of construction even as part of that construction is constriction, the lessening of our abilities to do what we were once able to do but now, because of our age, preventing us from doing so. And while our limitations and debilities constantly remind us that we are not getting any younger, we still have life and an abundant one at that.

Yet, even when we have or had or will have life in abundance, even in those years when we can (or could) go and go and go and never seem to tire, when we questions about health never arise (or arouse), there is (or was) areas of growth, parts of our life still under construction. The older we get, the wiser we become even when our memory begins to fail us.

Even when the latest construction projects on Route 28 and the Turnpike are completed, both will still be under some form of construction forever. That’s the nature of anything material. Ever known a homeowner who was not repairing, upgrading something? The same is true for us human beings. We need to remember that truth whenever we reflect, for instance, on our spiritual lives. Most of us bemoan the truth that we are not as spiritual as we would like to be or know we can be. We have room for growth, for construction. Drive that road carefully, but drive.

THE SEASON OF GIVING

Somewhere in my library I have a copy of Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet. It was a wildly popular book among my generation, the one that grew up theologically and sociologically in the 1960s. Gibran was a Lebanese poet and writer who died at a relatively young age of 48 but is still the third best-selling poet of all time, behind Shakespeare and Lao-Tzu. Back in the day, his poetic piece on marriage was a staple at many a wedding at which I officiated, much to the chagrin of the older clergy with whom I served.

That said, something that Gibran once said resonates with me at this time of the year when almost all churches, ours included, are in the midst of their annual stewardship campaigns (read: getting pledges to fund next year’s hoped-for budget). I quote: “All that you have shall some day be given. Therefore, give now that the season of giving may be yours and not your inheritors.”

As we are often reminded, we can’t take it with us, the “it” being anything and everything. When we die, we leave everything materially and monetarily behind. We leave it to our heirs, whoever they may be. We take nothing with us as we are resurrected to a new and eternal life. We know that, of course, and we really do not need to be reminded of that truth.

We also do not want to be reminded of that truth because such reminders often come as guilt trips, or certainly seem like they are. Well, in truth, they are. We all have more than we need but never have more than we want. Our wants are insatiable even as we convince ourselves that they are not. It is the nature of the beast to always want more, to never believe enough is more than enough.

That truth is compounded by the culture in which we live. We are daily bombarded with advertisements that tell us that we need whatever is being offered for our purchase and consumption. We do not always succumb to such blandishments, but we do so often enough, especially when it comes time for yard sales or downsizing and we realize that we truly have more than enough.

Gibran’s admonition is timeless. It is add-on to what Scripture tells us about giving, that it is indeed more blessed to give than to receive. There is an indescribable joy and blessing in sharing our abundance with those people and institutions and charities that actually have needs that can only be met when those of us who are abundantly blessed personally share in giving from that abundance.

In this time of church stewardship campaigns and season of national Thanksgiving it would be well for us to pause and remind ourselves about just how blessed we are to live in this wonderful country and to be members of this loving congregation. In this season of giving thanks, one of the ways you and I can give thanks is to share some of our financial blessings with our church. Not only should we not leave it to our inheritors to do so in the future, we should not leave it to others among us in our church family to do so in the present.

BABIES

The Election is right around the corner. The country, even the world, is caught up in it.  If you are like me, Tuesday cannot come soon enough. The political ads have consumed us so much so that we don’t want to hear them anymore and, in fact, probably do not. The fact is that whether our candidate wins or loses, life will go on in this great country of ours, as it always has. There will not be riots in the streets by the losers nor will the winners think they have won the lottery. No matter who wins or who loses the wheels of our democratic government will keep on churning. There are still problems to be solved, issues to be resolved, work to be done.

Yes, at the moment we are caught up in the election, almost making it out to be more than it really is as important as it truly is. In a very real way, other events will be taking place this coming Tuesday that outweigh the election and even give all of us reason for hope no matter who wins and who loses. In fact those events take place every single day of the year every time a baby is born.

Marian Wright Edelman, who is president and founder of the Children's Defense Fund, puts it this way: “When God wants an important thing done in this world or a wrong righted, He goes about it in a very singular way. He doesn't release thunderbolts or stir up earthquakes. God simply has a tiny baby born, perhaps of a very humble home, perhaps of a very humble mother. And God puts the idea or purpose into the mother's heart. And she puts it in the baby's mind, and then-God waits.”

She continues, and to the point, “The great events of this world are not battles and elections and earthquakes and thunderbolts. The great events are babies, for each child comes with the message that God is not yet discouraged with humanity but is still expecting good-will to become incarnate in each human life.”

Perhaps because children are born every minute of every day we have become inured to just how important each child is in the grand scheme of things, especially in God’s grand scheme. During this election campaign, in fact, during every election for every office, the candidates tell us how bad things are and how they, if elected, will change things for the better. They are all Prophets of Hope. Yet as Edelman suggests, we do not need elections to remind us that hope never dies. That is the message each new born child brings into this world.

None of this is to minimalize the importance of the elections taking place this coming Tuesday and the responsibility each one of us has both as a citizen and as a Christian to vote. It is truly a moral obligation as much, if not more so, than a civil responsibility. But we also must not lose sight of the greater and concomitant responsibility we have to those babies born that day but every day.

Political rhetoric aside, babies are the real beacons and heralds of hope but we, you and I, not politicians, are the ones who must help them fulfill and bring to fruition the hopes and dreams instilled in them by God from birth.