Valentines


Years ago there was a gas station that sat on the southwest corner of Wyoming and Menaul, across the street from the old Hoffmantown Baptist Church in Albuquerque, and one night I, along with hundreds of other youths, vandalized the place.

I was thirteen or fourteen years old when our church hosted a traveling evangelist named Arthur Blessitt. He was making a name for himself (and I suppose some might say for Jesus) by walking across America towing a giant cross, and preaching the love of Christ. It was the early 1970's and the country was in the throes of what many called 'the Jesus Movement.' It may well have been not much more than a California revival, where guys like Arthur Blessitt and others were finding Christ and preaching to surfers and ski bums and groups of people who would later emerge as Christian songwriters (Keith Green) and pastors of soon-to-become umbrella churches (Calvary Chapel and the Vineyard, etc.). There was nothing inauthentic about it. It was very real for at least a large enough minority that took the ball and ran with it. Folks were being baptized on the beaches of Huntington and Manhattan and Venice, maybe even Newport, and for awhile the number one song on the charts was Judy Collins rendition of 'Amazing Grace' (still the best ever recorded).

The night Arthur Blessitt came through Albuquerque and preached at Hoffmantown there were hundreds and hundreds of mostly young people from all over the city who packed the auditorium. It was a magic night, a spiritual night, a Jesus-Movement-California-charismatic-magic night. By the end of the evening we were beside ourselves, basking in the love of God and Arthur Blessitt and freedom from our parents and their stale, mid-westernness (even in a southwestern town). We were moved to 'change the world.' The Coca-Cola commercials about wanting to 'teach the world to sing' came directly out of this experience that we were experiencing for ourselves on this night. And we were equipped. We were given rolls of stickers, little round red stickers that said things like 'Jesus loves you,' and told to go plaster them all over kingdom come.

A whole pack of youths marched out into the desert night air, across the street to this gas station, and, believing we had been given some kind of militant marching orders to 'spread God's love,' we plastered that gas station with these annoying stickers. I don't know if any damage was done other than a 1970's-style flash mob of young people lost in a delirious deluge of Pentacostal Power and a handful of stickers labeling everything from the cash register to the gas tanks outside with the words 'Jesus Saves.'

On Sunday morning we were told that the owner of the gas station was pissed. Our parents were pissed. Our pastor was pissed. I'm sure we were probably told God was pissed. I don't remember if Arthur Blessitt was at the church on Sunday or if he'd already taken up his cross and continued along his walk across America. I don't believe our actions were his fault.

Many, many years have passed since those days, and youth turns to adulthood and responsibility and the machinations of trying to make a living, doing things like running a gas station, or pastoring a church, or teaching school, or nursing. I am much older now, and I look back to those days as the beginning of my coming to understand how little I know about love. I've been told over and over again that 'God is love,' and frankly that's the only thing in my whole life that I know that I know that I know. But most of the rest of what I think I know, or have spent a lifetime trying to understand, isn't nearly so certain.

I love marriage. I apparently love it so much that I've done it twice, and may I assure you that though the second time around is by far better than the first, I am forever grateful for the experiences that have come before, for as we all know, it is our failures that teach us the deepest lessons.

My wife is perhaps the easiest person in the world to love. I love her deeply and completely. But there's a part of this love that is kind of like walking around like a circus clown with a necktie that's too long. You find yourself constantly tripping, always looking backwards at what might have gotten in your way without realizing it's your own stupid, self-inflicted noose.

The song says, "I wanna know what love is," and Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote in one of her sonnets that she loved Mr. Browning 'to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach.' Ah, but it's my souls 'reach' that is the problem. Because I believe that God is love, I spend a great deal of time trying to find out who and what He is, so that I might find out what love is, how to live it and how to give it away. It's a full-time job.

So this is what I think (so far)...

I think that when Jesus told the folks who were listening to Him that they were to 'take up your cross and follow me,' He wasn't talking about bearing burdens, and He wasn't talking about a literal-Arthur Blessitt-walk-across-America kind of cross bearing. Those people knew nothing of what was to come for Jesus and the significance of 'the cross.' They 'did' know that the cross was where the very worst were sentenced to hang, dying a death of torture. Dying, dying, dying. Self-denial. That's it. That's love. 

To love God, to love Michelle, to love my children, to love my friends that I have coffee with and eat meals with and try to solve the worlds problems with, to love the homeless people that I sing for once a month and fool myself into believing I'm doing one good thing, and to love those I don't even know who I vehemently disagree with, has always meant getting rid of my own ego. This is not even brain surgery or rocket science to understand this. Love, real love, is self-denial. Putting them (all those I mentioned above) first. First! It doesn't even matter how easy or how hard that is. Doesn't matter. That's love. Anything else is not love. It's something, alright, but it isn't love.

I don't have any problem with loving myself. Never have. No one does. Those whom we describe as suffering from a lack of 'self-love' or 'self-esteem' or 'self-whatever' aren't lacking in an ability to love themselves. They just suffer from the same problem I suffer from; not knowing how to put 'others' first. Looking outward versus constantly gazing at one's own navel, thinking about how 'unloved' we feel, how lost we are, how hungry we are, how beautiful we are, or how lonely we are. There's a huge freaking world out there, and Jesus says that Economics 101 is this: He who would be first, be last. Got a box of donuts? Give 'em all away. Don't set aside the one you want for yourself! I do crap like that 'all the time!' Don't tell my ten year old son this, but I've eaten the last donut 'many' times when I knew in my heart I should have saved it for him. He's as skinny as a rail, and, well, I'm not.

I don't have a problem with fear and hate, or lust, or the desire to murder anybody. I'm as guilty of all that as you can get. I doubt that I've thought about murder as much as my wife has, but you really can't be married without having at least once or twice considered it. My PROBLEM is love. I'm even pretty sure that a lot of those times when I 'think' I'm being really loving is when I'm the most lost in my own damn self.

This thing of 'denying oneself,' getting rid of 'all' my ego, not just some of it, not just the chest-beating braggart loathsome 'self' but the whole of myself, all my ego, is the heart of becoming someone who loves, who understands love and understands God, and is no longer afraid of life or of unanswered prayer. I don't want to care about the things I want or the things I need. I don't even want to know more about love and become better at it because I'm convinced it's my only ticket to Heaven. I want to love because I believe that's the only way I'm supposed to live here, now, on this earth.

Thoreau said, "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."

Wholeness is selflessness. Salvation isn't so much redemption of 'sin' as it is denial of 'self.' That is clear, and any other reading of 'the good news' is gnarled up in too much stuff so many of us have been taught for too long, and it's kept us from understanding what love is, and that's the only thing. You may not believe that, and that's fine. Perhaps you're further along the road than I am. But for me to love is to serve, and that has nothing whatsoever to do with clawing my way into Heaven, or even thinking of such things. That path has already been paved in stone, and the instruction manual is clear, at least to me. Finally. It's love. Love for my wife and children (easy); love for people who live on the other side of Earth who don't think or walk or talk or bathe like I do (harder); love for those who wish me ill or who would scheme of ways to bring down towers (seemingly impossible, but not); love for world leaders and corporate executives and temple money-changers (still, not impossible).

Almost always, when I get angry, it's because in one way or another I did not get my way. That's true whether with my wife, or with God, or with the pedal-to-the-metal fifteen year old in my rear-view mirror coming down my tailpipe and then whipping around me like a jet fighter while she's texting her bff. I have a friend who claims that when he's driving on the roads around town he is invisible. He does not let the desires of other drivers affect him at all, and his only concern is stealthily getting where he's going. No ego.

Arthur Blessitt is still alive today, and may have traveled clear around the world twenty times with his wooden cross, and God bless him for it. He's a happy guy with a smile a mile wide, and a desire to serve others in his heart. But I did not learn anything about God's love that night. In fact, I broke all the rules. Or, the one rule. And I've been trying ever since to learn how to do this thing called love that we all want and need so badly. I'm still not all that good at it, but dying to myself is my target. It may have brought me to a place where nobody asks me to sing anymore, and that's alright. I read a lot more books now, and the songs I do sing echo from a deep well of what I know so far about love. So far.

So, happy Valentine's Day, Michelle. I'm learning from you everyday. Happy Valentine's Day, God. I see you in the flowers and in the children and I hear you when the tenor sings 'Nessun Dorma,' and I feel you in me and around me and behind me and most often ahead of me, pulling and dragging me along, pointing from side to side all the people I'm failing to see or care about along the way. I know you'll continue to forgive me for that, so there's one burden I can unload myself of. This cross you've informed me of? I want to bear it gladly, be rid of myself, and bask in other's glory, and in yours.

And here's one more thing. If God is love, and I believe He is, and if He is the Creator of all things, and I believe He is even if He chose to use some kind of evolutionary process to do it, and if at the beginning of this cosmic Big Bang (yes, He snapped His fingers and there was a big bang, yes there was) He set in motion this spinning globe of blue sea and red clay and made man out of it for one purpose, that purpose is love. His for us, and ours for Him and for each other, and somewhere someone is bending down in the poorest part of the poorest town on the darkest side of Earth and loving someone and serving them, and God is as thrilled in that as he ever is with me in whatever I do here on the bright and wealthy side of His world, and why anyone there or here has to suffer at all may in more ways than I understand have to do with me, and my ability to take the last donut. But I'm learning.    

        Worthy Is The Lamb


From Basra to Belfast, Beijing to Kiev, tonight the children try to go to sleep
They look up at the same moon from Newtown to Berlin, from Paris to Jerusalem they weep
And they pray for peace, and write their names on the walls of Heaven
Tomorrow will be Christmas Day again

And the children sing 'Hosanna!'
'Worthy is the Lamb!'
From Bethlehem to Calvary, 'Behold, the great I Am!'
His grace and mercy fill the seas,
His glory fills the land
The children and the angels sing,
'Worthy is the Lamb!'

From the battlefields of Kabul the lonely soldiers weep
Their homes have never seemed so far away
Their bullets and their silver crosses hang around their necks
like a brotherhood of love and fear at play
And they pray for peace, and write their names on the walls of Heaven
Tomorrow will be Christmas Day again

And the children sing 'Hosanna!'
'Worthy is the Lamb!'
From Bethlehem to Calvary, 'Behold, the great I Am!'
His grace and mercy fill the seas
His glory fills the land
The children and the angels sing
'Worthy is the Lamb!'
'Worthy is the Lamb!'

From Salvador to Londontown
Accra to Milan, from Selma to Pretoria, Baghdad to Saigon,
The children and the soldiers, the beggars and the kings,
the preachers and the poets all will sing....

And the children sing 'Hosanna!'
'Worthy is the Lamb!'
From Bethlehem to Calvary, 'Behold, the great I Am!'
His grace and mercy fill the seas
His glory fills the land
The children and the angels sing
'Worthy is the Lamb!'
'Worthy is the Lamb!'
'Worthy is the Lamb!'

                      Suzanna,

 

                      The very best I can hope for you is that you never fail to see the face of God at

                      every turn. As you pass the trumpet vines and honeysuckle that cling to the

                      neighbors fencepost, don’t fail to see Him there. As you ride the train and look out

                      to the ramshackled houses that line the tracks, and wonder to yourself how people

                      can live in such places, see Him there as well. And as you’re held aloft on the

                      shoulders of your peers, having made the goal that sealed the outcome of victory,

                      see Him there, too.

                      Hear His tender voice in the whining cry of your child when she doesn’t get her

                      way with things. He is reminding you of your own stomping feet and stubborn will.

                      Hear the beauty of His voice in the lofty notes of the tenor, as he sings ‘Nessun

                      Dorma.’ It is the voice of God that will gently lift you up and off the ground in each

                      soaring and climactic note.

                      You’ll hear Him in the song of the finch and the sparrow, as Earth turns into

                      a new day. He created the sparrows song, and He is calling you to rise up and

                      make good today what might have fallen short yesterday.

                      You and I were meant to walk through the mist, in the garden, tending to the

                      beautiful Earth, conversing with Him at His side. The fig tree withered as

                      we wandered away, but we should not fail to hear Him, still calling our name

                      as He waits for us on the broken path that now meanders through thorns and

                      imperfections. Feel the pain of your own betrayals and the broken-heartedness

                      you’ll surely know, but do not gaze too long at your own condition.

                      Look outward, to those poorer than you, to the blind and to the weary. Reach

                      out your hand to feed and lift up. You’ll soon discover you’ve forgotten yourself,

                      and the chains of your own sorrows will fall away. You’ll become free for having

                      fed the One whose voice you hear, for having lifted up the One whose face

                      you see. And at every turn, it will be Him.

 

                                                                                                                             Dad

 

 

                           epilogue to the forthcoming book titled

                            'Lamentations(of a 20th century man)'

                             that one hopes will see publication

                                    sometime this century 

 

 

 

We don't all like the same things. You could make a list of things that you would assume might be universally loved, admired, and adored, but your list would be different than the one made by your best friend, or your mother.

Travel! Some people want to see the world, and they know exactly where their passport is at all times. Other folks have rarely left, and don't care to leave, their own little corner of the globe. And still, even with today's requirements, they do not own a passport.
 
I could talk all day long to some of my people about how wonderful and lovely Paris is in November, and how the ability to stop along the street about every thirty steps or so and order a crepe smeared with Nutella reminds me of what I think Heaven will be like. But many of them would simply look at me with glazed-over eyes, and yawn, and say, "That's nice, dear. Have another slice of pound cake."

I love pound cake, too. It's just that I think a slice of pound cake and a cup of coffee would be especially nice while strolling through the Jardine du Luxembourg, and watching the children ride the carousel and watching old men play bocce ball, and craning my neck to watch a well-dressed Parisienne walk passed me, eating a crepe smeared with Nutella.

Tacos are perhaps the one thing you might be able to say are universally loved. Perhaps not as much as 'I' love them, but close. Yet you couldn't say that about very many things.

Not poodles
Or convertibles
Or skiing
Or granite countertops
Or peanut butter
Or Levi's
Or mayonnaise
Or Elvis
Or Raiders of the Lost Ark
Or oatmeal raisin cookies
Or old church hymns
Or motherhood
Or Caribbean cruises

I know many, many people who 'love' New York City. Love it! But I know about as many who have nothing good to say about the place. Even one's who've never been there.

I live in New Mexico. We were granted statehood in 1912, (during T.R.'s administration, I think.) It's just about the most beautiful place I know of on Earth, and yet it is still often mistaken for the last un-annexed slice of Mexico...Old Mexico...as well as being a bastion for meth labs and automobile commercials.

And speaking of meth labs, didn't 'everyone' love 'Breaking Bad?' No? Michelle and I began watching it when it first started, five or six years ago, curious to see the familiar locations they'd use (The Dog House is just down the road from our house). But we quickly grew uninterested. Stopped watching it, until, five or six years later, it was all the rage and all the talk and 'everyone' seemed to be waiting on pins and needles for the 'final episode.'

So, because over those last five or six years God and Netflix invented 'streaming,' we began watching the series from the beginning, sometimes together, often separate (Michelle watching an episode or two from some hotel room wherever she was, getting an episode ahead of me, or being two behind).

Just last week we finished. We watched the 'finale,' or as Mr. Gilligan coyly titled it, 'Felina,' several weeks after it aired.

Shakespeare never wrote anything much better than 'Breaking Bad,' right? (I have to admit, I've never watched 'Duck Dynasty' (prolly never will) so my comparisons are perhaps limited.) But what a beautiful, heart-wrenching, ugly, human story of utter un-redemptiveness.

But we don't all like the same things.  Who's the greatest rock band of all time? Twenty different people will have at least fifteen different answers. What would you like for your last meal before being slowly led down the Green Mile? Fried Chicken? From where? KFC, or Church's, or Popeye's, or some local 'mom & pop' place, or your mother's? And what about The Green Mile? Is that your favorite, or is it Shawshank Redemption? (Just wait a few days and they'll both be on again.)

What about color? We always ask what people's favorite color is. Why doesn't everybody say 'blue?' Heck, the sky is blue, and Columbus sailed the ocean 'blue,' so what other answer is there? Brown? My favorite color is brown! Sue me!

We do not all go to the same church, or even all go to church. We don't all vote for the same candidate (and I'm not even gonna go there). We don't all believe, or have the same 'family values' (worst phrase ever invented), and we're not even all attracted to the same kind of person.

I could say here that we all bleed red. I'm sure of that. I could say here that we were all created by a loving and kind God who made us for the pure and simple reason that He felt like it, and had need for His love to be expressed in the purest and most perfect way, and frankly, it's beyond our reasoning or understanding, and He knows that, and He just wants to hear us sing. I'm sure of that. But not everyone would agree, or be willing to spend much time and effort dwelling on it.

So that's why there's not one color. That's why you don't have to go all the way to Paris to figure out how to make crepes and smear them with Nutella (though, you know, deep down you know, it would be better). That's why not all the books written over the last century are about Democracy, or slavery, or war, or falling in love, or the trial of Tom Robinson, or petty thievery, or the journey of a father and son through the Apocalypse.

There are days when it almost seems like it would be better if we all lived in a commune, where rigid laws and regulations were followed, and the same music blared out over the loud speakers, and we all wore black, and the women's skirts fell just below the knee, and the men had names for their pitchforks; names like 'Buck' and 'Wally' and 'Fernando,' and everybody's favorite color was gray, because it wasn't black and it wasn't white, it was gray.

It seems like there'd be a lot of folks who might be satisfied by that kind of safety. But the world is not a safe place. It bursts with color and unusual tastes and smells and sensual pleasures and the search for life. There are figs still growing on fig trees, long after Adam and Eve wandered from the Garden, and the garden is still there, begging to be tended by bright people who still know how to sing. God is still waiting for us, to sing for His pleasure and for His glory, and thereby finding our own.

The world is full of life, and full of laughter, and full of color, and full of pain. No matter what your particular likes and dislikes are, there will be a poodle cross your path, or peanut butter in the middle of the chocolate, or Elvis singing an old church hymn, or another war breaking out, or another child of God shooting up a mall or a school like some crazed cowboy on the wide open American plains. And gray is the color of grace. The world isn't black and white. There are men who love men and women who love women, and nobody's starting no war against your marriage or your religion, so stop whining.

Look up! There's blue and green and brown and yellow and red and lavender and black and white. Look up! There are bulldogs and mastiffs and shepherds and wire haired terriers and Chihuahuas, for goodness sakes. There's lasagna and sole Meniere, and fish sticks and popsicles. They're still making Chevrolet's! They're still making Chevrolet's, for crying out loud!! Who cares if you like Fords or Fiats. They're still making Chevys. And the world still spins on its axis just as it always has, and it always will until love ceases. So look up!

The world may not ever suit you. I rarely suit myself! However many minutes you spend pointing out the sins of others is that many minutes spent not being about Gods work, not loving, not stooping down or reaching up to help someone...and there's 'always' someone. The Good Samaritan is Jesus' story of what I think He would call 'the gospel.' There's no mystery to what we're supposed to do or what we're to be about. The folks in Washington never, ever, ever talk about what it is we're supposed to do. None of 'em. The arrogance of spending all your days trying to bash in the head of somebody who doesn't really care for the color blue or for poodles.

It's not that simple. I know, so don't say it. But maybe it is. Maybe God 'is' love. Maybe He made 'all' the colors. Maybe we weren't supposed to stop singing, and holding hands in a great big circle, wearing robes of pink and green and orange and purple and ecru, and basking in all the differences, and completely satisfied in knowing that God is utterly and perfectly big enough to wrap His arms 'round it all.

Five thousand fed with two loaves of bread and some fish. Fish tacos!!

What if...

the Republicans had said, at the very beginning of Barack Obama's presidency, that they were going to do everything they could to be his greatest supporters, and what if they'd meant it? What if...upon meeting together to discuss the things they didn't see eye to eye on, each side spoke no words of distrust, and gave no support for the unfortunate misrepresentations by others?

What if...

the President had strolled up to Capital Hill, where he used to work himself, and brought with him a bottle of the best scotch (if there is such a thing) at least once every two or three weeks, to meet with the leaders of the other party, to chat about the real 'state of the union' and how they could, together, find ways to fix whatever was ailing us. What if he'd looked on these men and women as friends and tender foes to draft good intentions together? Together.

What if...

like in the very best marriages, the desire of everyone involved was to champion the other, knowing full well that no one ever gets everything they want, and that the missteps and shortcomings and failures and differences of opinion or even ideology are checked against what is best for everyone in the room (i.e. the nation)? What if, occasionally, Democrats said, 'You know, they're right about some of this and we need to listen up!' And, of course, the Republicans did the same.

What if...

when wrong-minded things were said of the President or the Speaker of the House or the Majority or Minority Leaders, the respectable folks on the 'other side of the aisle' chimed in, "Hey wait a minute...that's my friend you're talking about. What you're saying is unkind, uncalled for, and more often than not, completely untrue." What if they 'liked' each other. What if they believed that more would get accomplished and more of both points of view would be heard and meted out in grand compromise if they all behaved in some forgotten form of brotherhood (and, of course, sisterhood...though we'd probably all be better off if the girls were running the whole shebang anyway)?

What if...

those who live by their faith, who live by their religious or spiritual spine, chose never to slip into the foul pool of gossip and disrespectfulness? What if they read the words that they assume to live by, but read them with a new and fresh kindness and grace, a desire for bringing hope to an often hopeless world, salt to a tasteless thread of fearfulness, light to the dark places? What if they followed the one they name themselves for, and found him not to be nearly as damning to those who've yet to travel their own 'road to Damascus,' as they seem to be? What if none of us saw so many enemies around us?

What if...

we all cared less about being right? Arrogance is never so transparent than when men stand to tell everyone in the room that they know for certain that their way is right and the other persons' way is absolutely wrong...for everyone. Darkness is usually where you find most men shouting. Light makes its' way by seeping in through the cracks. 

What if...

all the labels were dropped? What if we never ever again called someone a Conservative or a Liberal or the slew of other names and labels we use to mostly set ourselves apart or band ourselves together, as though any of us ever, ever think exactly the same on every issue facing a broken, dying world? What if we did more lifting up of others? What if we did more stooping down to see that no matter what we have, we probably have too much? What if every single one of us said 'to Hell with it' and gave away half of everything we have, so that in an ideal world, everyone would have enough and no one would have too much? What if we all agreed on what an 'ideal world' would look like?
 
God, I suspect, frequents the saloons of the slums of the dirtiest places on the darkest side of Earth, while we who linger under marble domes and blue skies debate how clearly we are 'in His will.' And because He is God, He hears every cry, every moan, every name slurred and every lie perpetuated on the airwaves of disinformation, and He turns away from whatever is not distinguished as being His own good work. 

I don't know. I'm just asking. What if?

                       “I grew up believing in a loving and kind God, who made it clear through

                        these sacred pages that He was on the side of the poorest of the poor,

                        the lowliest of the lowly. I’d never heard anyone qualify God as a Conservative,

                        or a Liberal. He’s God, for goodness sake! The Creator of worlds, defender

                        of the pure in heart, father to the orphan and husband to the widow, and lover

                        of my very own soul.

 

                        He ordained laws so men might understand how to live rightfully. He laid them

                        down in black and white. But the law would eventually find its fulfillment

                        in the unequivocal sacrifice of His Son, surely the most grand and loving of

                        Divine gestures. What was black and white was finally renewed and fulfilled in

                        shades of a quite luminous and translucent gray. Gray is the color of grace.

                        The Law becomes Love. And you and I call Him Jesus Christ.

 

                        We know that grace is not black and white because we no longer, after all, put

                        people to death for eating pork, or for marrying outside their race, or for loving

                        someone of the same sex. This frustrates many who prefer things to remain ‘black

                        and white,’ who simply do not operate easily outside the borders of legalism.

 

                        But it is outside those borders where grace reigns supreme, and where the wars

                        that rage on against fear are won or lost.

 

                        How then do we, the Believers, those whom Jesus calls ‘Beloved,’ how is it

                        we come to rally ourselves around the fear-mongrels, whose sole aim is to

                        squash and suppress the desires and hopes of those they pejoratively call the

                        ‘bleeding hearts.’ The bleeding heart desires not only justice, equality, and

                        reason, but also compassion, wisdom, and truth. I think it was Jesus’ bleeding

                        heart that bled most, wasn’t it?

 

                        In this land that still represents to the rest of the world the ‘last best hope,’

                        we contend with what we like to call the ‘war on poverty.’ But this war has

                        little chance of success when the poor are viewed only as those whose

                        poverty represents a kind of laziness; an insufferable sense of entitlement. 

 

                        This land of hard work mixed with what used to be a large dose of kindness, is

                        filled with far too many today who believe that indeed the class war exists, but

                        in reverse, that the war is against the rich, those who’ve accomplished the great

                        American Dream, (mostly all on their own, they will tell you). They have little

                        interest in showing compassion toward those who haven’t achieved The Dream,

                        other than to allow their good fortunes and their peculiar goodwill to

                        ‘trickle down,’ like a labyrinthine economic pinball machine; or a sewer.

 

                        Once we were a nation of ‘receivers.’ Now we’ve become a nation of

                        ‘achievers.’ We’ve become a people who believe that entitlements are due

                        only to those who, by their own sweat, have found favor in God’s sight,

                        a favor bestowed on those who’ve accumulated the most toys. 

      

                        We are fearful of the poor, afraid they will take from us the things we believe

                        we’ve earned, mostly on our own. We are fearful they will take power they don’t

                        deserve. Power, after all, has a high price and must be paid for.

 

                        We want so much to believe we are, or once were, a Christian nation. History is

                        selectively recounted, and the past can be reshaped to aid our sense of security

                        in what we believe, as though what we believe needs the approval of an entire

                        nation, and the power of majority rule.

 

                        Would you still believe what you believe, if you were the only one? If the road

                        we’re on is as narrow as we’ve been told, then why in the world do we seek to

                        claim an entire nation for it? Why do we seek to make our faith and trust in

                        God so strangely synonymous with patriotism, democracy, capitalism, American

                        exceptionalism, and what we like to believe were the pure hearts and minds of

                        the founding fathers?   

 

                        We can, if we choose, transpose these sacred pages to fit a more militant

                        Christianity, and create a more dispassionate Christ. We can, if we so choose,

                        justify our condescensions. We can, in our search to write our own Book of Life,

                        stand together, roll up our sleeves, lower our collective shoulders, and shove the

                        camel through the eye of the needle.”

 

 

 

                                                                                                   Gideon Morrow

                                                                                 Portions of a speech given at Yale Divinity

                                                                                                  September 22, 1982

 

 

 

                 (From the soon-to-be published book, 'Lamentations of a 20th Century Man,'

                  by Jeff Kidwell)

There's a moment in the film 'Casablanca' when the face of Ingrid Bergman is set in close-up, all shadow and soft focus and distilled light, and for that brief few seconds, she appears to me to be the most beautiful woman on Earth.
 
That very same shadow and focus and light is used on Humphrey Bogart in several close-ups, and it doesn't really seem to do a thing for him. All things are not equal.

I love beautiful photographs. I always have. If I could have been anything, other than a musician, a writer, a singer, I would love to have been a photographer. I would also love to have been an architect, building small cathedrals and Latin American-style housing developments with courtyards and common areas and portals and stairs to the rooftops.

Beauty may be subjective, and perhaps at times lie in the eye of the beholder, but it is also often so spiritually ordained and concocted that there can be no doubt where it comes from and what it is that makes a beautiful thing beautiful. It comes from the Artisan and Physician, the God of all creation, who surely has an eye for beautiful things, and wants us to enjoy beauty whenever and wherever we can.

Your list might be different than mine, though I suspect we'd all agree that the Grand Canyon or Niagara Falls or the Shenandoah Mountains are beautiful, without a doubt. A polar bear floating on an ice cap, or an Okapi drinking from a watering hole just a few yards away from a zebra or giraffe on the African plains is nothing but beautiful to just about any eye that beholds it.

I used to work with a bunch of guys who would occasionally poll each other to critique everyone's list of Ten Most Beautiful's. 'Women,' of course, was usually the topic. Those lists would be amazingly different and unique. It was sometimes shocking to hear what some guys considered 'beautiful.'

My wife is beautiful in a classic, exotic kind of way, but she's usually the most beautiful to me in the morning, drinking coffee, sans make-up, prior to getting all 'fixed up.' I catch myself often, staring across the room at her, remembering the first few times we met, before whatever physical beauty I saw finally manifest itself in the deep, deep inner beauty that made her face just about perfect to me. Beauty being 'skin deep' gets quickly shot out of the water once you've spent a decent amount of time with someone whose beauty is revealed over and over again in kindness, joy, and energetic concern. It inspires and it comforts and it beckons.

I can't say why, exactly, but I think one of the most beautiful things on Earth is a pregnant woman. If that's even remotely shocking to anyone it shouldn't be, and I wouldn't waste much breath trying to explain.

I think Myrna Loy is absolutely beautiful in 'The Best Years of Our Lives,' particularly when she's not the focus of the scene. I guess that means I think great acting is beautiful. It's what makes Al Pacino beautiful in 'Dog Day Afternoon,' and Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron both beautiful in 'An American in Paris.' Paris is beautiful, too, by the way. The last scene in the film 'Guess Who's Coming to Dinner,' when Spencer Tracy gives what would be his final great speech on film, just weeks before he died, that's poignantly beautiful.

'A River Runs Through It' is a beautiful film.

Of course, from Beethoven's 9th to 'Thunder Road,' there is everlasting and mysterious beauty in music. I'm all but certain that on our initial tour through the streets of Heaven, Samuel Barber's 'Adagio for Strings' will ring through the corridors and roundabouts and green valleys of  Paradise and completely contradict the long-held belief that there will be no tears in Heaven.

We cry over beautiful things. I cry at weddings when the bride comes down the aisle and we all stand in her honor, and in honor of her father who must now hand her over.

We cry over and over again during the same scenes in movies that we've already seen a hundred times. You know what's coming. You still choke up.

I cry listening to beautiful sermons preached from a humble pulpit.

I'd be happy to fill my life with more and more beauty and less and less tension and disagreement and cruel arrogance. I'd be happy to find more of the beauty we used to know in our quietness. The loud, shrill voices of angry men and women drowns out the sound of the songs we used to sing. I'd be happy to sing 'We Shall Overcome' every Sunday in church, if it meant that we took each other's hands and braced ourselves for the storm.

La Sagrada Familia will one day be swept up from Barcelona, and replanted in either the new Earth or the new Heaven, not sure which. It will get finished, finally. Gaudi will have his dream. Beauty will have its day. We will waste no more time in pride and prejudice and ignorance and cruel brutality. We will find beauty all around us. And Ingrid Bergman and Myrna Loy and the photographs of Tina Modotti and Edward Weston, and the paintings of Van Gogh and Modigliani and Kahlo and Chagall, and the music of Ludwig and Amadeus and Johannes and Bono and Bruce will fill the skies and the streets and the landscape of whatever life it is that awaits us, that is being prepared for us.

'Til then, we need more weddings, more great films, more deeply spiritual 'folk' songs, more open spaces, more cathedrals, more photographs. I'd upload one here of my wife, but she'd kill me. It's a face that takes on global proportions; Turkish, perhaps, or Arab, or Spanish, or Italian; or straight out of the American Southwest; without make-up, drinking coffee, listening intently and patiently to yet another story told by her young son. It's the face of love and beauty, and I'm blessed by it at every turn.

I don't know that beauty is more important than anything else. Surely that wouldn't be true. Love is most important, with truth and faith and hope right up there alongside it. But that's where beauty resides. In love, and in faith, and in hope, and in truth. Awarm cup of 'chocolat' on a cold autumn night; a glass of sweet iced tea on a hot summer day; the sound of a baseball hitting the center of a glove; children laughing in a park; a glass of red wine shared with a friend or lover at a sidewalk café; the caves of Carlsbad, or the canyonlands of Utah, or the ocean along the beaches of Coronado Island.

We do trudge along in this life, but more than one wise person has told me before that life is too short, and what I assumed they meant was that time might be better spent looking for beauty rather than pursing your lips at every sour note you can find.

No doubt, beauty lies in the eye of the beholder. Say that five times.