What makes you feel rich? Of course it is very nice to have enough money to live comfortably, pay your rent, and buy good food. Yes, nice, but don’t watch the news—photos of all the world’s poor huddled masses shrinking from bombs, children all ribs and all filth. I do not know what to do at all about the spirituality of all this. I do not know how to keep myself from bad moods at the very least. I do not know how to pray, except in anger and abject pleading. Gratitude simply does not work for me, because it feels like I am being holier than thou. Can I dare to be grateful when others have nothing? Would I happily wave my palm on the way to a death by Crucifixion? Am I that naive?
All that I can manage is to pray limply, bless and breathe fresh air into my still-pumping lungs, look and listen for some small beauty that looks authentic and makes me grin.
Abraham, patriarch of note, well acquainted with grief and pain, can make me laugh out loud. In Genesis 18 he has a long conversation with God, really all with himself, in which he prays that God will not destroy a whole city, because what if there are some righteous people still living there? Ok, says God. But Abraham persists with his descending stats: Will you spare this city of sinners if there are 30? 20? 10, five? What if there is only ONE righteous person? Abraham whittles God down to the nubbin. We don’t know if the sex-riddled sin city called Sodom is spared, but we know Abraham gives his all into his efforts. The story makes me laugh out loud. It makes me stop worrying about the theology in this story about God being punitive and destructive. What matters to me is not the bad image of God presented here, but the portrait of someone who prays anyway even when everything is obviously lost, and God appears to be the culprit. It’s as stupid as kissing a child’s “boo boo” and saying that your kiss will make is all go away. And the child believes you. Sometimes all we have is bandaids and small but mighty lies.
Here are some images that make me rich with laughter, raise my gloom irrationally. I believe them all anyway.
Here is a wooden brightly colored sea horse at the edge of our friends’ swimming pool. An ornament with no purpose but delight.
And here is a gnome with the same foolish errand of Mercy—cheer up anyway, say these ladybugs aflutter below.
And here is an old woman who just turned 100. There’s a party to acknowledge such age of course—balloons, a cake, and a cheery song. A good neighbor makes sure the birthday girl shows up. What for? You’re 100 years old! “I am?”
And here’s a quote from French essayist, playwright, and poet, Paul Claudel (1868-1995). He nearly became a monk after a religious conversion he experienced at age eighteen, but instead of following the call of God and joining a Benedictine monastery, he followed his own rather cynical temperament and became a poet full of sardonic prophetic assessments about his religion, his times, and his country. He had lost hope for all of it, especially “the stench and the starch of partisan politics.” He even made it to the cover of Time Magazine, but fame is no substitute for faith.
I can identify with such disgust, but I’m not quite as consistently cynical as he was. Claudel felt it all as grief, perhaps depression as well. Still, in helpless sorrow, without cover-up or denial, there is hope. Because you know and name your sorrow without pretense, you become a prayer, a helpless fool, a poet, and a prophet.
“There is something sadder to lose than life— the reason for living;
Sadder than to lose one’s possessions is to lose one’s hope.”
Il y a une chose plus triste a perdre que la vie, c’est la raison de vivre,
Plus triste que do perdre ses biens, c’est de perdre son espérance.”
“Jesus did not come to explain away suffering or remove it. He came to fill it with his presence.” I think this poet filled his writings with spiritual richness—Soul.
And finally, here is a small bear playing delightedly with an old and empty bird feeder. This bear is sure that if she or he tosses the feeder about enough, delicious sugary water, or honey, or something delicious that will miraculously pour forth and fill his hungry belly. A bear rich with Hope in a friend's back yard—posing, no less.
