Christmas Means Many Things

Note to Readers: I have been requested by several friends and readers to resume posting on my blog in Open Salon. However, I find it virtually impossible to access that web site these days. In addition, what I have time to write these days are sermons. And so, I am posting here my Christmas message to the members of the Baltic Parish here in Ohio, where I am now serving as Interim Pastor. As I approach my 74th birthday anniversary on the 28th of this month I have much to be thankful for: including sufficient relief from the pains of my erythromelalgia to be able to continue serving God in in the ministry. My wife, Sue, and I wish you the most blessed Christmas and pray that you be blessed abundantly in the coming year.

What is the total meaning of Christmas?  That is a question that can cause real conflict in us if we just think about it.  That is because there is the meaning of Christmas most of us grew up seeing portrayed in the society around us; and there is the meaning that the stories of the birth of Jesus in the Bible portray; and, finally, there is the total meaning of Christmas that we, as Christians, know, but really don’t want to think about very much. And, ironically, we especially don’t want to think about that third meaning at Christmas time!  And so, both emotionally and intellectually, those three views of Christmas tug at us in strikingly different ways.

One part of me, a very sentimental and romantic part, a part supported by movie myths like “It’s a Wonderful Life,” and “Miracle on 34th Street,” and Hallmark ads on television, wants to approach a mystical manger and linger in adoration over a magical baby who will take all the pain away from the real world – if only long enough to allow Santa Claus and Toys R Us to fill the area around the Christmas tree with answers to every want we ever could be convinced we had – even if we knew not what we wanted.

Many of you might not notice, but, at heart, most of us are hopeless romantics, and so we actually really like the romantic, “It’s a Wonderful Life”  idea of Christmas; because we grew up with it and it surrounds us every waking minute from well before Thanksgiving until Christmas Eve.  It is the Christmas that America loves.

And while it is deeply seated in the romantic myth of Christmas, it is also the one that feeds the economy so effectively that, even now, the Business Section of every newspaper in America has daily articles of projected doom or salvation for the entire country – all dependent on the sales figures in this crucial season.

Since we were born it has been ever so.  And so, through good economies and bad we have always liked it. Why shouldn’t we like it?  Happy people, pure white snow, merry times and mistletoe, and all the other trappings of a bright, joyous time. Part of us really loves that vision and desperately wishes it were always true. After all, it has been THE image of Christmas since most of us were born.  It is familiar.  It is very comfortable.

But there is another Christmas that is not quite so comfortable; not so commercial; not quite so myth-filled; not so sentimental or romantic.  That Christmas, the Christian Christmas that focuses on a babe in a manger is also joyful and, in many ways, mystical.  But, still, the Bible is clear that this is no magical baby.  There is no mythical manger.  This Christmas is real; even as in the background of the manger loom shepherds, wise men and angels.

But, we know that while that scene played out for a few hours, very few people even knew it happened. Even the wise men went home without telling Herod or anyone else what they saw. And Joseph and Mary and the baby soon left Bethlehem and fled into Egypt. And Herod, furious that the wise men did not tell him where the baby was to be found, ended up slaughtering all the little children in and around Bethlehem in hope of killing this tiny baby that one day might seek to take away his crown.

We don’t focus much on that post-Christmas scene because it is horrifying and does not fit the image we want to have of that wondrous night when Christ was born. And we hardly hear anything about Jesus for another thirty years or so.  But still, in the Church, the focus at Christmas time is on the beauty and wonder of that one night of the birth of the Messiah.  And we love that sharper focus, because it allows us to avoid, if only for a while, the truth that will come after.

And so that brings us to the third image of Christmas: the fuller, truer, image of Christmas for a Christian. There is room in that image for much joy at the beginning, much pain shortly thereafter, and a long period of normal life as Jesus grew from baby to boy to man and began his ministry. But ultimately that meaning of Christmas has to recognize, at least out of the corner of our eye, that there is a story we already know that is at the heart of the Incarnation: that the babe in the manger did, as on of our beloved carols notes, “come for to die.”

And we, if only for a fleeting instant, have to recognize this third meaning of Christmas. Because it is not only in naive innocence that the Christian must approach the Incarnation of the Christ.  Rather there must be wide-eyed recognition that no babe in any manger saved the world.  The salvation of the world is the work of a man, a God-man to be sure, but of a man nevertheless; not of a babe in a manger.

So the Christian must, from time to time, look at the babe in the manger with full awareness of who he will grow up to be, and of what work our God will set him to do and of what will become of him. And our sentimentality must also admit the pathos, and our joy must be leavened by the reality of the work that lies ahead for this swaddled child.

In this view, of course, there is much room for the promises of peace, hope, love, and joy; and for great celebration of the coming of the Messiah into the world.  There is room for laughter, and wonder and awe; for rejoicing and, most of all, for worship.  For what could be both more awesome and more awful to contemplate than the fact that God so loved the world that He came into this creation of His in the form of a human baby for the simple, indescribable, purpose of saving us from ourselves?

And while I know that this is the real Christmas, I sometimes don’t like it nearly as much as the one offered to me by the culture or the one that focuses only on that one wondrous night of Christ’s birth.  This third, broader Christian look at the meaning of Christmas is too complicated; it is too messy. It is full of hope; but also of pain and despair – it is all too real.  And the grace that finds us searching our hearts to understand this Christmas is not a cheap grace at all; but a grace that comes at a great price.  Yet, thanks be to God that the price has been paid for us – because we are incapable of paying for it ourselves.

And so, for me, and perhaps for many of you as well, the question still haunts:  How do we approach Christmas?  We all know the answer is not easy.  Discipleship is never easy.

And it is in the light of that fact that I leave each one of you with my Christmas wish: that you and I, we together, may come to know and live the true meaning of Christmas: the wonder and joy of the night of Christ’s birth, and yet also be aware of the awful reality that must yet come as that child becomes a man.

May we celebrate the beginning of the story with the true joy that comes only from knowing the whole story.  Because, in the end there is resurrection and salvation for all who believe!  What begins in a manger moves to a Cross – but it ends in Easter!  And that is Christmas enough for all of us.

May God pour out abundant blessings on each of you this Holy Season, and may the God of Love who thought enough of us to send His only Son to be our redemption be with you and bless you and yours in the year to come.

May the Peace of Christ be with you all.

Memoir: The Earliest Years, Part One: Those who came before

First published on Open Salon, JANUARY 6, 2011 1:00PM

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Why now?

I  just celebrated my 72nd birthday, and have decided that it is none too soon to begin fleshing out my personal memoir, bits and pieces of which are already written, but with huge gaps remaining. As the old saw says, "I am not getting any younger."

As a child I was usually called "Little Monte" since I was a "Junior," or "Monte Gene," because my middle name is "Eugene." A brief glimpse of my early childhood was first introduced to my Open Salon readers in the final installment of the series "A WWII Romance." There we saw a melodramatic, but all too true, tale of "Monte Gene," then 6, being secretly lowered through a window by his uncle into the arms of his mother, Wilma, followed by a quick automobile run for the county line.

This "kidnapping" was the culmination of a bitter argument between his mother and his maternal grandmother, Lola, with whom he had lived most of his life up to that time. Wilma had remarried, over the vehement objections of her mother, to a young man named Alva Galemore. Al was to Lola nothing more than "poor white trash" and she had vowed to never give Monte up to go live with the newlyweds, even if it meant a court fight.

My life up to that time had been relatively uneventful from my point of view, but, from the perspective of the other parties involved, a center of controversy from the start. And it is there that my story really begins, long before I could have any actual memories of the history or the events.

However, all of the parties to my earliest years were eager, through the years that followed, to convince me of the truth of their versions of my earliest years. And, out of that cacophony of biased opinion, as I grew older, I pieced together my own version of my earliest years. That my version may be wrong in this or that detail is likely the case. But that the quilt that I pieced together from these multiple memories molded my understanding of human nature, family dynamics, my identity, and of life itself cannot be denied. That, of course, is a mixed blessing.

None of the key parties to this earliest story are alive, save me. And there is little that can be remotely called "evidence." There are, of course, a few photos, some crude information, what I have been told, and my personal memories which go back to about the age of three.

I am told there are those folk who remember their first birthdays, but I claim no such extraordinary abilities. And I only know that my memories go back to about three because there are pictures of me inscribed as taken at "age three" at events about which I remember details not in the pictures. Before that there are pictures, but I remember nothing about them other than what I have been told.

Before the Memories

But we must start even before my memories, because earlier events shaped those who shaped me, and I have distilled from them some background of those people who were vital to my formative years.

My father, of whom I have only the vaguest memories prior to age 12, was Monte Eugene Canfield. The version of my birth certificate filled in by the doctor, gives me that same name, but another certificate, the official state version, lists me as Monte Eugene Canfield, Jr.

In any case, there is some undocumented genealogical information on the Canfield side so we will start there. There is no genealogical information on my mother's side.

According to family records, my particular branch of the Canfield family emigrated from England to New England in 1639. My direct ancestor, Matthew Canfield, was born in 1604 and died in 1673. Later generations emigrated From New England, first to eastern Ohio when Ohio was a territory, part of the Western Reserve, and, later, to Kansas territory.

[Ironically, by shear accident, I have retired into the same eastern Ohio area of the early Canfield emigrants, some 60 miles southwest of the city of Canfield here in NE Ohio. I had no clue that there were Canfields in Ohio until after we moved here in 1997.] 

Some 9 generations following Matthew Canfield, my paternal grandfather, Leo See Canfield, was born in June, 1892. He married my grandmother, Ola G. Montgomery, in 1915, and died in Dec, 1918 at Scranton in eastern Kansas where he owned a small town newspaper. While the records do not say why he died, that was the year of the great flu pandemic that originated in the US in Kansas, at Ft. Riley, and killed over 1/2 million people here in the US, and 50 to 100 million world wide.

My father, Monte Eugene Canfield, the first of two sons, was born in 1916.

My father's mother's maiden name was, as noted above, Ola Montgomery. I know nothing of her background other than that she was born in eastern Kansas. After my grandfather died she gave birth to her second son some three months later, my uncle, Leo. My father was then about 2 1/4 years old. In spite of those dire circumstances, rather than give up the family newspaper, and knowing nothing of the newspaper business herself, she determined to learn the trade and run the paper and print shop. This she did. She later went on to become a highly respected member of the press establishment in Kansas.

My mother was born Wilma Lee Elaine Allensworth in eastern Kansas, in 1923. In those days her friends called her "Willie." She hardly knew her father as he deserted the family when she was a very small girl and she was raised by her mother and her second husband, William Isaiah Isaacs. Bill Isaacs owned three small coal mines in Osage County, Kansas and they lived in Burlingame, Kansas, some 30 miles south of Topeka, and 6 miles from Scranton.

From the time Wilma's mother, Lola, and her stepfather, Bill, combined their two very large families, Bill Isaacs was known to Wilma as "Daddy," as he was to all of Lola's children. Wilma was given the name Isaacs as her family name, but Lola's older children were offered the choice and all chose to be known by the name of Isaacs. I did not even know that Bill Isaacs was not my grandfather by blood until I was a much older child and by then could not care less. I idolized him.

My maternal grandmother was born Lola May Barnes. I know nothing of her family background other than that there was an alleged ancestral relationship to Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederacy, one which my grandmother was not interested in discussing. She told me, in no uncertain terms, that her family was part of the "free state" pioneers in the days of "Bloody Kansas." I judiciously never pursued that line of thought with her.
The Importance of Ancestry
The truth is that within my own family our ancestral pedigree was not very important, except for a small interest shown on the Canfield side. The general conviction on both sides of my family was that people earned their place in society by dint of hard study and/or hard work, preferably both.

As for myself the only thing I think is interesting about this little foray into my family background is that all the associated names are English in origin. I make no more of it than that.
And, I have little interest in the importance of "blood" beyond a sense of love and obligation to my immediate family, and, even then, "blood" cannot not define my immediate family.

The fact is that the man who had the most influence in my earliest years was my "step" grandfather, Bill Isaacs; the one who raised me throughout my public school years was my "step" father, Al Galemore, and the one who helped me most through my college years was my biological father's "step" father, Sam Shade.
All of those men treated me with unequivocal love as one of their own.

I have a sense of unconditional love and devotion to their memories today. They were my heroes, my mentors and my role models; and I loved them shamelessly and passionately. And I think of and miss them to this day; especially my ("step") Dad, Al Galemore.


Next: Wilma and Monte Sr. marry. And I am born, not in Kansas, but in the Oklahoma panhandle, a harbinger to an itinerant childhood.

Backing Up Your Posts/Comments to New Site is Easy

Originally published, Open Salon, DECEMBER 4, 2010 4:26PM

 

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I haven't spent much, hardly any, time here lately, but there seems to be a bit of panic going on, again, on OS. This time its what happens if Salon.com sells out, folds, etc. It could happen, but does not look very imminent.
 I wondered about what would happen to my stuff when a similar panic hit shortly after I came on OS. (To my recollection this is the third such panic since I came here in October, 2008). So, in addition to keeping back up files on my computer of everything I post, I decided to set up a "mirror blog" on Google's Blogspot. (Used to be known as Blogger.)
I was more concerned with keeping the formating, the pics, vids, links, etc. than just the content since it is time consuming to set up a post anywhere.
I chose Google's Blogspot over the many other available free spots to start a blog simply because I am lazy and Blogspot does almost all the work for you. They have templates you can choose from to set up the blog in any style you want, and step by step instructions about adding content.

In any case, once you have set up your account, chosen a format, and set up your blog name, etc. here is all you have to do to move content to Blogspot.

Open your Blogspot blog in one tab. In the Blogger "Dashboard" click on "New Post." That will open a window to allow you to add content.

Now, Open your Open Salon Blog in another tab and go to a given post on OS that you want to copy to Blogspot.

Right click and hold down the mouse key to highlight the post, including title, comments, etc. that you want. (You can edit out any ads, and miscellaneous stuff you don't want.) Left click the mouse and select "copy."

Then dump the copied material, pics, videos, etc. and all into the Blogspot window. (Left click the mouse and select "Paste."
Move the Title up to the title box in Blogspot. Move the "tags" into the "labels" box on Blogspot. And clean up any miscellaneous stuff that you don't want moved into Blogspot.

Click "Preview" and take a look at what you have. Edit that if necessary.

 When you are satisfied it looks OK, Click on "Publish Post." You are done.
(You can edit the post further at any time, or delete it entirely.)

That's it. Several of our OS friends have started doing this and many of them have Blogger accounts. You can follow their blogs there just the way you can here, and you can send notices of your posts, etc.

 Take a look at my Blogger "Mirror Site" to get an idea what it could look like, although there are MANY options how to set up your own blog using the templates.
http://montecanfield.blogspot.com/

If you have any questions let me know in the comments and I will try to walk you through any issues with doing this.
 Blessings,

Monte

Links to my Advent, Christmas and Epiphany Essays

Originally published on Open Salon, DECEMBER 1, 2010 8:55PM

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 Traditional Lighted Moravian Star

These essays are part of my ongoing, and developing, Christian Calendar Series. The links are posted here for those who like to reflect on the truths, beliefs and faith associated with those who celebrate these holy days in the life of believers. It is also hoped that those who do not share the Christian faith will come to better understand the importance of this tri-part season of love, hope, peace and joy.
                                                                      ---  Monte

 Links to Open Salon Articles in this blog:


The Rich Man and Lazarus: Approaching the Coming Holidays 

An Advent Reflection - Leaning toward God  

Advent Reflection: God Does Not View Us From a Distance

My Christmas Gift - -Blessings & Peace 

The Epiphany -- A Reflection on The Word of God


 

A Story of Thanksgiving: Where Are The Other Nine?

Note: While this is written from my Christian perspective, I believe this essay raises issues for people of all faiths or of no faith at all.

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Luke 17:11-19

Jesus was passing along the border of Samaria and Galilee. And as he entered a village, ten men who were lepers stood far off and lifted their voices to him, saying, "Jesus, Master, have mercy on us." When he heard them, he said to them, "Go and show yourselves to the priests." And as they went, they were healed. One of them, a Samaritan, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, and with a loud voice glorifying God he fell upon his face at Jesus' feet, giving him thanks. Jesus answered, saying "Were not ten healed? Where are the other nine? 18 Are there none who return to give glory to God, except this foreigner?" 19 And Jesus said to him, "Arise, and go on your way: your faith hath made you whole."

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This little story about Jesus and the lepers is about a time of great personal crisis brought on by a horrible, incurable disease. And there is no "big deal" in life quite like being really ill, whether it is a sudden onset sickness or a chronic and incurable disease.

Serious illness is one of the worst things life can throw at us. It is not only the pain and physical misery that has to be endured; it is also the mental anguish, first of not knowing what is wrong, and then of knowing and wondering if anything actually can be done about it. All of that mental anguish is a function of being confronted with the truth of our own mortality, or of a painful morbidity that we might have to face for the rest of our life. Death is no longer an abstraction, something that happens to someone else. It is something that is happening to us. It is a time of our greatest vulnerability to the one thing we can't avoid: our own decay and death.

Serious illness is an all too graphic reminder that this life is fragile, finite and short. Even though we know that to be true on an intellectual level it is often only on our sickbed that we finally figure out that our personal earthly life is terminal. At its worst, serious illness is a foretaste of what it is like to have the world go on without you.

Perhaps that is why, when we are well, we often avoid those who are seriously ill. We may send a card or call, but we find it hard to visit. And the more seriously ill a person is the more reluctant we are. I remember that when I was a hospital chaplain back in the early 90s I would watch visitors stream in to see someone who had hernia or gall bladder surgery, or a broken leg. But I would walk down the hall to the AIDS ward and sit quietly talking to those folks and never see them get a visitor for days on end. In those days when science was just confirming how AIDS and HIV were transmitted the general public was afraid that they would catch their death from someone who had that affliction. Literally.

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The many stories of Jesus and his dealings with those who had grave illnesses tell us that he understood this fear of death that we try so hard to cover over. This story of Jesus and the lepers takes place as Jesus is on the way to his own death, a death which he has foretold, in Jerusalem. Yet, on that journey he took the time to heal others. In this case, he was dealing with lepers. Ten of them to be exact.

It is hard for us to understand just how awful leprosy was in those days. Leprosy was a sentence of death, a slow, disfiguring, incurable death. But long before lepers died physically, they were essentially dead to anything approaching what we would call living. They were cast out of their homes, separated from their families, forbidden, literally, to come anywhere close to healthy people. In fact, they often lived in caves along the main caravan routes in colonies of other lepers, bound together in their dance with death, calling out for whatever alms they could get for essentials like food. They lived off the scraps of society because to society they were nothing but scraps.

When they moved about they were required to shout "Unclean! Unclean!" so that healthy people could avoid being in close proximity. Meanwhile, the relentless disease ate away at their bodies, distorting their features, even as it ate away at their pride and whatever dignity they had before they contracted the disease. Long before these unfortunates were physically dead, they were dead to their families and their community, even forbidden to practice their religion with those who were deemed "clean".

And so, into this setting comes Jesus, walking along the border between Galilee and Samaria. One of the ten lepers was even more of an outcast to a Jew than were the nine others, for he was a Samaritan. Samaritans were hated as a half-breed, syncretist race who held to a corrupt, compromised religion. That this hatred was ill founded did not really cross the minds of the Jewish leadership. And so, in the eyes of a Jewish rabbi like Jesus it should have been hard to imagine anyone lower than a Samaritan leper.

And thus the scene is set. We see Jesus walking along and, standing far off, the lepers beg Jesus for mercy. What did they want? What could they expect? Did they hope for a few coins, some bread or dried meat? Did they hope for a blessing or perhaps a kind word. Could these lowest of the low actually hope for a miracle?  And why would a Jewish rabbi help them at all, knowing that the priests had condemned them to this life. How could he afford to do anything contrary to custom and law?

Well, Jesus does not break the law nor does he do anything that indicates that there is a miracle afoot. He makes no gestures of healing, does not touch them or come near to them, does not say anything to them that would indicate that he is doing anything for them at all. He simply treats them as if they are healed. And so he commands them to go and show themselves to their priests.

But, why would they? They are a mess, covered with sores, their features distorted, some beyond recognition. Why go to the priests only to be rejected yet again? Had they not suffered enough rejection for ten lifetimes? After all, the priests held their lives in their hands. They decided who was clean and who was unclean. They decided how severe the uncleanliness was and how the affected person was to deal with it.

Yet Jesus, a rabbi, told them to go to the priests as if they were clean. And here is the first miracle: they obeyed. As I have said many times before, trusting obedience is the most rudimentary form of faith: to trust and obey may not seem attractive to us individualists, but it is the first step in faith. Belief "in" something or someone comes later. We do not know why they trusted Jesus and obeyed him. Luke does not say. But many of the graces of God are not explained. I believe that their trusting obedience had to come from some place beyond themselves. It could not have come out of any grace filled experience they had up to that point in their wretched lives. It was a gift of faith.

And so, uncured, they go as they are told to do. And, as they go, the second miracle occurs: they are healed. They trusted and obeyed before they were healed, and having done so they find that they are, in fact, healed.  And nine of them just keep right on going. Apparently they make no connection between their healing and the strange instruction of Jesus.  Like us when we are healed, sometimes we are so happy just to be well that we forget why it happened or who brought it about.

But one leper, the Samaritan, makes the connection between the healing and the healer. He comes back, praising God at the top of his lungs, throwing himself on the ground in front of Jesus and thanking him profusely: "Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!"

And Jesus doesn't pick him up, dust him off and tell him some little comforting parable or saying to remind him of what just happened. Instead, Jesus asks two not quite rhetorical questions. "Hey, what happened to the other nine?" and "Did only you, a foreigner, see fit to come back and praise God?" Then Jesus tells him to go on his way because his faith has "made him whole" (or, "has healed" him).

Now, I know most modern Bible translations say that the man's faith "healed" him. But that is far too obvious a conclusion, and robs the story of its extraordinary power. I believe that phrase should read "your faith has saved you." Luke is trying to tell us something vitally important here and most modern translations are missing the point. The Greek word we see here translated as "healed," "made well," and "made whole" is precisely the word used throughout the New Testament for "saved."

And here is the point I believe Luke is making: we know that all ten were "healed," or "made whole." That is obvious. But only one came back. And that one was "saved" by having done so.  Only one, the Samaritan, turned back to the source of his healing and expressed thanksgiving: joyous, outrageous gratitude; thanksgiving directed at God through the instrument of his healing: Jesus. Only one felt and understood the source of his salvation.

So, what is the difference between the thankful one and the nine who do not come back to say thank you? The ten lepers were all dead people. Spiritually and socially, and, increasingly, physically, they were considered dead. And every one of them would have given just about anything to be made well again, to simply be "normal" and to live a normal life. And Jesus gave all ten of them that. So, what is the only real difference?

Just this. What Luke is really talking about here is the possibility of a spiritual resurrection: a resurrection that gives them a chance to restore relationship with God and not to be just "normal" like other people. And if they did not know that Jesus is about the task resurrecting people to more than just physical life but to be in right relationship to God, then Luke knew exactly that. Story after story in his Gospel portray this role that Jesus plays throughout his ministry.

Luke knew that all of the healed lepers were once "outside" of normal society, and he knew that all are made "insiders" once again by Jesus. But only one, the Samaritan, realizes a spiritual resurrection. This one is not only healed, he is "saved," delivered, made whole, not only in body but in spirit. He alone comes back to say "thanks." He alone realizes that Jesus has now established a relationship with him, and has renewed his relationship with God.  Most importantly, he alone recognizes that he is saved and was accepted by Jesus while he was yet a leper, while he was still sick, untouchable -- before he got well.

That is the true message Luke brings to us in this little story.

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Personally I believe that Jesus is saying to the Samaritan, "Your acceptance of my embracing, life giving love, your faith in me even before you knew you were healed, and your recognition that the source of your healing is God; that faith has saved you."

As for the others they too got a wonderful gift for they were healed. The healing of the leprosy came with no strings attached. There was no requirement that they turn back and thank the one who healed them.  And, like us, there is little likelihood that they will. You see they are all back to being "normal." And give it a year and they will forget all about who healed them. After all, their skin is clear, their sores are healed, there is a mortgage to pay, children to raise, shopping to be done, and work to do to make all of that possible.

But for me there remains a certain pathos in that outcome for the nine. What a shame it is to have met the Lord and giver of life and to come away from that encounter only "normal."

What happened to the other nine should remind the Christian believer that we really cannot ignore the One who blesses us, and in so doing not recognize the source of life and the offer of life in Christ's name.

And for my all of my readers, Christian or not, I would hope that you come away from this essay remembering that we really do not get by in this life without the help of others. And when someone comes into our lives and comes bearing life giving, life sparing or life changing gifts, be that person divine or human, we need to ask ourselves: do we both recognize and give thanks for the gifts we are given; or do we take them for granted and believe that no thanksgivings are in order?

The choice, of course, is always ours.

Monte  

God's Blessing

 

I haven’t written a post specifically on faith since May 11. However, it is important to me to write only when I think I have something useful to say. My short series on alcoholism certainly was driven by my faith and I shared with you its central role in my recovery.
I have spent a great deal time during this period praying, reading, and thinking about what I could write on faith issues that might be helpful and relevant to you in your daily lives. I hope that this essay will strengthen you on your own spiritual journey.
Blessings and peace to you all.
Monte

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The Bible speaks many times about the blessing of God and the blessings that God bestows on us. It speaks of God blessing particular individuals, even groups and entire nations. Israel, for example, is blessed, not just for itself, but so it could be a blessing to all nations.

But it also is clear that God bestows blessings on everyone, not just on the religious, and not even only upon on the good, but also upon the evil. Sunshine and rain, two essential ingredients of life, Mathew tells us, fall upon both the good and the evil.

The Bible also speaks about the blessings we should bestow on others. And, of course, it often tells us that we should bless God, both in gratitude for the blessings God gives to us, but also simply because God is God, and worthy of praise, blessing and worship.

But I want to move beyond these theological generalities, because, while they set general parameters for understanding blessing, I would like to bring the discussion down to a much more personal level, one with which we all, hopefully, can identify.

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I believe that most people today would say that most of the thanks for the blessings they receive goes to themselves. If we are blessed, mostly we figure we have earned it. We believe that we deserve to be blessed.
A few of us will acknowledge those who came before us and laid the groundwork for our successes, whatever they are. But, still, we believe that we are the ones who built upon that foundation and made it into something. They gave us a leg up, but we did the real work. So, still, we think that we deserve the blessings we get.

The interesting thing about these notions is that they are, of course, partly correct. But only partly. There is something missing in that kind of thinking, something that we have not necessarily consciously forgotten, but that was forgotten long before we came along. Unless we are taught what that is, we will inevitably place our trust in the one we think is the source of our blessings: our own self.

And in doing so we still miss something we have lost, perhaps never really known that we had. That is because we, as a species, lost that something long before there was a church, or a temple, synagogue, or mosque. It was lost before there was anything like a formal “religion.”

And that is an awareness of God as the source of all blessing.

Long ago we lost the understanding that we wholly belong to God, that we are so dependent upon God that our very existence is in God’s hands. We forgot that our lives are nothing more than pure gifts, gifts of God’s steadfast love.

We have forgotten who we are and to whom we belong.

Now, if you are a believer and even, perhaps, a regularly worshiping believer, you may think that what I am saying does not apply to you. And if it really does not I am very happy for you. Unfortunately, I cannot say that it does not apply to me.

The truth is that day in, day out, I hear myself complain, or I get anxious, about things that are not going my way, or I try to control my life and the lives of those around me, seldom doing a very good job of that. And in the process I inevitably forget whose I am and how I am daily blessed by God. And I, of all people, should not do that. Allegedly, I know better. Alas, what I know does not always translate into how I live my faith.

For me, there is a simple word for such forgetfulness: sin. And, unfortunately for many of us, when we feel a bit too self-righteous, the Bible is there to remind us that we are all sinners. Not some, ALL.

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The Bible stories in Genesis that tell us about the time just before Noah and about Noah illustrate the importance of God’s blessing. I will paraphrase the essence of these stories as I go along. [I won’t bore you with lots of scripture quotes, but, if you wish, you can read Chapters 6 through 9 of Genesis for the details. They are short and won’t take long.]
After the great flood, the story says that God tells Noah that God will establish a covenant with him, his descendants, and with every living creature. I doubt that Noah had much trouble understanding the importance of that covenant given that God had just wiped out every living thing on the earth, except for the animals and Noah’s family that were saved on the ark that God had told Noah to build.

God had wiped out all the rest of the land borne creation because the people had already forgotten the source of their blessings. By chapter 6 of Genesis they already had forgotten. To give you an idea how early that is in the Bible, look at it this way. A typical Bible is 1000 plus pages. Chapter 6 of Genesis will be found within the first 5-7 pages of that Bible, right after the stories of the expulsion from the Garden and of Cain and Able. Soon. Really soon.

According to the story, the people were already so evil that God was, literally, “sick to his guts” with their sin. And the Bible tells us that this “grieved him to his heart,” and concludes with a quote from the maker of heaven and earth saying, “I will blot out from the earth the human beings I have created; people, together with animals and creeping things and birds of the air, for I am sorry that I have made them.” But……

But, after the flood, God decided to make a covenant with Noah which would guarantee the salvation of not only humankind but of all of the creatures of the earth. God did this because God saw in Noah a righteous man. And Noah found favor in God’s sight.

In this tiny remnant family God saw enough goodness, enough understanding of to whom we creatures belong, to decide to keep our story going. So, as the story goes, without God remembering Noah, I would not be writing this and you would not be reading it.

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And here is an amazing thing. Something that we inevitably overlook in this story. The story of the Noahic covenant starts with Verse One of Chapter Nine. And it starts out with a phrase we always skip over, perhaps because it seems so natural, so simple, so expected that we don’t even notice it. It starts, “Then God blessed Noah….”
Ah. That simple phrase. It just isn’t very dramatic, is it? I mean, we remember the big things that God does in the Bible, don’t we? We remember all the mighty acts of God in history. Those are the ones they teach in Bible School. Almost every child of a practicing religious family can tell you about Noah and the Ark.

Yet the blessing is by far God’s greatest act in that story, for without God’s blessing Noah would have failed even after the flood. It was the blessing that allowed the world to go on to become the world we know today.

Go back and look at the story of the creation in Chapter One. What does God do for humankind after God makes us on the sixth day? God blesses us. We are nothing without that blessing.

When people forget the blessing of their creator no good results. That is the moral of the story and of almost every other significant story in the Bible. Forget the blessing. Forget God. And God will not take that lightly. Fortunately, Noah did not forget that he was blessed by God.

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It is easy for us to lose sight of the simple rhythms of God’s blessings in our lives. But we must not forget that there is a continuous, constant, steadfast presence of God in our lives, and it comes from those countless blessings. It is God’s blessing that brings to us fertility, family, nourishment, growth, nurture, love, and well-being. And these are the things that sustain our lives and that give quality to living. These are the “Simple Gifts” of life itself.
Noah knew that. Noah knew that he could endure the hardships of life, could endure the endless days on the ark as he rode out the flood, could endure the pain and loss of so many friends and relatives who chose not to believe, who chose to forget the blessing, who would not listen to God. He could endure because he knew that he belonged to God. He knew who he was, where he fit in the scheme of things, and, most of all to whom he belonged.

And, he knew that even before the flood. Before anyone, even God, spoke the words of blessing over him Noah knew who he was and to whom he belonged. He knew. And because he knew God considered him righteous.

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Can we know as much? Or must we see amazing signs and mighty wonders to believe? Do we need to see some miraculous and overwhelming act of God before we remember to whom we owe our lives? It is not likely that in this lifetime we will see one of those mighty acts of God.
But if we just look around we can see God’s blessings everyday. The beauty those blessings bring is all around us. The world itself is a beautiful, wondrous, improbable place. It is a blessing that you can laugh, or work, or play, or think, or feel pain, or cry, or love and be loved. God provides life to us every day. Why do we take that for granted?

If we remember nothing else can we remember just this one thing? Can we remember that we are not necessary?!  Surely that thought has crossed your mind at one time or another. Our lives do not have to be. There is no necessity that we exist. One egg. One sperm. One particular egg. One particular sperm. That makes you. Any other sperm, any other egg, and you don’t exist.

Do you realize that in countless ways every day of your life you are exposed, vulnerable, to things that could eliminate your life in a single heartbeat? But here we are. And that is a blessing.

The life we have been given; the air we breathe; the people we know and love, and who love us, all these and countless more things we take for granted, all are blessings. They are gifts. Gifts from the one who created us and sustains us and loves us. Not “us Christians.” Not “us Jews.” Not “us Muslims.” Not “us atheists.” ALL of us.  All of us are blessed: by the God who gives us life.

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For me it comes down to some choices. First, I choose to believe that this world and my life as part of it are not simply random acts of indifferent chance. Others do not share that belief. They are entitled to their beliefs, or lack thereof. Each must decide for him or her self what they believe about that fundamental choice.
Second, I have to constantly ask myself two questions lest I fall into the fallacy of self sufficiency: “Am I my own man, or am I God’s? And, if I am God’s, do I owe my life to my hard work or to God’s blessing?”

Too often we think that we are too busy to think about questions like these. Yet at times of stress, of grief, of illness, or great loss, times when there is no time to think, we often think that we are not blessed. Those are times when our self reliance and our self confidence in our ability to control our lives fail us. Those are the times when we feel most lost, most alone.

We feel alone because we have put our faith in ourselves, and when we fail ourselves we all too often blame that on God. It is very hard, indeed, to look in a mirror at times like those. But we must. We must be honest about who really failed. And we must, at our lowest times, remember God’s blessings.

We must, because it is when the god we have made out of ourselves, or our success, or our science, or our technology has let us down, and we finally realize that we cannot bless ourselves in ways that really count – that is when we must remember what it means to be blessed by God.

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But we do not have to wait for some personal tragedy to start thinking about God’s blessing. We can take a chapter out of Noah’s book. Noah knew he was blessed long before the crisis came. He had thought about it and pondered it in the quiet recesses of his heart. He knew.

We too can know in our hearts that we are blessed; that we belong to God and that God takes care of God’s own. We can know that we are blessed because God has given us our very lives. We can know that we are blessed because God loves us. All of us.

It may sound trite, but it does make sense to count our blessings. Add them up. Get a sense of how totally pervasive they are in our lives. Get a sense of how totally indebted to God we are for our well being.

And then go out and pass on some of those blessings that you have been given to someone else. There is much to be thankful for, and one way to show your gratitude is by paying it forward to someone who needs to feel a blessing at a difficult point in his or her life. You are blessed, and, you can be a blessing to someone. It is a wonderful feeling.

The Weavers: A Musical Tribute

My latest in the Musical Tribute post series. A tribute to the group that started the popularity of folk music in post WWII America. Videos included. At my mirror Open Salon blog.



http://open.salon.com/blog/monte_canfield/2010/08/02/the_weavers_a_musical_tribute

Obama: Will He, Can He, Be the One We Thought We Elected?

 I don't write about politics much anymore, but this nation is at a cusp in its direction and we ought to think about and discuss something that can determine the direction of the nation for the next decade.

Try as one might, it is not possible even for a President to be all things to all people. Nor is it possible to be the President of all of the people, if one insists that “all the people” includes giving to the rich, the spoiled, the pathological, the amoral and the immoral what they believe they deserve.

But President Obama is trying to do precisely that. And in the process, the nation, which lost its moral compass under the Bush Administration and has since been wandering in the wilderness, is in the process of reclaiming the dubious title of the “United States of ME,” forgetting that America is about “WE the people,” not “ME the greedy.”

But the President seems to have forgotten this. Rather, he is content to be the one who tries hard not to offend, or to be offended, regardless that he should find some things disgustingly offensive and should be mightily offended by others. He seems more content to be the professor who calmly discusses the subtle nuances of the many shades of gray as a black cloud descends over his Presidency.

Yes, this is the same man who showed us one side of himself during the campaign, the side of the progressive, center-left liberal who championed the rights of the poor, the disenfranchised, the working folk, and, yes, the middle class who, we were constantly told, were the 97% plus of us who made less than a quarter of a million dollars a year.

This is the man those of us who cared about America as a nation of all the people could get behind; a man who offered a clear alternative to everything Bush and his tools stood for. [With the shameful exception of continuing the war in Afghanistan.]

And what was his first act of consequence? To pass a Stimulus Act skewed almost entirely to bailing out Wall Street, a bill that offered but a trickle of funds to those who needed it most, the working people of America. Rather than complain about bailing out institution after institution that was “too big to fail” the Administration threw itself at the feet of the rich and invited them to take what they needed, after first inviting the financial foxes to run the chicken coop.

Then he said nothing in response to Republican complaint about bailing out the auto industry, an industry where real people were employed and where the government exposed a few tens of billions, a subsidy which is working and will be paid back, kept people employed, saved an industry that actually adds jobs and value to the GDP, rather than a Wall Street house of cards that adds phantom value through the trading of paper and the goosing up the “value” of worthless derivatives.

But he was not done. While urging passage of the most comprehensive overhaul of health care in the history of the nation he turned around and did not fight for a public option and did not insist on coverage of the now 45 million uninsured, settling for 36 million and then offering them only “high risk” pools run by, of course, the very insurance companies that ran our health care into the ground in the first place. Talk about throwing the baby out with the bath water.

Now we are down to a basic political issue: will the Presidentt quit thinking about whether he personally can win in 2012 and start now calling out the Republicans for their obstructionism, their incessant “just say no to everything” campaign? Or will he be left with a Congress that cannot actually get anything done in the remaining two years of his first term? Will he, convinced that he can compromise with Republicans, in spite of the clear and unequivocal fact of perpetual Republican negativism, try to reason with the unreasonable for the next two or six years?

In the next couple of weeks he will have a chance to prove which Obama we will see: the moral leader of the nation, or the weak, deal cutter who negotiates from timidity.
The tax cuts expire soon. A Democratic bill has been introduced in each house to extend them to all but the top 2-3% of earners in this country, those making over $250,000 a year. That windfall to the rich would be allowed to expire and the income from their paying a few percentage points more taxes could be used to fund the programs that we desperately need: including feeding the poor and helping the states avoid going bankrupt.

The Republicans already have told us that they will vote against any extension that does not include all of the original tax cuts, including those to the rich. They will argue, using the usual smoke and mirrors, that the economy demands that we treat everyone “equally.”

The counter argument is simple: The top 3% don’t need the tax break. The lower 97% does. The top 3% will hardly feel the increase. Large numbers of the bottom 20% are literally starving, and/or out of work, without health care, without hope, and hurting beyond comprehension.

There is only, literally, one man in American who can effectively and convincingly make the only  argument that is ethically correct, sway the voting public, and expose the Republicans in Congress for the morally corrupt puppets of big business that they are. That man is the one who ran for President two years ago. The one we have watched in the White House these past 18 months cannot and will not take aggressive action.

Time is surely running out, not just on this Congress, and not particularly on this President. But it is running out on the chance for this country to honor its moral obligations to its people. Who really wants even two more years of what we have now? Its time for our President to remember where he came from, who put him in office and why.

This country is hurling toward yet another decade of moral bankruptcy. We have lost our way. Have we forgotten all that America means? Have we forgotten what “and justice for all” means?

Which President will emerge now?

Monte 

Favorite Country Music Vocal Duets, Tribute Series

Link Here to Listen to Great Country Music Duets on my Open Salon Blog:

http://open.salon.com/blog/monte_canfield/2010/07/22/favorite_country_music_vocal_duets_tribute_series
Enjoy!

Monte

I am an Alcoholic, Part Three, Final, "To the Bottom"

I have struggled with how to wrap up this brief series. I do not want to go into detail because most of the people who were friends, some of whom were also alcoholics, are still living and I have no right to expose them, even disguised, in this series.

So rather than discuss details that involve particular individuals beyond my immediate family, I would like to reinforce a couple of the truths and to dispel a myth about alcoholism by using myself as the example. Challenging the myth requires a bit of “tooting my own horn,” which makes me uncomfortable. But I also cannot expect you to take my word for the myth's lack of validity.

The simple fact is that the essence of my addictive behavior was set within the first years of my drinking. I drank for the feeling that alcohol gave me: it lightened my burdens, reduced my anxieties, and made me feel mellow, while usually making me happy and extroverted. At times, though, it would unleash my fear, anger or self pity; and that was when I could hurt others the most. Under the influence of alcohol your cognitive ability to control emotions is greatly reduced while your emotions are heightened. And there is no question that alcohol fed my already rather large ego, which made me during those times hardly the epitome of the well adjusted person.

I did not drink periodically, nor did I drink in moderation. I drank daily and to excess. But I did not feel or appear “drunk” until I had many drinks. I had a “high tolerance” for the drug. I can only remember twice when I was “fall down” drunk, and alcohol never stopped me from remembering what I did and did not do. Rather, I was a highly productive “functional alcoholic.”

People who did not know me well did not know how heavy a drinker I was. This pattern never changed until the last year of my drinking when I gave up trying to have a life beyond drinking. Toward the end I was drinking literally from the time I got up until I went to bed, and I really didn’t care who knew it. I was at my bottom. But for the first 34 years I was nowhere near that bottom. The final fall was off a cliff, not down a sloping hill.

One of the truths of alcoholism that I want to reinforce is that I hurt mostly those who most cared about me, my loved ones. I was not an awful husband and father, but I was surely not a good one, even by my standards in those days. I was too often indifferent, unloving, overly strict, suspicious, jealous, tired, short fused, angry, and self absorbed. Those whom I loved did not come first. I did. Or perhaps I should say alcohol and my career came first.

Another truth of my alcoholism is that deep down I knew the damage that I was doing to those who loved me and yet I did nothing about it. If there was a choice between booze and them, and there was, I chose booze, all the while telling myself it was a “false choice,” and that they did not really understand me and the important things I was accomplishing. Yet I knew that was a lie when I left my family after 12 years and sought a divorce, but, even then, I told myself they were better off without me. Perhaps that was literally true, considering that I had no intention of stopping drinking. I will never know. But I know that the wounds from that divorce have never healed in my children.

The myth I would like to dispel is that alcoholics are not as productive, creative, smart, inventive, imaginative, and morally driven as are nonalcoholic members of society. While we all can easily identify alcoholics in history who disprove that myth, social propriety insists that alcoholics are wastrels and worthless.

I fervently believed that when I finally got sober. I believed it because for many years after I quit drinking I came to two conclusions about myself that supported the myth because I was afraid that if they were not true then I would go back to drinking.

The first conclusion about my self was that I had stepped all over others in my career in order to get to the top as quickly as I did; that I was egomaniacal and ruthless and let nothing stand in the way of my personal success.

And the second conclusion was that I would have gotten much further and been more successful than I was had I never been a drinker.

I no longer think that either of those conclusions is true.

It is true that I may have stayed longer in the government part of my career and may have, given time, advanced to higher positions, which would have involved accepting political appointments. But I was a career civil servant and proud of my nonpartisan role in government, and it is highly likely that I still would have tired of working for the government and would have moved on in any case.

And I can not remember one time when I was given a promotion that I had not earned. I believed fervently in meritocracy. Nor did I ever do anything that would have otherwise stood in the way of someone else getting the same job as I got, or a better one.

To help put the lie to the myth, let me give a sketch of my life as a practicing alcoholic.

After the first three semesters of college at Washburn U. in Topeka, I got married on my 19th birthday. I dropped out of school for a semester to earn enough money to go back, and I went to Wichita U the following Fall. I had decided to study and completed my course work with a 4.0 average, taking extra courses, while working full time. I graduated in 1960, BA, cum laude, in Political Science.

I then accepted a post graduate teaching assistantship at Colorado U. at Boulder. I completed the MA course work, 30 hours, in two semesters, 4.0 average, while teaching two American Government undergraduate courses and a senior seminar in Constitutional Law.

I left Colorado for Cornell U. on a post-graduate fellowship at the end of that year to work on a doctorate. However, I was deeply in debt from school loans, had by then three children to care for, and decided to quit after one year.

I went to work for Gov. Nelson Rockefeller at Albany in the NY state Executive Development program. During that year I wrote my Master’s thesis (political theory) for Colorado U. I took the Federal Management Internship Exam the following Spring, scoring in the top 1% nationwide. I received offers from many federal agencies and chose to go to the Bureau of the Budget, Executive Office of the President. I was 23.

I moved up annually from GS 9, to 11, 12, 13 and 14. I wrote and reviewed proposed legislation, and was responsible for reviewing the budgets of the Corps of Engineers, Bureau of Land Management, US Geological Survey, and Federal water resources management programs.

When President Nixon came into office I moved to the Bureau of Land Management, as Director of the Division of Energy and Minerals, GS 15, responsible for management of the Government’s programs under the Mining Law and the Minerals Leasing Act, including Outer Continental Shelf Oil Leasing programs. I was 29.

Three years later McGeorge Bundy, then at the Ford Foundation, asked former TVA Chairman, David Freeman, to launch a high profile study of US energy policy. I knew Dave from working with him when he was on the White House staff under LBJ. He asked me to come to the Ford Foundation with him. Dave became Director of the Energy Policy Project and I was Deputy Director. We published a library of 23 books on US energy policy. I co-authored three of those and edited others. I also designed a new methodology for the Project into which all of the research flowed: “Alternative Scenarios Analysis.”

During this time I gave speeches throughout the US and in Europe, appeared on numerous panels and wrote and co-authored several professional papers and journal articles. I also taught at George Washington U., the Aspen Institute, the Federal Executive Institute at Williamsburg, and appeared on TV and radio in support of the recommendations of the Project.

After the completion of the Project, Elmer Staats, Comptroller General of the US, asked me to come to the General Accounting Office as Director of a new Office of Special Projects where I would implement policy analysis within the GAO using the scenarios analysis methodology. I went to the GAO at GS 17 and the next year, they created the Division of Energy and Materials and appointed me head of that Division at GS 18, the highest level civil service appointment. I was 35.

During the time at GAO we wrote between 30 and 50 reports to Congress a year, and I testified many times before congressional committees, was interviewed often by newspapers, magazines, TV and radio, particularly National Public Radio.

By age 38, I was burned out and tired of offering the same solutions to the energy crisis over and over and seeing essentially nothing happen. So I moved on to NYC as VP of a chemical company, ending up in St. Louis as CEO of a subsidiary of the company. After turning it into a profitable operation, I was out of a job, but with enough of a parachute that I was able to buy a small retail energy conservation company in St. Louis, which I owned for the next ten years.

All of this time I was drinking continuously and heavily. I was smoking 3 plus packs a day and getting about 4 to 5 hours of sleep a night. I was working 60 to 80 hours a week, usually 6 or 7 days a week. I was a successful, productive “workaholic alcoholic.” That I might have gone higher, further, faster is to me, looking back on it today, highly doubtful. At every turn I was the youngest ever to hold the positions I held, or positions were created for me to fill.

In terms of my public service career, I was an effective, competent, and innovative thinker in my areas of expertize, and was recognized as such by my peers, and by the academic and political communities that counted. And I was an alcoholic.

But, I was not a success as a husband and father, and there is no one but me to blame for that. That I could have been a much better father is, without a doubt, true.
In the end after my life all crashed down on me, I was saved, and not by my own doing. I do not know “why me?” But I know how and by whom.

Most of all I was blessed, after being alone for over 10 years, to have met Sue, who saw enough in me to love me in spite of my drinking and then to make me face a choice when I hit bottom: her or the bottle. And for the first time in 35 years I chose correctly. It was the best decision I ever made, and all of my academic and career successes pale into insignificance in the light of that decision.

And there is one thing I am sure of about that decision. When Sue forced that decision on me I was in no condition to make it on my own. I owe that to God. God gave me her and then God put Jim White into my life to show me the path to sobriety at exactly the time I hit bottom. Jim took me to my first AA meeting and stood by my side for three years until he was too frail to continue as my sponsor.

That is why I know that my 20 years of sobriety is a miracle. All we have left are miracles when we have no capacity to create for ourselves a future, when we are beaten down, consumed by something that we have no strength to resist, nor the will to try. Some higher power has to reach into us from the outside and lift us up out of the pit of despair.

God did that for me. While I had been a religious person all of my life, even when I was drinking, I know now that God was not then my higher power. Alcohol was. But when I got sober I dedicated the rest of my life to God, and to the service of others in God’s name. I have never once come close to regretting that.
It has been my intention with this series to show how this one alcoholic has, by the grace of God, achieved the reprieve of sobriety. I am not cured; but I am in remission, one day at a time.

I do not think of myself as unique. Rather, just the opposite. While the details differ there are common things that bind all the addicted. We have many more things in common that we have differences.

I also know this: If I can make it, so can others who share my addiction. And I will continue to reach my hand out to any who will take it. I will help them to walk the path I have been blessed to walk these past 20 years. We can walk it together.

God bless you all.

Monte






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