Category Archives: mental health

“Lighten up” You Pain Mongerers!

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And one trembles to be so understood and, at last, To understand, as if to know became The fatality of seeing things too well. -Wallace Stevens

Wallace Stevens was a fine poet and I do think he experienced the “pain” of seeing things to well and that probably it felt like a “fatality.” For, the gods have forbidden us to look at things to clearly, too well, as it does not look pretty. For example, each of us could die at any moment but neurologically we are wired to not obsess with that thought. If we did, we would have trouble functioning. So we live our hum-drum lives “assuming” that we are going to live forever, knowing in the back of our hearts that we won’t, but not worrying about the fact that the very next moment the grim-reaper could be knocking on our door.

But some do live portions of their life in very dangerous situations and have the knowledge that their life is on the line. Soldiers are one example but they are disciplined and trained to now allow that fear to predominate. Others are racked with serious illness that could take them at anytime. But many others are merely predisposed to see through to the grim of life, its intrinsic ugliness and ultimate “fatality”, and at times get overwhelmed and even on occasion decide to throw in the towel and borrow Shakespeare’s “bare bodkin”

But, to those people, I challenge them that they are taking themselves too seriously. Yes, they see that “fatality” dimension of life and it tears into their soul. But, they need to “give it a rest” from time to time even as they write about it or preach about it for it is only one perspective. That perspective can become all-consuming as the mind can readily perseverate on anything, certainly something like the ugliness of life, and that “bare bodkin” or Socrates’ “hemlock” might beckon. In those instances, I fear these people are often just taking themselves and their pain too personally. THERE IS ANOTHER WAY OF LOOKING AT IT! Often, “This too shall pass.” I strongly recommend that when life is looking overwhelming, try to utilize a simple cognitive-behavioral strategy and follow the advice from the movie, “The Life of Brian” and sing the little ditty, “Look on the bright side of life.” Make it a practice to look around you and focus…and feel…the beauty that is around you even in the midst of your pain.

Here is a picture I found that makes me think of myself with my wife when I have consumed with ponderous, boring thoughts about the heaviness of life:  I have just quoted  T. S. Eliot:  “Dark, dark, we all go into the dark, the vacant interstellar space…”  Note the look on her face.  She is pondering, “How in the hell did I ever get stuck with this morose loser?”

2be old bored couple pix

Group Think, Collective Psychosis, and Spirituality

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Indian novelist and social critic Arundhati Roy wrote one of my favorite novels, The God of Small Things, which I strongly recommend. She has been outspoken about political and social injustice in her own country and even in our country. He outspoken views have gotten her into no small amount of trouble with her own government. Recently in Amy Goodman’s radio program, Democracy Now, she was interviewed about the U.S. declaration of war on Iraq a decade ago and used the term “psychosis” to describe the decision. Now, I think “psychosis” might have been a bit over the top. But she does offer a very insightful, critical perspective about that decision, a perspective that is now agreed upon by many in this country. (Ms. Roy interview link: http://www.democracynow.org/2013/3/18/arundhati_roy_on_iraq_wars_10th)  Cultures do function as individuals in a sense and can be “mentally ill”, even psychotic. And it always takes someone from the outside, someone who is not caught up in the collective madness, to point in out. Thus the important role of Ms. Roy and other brilliant thinkers from other cultures.  Circular reasoning often prevails. We have something in mind that we want to do and then devote our rational processing of data into legitimating the conclusion to which we’ve already been led. Or, to quote someone (whose name I no longer recall), our thinking is often “the belated rationalization of conclusions to which we have already been led by our desires.”

I know I sound like a broken record, but “this is a spiritual problem.” Now to call anything a “spiritual” problem and, already acknowledging there is the “broken record” issue with me, I myself want to say, “Oh, barf me with a spoon!” It is so easy to pontificate about “spiritual problems” and even more so I know that I’m doing so on some level, playing back an old recording in which I achieved cheap ego satisfaction from heaping “hell-fire and damnation on a lost and dying world.” Well, that is not what I have in mind. That is too simplistic. The solution I had in mind back then was very immature, reflecting spirituality seen as a rational process in which certain precepts merely needed to be accepted and followed. But by “spirituality” here I refer to the gut-level values of our culture, values that are usually reflected even in our religion. And, if we were honest, our supreme value today, our true “God” is consumerism, or “stuff.” We actually believe only in “stuff” and our heart lies with “stuff.”

But the spirituality I now value and seek to practice…and admittedly do so very poorly…is that of a new direction. It is a focus on the “eternal” but not in terms of time and space but in terms of value or quality. It is simply to recognize that our world is ephemeral, that there is an Ultimate reality that is present and expresses itself through this world. And our ephemeral, mundane world can have meaning only when we live in reference to that other dimension. Thus we daily “chop wood and carry water”, not knowing what the outcome may be, but knowing, i.e. “believing” and “hoping”, that it was make a difference. T. S. Eliot described it as the need to “offer our deeds to oblivion.” Of course, this offends our grandiose ego self who wants to know what the outcome will be and wants the outcome, especially the part that we played, to be really magnificent. But we can’t know. But we can take comfort in the hope that, collectively speaking, “There is a divinity that doeth shape our ends, rough hew them how we may.” (Shakespeare)

I offer two poems which so beautifully emphasize this external reference point, one from the East and one from the West:

First, from Lao Tzu:

Thirty spokes are made one by holes in a hub,
By vacancies joining them for a wheel’s use;
The use of clay in moulding pitchers
Comes from the hollow of its absence;
Doors, windows, in a house,
Are used for their emptiness:
�Thus we are helped by what is not
To use what is.

And then there is a lovely sonnet by John Masefield in which distress in our life is seen as an occasion to “thrust on that Unseen” and “cast to the devil’s challenge” the man’s “yes”. For, the devil’s challenge is a resounding “No”, an emphatic declaration that our life does not have any meaning and that our efforts are futile. When that spirit of negation rears its ugly head, that is the moment to look around and find the beauty that is nearby in our world, to offer a “random act of kindness”, and try to do so anonymously and without ostentation, and perhaps offer to love to one of God’s critters, human or otherwise. In other words, “get over ourselves” for a moment which is what the black hole of despair is often about.

Man has his unseen friend, his unseen twin,
His straitened spirit’s possibility,
The palace unexplored he thinks an inn,
The glorious garden which he wanders by.
It is beside us while we clutch at clay
To daub ourselves that we may never see.
Like the lame donkey lured by moving hay
We chase the shade but let the real be.
Yet, when confusion in our heaven brings stress,
We thrust on that unseen, get stature from it,
Cast to the devil’s challenge the man’s yes,
And stream our fiery hour like a comet,
And know for that fierce hour a friend behind,
With sword and shield, the second to the mind.

Grace, Hope, and “The Peace of Wild Things”

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I have met several Indian friends in the blog-o-sphere the past two years and feel a real kinship with them. And, this kinship corresponds with an “Eastern” direction in my spiritual life as I see boundaries as less distinct than I was taught in my youth. I illustrated this several weeks ago with an anecdote I learned decades ago when someone pointed out that in one Eastern language, instead of saying, “I see the book over there” their language puts it like this, “The book is seen.” The separateness from the world is less pronounced. The world is less objectified…in some sense.

One of these Indian friends and I have had several very rewarding exchanges about the nature of reality, the nature of “spirituality”, and the role that culture plays in shaping our view of these things, and our view of all things. He, like me, sees the ugliness in the world…in my country, yes…but also in his own country. I get the impression that at times he finds it very troubling like I do. When I have these feelings, I will often deliberately miss-apply one of the scriptures, the shortest verse in the bible, and will tell myself, “This is why the Bible says, ‘Jesus wept.’” For, the writer of this “shortest verse in the bible” said Jesus was on a mountain, overlooking a city when he said these words. Using my “literary” license, I feel Jesus was weeping in realizing how unnecessary it was that mankind lives in the self-imposed spiritual squalor and I think that any of us who looks at the human situation with a heart, including his/her own situation, certainly wants to cry on occasion. I know I do.

But this friend this morning pointed out something which again caught my attention. Perhaps I fawn too much over his culture and it’s lesser emphasis of object separateness for he noted emphatically, “Forget culture shit. Culture is the same everywhere.” And I realized that yes, even in that culture of his with its different “object-relationship” paradigm, there is still the human tendency to absolutize to his/her worldview and to take it to be the only way of being in the world. And the minute people make this mistake poison is introduced and/or perpetuated in the world. This is the human predicament in a nut shell right there. We just can’t get around that obstinacy and it is that obstinacy that creates the profound problems that we are facing. I see it currently in my country’s recurring political pissing contests which I most recently illustrated with the internecine squabbling in the extremists of the Republican Party. But everywhere in the world, we just can’t “get over ourselves”.

Now, suddenly I realize I’m broaching too much despair! I try to not go there too often. When too much grim besets me, I am learning to counter this despair with focus on the beauty that always abounds in my life if I will deign to look for it and pay attention to it. And when I focus there for a moment, if I practice meditation, I will offer a prayer of thanks and find my Center again. This exercise helps me to appropriate and honor grace.

And the notion of grace brings to mind a powerful moment about a year ago when I was helping a dear friend exit this world after a long, ugly battle with that bitch cancer. KW and I had always talked about spiritual matters in the 25 years we had known each other so this was not merely a “death-bed” concern of his. On a particular day, he posed the question to me, “What is grace?” Well, I didn’t miss a beat and employed what I so often employ, a bit of poetry that I have gleaned over the years. And on that occasion I quoted an excerpt from a marvelous poem by Wendell Berry entitled, “The Peace of Wild Things.” KW was touched, and so was I, as I felt I had offered a “word fitly spoken” even if it was someone else’s words. Here is that profound wisdom from Berry:

When despair for the world grows in me
And I wake in the night at the least sound
In fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
Rests in his beauty in the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come unto the peace of wild things
Who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come unto the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

 

Ludwig on Claire’s Crochet

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Ludwig on Claire’s Crochet.

This is my first “re-blogging” effort!  A dear blog-o-sphere friend wrote this beautiful poem about one of my beloved dachshunds, Ludwig.

Loving a dog is relatively new to me.  I often tell Ludwig that God sent him, and his younger sister Elsa, to me to teach me more about love.  For they have tapped into a “love muscle” that lay dormant for much of my life.  Oh, yes I always “loved” family, friends, and even the world.  But my love was always too measured.  But God has sent four puppies into my life to teach me about love in a less measured way—First, my wife Claire, second my first dachshund Sonya who is now deceased, third Ludwig, and then four years ago his sister Elsa.

And an important dimension of this love is merely paying attention to them, recognizing that they have needs, and that my first nature is to give most of my attention to my own needs.  These four puppies are teaching me to “get over myself” and I’m making progress.

So thanks “Inner Dialect” and also thanks Sandeep for sharing the same picture of Ludwig on your web site last week.  Sandeep announced to the world that Ludwig was seeking a beau and since then Ludwig has been very excited at the prospect.  The very next day after Sandeep’s post, I caught Ludwig in the bathroom primping before the mirror, sporting a pair of sexy sunglasses, and dashing Old Spice on his body.  I quietly backed out, hoping he didn’t see me, as i didn’t want to spoil his hopes of “getting lucky” after all these years!

Keep the Categories Pure, Keep the Categories Pure!!!!

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Not long after I married in 1989, my wife and I were taking a road trip out west. I had already discovered that she was not as anal-retentive as I was…how could I expect otherwise as she was a musician and artist…but this difference became more apparent on this trip.

To make a long story short, we could not keep track of our road maps and related travel information. I had an easy solution to this—keep maps and such in a side-pocket on our respective car doors. But Claire, lacking this god-given (and mandated) anal retentiveness, would use that door pocket for all sorts of stuff—gum, food wrappers, reading material, sun-glasses, newspapers, etc, etc. and pretty soon it was overflowing with all sorts of stuff, so much so that often the road maps and other “pocket material” would end up elsewhere. Thus, when needed a map it could not be found. I was frustrated for, clearly, in the Old Testament book of Leviticus, God had instructed us to “Keep the categories pure” and side-door pockets were meant only for specified material, “specified material” which I was clearly more qualified to define than was she.

After this trip, I was sharing re the trip with a good friend and sharing re frustrations which had arisen, as is always the case when newlyweds travel for the first time. And, I remember emphatically making the point to him…albeit facetiously and self-consciously…that I wanted to scream at her from time to time, “Keep the categories pure! Keep the categories pure, dammit.” Fortunately, and wisely, I knew that sharing my frustration at that point on this matter with her would not have been prudent!

But this anecdote is admittedly so revealing about how my mind works and how alienated I am, how detached I am, how “clinical” I am in my approach to life. Sure, she needed to honor the Old Testament Levitical instruction more closely but my emphasis on this categorization was also very problematic. For, in reality none of us can “keep the categories pure” as I was implying and, as I admit, my first nature dictates. For, reality is not clearly defined and in fact is, ultimately, not defined at all….it is a flux…and our “definitions” are very arbitrary and limiting.

This “categorization” is a verbal or cognitive enterprise and reflects the human penchant for subjecting the whole of reality into cognitive structures, i.e. “thought”, so that he/she can manage and manipulate them and feel that he/she is in control. And, without this ability, we would not be human and we would not have human culture; for culture is an invention, the result of our ability to carve up reality and make it subservient to some purpose even something as simple, and necessary, as the well-being of the group.

But, this carving up can become problematic and I think most observers of the human predicament….particularly the Western expression of this predicament…will agree has become problematic. For, we have come to see the world as our oyster, something to be exploited and used. We have come to see ourselves as separate and distinct from the world and done so to such a degree that could ultimately lead to our demise as a species.

Yes, we must always “categorize” and “think” but we do have a forebrain and with that God-given contrivance we can find the capacity to get outside of ourselves, to “think outside of the box”, and think in less categorical terms, in terms that are more inclusive of others and of the world as a whole. We can come to the point where we no longer see the world as our oyster and see ourselves as part of the world, an expression of the world even, and that the world includes all of us….even those who are different than ourselves! Even more so, it even includes those people who we do not like…cursed be the thought!

To sum it up, we can have our “categories” but the goal is to not worry so much about keeping them “pure” as I have been wont to do. For anybody who actually succeeds in “keeping the categories pure” is certifiably nuts! Fortunately, I never literally went to that extreme! Yes, we can have our “words” and “thoughts” and must have them. But we can realize that they are not to be taken literally, that they are a means to an end, that the astute Buddhist wisdom is very appropriate, “The finger pointing to the moon is not the moon.”

 

 

Musings About an Identity Crisis

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I wish you first a sense of theater.

Only those who know illusion

And love it will go far.

Otherwise, we spend our lives in confusion

About what to say and do about who we really are.

This poem by W. H. Auden presents an essential quandary in our quest for identity. If you find yourself wondering about “who I really am” then you have already opened a can of worms and have an identity crisis in the offing. And please note that an “identity crisis” is often a luxury, one that millions of people cannot afford, being the urgency of the day-to-day grind of trying to make a living to provide for themselves and their family But for those of you who have this luxury, I’m going to share some thoughts about the nature of identity.

The notion that “I am” assumes a whole lot. When I think about who “I am”, I am practicing selective attention as the question brings to mind only memories that are consistent with presuppositions about myself that I have been permitted and find myself comfortable with. Everything else has been excluded. But the “everything else” is still there and always beckons in the unconscious, coming to us in fears, anxieties, projections, and dreams, good and bad. Addressing an identity crisis is to realize that we have drawn the boundaries of our existence too narrowly and that the “crisis” we are now feeling merely is an opportunity to broaden these boundaries. It is to realize that our identity….the one that I’m presenting here as a false self, even as a charade in some sense…is very necessary and is not to be totally discarded. It is to realize merely that it is only part of the picture, only the surface of our real identity and for that identity to have meaning we must allow some of its excluded context to surface and be integrated into our sense of self. That “false self”, or “ego”, is very important. The problem lies only in our insistence that it be the whole of ourselves.  Failure  to recognize this is to find o living a very shallow life.

Let me illustrate with a snippet from another Auden poem in which he notes how that most of us “drive through life in the closed cab of occupation.” By this he meant that a person often, if not usually, sees the world through a template which is often best characterized by his occupation. Thus, a physician sees people through a medical model, an educator sees people as children needing to learn, a clinician (such as myself) sees people with the cold detachment of a diagnostic manual. But, Auden’s point was not merely about “occupations” but about a template, an ego structure through which all of us see the world, be it “occupational” or otherwise. This ego structure is our identity, our “false self” or persona, which always needs to be enlarged. And when this “enlargement” takes place, it does not invalidate the template…usually. The template usually serves a useful purpose. But we need to see the world through broader terms than we are wont to do when totally subservient to the template that with which we are so familiar and comfortable  that we can’t even see it and are actually averse to seeing.  (Emily Dickinson noted, “The mind too near itself to see itself distinctly.)

Let me illustrate with Mitt Romney. I think Romney was, and is, an intelligent, good human being. He had many qualities which could have made him a good President. But his worldview, his “template”, got in his way and posed some real problems in his campaign, best illustrated in the surreptitiously taped 47 percent speech to wealthy donors. His template demonstrated an extreme rigidity which often left him appearing very awkward and socially maladroit so that he often missed the nuances of personal and public interactions. For, Romney is a “corporate” person, a “corporate” mogul and persons of this cut do have a place in our culture, be that good or bad. He sees the world through the eyes of a corporate mogul and was not able to give this viewpoint pause on occasion and approach the public in more personal terms. It is not that he was “bad”. It is just that he was Mitt Romney and that “Mitt Romney” was, and is, a “corporate mogul.”

(An equally valid point is the “literarylew” is merely “literarylew” and sees the world through the template that comes across through his blog. Those who know me personally also see how clearly that “literarylew” is part and parcel of who I am, it is my identity, and yes, it really gets tiresome on occasion, or at least as annoying as hell!)

 

“Post Hypnotic Trance of Early Infancy”

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R. D. Laing once said that most of us life our lives in a “post hypnotic trance of early infancy.” Laing recognized that most of us live life unconsciously, driven by fears and anxieties that we acquired in our very early life before we had acquired reason. Most people do not realize that this earliest period of time was one of intense “conscious” awareness as we were soaking up the world in a way that would not be possible once the dawn of reason came at about age one and a half. (Aldous Huxley once posited the notion that our brain is basically a filter that selects what part of experience we will be open to.)

This core experience stays with us and will shape everything we do the rest of our lives. This core is inherently emotional, a “feeling state” that provides the basic orientation we have to the world and even to our own view of our self and that world. It will reflect our perception of our very place in the world and the perception of how much power we have to shape that world.

Asking someone to recognize this part of his/her existence is challenging and often impossible. I often use the following notion—it is like asking a fish to see water. A blog-o-sphere friend recently shared another image which I love—it is like asking someone who has fallen into a jar of marmalade and lived there all his/her life to see anything but marmalade. And this perceptual field is mutli-faceted, if not infinitely-faceted. But one facet will be the answer to this question, “Is this world an hospitable place?” Those raised in abject poverty are more inclined to answer “no” and adopt a stance of disappointment and hopelessness, a life confined to one poor choice after another. One that is born into a world that is stable is more likely to adopt a world view that sees potential, that sees the beauty…and the ugliness…in the world and says to himself/herself, “Hey, I can do this!”

A key task in life is the gain a perspective on our perspective and as one philosopher has said that to do so is to “somehow escape it.” I would qualify his observation with the notion that this meta-cognition is at least a step in the direction of escaping it. The next step will require courage, the courage to take the step beyond from time to time, to step into the beyond. And someone has noted, “When taking a far journey, you can’t see the destination until you have lost sight of the shore from which you departed.”  It makes me think of the Call of Abraham who was asked to forsake everything and “go unto a land that I will show thee.”

Beauty Always Abounds!

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In the desert of my heart,
Let the healing fountain start.
In the prison of my days,
Teach this free man how to praise.

 

I love that poetry snippet by W. H. Auden and it is part of my daily devotional. But, I can occasionally look at it differently and be taken aback with the grim notion of a “prison of my days!” “Wow! Somebody needs to get a life,” someone might say. “Prison. Aw, come on…”

And he/she would have a point. A good poet is a pain mongerer on some level as, just as “mad Ireland…hurt” W. B. Yeats into poetry (per a W. H. Auden poem), a mad somewhere-or-another hurt most poets into their private, though beautiful, torment. And, yes, “mad Arkansas” hurt me into “other people’s poetry” as my wife once quipped!

But, anyone who sees only the pain probably needs to pause every now and then and see the beauty that abounds around him/her. Yes, I do see humankind confined to “the prison of his/her days” in that the time-space continuum does not provide us any exit. We are trapped! But, just when the prison seems most confining and unbearable, most of us can take that pause and see the luxurious beauty that surrounds us—the simple breath of life, the gift of children, the love of friends and family, the loveliness of plants and flowers, and the stunning beauty of the animal kingdom. This focus can help us escape ourselves for a moment and that is one of the basic tasks of life

 

Shakespeare on Hypocrisy

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Shakespeare does it again! Just when I’m taking comfort, so luxuriously ensconced in my humility, he punctures my bubble:

When love begins to sicken and decay,
It useth an enforcèd ceremony.
There are no tricks in plain and simple faith.
But hollow men, like horses hot at hand,
Make gallant show and promise of their mettle.

Ever caught yourself being full of yourself? Ever caught yourself being pious and righteous? Ever caught yourself doing so “like horses hot at hand”? What an incredible image this is. I can see the huge horses, snorting and pawing the air, announcing, “Hey, everyone! I’m here. Look at me.”

Now in fairness to myself, I am not as guilty of this as in my youth but it still happens. Then “mindfulness” will visit me in (spite of myself), and the sting of conscience will prick me. Then, suddenly humbled by self-awareness, I will utter the famous word of Texas Governor Rick Perry, “Oops!” For I have been caught looking foolishly full of myself.

“Hollow men” wear their faith for show. In another play, Shakespeare said of them, “With devotions visage and pious action, they do sugar o’er the devil himself.” They often mean well and are often only of guilty of immaturity. But they do great harm. I think the televangelists are a good example of this “horses hot at hand” type of faith. These fellows are usually performance artists and prey on an unlearned audience, one that lacks the gift of a discriminating ear.

To use still another notion from Shakespeare, these “hollow men” have hearts that are “bronzed over” by “damned custom” so that it is “proof and bulwark against sense.” Yes, the heart has been replaced by “damn custom” or these aforementioned cognitions, the pious jargon, so that the heart itself is “proof and bulwark” against “sense” or “feeling.” Thus the heart is empty of feeling and the person living merely in the grasp of the conceptual is a “hollow man” and must make “gallant show and promise of their mettle.”

For, the “plain and simple faith” that Jesus spoke of is not available to them, the faith that Jesus had in mind when he spoke of the need of coming to him with the faith of little children. I now work often with little children and their sweet little hearts are just overflowing with faith—faith in mommy and daddy, faith in their teachers, faith in their budding notions of “god”, faith in the world they are exploring, and even faith in an old substitute teacher like me! It is beautiful to see their simple trust. This is the “simple faith” that Shakespeare had in mind and the faith that Jesus calls us to.

But, oh, it is so much easier to just rely on what we are accustomed to, those “well worth words and ready phrases that build comfortable walls against the wilderness,” even if they are the “Christian” variety!

This is the Day that the Lord Hath Made

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And the conclusion to the refrain is, “Let us rejoice and be glad in it.”

It is Sunday morning and memories always flood my soul on Sunday mornings. Decades ago I was a six year old boy, getting all “gussied up” for Sunday school and church. “Gussied up” back then meant I’d taken my weekly bath the afternoon before, and was donning my pressed and starched “Sunday-go-to-meetin’” clothes, that I’d polished my shoes, and I’d read my Sunday school lesson. Back then we would all climb aboard an old rusted jalopy… all eight of us…and we’d slowly travel down the dusty Arkansas road, connect up with the highway, and eventually convene at “the Lord’s house” with people of a similar stripe. There we would imbibe standard Baptist fare, the “death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ” presented with all the fire-and-brimstone fury our standard-edition Hazel Motes could muster up.

“Gussied up” today means a clean pair of Levi’s and a wrinkle-free shirt with a pair of tennis shoes. Though my church certainly accommodates more formal attire, casual is readily accepted. I have taken my daily shower. I will shortly get into my 2006 Toyota Scion and note that, though it is a simple automobile, it will promptly start, none of its windows are cracked, and the hood is not tied down with baling wire. I will leisurely drive into town on this beautiful morning, appreciating the barren, wintry terrain of this bright sunny morning. I will probably see two or three beautiful hawks perched on the power lines along the road, looking for their Sunday “dinner”. (“Lunch” back then was “dinner” and what is now “dinner” was always “supper”.)

As I park my car near the church, I will appreciate the lovely old buildings and as I walk down the street will admire the spring flowers that are budding. I will realize that they are budding prematurely due to our global-warming induced mild winter. At about that moment I will suddenly realize, “Oh, I’m going to church” and will recall the satisfaction that came from knowing I was doing the “right thing”, I was being a “good boy” and going to church, not “forsaking the assembling together as the manner of some is.” I will note that, yes, even today I have some of this same ego reward in “dutifully” going to church, recognizing that those feelings too are ok.

I will meet with people of a “similar stripe” and will enjoy the time together as we ponder over spiritual issues. I will take satisfaction in noting that no one will guilt me into “coming back tonight for BTC” or for Wednesday night Prayer Meeting. There will be no emotional high-pressure effort to get me to believe a certain way. The “saw dust trail” of conversion is not present as one is allowed to “work out his/her own salvation with (or without) fear trembling.”

I will feel the presence of God as I do even at this moment. And I will also note that the “presence of God” was present back then also but articulated in the experience of that particular cultural moment, refracted through the experiences of that little group of people who were approaching God as best they knew how. And can any of us ever do otherwise?

(Now here is a tune by Johnny Cash re the subject. But I promise I am not hung over as he was!)