A SIX-YEAR-OLD EIGHTY+-YEAR-OLD

It is often said that as people grow older and their memories fade and they spend more time talking about and remembering the past that they are entering their second childhood. Perhaps the real truth is that it is better to remember a sanitized version of the past where the “good old days” were really good because the bad has been forgotten than it is to think that the rest of one’s life may be filled with severe limitations on one’s ability to do much of anything except exist.

And yet there is much to be said about a second childhood. When I reflect on my own life, something that I do not do often enough, I do wish there was more of the six-year-old in this eighty+-year-old body and mind. No, I do not want to go back to those days nor do I want to have the body of someone much younger, say a twenty-year-old. I am as old as I am because I have been blessed with good health. And I am thankful, especially when I see some of my contemporaries needing bottles of pills to stay active and alive and whose bodily aches and pains prevent them from doing much of anything.

That being said, it is so easy as we grow older to take life for granted. One day follows the next and not much changes. We have seen and experienced so much that we tend to take most things in life for granted, both the good and the bad. “There is nothing new under the sun” seems to be our mantra and we’re sticking with it. Nothing seems to shock or surprise us anymore. And the older we get, shock and surprise becomes less and less.

That is why, the older we get, the more we need to be childlike. For me it not only would be good but it would also be wonderful to be a six-year-old-eighty+-year-old. Imagine what it would be like to be excited once again by all the simple things in life that one was experiencing for the first time: a rainbow, a birthday present, a drive to get an ice cream cone, winning a game of cards – all those things we take for granted and find so routine as we grow older.

None of this is to say that the life of us elders is dull and boring even if there are limitations on how much of this life we can enjoy because we are not six years old. It is to say that, no matter what our age, we need not lose that joy of life that six-year-olds see as what life is supposed to be all about anyway. Yes, they will be disabused of all of this as they grow older and take on more responsibilities and as their bodies and minds age and betray them.

So what? So what is wrong in finding the little pleasures in life and making them out to be more than they really are?  What is wrong with waking up every day looking for the small surprises that will come our way, the little joys, the life-giving and not life-sapping events that make us look ahead to tomorrow for the next bit of wonder and awe, wonder and awe that have become routine but which should not?

There is that inner child in each and every one of us. Perhaps that is why Jesus routinely, I think, sat down and made his disciples sit down with little children. He reminded them and reminds us that we can learn much from children and from the child inside us.

TALENT

Martin Ritt was one of the great, but also according to many critics unsung, movie directors of all time. Ritt knew talent when he saw it and he knew how to use that talent to make great movies. He worked with stars like Laurence Harvey, Paul Newman, Claire Bloom, Edward G. Robinson. He won acclaim for movies like The Great White Hope (earning Oscar nominations for James Earl Jones and Jane Alexander), Sounder, and Norma Rae (Oscar for Sally Field as Best Actress).

Ritt knew talent. What perhaps set him apart was his view of talent. He once observed, “I don’t have a lot of respect for talent. Talent is genetic. It’s what you do with it that counts.” And isn’t that the truth? Talent is indeed genetic. Every one of us who has ever dreamed of doing something we cannot understands that truth. We desire what we do not have but wish we did.

As is well-known by now, my greatest desire as a youngster was to play first base for the Pittsburgh Pirates. As is also known, I got cut from my Little League team because I was that bad. I had no talent to play baseball. In my head I was certain that I was good.   I also believed that if I just worked hard enough, practiced long enough, had that great desire to succeed, my dreams would come true. My Little League manager and subsequent failures in playing baseball taught me, begrudgingly, the truth.

Of course, some of my pals growing up were very talented baseball players and I envied them. None of them ever made it to the Major Leagues or even the Minors. But they did use their abilities, their talents, to take them as far as they could go playing baseball and then they moved on in life. Some of them, I suspect, like me, thought they had more talent than they did and, like me, had to learn the hard way: they got cut from the team.

We all have our special talents. They are genetic. They are God-given. It is useless to ask why we have the talents we do. We simply have them from birth through our genes. It is also useless to ask why we don’t have the talents we wish we had but simply do not. That is also the result of our genes and thus beyond our control. What is important and what, in the final analysis is the only thing that really matters, as Ritt observed, is what we do with those talents.

We know that, of course. We know people who don’t fulfill their potential, who don’t use their talents to the best of their abilities. Some of those people are you and I. As talented and gifted as we are, we still know that any talent has to be fostered. The greatest ball players, actors, teachers – you name it – became great not because they were the most talented but because they used whatever talents they had to the very best of their abilities.

Again, the talents that we have, each one of us, are indeed genetic but, most importantly for us as Christians, God-given. While we may wonder why we have the gifts we do and wonder why we don’t have the gifts we might like to have, in the end, what matters to God, what matters to others and what should matter to us as well, as Ritt has said, what really counts, is we do with those talents and gifts. How are you doing?

EASTER: IT’S NOT JUST HISTORY

There is an on-going debate, unfortunately, among fundamentalists and those who are not about not only the historicity of the Bible but also its factual truth. There are those who maintain, for instance, that Genesis’ six-days-of-creation story are actual fact when, in fact, the creation story is a profound parable whose meaning it would take volumes to explain. I have a volume or two on my bookshelf attempting to do just that. On the other hand it is easy, and simplistic, to say, as some bumper stickers do, that “The Bible says it. I believe it!” Good for them!

The Bible is filled with stated historical facts, many of them truly factual, many others embellished to emphasize a religious point. When we read Exodus, for instance, we are told that 600,000 people made the march from Egypt to the Promised Land over a period of forty years. The actual number is closer to 6,000, perhaps even 600. And did it take forty years when one could actually walk that distance perhaps in forty days? The point the biblical writer wanted to make is that God fulfilled his promise to save his people and, by God, God did – in an extravagant way at that, no matter how short a journey or how long it took.

And yet while the Bible is historical, it is much more than history. It is even much more than religious history. History, if it has any meaning at all other than a record of past events, must be relevant in the present as much as it was when the events remembered took place, if not more so. History is supposed to teach us something. We are to learn from it if only to not repeat the mistakes of the past. We ignore those lessons to our own pain, as history has also taught us.

Thus, in so many ways, the past, history, must be a present reality even if in a different manner and mode than what it was when it first took place. Easter, our remembrance and celebration of the resurrection of Jesus, was a one-time historical event. It happened on a certain date in history even if we do not know the exact date. Yes, there are those who claim it never happened, that Jesus was never raised from the dead. They have a perfect right to deny that the resurrection really happened, like those who deny people landed on the moon. To each his own.

But in truth it does not matter what non-believers believe about Easter. What matters is what you and I believe. More importantly, what matters even more is what we are doing about it, what our personal response is. Each of us needs to ask ourselves a simple question: “Does it really matter to me that on that first Easter Sunday that Jesus was raised from the dead?” And if it does, the next question I must ask is, “So what? What effect does it have on my daily life?”

Those are faith questions that are asked generically by this historical event. But they are answered only on a very, very personal basis. No one can answer those questions for me nor I for another. My response, as every response, will be unique even if those responses seem to be quite the same. But respond we must if we believe that what we celebrate on Easter is much more than an historical event, that, in fact, it is personal.