Sunday Morning Meds from Psalm 32

 “I said, ‘I will confess my transgressions to the Lord’

—and you forgave the guilt of my sin.”

I never committed adultery—per se. I guess I may have to confess, like Jimmy Carter, that I’ve sometimes ogled a bit too sumptuously; but I’ve have not blazed my way through some tawdry affair.

I’ve not murdered anyone. When I was a boy, I stole cigarettes—we used to call it “hocking,” as in “let’s go hock cigarettes.” But I haven’t hocked a thing in close to 70 years.

I’ve eaten too much—just two nights ago, in fact. It started with the smooth guacamole. . . But that’s another story. I’m in a perpetual battle with love handles.

I love a beer now and then, but I’m light years from alcoholism. The love of money may well be the root of all evil, but greed or avarice has never been a weakness of mine. Ask my wife.

I’ve come to that point in my life where covetousness isn’t much of problem either. Here I sit in a little office space, surrounded by books I’m can’t get rid of, file drawers full of stuff I can’t toss, and a collection of flim-flam filling every shelf, every last bit of it worthless beyond anything but sweet sentimental value. Even though a flood swallowed half of what I’ve saved through the years, I could use a couple healthy trips to Goodwill.

I don’t think I’m crochety, although my wife might argue. I’m not bitter. I love a good story, and I’ve become convinced that humor is, as the Readers Digest has long insisted, the very best medicine for the soul.

The 78-year path of my life—check it for yourself—contains no spectacular sin or reprehensible acts. I was in Vegas once, but I was ten. All I remember is sudden bright lights.

My biography would never sell. A fourteen-year-old with an eating disorder makes a better chapel speaker than I do. There are no bank heists or car chases. Thank the Lord, there never was a Bathsheba, nor Uriah.

For the most part, mine are sins of omission—and they are legion.

I wonder if, through my life, I worshipped the task I’m at right now, if I placed a god before me that obscured the one who forgives. I often wonder if I neglected to love my children or spouse because of my love of writing, if my profession of faith had more to do with the letters appearing on this screen than it did with the Lord God Almighty.

I wonder, as I never have before in my life, if I’ve done the best I could with what I’ve been given. I really do. When I look back, I wonder whether I did it right at all.

I don’t wonder, not really. I have no doubt that in many important ways I’ve failed.

I doubt my confession would be easier if I could point at a Bathsheba or too much bourbon or some kind of abuse and say, “there—that’s the sin for which I need forgiveness.” I’m thankful there are no such lurid misdeeds.

But I’m old enough to know that, just like the wanton King, I can stand only if I’ve been on my knees.

For what I didn’t do, Lord—for what I didn’t do right and for my idolatry, my pride—please, forgive.

A crumby picture

 

No matter how you look at it, it's not a good picture. Like most all of its contemporaries, it's taken with something akin to a Kodak Brownie, probably with a flash, although the usual contrasts aren't here to suggest a bulb, one of those big ones. Back then, this shot wasn't attainable without a flash.

It's a prom shot, I'd guess--her dress is not a bridal gown; his boutonniere and her corsage suggest some kind of high drama occasion, almost certainly Jr./Sr prom. I remember thinking back then, that high school proms were simply "of" another era and wouldn't be a feature of a kid's high school years after the hippie revolution. When I watched them line up for portraits, I knew I was wrong. Prom was still a big, big deal.

I'm quite sure that someone with a camera sat in a corner of the heavily decorated gym (colored paper streamers all over) and waited for couples to walk up like these two and create a keepsake.  What'd he pay? a dollar? five bucks? This was prom night, for goodness sake. How often do you get the chance to throw bucks around?

These two should have asked for their money back. It's a crummy picture no matter how you look at it. If I didn't know the corner it crept out of, there's a chance I wouldn't even know who the two of them are. But I do know, and I did know them, although they are no longer a they--they long ago went their separate ways.

The picture itself--a tiny thing--was stuck in the pocket created by the transparent dust jacket of a high school annual. Not hidden or anything, just attached somehow close to the story of the couple's senior year. "And this is prom," he might have said if he was here when I found it, "our senior year."

Sweet and memorable, just as they'd thought.

But it didn't last. 

I don't know the specifics, but I knew the couple. They were both my students in my high-school-teacher days, both good kids, really good kids and recognized as such by their friends, of whom there were many. 

And somewhere there are far better pictures, I'm sure--the two of them being married, a sure thing made eternal by their vows in some little church in town, everyone fawning over the two of them, probably, back then, a shower of rice as they left the church.

But for reasons I don't know, this couple didn't last. Those very public vows didn't hold. The marriage of too really sweet people didn't make a decade. My guess is the man with the boutonniere didn't remember that he'd stuck this really bad prom portrait in the fold of the dust jacket, stuck it there with high school memories; couldn't really throw it away like he did tons of other memorabilia from a failed marriage, told himself he wanted to just hang on to that little tiny prom portrait, a reminder--however crummy and how painful, a reminder of a moment in time when what the picture rehearsed was sugar-coated, a reminder of something sweet between sweethearts, something sweet that once was that turned regrettably not so.

I remember them both, remember the thing they were, remember that both of them were great kids.

For so many reasons, to me it's a crumby picture, a really crumby picture. I could toss it--he probably wouldn't miss it anymore, that painful time now long ago behind him. I could just throw it away.

I'll put it back where I found it, tucked away in his old high school annual.  

The powerful impact of nature on your health*

How time spent in nature can improve your health

The average adult spends more than 90 precent of their day inside, away from nature, and that's affecting their well-being.

The benefits of nature on your mental health.

The outdoors especially benefit those with:

--ADHD. Research suggests that outdoor activity reduces ADHD symptoms in children.

--PTSD. Nature-based thereapies have become increasiingly common for the treatment of PTSD veterans.

--Stress, anxiety and depression. Nature exposure reduces the symptoms of these conditions by regulating the sympathetic nervous system. 

The benefits of nature on your physical health

Studies have shown that nature exposure

--Improves immune system function through increased exposure to vitamin D and organic compounds that boost the human immune system.

--Decreases blood pressure levels.

--Regulates circadian rhythm, which helps you sleep better.

--Increases the length and intensiity of physical activity.

What counts as nature

Any outdoor green space counts. This can be your backyard, a park, walking trail, or the golf course.

And if you can't get outside, even listening to nature sounds like waves, thunderstorms or bird calls can help you reap the mental and physical benefits of nature.

______________________________________

*Text is taken from a Wellmark advertisement brochure. The images are my own.

The Restless Traveler ii

Continued from yesterday, a short essay attributed to me but long ago out of my computer. A Canadian grad student studying the occupation of the Netherlands, asked me for the proper bibliographical data, which I don't have. I remember the incident he described, but I have no copy of any essay I might have written. 

He sent me the essay. I knew it was a piece I wrote, but I hadn't seen for 16 years.  

Yesterday I passed along the first half. Here's the second. What I remembered was the restless traveler's discomfort at the comportment of the man who told the story of the Dakota's attack on his hometown, New Ulm, Minnesota--just the way he told the story, just his demeanor. It was reminiscent of the way the German occupiers acted/spoke/behaved. He couldn't handle it.

___________________ 

Achingly, painfully tethered. By choice, right then, he would have deserted the whole bus if he could avoid pain that was closing in on him—ancient, deadly fears long ago thought put to rest, but suddenly awakened by tone and rhetoric and ethnic pride.

When we got out of the bus at the college chapel, I could see he was not to be reasoned with. Some spirit in him was out of control—and he knew it too.

“When we arrived at this most beautiful Lutheran chapel,” he wrote, “I made sure to stay in the back on a church bench, so I could escape the professor’s diatribe attack on my senses. I fretted about myself—within my own, why I do not have more patience.”

And then, “Finally he stopped talking,” the Dutchman wrote.

The retired prof had stopped because we'd entered the Martin Luther College chapel, where, serendipitously, which is to say, providentially, the college’s own fine organist just happened to show up. That man opened up that new huge organ in a fashion that no guitar and drum set can ever do. Together, we sang old hymns, even “A Mighty Fortress,” Luther’s own. It was a blessing I have not the words to describe.

But our war survivor tries—listen:

“Then the college organist played this beautiful very large pipe organ, with songs so wonderful. Peace came in my heart, and I thanked God for his patience with me, being a ‘Restless Traveler.’ Those familiar songs released my anxiety,” he wrote.

Those old hymns of faith were decidedly providential therapy. What he required at that point—and he understood it himself—was therapy.

That retired history prof never wore the black SS coat and had nothing to do with The Final Solution. He was an American, doing what lots of us do—taking pride in his heritage, including the town’s own history, which started a full century before a little madman with a paintbrush mustache.

But there’s a little more to the story of our restless traveler.

Henceforth we were transported to the Shell Brewery, where, following a short tour, we were led thirstily to their tasting room for some product research.

“We were invited to taste small amounts of different types of beer,” our restless traveler wrote, quelling, for a moment at least, his old fears and hatred. “It tasted good and put me in a mood to sing a song, song from my younger days—not quite proper for elderly Christian persons perhaps, but seemed funny.”

There’s nothing like a little sip to help you forget, maybe, eh?

But the charmer was the evening, when, accompanying some fine German drinking songs, a motley crew of masked intruders, the Naaren, ended our German dinner by pulling every last one of the weary travelers from their chairs and waltzing them into a series of hoopla dances and marches that would have sent all of our travelers reeling had they carted in a keg or two with them. Which they hadn’t, thank goodness.

Here's the way the Dutchman described the hijinks:

“A dozen characters, men and women, although whether man and woman was difficult to distinguish, were wearing wetween our dinner tables, encouraging us to join. It took me a while before I was reaooden masks and colorful costumes. They entered the hall dancing, and hobbled bdy to accept their invitation, until I secured a woman who was a good dancer. I managed to get a hold of her. Her mask was not as scary as the other ones. When the music stopped, she gave me a compliment about my dancing. It made my day.”

It made his day.

And thus, presumably, our restless traveler, so psychically stricken earlier in the day, was comforted finally, by the great hymns of the church, a few sips of good stout German beer, and a sporty jaunt with a masked intruder—a woman he managed to get hold of, he says, who then told him that for an old guy with a wooden leg, he was, by cracky, one heckuva good dancer.

That's the whole story. Let preachers of all types and persuasions do with it what they will. All I know is, that’s the way I saw it, and the way he tells it.

There’s got to be a sermon there, if we have ears.

"The Restless Traveler"

A grad student in Alberta sent me a note to ask if I could tell him where a little essay had appeared so he could include it in a bibliography. I looked, but couldn't find it. But I told him I recognized the events and specifics; I told him I remembered the original story, but I had no idea where it could be found. It was titled, the grad student told me, "The Restless Traveler." I couldn't find it, so he sent me a copy.

It's mine all right, but my guess is our restless traveler himself  picked it up in 2010 or so from this blog.

Here 'tis. And here, I think, is the man who used the essay, the interesting guy whose war memories came flooding back when he listened to a man explaining, the story of the 1862 Dakota War. It's a story I told and will never forget.

The man at the center of the photo, I think, is our restless traveler.

Somehow, I think I knew what was going on, in part, I think, because I knew the man, his history, and the sometimes stinging effects of childhood experience. He’d immigrated to Canada after the war, after the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, and not all of that experience—hiding from conscription, living in fear day and night, the hunger winter—not all of that simply sifts out of one’s life when it's left behind. If there are jackboots on the necks of your neighbors, you don’t walk away whistling.

What happened was a kindly old retired professor walked up on the steps of the tour bus and began to tell the peculiarly German story of New Ulm, Minnesota, a town that celebrates its heritage of sauerbraten, schweinhocks, and polka bands. In his defense, the old prof was German-American, not German. In all likelihood, he spent the early 40s here in the States, picking ripened milkweed pods for parachute silk in the U.S. war effort, no more a Nazi than any of the other seniors on the tour bus.

No matter. Once he started talking—even though he spoke English with no accent—he was unapologetically German; after all, his chamber-of-commerce job was to sell the town, which means to sell the local, proud German heritage. And our tourist, the man who couldn’t forget the Nazis’ snarls in his boyhood backyard, got what the Dutch might call “benauwd,” so breathtakingly claustrophobic that he literally couldn’t stand it. He couldn't listen.

This 80+ year-old war survivor had distinguished himself already as someone who could be strong-willed, to say the least. He was, after all, a man who'd climbed the Himalayas—he warn't no marshmallow. And he’d lost a leg in an biking accident—he hobbled demonstrably, but never complained.

In just two days, he'd distinguished himself clearly, so when we noticed that something was decidedly wrong with him, he was moping sort of publicly, initially at least, we rolled our eyes. But my suspicions weren’t far afield.

Here’s what he wrote in a little summary he penned of his experience on our Minnesota bus tour:

“Memories popped up about the Second World War, when German soldiers occupied Holland—us. Then when someone was going to give me a small sticker to put on my chest, it bothered me. I left the room to go outside. There was something that disturbed me, my memory in the past, when the Jews had to wear armbands with the name ‘Jew,’ to separate them from (us) whom they considered other (Germanic) Dutch people.”

I guessed it was a version of post-survival stress. Something in the kindly old professor’s mannerisms, his tone, his story, his telling of it, something in that little tourist sticker unearthed memories our own “restless traveler” might well have thought buried, and he nearly fell apart.

“He was very knowledgeable and could not stop telling his stories about German history and Indian wars,” he wrote. “He spoke while the bus drove around, to our next stop. I fretted, but I could not get out of the bus; he was driving me up the wall. I was stuck in the back of the bus and could not escape him.”

_______________

Tomorrow: the rest of the story of the "Restless Traveler."

Sunday Morning Meds from Psalm 32

 “Then I acknowledged my sin to you 

and did not cover up my iniquity.”

A woman came up to me at a conference and told me how much she’d enjoyed reading a novel of mine titled Touches the Sky.  I’m thankful for any readers, but the ones who sing praises bring real delight.  It’s an ego thing.

“The last chapter,” she told me, “—when I finished it, I cried.”

I can’t tell you how much that comment meant because the most indelible memory I have of having written that novel is the moment of its completion.  I’d never felt exactly that way about anything I’d written, but when I finished the final chapter and wrote those last words—“please do, please do,” I was struck with the feeling that I had poured every last ounce of who I am into those final pages..

It’s embarrassing, in a way, to say that.  The person you might meet on the street—the man you speak to when you talk to me—is not so much the human being he is as the man you hear in the words of that final chapter.  It’s scary to say that.

I used to tell my students that writers need to be flashers, willing to don and doff raincoats.  It’s a lousy metaphor, but it gets their attention—and it’s not all wrong.

Getting naked isn’t easy.  Physically, it is easy to some people—hence nudism.  But metaphorically, it isn’t easy; even those who may well consider themselves most transparent can engineer pseudo-openness to cover their own precious nakedness.  

I’m not sure any of us really knows much about our nakedness because not many of us really know who we are.  Some of us know we belong, body and soul, to our faithful Savior; that’s an identity, a real identity.  But who, really, are we?  Who am I?  That’s an essay question requiring a lifetime—actually, more—to write fully.

When David retells the story he’s singing in Psalm 32, and when he gets to very heart of the action—“I acknowledge my sin and dropped the cover-up”—it’s amazing, isn’t it, to know that literally there was no cover up in the first place?  Before God almighty, there are no flashers. There was nothing about the sordid Bathsheeba affair that God didn’t know—not the adultery or the premeditated murder of her husband Uriah.  God saw it all.  There were no secrets. Buck naked, 24/7.  

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s fascination with secret sin is fascinating in itself, but, in a way, silly because God is not a TV detective.  He doesn’t need clues or even confessions to know what happened.  He knows where we’ve been, who we’ve seen, what we’ve done, what we think of what’s happened.  Before his face, there are no secrets.

The really painful part of our coming to Him in confession is the injury, the pain which accrues when our precious will shatters like our pride, when we come to know we can’t do it on our own, when we learn we must crawl or be dragged before him.  

When we give up, he smiles and nods and heals. When we come before him naked, he gives us a whole new wardrobe. What he wants, simply, is our human pride buckled before him. We have to get naked, even if there are no cover-ups.

That’s the song David is singing in Psalm 32.  

September 2009, McNally, IA