DISEASE AND DIS-EASE

No one likes to be ill. When we are, our life gets messed up. Sometimes it is completely in shambles. We are at sixes and sevens, not knowing what to do or where to turn because our once seemingly tranquil state is now turned upside down. We’ve all been there and will be there again – and probably again and again in this life. Illness comes with the territory of being human.

And so does being dis-eased when disease strikes us, whatever that disease is. It does not have to be traumatic. It can be a simple head cold that knocks us for a loop; and, again, it does not matter how big or small that loop is. We’re rolling with it and not knowing where it will take us because we’re not in control even as we down the aspirin or whatever meds we are using to get the body under control. That is discomforting and making us feel not the least bit at ease.

We’ve been there. We may be there right now. If you are like me, whenever a disease brings on that feeling of dis-ease, especially if the disease is more than sniffles and sneezing, but a real loss of control over what we are to do next, God comes into the picture almost automatically. We may, thankfully, have a great support group to help us through this trauma who try to bring some sort of ease back into our lives, but we know we also need God’s help. So we turn to God in prayer.

That’s all well and good and what we should do. But why is it that it so often takes a real disease that makes us so dis-eased that we turn to God? Why does it seem than God is only on stand-by duty rather than being on duty all the time? Yes, we don’t want to bother God with the coughing and rasping. We can handle that dis-easiness. It’s no big deal. It’ll pass soon enough if not as soon as we would like it. But we can buck up and plow through.

We can go through the day and even days on end without ever giving any real thought to how God is a part of our daily lives both on God’s part and on our part. God, of course, is always a part of our lives. That’s God’s doing. We are not in control of that and can do nothing about it – thank God! Our doing is to consciously make God a part of our lives on a daily basis and not just when our life seems to be going to hell in a handcart because we are so dis-eased because of some disease.

Easy to say and I’ve just said it. Hard to do. We get so caught up in our daily living sometimes, oftentimes, that it is so easy to take God’s presence – and caring and concern for us – for granted. But we do. We do. And then when we turn to God for help in a real need, we come a-begging rather than knowing and feeling that God knows are needs before we ask and don’t really need to ask. Realizing that truth may not and probably will not make the disease less painful but it will bring ease to our dis-ease which is often comfort enough and enough to get us through the day, one day at a time.

SOMETIMES A METAPHOR FOR LIFE

Awhile back in the comic strip Shoe Shoe is stopped by a traffic cop who says to him: “Do you realize you’re headed the wrong way on a one-way street?” Shoe’s response: “Talk about a metaphor for life.”

Indeed, talk about it! We’ve all driven down that street, sometimes, is seems, in the middle of the night with our headlights out in a strange city. We wonder how we ever got there as being there was never our intention. And we wonder even more how we will find our way out. Such a situation may not happen these days with most everyone having a smart phone with a GPS app included.

Unfortunately the human body does not come with a built in GPS to guide us through life and prevent us from driving down a one-way street the wrong way or to make sure we always drive in the right direction to the place we are supposed to go. Even more, there is nothing internal that even lets us know what that right place is. There are times when we fly by the seat of our pants through life hoping we are on the right street going in the right direction to the place we are supposed to be heading.

Fortunately for us and fortunately for the world, those times are not all that common even though, when they do occur, we think we’ve been there too many times already and should have known better or prepared better when we started out. For if those times were all too many, our life would be a mess. And if everyone were like us, imagine what a mess the world would be in!

Come to think of it, maybe the world is in the mess the world is in because all too many of us keep driving down one-way streets the wrong way. What is worse, we often do not discover that that is what we are doing until some sort of traffic cop stops us and prevents us from going further and getting into real trouble. But not always and with no the harm we bring to ourselves and to those we injure because we are going the wrong way.

In fact, we do have an internal GPS that is supposed to show us the way through life, keep us on the straight and narrow, and prevent us from harming ourselves and everyone else. That GPS is our faith. For the most part in this life, we know when we are heading down the wrong street in the wrong direction. We know when we are doing what we know we should not be doing and not doing what we know we should be doing. And we do not need some kind of policeman to stop us in our tracks and call us on it. We know.

We knew when we started down the wrong road. We knew it when we were travelling that road. And we knew we had no one else to blame but ourselves. The opposite is true as well. Wouldn’t a better metaphor for life and for this new year be this: always drive to the right place in the right way in the right direction? We can. Our faith will show us how and the way. Happy New Year!

GENEROSITY

Someone, and I apologize for not remembering who, once observed that if we are generous, our whole life will show it; and if we are selfish, it will infect our very soul. Isn’t that the truth? We certainly know that to be when we stand off to the side and observe the way people whom we consider to be very selfish and self-serving act. Everything is about them and only them.

They do things for others and can be very generous, but they do so only because what they are doing is advantageous to them. Then they brag about how generous they are and expect to be praised to the highest heavens. When they are not, they take offense and cannot understand why they are criticized.

It is certainly quite easy to point out those selfish and self-serving people. When we do, we often take delight in castigating and condemning them and their behavior and their attitude. Maybe it even makes us feel better in some, probably perverse, manner. We all do it; or maybe I should say, I know I do it and probably should not assume that everyone else does it too.

In our smugness what we often fail to do is look into that mirror that makes us take a good look at ourselves and our actions. Why do we do what we do? Is it out of generosity, out of our concern for those who are less blessed, out of a desire to lift up those who are down? Or is it done to make us feel good about ourselves and, perhaps, to reap praise and recognition from others?

My guess is that our egos never get out of the way. There is always a little of the what’s-in-it-for me in our actions. There has to be, of course. Everything we do begins with the self and we can never take the self out of anything we do. No one can be generous for me just as no one can be selfish for me. The ego, the I, is always front and foremost whether we realize or recognize it or not.

The point is simply that we need to be honest with ourselves, brutally honest. That is often difficult to do. It is not wrong or selfish to feel good about helping another, about sharing our gifts and talents. That is why they were given to us in the first place, why we were blessed by God. And while we enjoy that feeling, we must also be thankful for the blessings given that we have shared.

Selfishness is insidious. It can grab us by the neck and choke us to death before we even realize it. Selfishness often masks itself as, well, generosity, and tries to convince us that we are so wonderful and giving and even loving when actually what we are doing is simply being, well, selfish. Generosity is also insidious all in the right way. Better to be chocked by it; but that can only happen if we deliberately keep selfishness in check and always try to look as to how we can share our blessings in thankfulness for them.

TOO MUCH TO DENY, TOO LITTLE TO BE SURE

I think it was the philosopher Blaise Pascal who observed about God that there is too much that we can know about God to deny God's existence, but too little that we know about God to be sure enough to believe. If this is true, and I believe it is, then there is a reason why we all have doubts every now and then.

We can and we do look around and see what we believe are positive proofs, proofs, of God's existence. Someone greater than any one of us individually and all of us collectively had to be responsible for the created universe, we conclude. It just did not come about after one colossal big bang, no matter how big the bang, nor could it. The universe is too orderly for everything to be so ordered and still be so coincidental. It seems so obvious.

           

But we cannot be sure because we cannot understand. Oh, we can understand that God did it, that God holds it all together. But it is the "how" of God that leaves room for doubt. For doubt arises in minds that cannot understand but yet demand understanding. The more we want to know about God, the greater the chance that we will doubt God's existence. The opposite is just as true.

           

Does that mean it would be best for us to stop asking questions, faith questions? Probably. The only problem is we can't. Our hearts may want to rest in God, as St. Augustine prayed, but our minds never rest. The unquestioning heart says that God loves me. But when bad things happen to me or to my loved ones, my mind asks how could a loving God do this?

           

We do not act this way only with God, however. We do so with one another. Our hearts say that a person loves us. Our minds may wonder if that person really does after what that person just said or did to us. There is too much about our relationship with others that prove our mutual love, but sometimes not enough to hint that the love might not be total or reciprocal.

           

Doubt will never go away given our inability to know or understand everything and everyone. We do not even understand ourselves, not really. We ask ourselves why we did this or where that thought came from or how we could say something like that. The truth is, if we knew the answer to even those questions, we would be God. That fact that we do not proves we are not. But nothing proves God's existence. So we believe, so we are left only with belief.

           

The difference between a believer and one who refuses to believe is simply that. A believer chooses to live a life of faith even those whose minds are full of doubt. Those who do not believe in God refuse to do so because they seemingly cannot live with doubt God’s existence.

           

Who has the easier road to travel? Does it really matter? Or does what really matter is that we who believe live fully into our belief?

CELEBRATING CHRISTMAS UNAWARES

It would be easy to wax eloquent about how our society had made Christmas a Civil holiday rather than a Christian holyday. Many of my clergy colleagues have done so year after year. It would be even easier to moan and groan about the commercialization of this season. But if the truth be told, it would be a waste of breath and an even greater waste of words to do so.

I will grant that many of my neighbors probably, probably, because I have no way of knowing unless I ask them personally -- which I will not do -- do not even think about Jesus on Christmas. Jesus may be the last thought on their minds when they purchase and/or exchange presents. They may even have a crèche somewhere among all the decorations, but that is still no reason to believe that Jesus has any real meaning in whatever it is they do at this time of year.

           

Oh, they are certainly aware, or at least I hope they are, that Jesus is the real reason for the season, but he is not the reason why they are personally celebrating, giving and receiving presents or gathering family around the dinner table or decorating the house with a Christmas tree and lights and all the rest. You should see how hey decorate the outside of their homes! Their reasoning, I suspect, why they do all that and even more is that it is Christmas the Holiday.

           

Yet, the holiday and the holyday are so intertwined that one cannot celebrate the one without celebrating the other. I love holydays. Holydays are always holidays, always, days when we pause to remember and celebrate the holy, the good, the Godly. They are a pause within the ordinary. They are the extra added to the ordinary, the extraordinary, even the out of the ordinary. That is why they are special.

           

And holidays are holydays, but not always. If we do on holidays what we always do every other day, then there is nothing special about the day, at least for us. But when we take the holiday and celebrate it, even if our celebration is not in keeping with the real spirit of the holiday, it is still a holyday. How one keeps holy the holiday of Christmas --   for Christmas is both: it is, again, a civil holiday and a Christian holyday -- is almost beside the point. The point is that when we keep the holiday, we make it holy.

           

Many, many people are celebrating Christmas the Holyday unawares. The temptation may be to blame them for their failure to be aware of what they are doing. But we would be wrong if we did. If there is any failure, it is the failure of those of us who know what is holy in the holiday for not making the unaware aware of the holiness of this day.

           

We who have failed to convey the true and holy meaning of Christmas to those who celebrate the holiday can begin to redress our failure by inviting our neighbors to keep the holyday with us, to make the holiday truly holy. It doesn't take much. But it can mean the beginning of a new awareness, an understanding of what this season is all about.

           

Have a blessed holy/holiday.

WHO IS(ARE) YOUR ICON(S)?

Tom Hanks the actor was in Pittsburgh recently to film segments for his new film in which he portrays Pittsburgh’s great national and international icon, Fred Rogers. This past Wednesday our country, if only for a passing moment in time, stood still and, hopefully, together, to mourn the passing and celebrate the life of another national and international icon: President George H. W. Bush.

Our children grew up with Mr. Rogers as their teacher and adult role model. I would like to think that their parents were. But the truth is parents really don’t become role models until their children are about twenty-five or so. Hopefully we have at least been favorably compared to Mr. Rogers.

As I watched the service For President Bush on my tablet after returning from mother/mother-in-law duty, I wondered if the gentlemen in the first row on both side of the aisle were comparing themselves to the man they had come to remember and if it was a favorable comparison. (I’ll keep my opinion to myself.)

To paraphrase and old folk-protest song of my younger days, where have all the icons gone? Mr. Rogers is dead and my children are grown adults, some with children of their own. Who are my grandchildren’s icons? Who are our leaders’ icons? Who do we have to teach us the lessons of caring about everyone, service of others, kindness and generosity with no expectance of anything in return, for doing the right thing simply because it is the right thing to do?

Fred Rogers taught us that. President Bush taught us that. As a dyed-in-the wool Democrat I did not always agree with his policies but I never ever doubted he did what he believed was best for his country and our world. Mr. Rogers would agree. What I find refreshing is that both men lived and taught because their faith was deeply imbedded in their very being: Fred Rogers was an ordained Presbyterian pastor. George Bush was a lifelong committed Episcopalian.

Are not our icons those who have a deep-seated faith in God and who live out that faith in their daily lives and never, ever wearing that faith on their shirt sleeves? I didn’t have Mr. Rogers as my icon. I had Anne Pugliese, my Mom. In her own quiet and unassuming manner she taught me and my siblings the lessons Fred Rogers and, I trust and hope, my wife and I taught our children.

We all have those icons in our lives who call us to be better than we are simply because we can be better. They may not be with us in body but they are always with us in spirit. They taught us by their actions even as their words spoke volumes. More importantly, however, they are reminders that we are to be icons to others. We are whether we realize it or not. The question remains: what kind of icon am I?

BUNNY

I have a friend whom everyone calls “Bunny”. It’s not because he looks like a lost little rabbit (although sometimes there are resemblances), not because he is light on his feet (although in his long-past prime he was), and not because he is so cute and cuddly (although certain women I know think he is). No Bunny is called Bunny, I think, simply because the name doesn’t fit.

Let’s face it, can you see an All-State linebacker called “Bunny”? Can you imagine a hardnosed miner or steelworker called “Bunny”? Can you even believe a grown man called by that name? It just doesn’t fit, does it? And yet “Bunny” fits Bunny perfectly.

“Why?” you ask. “Bunny” fits Bunny perfectly because “Bunny” doesn’t fit: you never know when he is serious or when he is pulling your leg, when he is telling the truth or feeding you carrots.

Now this behavior might be disconcerting to some of us who just don’t like our legs being pulled. Some of us want a spade to be called a spade and not a shovel, if you know what I mean. Some of us just hate to be played the fool even in jest.

But people like Bunny are there to remind us that life, serious as it is, isn’t all that serious. Life is to be lived, loved and thoroughly enjoyed. One cannot be so straight-laced that any deviation is looked upon as out of the ordinary. The ordinary in life is often to expect the unexpected and not to always expect the expected.

That is why Bunny is so refreshing. I have learned, as the women I mentioned above have not, to expect the unexpected from Bunny. That includes a tear in his eye when he is telling me about how his Beloved lit a cigarette for him while he was flat on his back – and you know how she hates him to smoke. The unexpected also includes his total devotion to his children and all children, something that is rare these days when “Me First” often seems the pervading philosophy of life. The unexpected is being there when anyone needs him. Another rarity.

I write this not to give Bunny and the Bunnys of this world swelled heads. I write it to remind me, to remind all of us, that part of what makes Bunny Bunny is also part of us: the ready smile, the unpredictability, the joy of living, even when life seems unfair.

Sometimes we forget that life, our life, was given to us to be enjoyed, not just endured; to be lived out, not just languished through; to be celebrated, not just completed. Bunny enjoys, lives, celebrates life, every day of it. So should we.

Into every life a Bunny needs to come: to pick us up when we are down; to make us smile amid our tears; to hold our hand when we are weak; to ease our pain when we hurt so badly. We need to find our Bunny and we need to be a Bunny one to another.