Stop the World

Stop the world I want to get on!
In this hectic season and violent-crazed world most people want to get off. I'm tempted.
However, I don't want to be left behind, unless of course it's the biblical Rapture in which case I assert myself as a child of heaven-on-earth. I'll go down not up.
I'm trying to keep up with the technological revolution. I'm wired for print and paper, not cyber-paper and electronic non-books. I'm wired for slow and steady not swift and simultaneous. It's a sea change.
I must be getting better (or worse) because I get impatient when my computer is out of date and responds like a tortoise not a hare.
But I need to understand the computer and its language for my vocation as a writer. And I want to get my memoir published at a time when publishing is in as much disarray as the auto industry.
Also I want to be able to understand my grandchildren's lingo, to stay technologically intelligent enough not to be shelved.
My twelve year old granddaughter has the lead role in her school play "Annie" this weekend and I want to "text" her, because "texting" is how she communicates. Even email isn't accessible and immediate enough. (As evolution goes, in generations thumbs will be long and thin instead of short and stubby. Thumbs for digital agility as well as for prehensile grasp.)
And young Will wants Grammy to play his latest video game with him. What about Wii? My eye/hand coordination is too slow. I'm grateful for the ones four and under whose games are Chutes and Ladders, Calico Critters or Peek-a-Boo.
Studies show that too much screen time can damage developing brains so I worry. But my brain probably needs the stimulation of new learning to forestall the damage of age.
That's my rant for the day. Any suggestions? Let me know. In the meantime I'm on board.

The Grand Charlotte

Charlotte is 94 years old today. I saw her yesterday in the nursing home and forgot to say Happy Birthday Charlotte. So ... Happy Birthday Charlotte.
Yesterday Charlotte said something extraordinary to me. In talking about a friend who lives in the retirement community where Charlotte lives and to which she hopes to return after her post-surgical recuperating time in the nursing home, she told me that her friend had "pretty much given up," then added, "You know you just can't do that, give up like that. It ruins everyone else's life."
Today most of us think that "giving up" would ruin our own quality of life, but Charlotte in her famously blunt, matter-of-fact way is quite firm that such an attitude would ruin every else's life. How grand is that! How holy is that in a world gone so crazy with self-interest that it can't see its own worth and beauty let alone that of anyone else.
It's not that Charlotte has had a rose garden life, and it's not that her friend is older and in worse shape than Charlotte so we might justify her giving up. I don't know how people turn out like Charlotte. The usual rationales don't work. You know the ones like growing up all loved, having had advantages in life, one solid mutually loving, death-do-us-part marriage, successful kids, plenty of money, basic good health, on and on. Some of these things Charlotte has had and some not.
And, BTW ( that means "by the way" in email-ese) Charlotte's not one who slathers pink icing all over everything. Her patience isn't sterling; she mostly blurts out what's on her mind, political correctness be damned; she has physical limitations, cancer, tempers and moods, a gruff voice and a sharp wit you wouldn't call corny or sweet. There are days she feels like giving up too. But she doesn't—for your sake and mine.
I pray I can age with as much grace.

It's Safer in Church!

We went to the mall over the Thanksgiving weekend. It was a sanity test we failed, proving ourselves insane. We did find a parking space less than a two mile hike from the mall scene; we did remember to stop at 5 p.m. and put our name in at the new PF Changs where there was only a 2-hour wait; and no one died of anything but boredom. Still, I suffered a case of mall hypnosis, similar to highway hypnosis. After a while everything looked the same and every store sold the same merchandise, all of it essential to your wellbeing and all of it glittering.
We had just read the tragic story of the young man at a Walmart store in upstate New York who was crushed to death by crowds. It used to be that you could get crowd-crushed by sports mobs, then rock concert mobs, and now it's shopping mobs.
We knew about desperate shoppers, killer shoppers, even about inadequate secirity measures in retail stores, so what were we thinking of? Our granddaughters, 12 and 9, eager to visit Icing to examine and beg for the latest bauble or gee-gaw. At least we resisted their sweet shopper-dazed eyes and said NO, which made us feel a little sane, but not really because we could excuse our penury with "Christmas is coming." But we know we won't go back to Icing or any other mall store ever to get anything for anyone.
Are we too old? Or is it our affection for the beauty and new life offered by the Christian nativity story that is mocked by commercialization? We are almost-but-not-quite immune to the sound of Christmas carols, all muzaked in at the same brisk march tempo. Nuance is not a mall feature.
I conclude: You are safer in church. There you will not, at least in most mainline Christian churches in New England, encounter large frantic crowds; you will not be squished; you will find a seat; you will hear lovely choral and organ music, both traditional and not; you may tune in or out at will; you do not have to be a believer to join your personal experience to the Christmas story, whether you feel this year like an infant, a magus, an unwed pregnant young girl, her worried fiance, or just one of the onlooking stable animals. You may even hear some wise words from the bible or a preacher whose homily is concise, clear and ten minutes long. Last but not least you will not have to discern among millions of attractively packaged buying options. There's only one product and it's free.

Death on a Blog? Engage with Grace NOW

When I think of the end of my life tears immediately spring to my eyes. I am completely in love with life and the thought of leaving it behind with all its glories is sorrowful.
Nevertheless, today, Thanksgiving morning, I am inspired to join the "blog rally" and to speak of death in the spirit of the grace of this holiday. I invite my readers to join the Engage with Grace (www.engagewithgrace.org) project, begin conversations with friends, family, at a book club or online about how to end your life with the same purpose and love with which you have lived it—no, it's not about Dr. Kevorkian or the Hemlock society.
I read the front page story, "Talking Turkey about Death" in the Boston Globe, November 26.2008. Rosaria at 32 was dying of a malignant brain tumor. As she lay motionless, unconscious in her hospital bed, at home her beloved two year old daughter languished without Mommy. The child was afraid to touch her mother in the hospital setting. (I've been a hospital chaplain and I understand that fear.) Rosaria's medical team strongly advised the family to leave her in the hospital where she would be well cared for. They defied this authority and took Rosaria home to her own bedroom and bed. For the first time in a week Rosaria opened her eyes as her daughter snuggled in beside her mother. She died the next night at home.
Did this courageous family make the right decision? It seems so but they had to do it by guesswork. They had never talked about dying wishes. Have you?
I have a living will, health care proxy and other written directives, but at 70 I have never talked face to face with myself, my children or even my spouse about my feelings. We are a pretty open family. I guess it's felt almost tabu. Why introduce such an uncomfortable topic? Leave well enough alone.
As a priest I have sat with many a family engaged in agony and argument over what a loved one would want or not want. They care but they don't know! Believe me the discomfort of that struggle is far worse than any discomfort one may feel talking about all this NOW. And this isn't a one way conversation: from the old to the young. We all need to think, talk, and love each other into and out of ignorance. Rosaria was only 32!
Rosaria's sister-in-law Alexandra Drane started the Engage with Grace initiative and the word has spread throughout the healthcare community and beyond thanks to the internet. The website suggests ways to engage yourself and others in such conversations. Begin by asking yourself: On a scale of 1 to 5 where do you fall on this continuum, 1 being let me die in my own bed without medical intervention and 5:Don't give up on me no matter what. Try any proven or unproven intervention possible. I'm on the cusp of 2.5/3. (Other questions, links, resources and more information can be found on the site.) I invite you to check this out and spread the word.
Spiritually, is this taking your life in your own hands? Is it hubris, trying to control too much, not letting go, taking over for the divine will? I say, none of the above. A loving creator has given us minds, hearts, bodies and souls with which to discern how best to love ourselves and others right up to the final intake of breath. This effort is all about fulfilling the essential word of all the world's major religions: do to and for others what you would want done to and for yourself.

I love life enough to talk about its end with gratitude, grace and tears. Death may just be one of those spiritual lemons that you think is too sour to taste, but it could deepen your relationships right NOW, as well as in your last hours. So pucker up!

My Kinda Guru

There is a terrible and growing mess all over our front steps—orange shreds of pumpkin flesh and hundreds of strewn seeds. I should take a broom to it.
I've watched the demolition of our Halloween pumpkin at the mercy of the deft claws and razored teeth of squirrels. It's taken them days to get a breakthrough but at last this morning they, spelling one another, get all the way through to the juiciest innards. The chow line forms. I grab for the digital and click away through the storm door. My favorite photo shows the tail end of one of the gray scavengers whose front body is completely submerged inside the pumpkin. She looks up every once in a while, sometimes to sniff— raised ears alert, eyes darting around, head aswivel, and sometimes to sit on her haunches and nibble to satiation, cheeks flapping, tiny jaws moving faster than she can fly from branch to branch—and that's fast.
As for me these silly gray rodents are my kind of gurus. A guru is a remover of darkness. The usual image of a guru is someone who embodies tranquility, evokes and emits energy from a still point at the center of the cosmos, a point that encompasses all things and also roosts in individual souls, a point called divine. A guru in any religious tradition is a wise soul who can teach you how to live happily in spite of it all.
My squirrels don't fit the bill. But they teach me this: be diligent after that which will feed you; pursue your passions working in teams; be watchful for dangers but do not let your fear keep you at bay for too long; when you have a breakthrough savor it, then share its juices; do not overeat; spit out pitts or other indigestibles; if you make a mess do it with joy; return often to visit the holy place.
I've felt dismal today, worried about many things. My gurus have lifted my darkness. I'm grateful. Maybe tomorrow they will topple the pumpkin and have a community Thanksgiving banquet.

Open Door Policy or Will and the Kingdom

When my grandson ( or one of them) was four (he's five now), he wanted to come see my church, "with no one there."
"It's the one where you get all dressed up on Sunday and give us bread," he says. I tell him he can come on Sunday, but he wants a private tour. So we go.
Will, always speedy with words and legs, runs in ahead of me and heads for the sacristy. "This is your special closet, Grammy," he says. The sacristy is where clergy, acolytes and other servers at the altar don robes for the service. Will wants to see all the scarves. He means stoles, long narrow, colorful strips of fabric clergy wear over their shoulders. Will wraps himself round and round in stoles—red, green, white, blue, paisley and more and asks me to open the door, "Grammy's secret entrance," that leads into the sanctuary. He hops up one step and into the high altar area, which in ancient temples used to be called the "holy of holies."
What happens next surprises me. I listen for Will's speed run around the altar area but hear nothing. Silence. Has he fallen? I go to see and find Will standing still, staring up at the reredos, the wooden carving that fits over the altar, an altar we no longer use. In our day it doesn't make sense to invite people to a holy meal in Godde's name and not allow them to gather round the dining table.
Will is still. His widening brown eyes roam the sculpture: a large wooden crucifix surrounded by niches in which stand Jesus' many followers stand, some looking straight out at us and a few, including Jesus' mother Mary, looking up at Jesus. I worry Will will be frightened by the image. Then I half expect him to drop to his knees and wonder if he has a vocational calling.
"Grammy, look," he finally says.
I look.
"Look. Look," he pulls my hand and walks me back and forth tracing the rows of niches with his finger. He see something wondrous. His eyes are alive with light. I wait.
"There are no doors," he says. "There's no doors."
Will is not at all interested in Jesus and has no questions about what must be an odd image to him. It is the array of saints in their doorless rooms that mesmerizes Will. I know he is learning about time-outs, and I know he is able to turn his temper around fast, repent and begin over, as long as his parents leave the door to his time-out room open.
No closed doors.
Before I can hug him he's off, dashing down the aisle, then hurtling his tiny body as fast as it will go in and out among rows of pews down one side and up the other and back again shouting to me, "Watch this. Watch this."
I watch. I clap. I think to myself that Jesus' wisdom about children was right: " It is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs." (Mark 10:13)

Young and Old Bodies Got Spirit

I've discovered something quite wonderful as I age— and it's not all my aches and creaks.
I watched my grandchildren, the latest one only six months old, begin to see, smile, sit, hitch, crawl, toddle, fall, run, skip, leap and dance. There is such joy in every bodily achievement. No need for a grade. The pure exhilaration of movement, praising Life itself, if enough.
Just recently I was privileged to witness the same bodily joy in a person age eighty two. She suffers from physical ailments all of which keep her a little depressed and mobile but with pain. But this day she came to see me with a smile. "I can walk!" She had always walked I thought.
She told me she'd decided to "take hold of her body and stop all this sitting around."
One of her loves is gardening. "I was afraid to get down there. I might never get up," she says. "But watch."
She did a demo—put the stool in front of her, rolled over it, got her one good knee positioned, curled her toes under, telling me she knew this move from yoga, braced her belly on the stool and stood up. She was overjoyed with the feat. "I'm walking better since I did that," she said as she strode, sort of, across the room as full of grace as a toddler in between falls.
Childhood and elderhood are ages of embodiment, times when the body's movements, not the mind's, are the chief source of and witness to soul. Maybe that's true in between too.