Loving to Hope

I’m composing this message on Mary’s birthday. I have the time because she has chosen to spend her special day doing what she most enjoys doing: increasing and improving her skills as a teacher. She’s attending a class today that she registered for last November, typically not paying a lot of attention to the fact that it was scheduled for the anniversary of the day she was born. Next month Mary and I will have been married for thirty-three years, and I am finally beginning to realize that this time has been an ongoing practicum in the lessons of love.

Both twenty-one (do the math correctly and you’ll figure out which birthday she’s celebrating :-) I don’t think either one of us knew exactly what to expect of the future. About the only thing we really knew for sure was that we loved each other, and this was grounds for committing to a lifetime together. Too, I don’t think that we understood at the time that while the quantitative aspects of our love would theoretically remain constant, the qualitative aspects would be continually and dynamically influenced. The best example I can think of to explain what I mean by this are Rachel and Rebecca, each of whom has significantly shaped and molded Mary’s and my original love in new and unforeseen ways.

Another aspect of love that I had not anticipated was how much work it can sometimes be. I say this with a most positive tone, but while the early and exhilarating stages seemed to flow effortlessly, the new dimension of maintenance that inevitably appeared as our marriage matured required more intentional attention from both of us. I can honestly say (and I hope that Mary can, too) that there has not been a day since our vows that I haven’t loved her, but there have definitely been times in which the circumstances of the moment made it more difficult to be mindful of that truth. We are part of a generation that has come to accept those difficult and challenging moments as grounds for separation and divorce, apparently not seeing them as part of the loving process as well.

In an attempt to identify the cause for those times when the love-consciousness is somehow sublimated, I have discovered that they most usually occur when what I refer to as the scriptural triad (love of God, love of neighbor, love of self) gets out of balance. Rarely is this a matter of loving God or another person too much. And it’s usually not an imbalance resulting from what could be termed a healthy love of self. The loving relationship most often gets thrown out of whack whenever I pervert the definition of what constitutes genuine self-love to a selfish pseudo-philosophy of “me first and only.”

Slipping into this frame of mind happens with frightening ease as it is culturally reinforced by the multitudinous variations of “taking care of Number One” that our consumer society constantly bombards us with. Even the consumer theology of our times emphasizes as all-important the aspect of personal salvation to the neglect of focusing on what is required to love God and neighbor. Spouses, children, coworkers, and eventually everyone but “me” become excess baggage and inconvenient nuisances as we attempt to satisfy the insatiable quest for self-gratification and fulfillment in the mistaken name of loving ourselves.

It is this misguided quest to serve self that ultimately robs us of any sense of hope. For as long as I invest everything in my finite self I gradually slip deeper into the despair of hopelessness. However, for as long as I have a future that consists of being in a truly loving relationship with others – not the least of which is God – there is eternal hope. The world’s great religions are unanimous in their affirmation of this truth: true love is the source of genuine hope. The disparities arise from the misunderstandings and incorrect definitions of what constitutes authentic love.

This brings me back to what Mary and I have been working on for over three decades now. I don’t mean to make it sound so clinically sterile, because our marriage has been anything but that. But we continue to learn the lessons of love, and in so doing replenish and renew our hope in and for the future. In a world so filled with hatred and conflict that it seems virtually impossible, there perhaps has never been a time when humankind more needs to hear – and critically more important, to put into practice – the words of the Christ, “This is my order to you: You are to love each other just as I loved you.” (John 15:12 SV) Amen.

Looking to Hope

Rachel and Rebecca took a snapshot of themselves at an outdoor concert they were attending which I now keep prominently before me at my workstation. Whenever I have doubts about doing what I do for forty hours each week (and this happens more often than I like to admit) I can dispel them by focusing on the smiling faces of my two beautiful daughters. Whenever the future begins to look little more than hopeless, true hope can be resurrected simply by remembering the character of these two remarkable young women each time I look at their picture.

Rachel and Rebecca weren’t on the front page of today’s paper with the group of teens accused of killing and burying another teen in the desert. They aren’t among the thousands of young women that my office deals with for whom the first step in getting child support is trying to figure out who the father is. Indeed, they are in relationships with two equally outstanding young men who, to a father’s great delight, display genuine respect and affection for my daughters. They don’t abuse drugs (or anything else that I’m aware of), they are good drivers, and are in general responsible, contributing citizens of our society.

Now that I’m a parent I better understand something that my cousin, Carol, said about her children long before Mary and I had our own. She said, “I can’t take credit for the fact that Kevin and Christie turned out to be such good kids anymore than I could have accepted all the blame if had they turned out some other way. Kenneth and I have done the best we could and have provided to the best of our ability, but from there on the kids have been on their own.” Mary and I protested that their good parenting could not be discounted as being instrumental in the way their children turned out, but now I realize the wisdom of what she was saying.

Rachel and Rebecca are not wonderful persons because Mary and I “made” them be that way. Indeed we quickly learned that we weren’t going to be able to “make” either of them do much of anything they didn’t want to. The most that we were able to do was to create an environment that was conducive for each newly forming personality to realize her own wonderfulness, and then to encourage that realization to the best of our ability.

And now for the really good news! Rachel and Rebecca aren’t the only two “good kids” I know. Quietly out of the spotlight a multitude of their generation is examining the lemons being handed them to figure out how to make lemonade from them. Although it is no more desirable to have your parents present when gathering with friends than it was when I was their age, I have occasionally had the privilege of getting to be – literally – in the next room. I have marveled at how this group has chosen of its own accord to abstain from the kinds of things that are the stuff of which parents’ nightmares are made and still manage to have a good time with one another.

Yes, there are still “bad” kids that unfortunately get a lot of media attention because society really can’t afford to ignore the destructive activities in which they are engaged. But it is not fair, nor is it spiritually healthy, to ignore the “good” kids because we are so focused upon what is truly a minority of the population. As I strive to continue to grow in Christ I am slowly but surely learning that I control whether my experience is one of despair or hope by where I focus my attention and upon what I allow my mind to dwell. That’s why I keep right in front of me my picture of Rachel and Rebecca. Amen.

Despairing to Hope

I am blessed with two wonderful parents! That they were not destined to remain husband and wife until parted by death I suppose will always be emotionally painful for me, but I am truly grateful that our love for one another has managed to transcend whatever differences divided the two of them. In a strange sort of way their separation has actually made it possible for me to get to know my parents as the individuals that might not have been as accessible as the couple. They each continue to challenge and inspire me to live life with purpose and meaning.

Their nurturing concern has spanned now more than half-a-century and has been most recently evident as they have each agonized with me as I have wrestled with a calling that no longer finds expression in the traditionally defined roles. And each of them continues to offer in their own unique way a promise of hope that has sustained them through their dark times as a way to get through my own. It was in the home they created that I first heard these words of Phillips Brooks:
Tomb, thou shall not hold him longer;
Death is strong, but Life is stronger;
Stronger than the dark, the light;
Stronger than the wrong, the right;
Faith and Hope triumphant say
Christ will rise (in human hearts) on Easter day!

No one needs to hear – and more importantly to assimilate – these words more than me. I have let myself become overwhelmed by the apparent apathy of the American people toward the treachery and deceit of the Bush Administration that has plunged us into an international quagmire while at the same time undermining our most precious liberties at home in the feigned name of patriotism. My children will be victimized by a national debt that already defies any sort of rational remedy, my planet is being raped to satisfy unquenchable corporate and personal greed, and my religious/spiritual freedom is being usurped by right-wing fanatics that have managed to put their Messiah in the White House.

I have not yet seen Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ” and am beginning to suspect that I never will. If there truly were those who did not know or comprehend the horrific nature of Jesus’ crucifixion then the film may have served some polemical purpose. It also served to remind those of us already familiar with the story of what a truly dark moment in human history that day was. For as hopeless as the world situation seems to me today, it pales by comparison to how those disciples of two millennia ago must have felt about their situation.

The reason that any of what happened then is still remembered now, however, is because something transformed those followers’ despair into hope. I am skeptical that this “something” was the sudden formulation a complex Christology based upon sacrament, ritual, and a catechism for human (or for that matter, personal) salvation. All of this was, for better or for worse, to come later. I believe that the transformational phenomenon experienced by the original faithful was the realization by those who knew him that Jesus was the incarnation of Truth, a living expression of the Ultimate Reality that could not be destroyed, even by cruel and unjust execution.

From such an understanding I am able to pursue my own transformational movement from despair to genuine hope. The eternal Truth is revealed throughout the ages as it passes from one generation to the next through those who have known and experienced it, and it is just as accessible to me this Easter as it was to those who witnessed the first. Rather than dwelling in darkness, I can turn my vision to the light. Rather than being oppressed by the wrong, I can liberate myself by pursuing the right. Rather than succumbing to despair, I can truly discover hope in the resurrection promise that “Death is strong, but Life is stronger!” Thanks, Mom and Dad, for making known to me the Truth, and for continuing to encourage me to encounter and embrace it. Amen.