Ponderings

“We doing our best to make your life boring,” was the promise. After a good bit of tumult in the day to day life of the church, we were all ready to be bored. Sooner rather than later. But I’m still waiting.

I’ve ridden the roller coaster with the demon-drop this week as my kids went back to school and all the normal chaos of starting a year at church was compounded with concerns for a homeless friend whose been camping out at church. One of the incredible highs of the week was totally unanticipated, my fifteen year old actually cooked, served and cleaned up a balanced meal– without being asked! - not once but twice! The tracks of this coaster definitely go up. But what goes up inevitably comes down. One evening I talked with a friend about endless sadness and then snuck out to the hammock in the backyard and had a good cry. Another day I was on the phone with the police, frantically pleading for illusive wisdom. Today I snapped at a friend. From the bottom, I felt the jolt upward this afternoon when my fifteen year old appeared in my office after school with two friends and much laughter in their wake. Our fall program brochure is in the mail, symbol not only of a week’s work (thank you, Leslie!!!) but also of a season’s planning. What was on the bottom will inevitably rise, constancy at best an illusion.

In the midst of the ride, I almost missed the news of the week. Life almost eclipsed the news as Albert Gonzalez, US Attorney General, resigned. To be sure, the story was a bit anticlimactic after so many months of controversy. Besides, hanging on to the roller coaster uses pretty much all of my energy, a ride that won’t likely change with the day’s news. If confession is good for the soul, I should admit that I’ve not read more than the subject line in any political email this month, nor beyond the headlines in any news story (save the one about Mother Theresa – who knew?). As soon as boredom haunts my life, I reason, I will pay more attention to the news.

Explanations are not excuses, and interested or not the balance of power is shifting in our nation and world. A friend reminds me that important stuff is ‘hidden in plain sight’, our blindness caused only by our unwillingness to see. Criminal ignorance is what another friend calls this blindness. As another Labor Day approaches with the disparity between labor wages and management expanding, ignorance may be bliss but it isn’t responsible.

I have a season pass for this roller coaster and boredom doesn’t appear to be part of the package. So maybe I’ll start reading again. But I think I’ll wait until the ‘coaster goes round the next bend.

With American support for the endless war in Iraq waning, President Bush played the Vietnam card this week. Likening the current dissenters to the fabled hippies of yore, President Bush warned that a withdrawal of troops in Iraq would unleash a torrent of violence reminiscent of the Cambodian nightmare of the late 1970s.

“One unmistakable legacy of Vietnam is that the price of America’s withdrawal was paid by millions of innocent citizens, whose agonies would add to our vocabulary new terms like ‘boat people,’ ‘re-education camps’ and ‘killing fields’.”

Maybe so. And for a moment the prediction sucked the air from my dissent and I pondered the possible parallel. After all, children of ‘my generation’ have spent our entire lives being shamed by those before and after us for our ill treatment of the Vietnam Veterans. Our cross to bear is the legacy of returning soldiers who received taunts instead of cheers and death threats in lieu of a hero’s welcome. Time cannot erase the tragedy that the uniformed soldiers, many of them serving against their will, bore the bitter edge of the growing disdain for the Vietnam War in those coming of age years for my generation.

Neither can time erase the haunting memory of the crossroads faced by a generation of young adults, a crossroads in which the choices were to either accept the judgment of our elders that our protests were misguided, or to believe that our government had sacrificed us (and the Vietnamese people) to the mythic military industrial complex. In the rearview mirror we’ve made our bed with the unworthiness of our dissent rather than face the utter helplessness of a citizenry betrayed. We opted for the judgment and carry the shame.

Hooking into that shame and laying the Khmer Rouge on top is brilliant strategy for controlling the Iraq war dissent. Shame is a powerful controlling force. Shame hooks into us at the very core of our being at the pivotal crossroad where unworthiness is the alternative to despair. Shame is the undercurrent that sucks our self confidence and leaves us at the bar of self destruction asking for one more round.

My stay at the bar this week was interrupted by time spent with a WWII vet. My friend was reminiscing about the war years and his return as a veteran. He said, “back then we had respect for veterans.” I braced myself for the inevitable. But what came next wasn’t a call to bless the troops, to sing patriotic songs in church, or even to support the current war. What came next was the recollection of the GI bill and the way it enabled returning soldiers to go on to school. And then a remembrance of the healthcare afforded to veterans and access to jobs with sustainable wages. Respect for veterans had nothing to do with flag waving and everything to do with honoring our commitments.

Dissent is neither anti-American nor anti-Veteran, and it certainly is not anti-Iraqi. To be sure, when the United States soldiers leave Iraq there will be a tremendous shifting of power. Without the continued infusion of military might, the future for Iraq is uncertain and our vulnerability is palpable; so we clutch the familiar. Yet continued war making profits only the munitions makers, the grave diggers, and the poisonous well of our communal shame. Although this path of shame is studded with the fool’s gold of good intentions and smoothed from our many footsteps, I yearn for the bramble filled path of humility. Truth and Reconciliation commissions, Marshall Plans, and reparations may be signs of weakness and vulnerability, but they are the only real alternatives to the killing fields.

As I entered adulthood, married life and ministry (roughly all at the same time) my friend, Allene, shared with me scrap of a paper bag with a bit of calligraphy.

“There are two ways to have enough. One is to acquire greater wealth. The other is to acquire fewer needs.”

I have returned to this simple wisdom repeatedly over the years, but it failed me this week.

On Saturday I was startled to discover a young man trying to sneak out of my office. He was vaguely familiar, he had come into the office some months back for no apparent reason. As the story unfolded, I discovered that this young man has been sleeping in the church, perhaps for some time. He doesn’t take anything, doesn’t hurt anyone. He is very uncomfortable with people (hence he avoids the shelter system.). I talked with him at length that day, and again on Sunday, and again on Monday. I fretted, pleaded, and made introductions with outreach coordinators. But it wasn’t enough. Still he snuck in, still he made his bed on my couch. Ultimately we’ve changed the locks and contacted the Webster Police to enforce our “no sleeping rule”.

The staff and leadership have been incredibly patient both with this young man and with my angst about an appropriate response. But everybody has limits, and I think this pushed us all to the edge. The stark reality was that the legitimate needs of all concerned were not going to be met.

I find myself angry with the young man. The anger’s source surprises me, it stems not from the violation of boundaries that was so palpable and troubling. Anger regarding the trespassing would be a reasonable response, but the emotion triggered instead was sympathy. Sympathy is not as well defended as anger, and all too quickly I became emotionally entangled in this young man’s plight. The anger that eluded me on Saturday came to my rescue too late and only added to the emotional turmoil of the week.

Pulling at the jumble I sense a familiarity with the anger that finally arrived. It’s the anger I feel when I’ve given the best that I have to offer and it is deemed to be inadequate. It’s the parental defense when our children’s needs exceed our capacity. It’s the last line of emotional defense to protect us from the pernicious fear of inadequacy. Recognizing the anger, I find myself face to face with finitude.

Whatever grace might exist for this young man is not in my purview. I can chose to believe in possibility, but the facts testify to an alternate reality. Sustained hope for the millions of homeless mentally ill Americans is as illusive as peace in the Middle East. Shelters are anathema to those who are truly frightened, so too the concept of hospitalization. And should I succeed in coaxing this young man into ‘treatment’, the tragic reality is that the tremendous strides in pharmaceuticals for mental health are not cures. Whatever treatment might be helpful for the homeless mentally ill require access to a healthcare system that is beyond their reach and dependent upon familial support that for many never existed. At what point does illusive become impossible?

And herein lies the real test of faith.