Sliver Of Hope

Warning: You may find some passages in this entry very disturbing.

Listening to the 911 tape brought me to tears. On the tape you can hear the woman saying he’s got a gun, he’s really mad. Then you hear the dull thud as he presses the barrel of the pistol to the back of her head and shoots her while she is talking to the 911 dispatcher. Then you hear a loud shot as he shoots himself in the head. Then you hear the screams of the two little boys who just witnessed all this. There was also a 9-month old in a crib in the next room. Later on one of the boys told investigators that the battery (the shell casing) from Daddy’s gun hit him. That’s how close these two boys were.

This tragedy was brought on because the man (a sailor) thought his wife had been cheating on him while he was out at sea. It truly was a permanent solution to a temporary problem.

Not so long ago a woman called our 911 Center to report her husband missing. She said he was depressed and that he had a pistol with him when he left. His daughter found him in the woods about 50 yards from the road. He had put one bullet into his right temple. If it was not an instantaneous death it was at least mercifully quick. Not so for his daughter who is now left with memories of a sight that will never leave her. Everyone who loved him will wonder what else they could have done.

The innocent bystanders are the ones who really suffer in suicide cases. For the person who takes their own life their temporal misery is over. There are no more black days, there is no more pain. For the spouses, the children, the friends and the co-workers the pain only increases and often festers as guilt.

All that aside I can see how some people come to believe that death is better than another tomorrow. There was a time in my life when the consequences of a number of horrendous decisions descended on me all at once. My very public downfall reverberated through every aspect of my life, my family, my friends, my job and buried me in the deepest depression. They were my bad decisions and I made amends everywhere I could and tried to regain the trust I had so maliciously violated. Trapped in the throes of grief and shame I went shopping for a shotgun. It seemed at the time more like a backup plan if things got worse. Fortunately the thoughts quickly passed and I committed myself to a becoming the man I wanted to be. I began listening to my conscience. Over many years I have become the man I am today and repaired most of the damage I inflicted on so many innocent people. In the ensuing years I also encountered true unconditional love.

Part of my decision to step back from the brink was that I did not want to be remembered as a man who quit. I wanted to be remembered as a man who fought back and remade himself from the shattered shards of his former self. That sliver of hope, or grace if you will, was enough to work with.

I am not trying to imply that someone who takes their own life is weak or is a quitter. I believe that there are no suicide decisions that are entered into lightly. Perhaps it’s one too many days with no hope, or the discovery of a fatal disease, or perhaps it is simply too much shame to bear. There are many more suicides in our community than I would have imagined. There probably more in your community as well. Unless the suicide is particularly gruesome, or is a public figure or a murder suicide the media generally stays away.

Sadly, as we enter into the so called Holiday Season the number of suicides will increase. For some the memory of a loved one who died during this season will simply overwhelm them. For others perhaps the isolation from the allegedly merry world will simply be too much. Many people, myself included, often have a hard time feeling the unabashed merriment everyone else’s seems to be wallowing in. I have had too many grey Holiday Seasons for that.

What should be the season of The Nativity of Our Lord God and Savior Jesus Christ, will for most of us instead be a season trampled by materialism and over indulgence. For some it will be too much. So I will try to remember the lonely, the sad, and the outcasts, to reach out to them to assure them that another tomorrow is better than the alternative, that the light of hope and love still permeates our sometimes lonely and bleak world.

Note: I painted the image used in this post several years ago.

The Fire Of Dedication

To embrace this path [of spiritual growth] is to go from first fervor to true fervor, from sentimental, romantic love to self-giving love, from the fire of emotions to the fire of dedication, moving in a continuously upward spiral into the fullness of what we are meant to be. . . Our concern must be what we are responsible for: transforming our fervor, our behavior, our love. Throughout the spiritual journey we are required to let go of this preoccupation with “what we can get out of it.” To do this courageously is one of the principal efforts and effects of authentic and wholesome spiritual practice.

In The Spirit Of Happiness by the Monks of New Skete

For the basic question is: of what are we witnesses? What have we seen and touched with our hands? Of what have we partaken and been made communicants? Where do we call men? What can we offer them?

For The Life Of The World by Fr. Alexander Schmemann

In my reading this week these two passages gave me pause. What to do when the fire doesn't burn quite so bright? Are we what we say we are? Is my life a faithful witness? Why do I not fast and pray as I should? Why am I so stingy with money and affection?

I know the answers yet I do not act. I understand that after the thrill is gone (pardon the phrase) comes the day to day expression of faith through action or inaction, through the daily sloughing of self and seeking to conform to His will. Even when I don't feel like it. No, especially when I don't feel like it. I once asked one of my former pastors/friend how she could get up every Sunday and preach? There must be days when she just didn't feel like it. Her answer was, "Fake it until you make it." That seems harsh but I think her comment contains a nugget of truth. In the repetition of prayer, in the unfortunate rhythm of repentance, in the acting out of our faith we find wisdom and solace. In our day to day we find eternity.

The Work At Hand

But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return; and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High; for he is kind to the ungrateful and the selfish. Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.
Luke 6:35-36

Is this not the heart of the Gospel? This reading from Sunday brought a lot to mind. There was a time in my life when I was in a program in which I had to do a kind deed for someone every day and then not tell them what I had done. How quickly my enthusiasm waned. Doing good felt a lot better with positive feedback. I wanted everyone to know I was capable of kindness, that I was more than just a roiling cauldron of rage. What I did not realize then (or for too many years later) was that in doing good for others I was saving myself. It was not at all about what their reaction might or might not be. It was about my motivation. Why did I do the good deed? Works without love are dead. Love without works is not love.

This desire for affirmation was, of course, my pride talking. I could not see beyond my own self and never really took others or their needs into consideration. I suppose I could say I was raised in a family rife with alcoholism and abuse on both sides. Or that sometimes I like things too much for my own good. But those are crutches. I am responsible for my actions as well as my inactions and part of this responsibility is being honest with myself.

In some ways I have made no progress in the piercing of my pride. Here is an example. There are times when going through a restaurant drive-through that I also pay for the order of the people in the car behind me. I believe the politically correct term is practicing random acts of kindness. Initially I believed this was a way of being generous without taking credit, almsgiving of a sort. But I did enjoy the look on the face of the person working at the window. I realize now it is still about assuaging my guilty soul, taking the road most traveled and avoiding the real work at hand.

There is a homeless man who sleeps on a bench in front of a shut down restaurant near my home. He is harmless enough but he is slowly drinking himself to death as he fights to quiet the war still raging in his mind. Not the funny Otis Campbell kind of drunk from The Andy Griffith Show. His is serious alcohol abuse. Leaving food there for him would be an act of mercy yet I do nothing. When I am called to be merciful I am instead merciless. My unwillingness to reach out, to go beyond myself is disgraceful. I am undone. Will they know I am a Christian by my love?

Slouching Toward Bethlehem

This is one of my favorite poems. Every day it seems more and more appropriate to the times in which we live.


The Second Coming

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

-- William Butler Yeats, January 1919

Words Of Earnest

This album came out in 1972 I believe and I probably first heard it sometime in 1974 or 1975. Don't be deceived by the cover art. This is a profound album that has worn extremely well. Just today I was listening and discovering things I had never noticed before. In the title song the words of Earnest (or Ernest) are, "Happiness is free." Simple yet profound truth. In addition to excellent song writing the musicians are all top notch. If you are not familiar with Goose Creek Symphony or this album you owe it to yourself to give it a listen. It's a hybrid of bluegrass, country, rock and more. There is even a cover of Janis Joplin's "Oh Lord, Won't You Buy Me A Mercedes Benz." My brother and I saw them years ago and they were still prime musicians who knew how to put on a show. More than a show really, more like an event. I wore the t-shirt from the concert so often it eventually turned to shreds.

I know this post is a bit off topic for me. Just trying to pass it on.

Still A Sojourner

Many times when looking at the quality of other blogs I realized I was a pauper among princes. No deep insights, no profound pronouncements, just a melancholy man trying to express the often inexpressible. I am in practice a very private man. I am slow to trust and quick to back off. Yet I found myself putting my life on public display. Vanity? Insanity?

I quickly discovered the hidden cost of blogging. The blog took over, leading to vanity, to skewed priorities. Often I wrote hoping for a large response. Thankfully the groundswell of adulation never materialized. My vanity, my pride would have only tempted me to seek more. For the first time in my adult life writing offered no relief.

It got to the point that even looking at the blogs I usually perused became something I had to cast aside, if only temporarily. It all was taking up too much of my time. Time that should have been used in prayer, or learning to love those who hate me, or in seeking my salvation.

Also, I let myself get caught up in moving and spending all my free time addressing the many needs of a 50-year-old house. Perhaps I was searching for a geographical cure. But I am still a sojourner so I will try to post entries more regularly.

A Dream Come True

Much change has occurred since my last posting. My family (finally) sold the small three bedroom home we had lived in for 9 years and purchased an older home. We had simply outgrown the old residence. There were many good memories there but there were also some that were a constant source of emotional irritation. In adddition the neighborhood had grown up around us. Walking the dog at night was taking your life into your hands. Vehicles flew through the neighborhood at warp speed.

The new (but 50 year old) house is in the county seat of about 1,500 souls. As I sit here now I can see the trees in my front yard and the wonderful red brick home across the street. At the old house I would simply have to stare at the wall. The county courthouse is close enough that I could hit it with a rock. I can walk to work in about 2 minutes. The new house was for many years a Baptist parsonage so there is a warm, comforting spirit to the place. Here we have four bedrooms, a study, a family room, two baths and a half acre yard.

The move was for me a dream come true. My eight year old daughter is still struggling with the change. The old home was the only one she had ever known. She'll adapt quickly. My wife had many reservations from the very first day. I saw that the house was for sale and dragged her with me to go see it. I saw potential. She saw poblems. Thankfully, she too is coming around. As we unpack and settle in I will hopefully have more time to write.

Man Overboard

Leviathan
For years uncounted I ruled the depths, unchallenged and unchecked. So when he plunged into my murky world, I swallowed him. What else to do? Just another mere morsel.

Then, for three long days he roiled, trampling around, oblivious to my discomfort. At the greatest depths, with the pressure building to unbearable, his meager voice rang out, vibrating within me. But not the mournful lamentation of one lost to his fate. With hope all but extinguished, the gladsome chorus swelled.

Swallowed, but not destroyed.

Distasteful. So up and out he came, back into the land of men, floundering in the light like a newborn. He won't be back, but there are always others struggling in the deep water.

Jonah
I was in the house of my father when the voice roaring like the tempest called to me. I had not heard the voice before and believed it to be just the song of whirling wind. Then it called again with the voice of a man yet I was alone. The final call was like birdsong yet I understood.

I fled the house of my father. I made it to the sea and hired passage but my flight was in vain as a raging maelstrom descended upon us. I knew the cause to be my own cowardice. I told them to throw me overboard, to save themselves. Being good men they refused. Then, being men afraid of the watery grave they acquiesced. Into the deep I dropped.

I awoke trapped in a great heaving blackness beyond all description. I drew breath in the putrid darkness and cried out, giving voice to my despair. I admitted my helplessness; I knew I could not save myself. I swore to pay all that I have vowed.

Then, thrown from blackness to blackness with water rushing around I caught a shimmer of dim light growing brighter. I broke the surface and waded ashore, collapsing in the ebb tide.

Here I stand, the voice still whispering, telling me of Nineveh.

Storm
He came aboard bedraggled, furtive, scared. A lubber he was. Low born I suspect. Slight of build with an unmemorable face, there was no thing remarkable about him except the story he had to tell. He told us his name and said he had heard a voice calling him as a prophet. Delusions of grandeur I thought. Until the storm. That made believers of us all. But we’ll get to that.

He said it was the voice of the God of Isaac, Abraham and Jacob calling him to cry out against the great city, to turn them from their wicked, wicked ways. As if any man could do that. So being the wise man that he is he set his mind to a course away from the city. His gold was as good as any and he joined us.

Then, the storm. It swallowed us like a serpent on a mouse. Lighten the load. Everything but the ballast went over the side. Whereas we began as honest men seeking a living we were soon reduced to seeking only survival. What matters if we gain the world but lose our souls?

As we died, he slept. I shook him and said, “Awaken and call upon your great God that we may not perish.”

He answered us not. Unsure, we cast lots. He lost. I asked, “What have you done to drop this doom upon us? What must we do to be saved?”

He said he was a Hebrew, that he feared his God but did not obey Him.

“Throw me overboard. Cast me forth as I must be cast down. It is my fear that forges this fury. I must be sacrificed.”

But we said no we would not give up a man to the deep and rowed harder believing still our lives to be in our own hands. The storm abated not, increasing in violence until we too prayed to his God asking not to suffer for his folly or shed his innocent blood.

Finally, and only to save ourselves, we dropped him into the deep. We all saw it. As he struggled something enormous took him and descended. The wind eased, the storm ceased. We were saved but lost.

Turmoil
Unwashed, unshorn and uncouth he infiltrated Nineveh from out of the west. At the Mashki Gate, he cried out in a thin, trembling voice. He said he sailed over the heaving seas, escaped the belly of the beast and made his way across the endless desert all the while carrying the word of his god.

"People of Nineveh, slave and freeborn, king and nobles; in forty days Yahweh will lay your city waste. Your fornications are an abomination in his sight. Like a scorpion underfoot you will die. Repent and give over your gods. Repent and turn from your lusts. Repent and know mercy."

As the king’s counselor I was duty-bound to respond. "Foolish man. You are but the latest in a caravan of impotent prophets, false men serving empty gods. Who is this mighty Yahweh that we should tremble in fear? Who can imagine eternal mighty Nineveh brought low? Go back to your goats."

All reluctance gone he trumpeted, "Heed His word. Yahweh will not be mocked. Cease the violence that is in your hands. Repent and accept His mercy or wallow in your evil and die."

And so he raved, haranguing, merciless, unending. Slowly, like the ceaseless wind shaping soft stone his words eroded the royal resolve. By decree (and against my explicit advice) the whole city was thrown into mourning. A city of revelry reduced to wailing. It fills me with terror to see the people of Nineveh brought so low, prostrating themselves in sackcloth and ashes before an unimaginable foreign god. The city’s finest forgo their finery, degrade themselves until there is no longer any distinction between artisan and prince, between gentlewoman and harlot. An unknown spirit has gripped the city.

I too am reduced to wearing the unsightly garb of woe. Like a commoner I am denied entrance to the king’s chamber. No privilege, no protection and no end in sight. I believe this Yahweh is nothing more than a faceless, formless, figment of this pathetic so-called prophet’s imagination.

And yet just today I watched an infamous judge who has never shown forbearance sit in judgment on a worthless dog convicted of stealing grain. This magistrate who favors the whip, who enjoys exercising the rod of wrath, instead forgave the man, gave him grain and sent him home. How the world is cast into turmoil!

And still this Jonah thunders.

Nineveh
I am the seductress in the desert, my allure untarnished by time. For years uncounted like bees to the blossoms they have come. So when he wandered into my shadowed world, I swallowed him. What else to do? Just another mere mortal.

The moment we embraced his entrancing voice sang out, echoing through me. In my alleyways and thoroughfares he spread his poison, tainting my solace and succor. For forty short days he raged, exhorting the people, exacerbating my discomfort.

I am betrayed. Slave and freeborn, king and nobles they all sup at his vile cup. It shames me to see my children prostrating themselves in sackcloth and ashes. My beauty muted to black and gray. My revelries reduced to wailing.

I am not yet undone. Let them grovel in their repentance; let them bask in their holiness. Soon enough this pathetic prophet will pass from memory and the pilgrims of the flesh will once again wander out into the deep sands.

Jonah
The city was like an old harlot, brittle but still dancing. At least until I arrived and pointed out that her robe was too revealing. Then she covered herself and became respectable.

Never had I seen a people so undeserving of salvation. Never was there a city more deserving of purging in the refiner’s fire. We warned them of the wrath to come and we went unheeded, our words scattered like chaff from the thresher’s winnow.

Eventually, like cattle catching the scent of water all the people from king to slave turned together and followed. Turned from the desires of their flesh to the desire of their heart, turned from revelry to fasting, turned from silk and linen to sackcloth and ashes, turned from gods to God and Nineveh was transformed.

I was astounded to witness such change firsthand and yet I was sorely disappointed. I was driven from my father’s house, I lost all my possessions, I was thrown overboard, I was swallowed by Leviathan, I was twice nearly drowned and I walked for weeks across the open desert, all to preach salvation to this unworthy heathen horde.

From the beginning I knew He would repent and show mercy. Did I not say at the beginning that these idolaters would be spared? So here I sit with nothing, even the shade has withered. How will I get home? How many precious days have I wasted on this fool’s errand? No fire from on high, no bolt from the blue, no destruction visited upon generation after generation. All for nothing, all for naught.

He says I have no right to be angry. After all I have done for Him. Waves of rage break over me. Withdraw your shade, withhold your sustenance and let me die. Alone I walk to Tarshish, swallowed in the vast expanse.

Eight Years Old Today

Today is my youngest daughter's (Sophia) eighth birthday. Over the weekend one of her paintings entitled "Rain Storm" won a ribbon at a local art show/festival and we went to the beach which is never far away literally and figuratively. Enjoy the photos.

Also, I am done making changes to the blog. I am very happy with this theme. I was tired of the blogger templates and needed to come up with something at least semi original. Please let me know what you think.

And finally, for no good reason at all, my view when being walked by the dogs.

Homeless and Hungry

At the intersection, (this was yesterday afternoon) beneath the stop sign sat a slim, nondescript, middle-aged man with a hand-scrawled sign that said Homeless and Hungry. Someone in the vehicle ahead of us lowered a window enough to hand the man what was probably no more than a pittance. I didn’t even do that. I could use the excuse that it’s a dangerous intersection (and it is), that I was focusing on the road and simply did not see him. But I did and I did my best to ignore him.

Very shortly thereafter we heard our daughter crying in the backseat. She had read the man’s sign and was instantly moved to tears by his plight. To her this was a man without food, without a soft bed, without a Mommy and a Daddy. This was a plight for which (thank God) she had no point of reference. To her this was a man who simply was hungry, homeless and needed help.

To me he was a potential predator, someone who might hurt my family if given the chance, a malodorous possibly mentally ill threat. Or, even worse, someone who was not really homeless but simply a lazy beggar. I know that I am jaded by experience and often err on the side of being too cautious, too self-contained.

She wanted to know if he could stay at our house, he could have her bed and she would sleep in her sleeping bag on the floor. The part that brought me to tears was that she hoped he was not allergic to dogs as we have two and she did not want them to bother him when he stayed with us. She was far more worried that this stranger be well taken care of than anything else.

I, of course, was horribly ashamed and, in my own defense, she has seen me help the destitute. But this day I was knowingly negligent.

I told her that we didn’t really know him and while we would stop and help him on the way home he could not stay in our house, in the back yard maybe, but not in the house. We had to crack the door a little more and let her get another glimpse of just how harsh the world can be, a slow gradual loss of innocence that breaks my heart. In all honesty, I am glad he was not still there on our return trip.

My wife and I talked about this at length. This was not the first time our little girl had been moved to tears by someone else’s plight. On Great and Holy Friday she did the same when she realized Christ was being placed in His tomb (we also should have been overcome by our emotions). We reminded her of His certain resurrection and her joy was then as complete as her grief.

She is seven years old, I am almost forty-seven. She has a kind heart and overflows with love. I am too often uncaring and stingy. In her innocence she is wise, in my wisdom I am blind.

Ashes, Ashes

For the past several days we have intermittently found ourselves directly downwind of the 60,000 acre plus fire burning in Ware and Charlton Counties. The distance becomes blurred in a blue haze, the sun a pink orb at midday. A cascade of ash, mute messengers from sixty miles away drifts on the breeze, delicate white, black and gray smudges. The neighborhood looks otherworldly, a reminder of the many forces over which many times we have absolutely no control.

We have been by no means immune. The above photo was taken this afternoon (that’s my lovely wife and daughter). On the horizon you can see the plume of a fire that could have very easily become a major conflagration. Only the unceasing efforts of our local firefighters managed to get in under control in a matter of hours. High winds, low humidity and literally tinder dry woods make a potentially potent combination.

Just yesterday I saw a car erupt in flames on the side of the interstate when the hot exhaust ignited the grass. And there is no relief in sight.

Conquering The Worm

And let me speak to the yet unknowing world
How these things came about. So shall you hear
Of carnal, bloody, and unnatural acts,
Of accidental judgments, casual slaughters,
Of deaths put on by cunning and forced cause,
And in this upshot, purposes mistook
Fall’n on the inventors’ heads: all this can I
Truly deliver.

Hamlet
Act 5, Scene 2

It was a dank day for dying on the old Dixie Highway that heads north through the prickly palmetto spears and towering Georgia pines. A malfunction of undetermined origin sent the car sliding though the slick grass sideways into the live oak that stands just before the crossroad. The driver was ejected, thrown rudely through the midday gloom into the unforgiving underbrush. His legs broke upon impact. Flames swallowed up the car, quickly consuming the faded paint and tattered upholstery.

Mosquitos and sand gnats agitated the humid air, tag-teaming the rescue workers and the gawkers, all drawn like moths to the flame, the makeshift funeral pyre. As they stood in an irregular circle around the scene I innocently walked up and stuck my head in the driver’s window. A sweet, earthy smell of mud, burnt flesh and spent fire extinguishers nearly gagged me. The passenger had died, trapped in the car. What I first thought was the charred remains of the front seat was his torso. He was truly cooked. The deltoid muscle on his shoulder looked like a turkey drumstick. The skin had burned away from the top of his skull to reveal an egg-shaped indentation from his striking the windshield. I clearly saw the interstitial cracks between the skull bones that look like irregular stitches. This was not the sepulcher white skull of some anatomy class skeleton. This was the skull of a sentient rational being who until a few moments earlier was alive and breathing, full of dreams and despair. This skull still held a warm brain.

It was then that I realized that our frail forms obey the laws of physics. We’re just flesh, bones, skin and water. We roast and char like any other animal on a spit. Entranced by this stranger’s misfortune, I made myself stand and look, glad that it was he and not I curled there in a fetal ball. Even in death he assumed this basic vertebrate position. I felt a peculiar power from not flinching at the face of death. Conquering the worm, as it were.

They were both Mexicans seeking the proverbial better life in rural South Georgia, working in one of the seafood processing plants, up to their elbows in fish or shrimp all day. Around the passenger’s neck, blackened but still whole, was a silver medal of St. Christopher engraved with a likeness of the venerable saint.

At the scene, everyone was joking. Hot tamale. Crispy critter. Burnt toast. It seems cruel but humor in such a horrific situation is a defense mechanism to men and women for whom death is their stock in trade. Men who have seen decapitation, men hardened by necessity, men who have the job of prying him free from the car.

I later learned that after awhile the physical landscape takes on a much more emotional dimension. You find yourself remembering grisly accident scenes, bloody suicides, domestic disputes and a host of other horrors while riding the county. A mental map covered with skulls and crossbones marking where death and destruction visited themselves upon the unsuspecting. But all that was still to come.

This entry was written as a way of coping with the very first death scene to which I ever responded. It was written as the beginning of a fictionalized account of the event, but all the details are true and accurate. It was brought to mind after I responded last week to the suicide of an 83-year-old man. Alzheimer’s was tightening its inexorable grip and I suppose he wanted to die with at least a modicum of dignity. The suicide took place just down the road from one of the most horrific scenes I have ever witnessed. Several years ago a young boy accidentally shot his even younger friend between the eyes at nearly point blank range (in his bedroom) with a .30-06 hunting rifle. I won't go into any details, but it was one of those days after which you know you'll never be the same.

I apologize for the cheapshot blast from the past. I am in the process writing something more current and relevant (and not so grisly).

Real Live Dragonslayers

Below is a paragraph I wrote that is part of a letter to the editor in the local newspaper. I'll not get into the larger context, but suffice it to say that this is something I have wanted to say to the media for a very, very long time.

"The next time you start to criticize the men and women of law enforcement remember that you sleep and rest secure under the umbrella of their protection. That it is through their sacrifice, through their willingness to literally put their lives on the line every day that you enjoy the safety and security of your home. They are not the stereotypes you imagine. They are men and women who believe enough in public service to go out and try to make the world a better place. And despite the public apathy or even open disdain, despite the media nipping at their heels and doing everything in its power to demean and degrade them, despite the emotional and physical burden it places on them and their families, they still suit up every day to go out to slay the dragons. They are what is best about all of us."

Sacred and Profane

I have thought a lot recently about the intertwining of the sacred and the profane in our lives, about how chaos can coexist with calmness. Of course it is not always as much coexistence as it is a sudden purging of one by the other, or of the wind that bodes no goodness seeking to extinguish the flame of our joy.

Not so long ago I was in my vehicle listening to Archimandrite Zacharias Zacharou’s very profound remarks on The Hidden Heart of Man (if you have heard any of Zacahrou’s talks you know just how deep he gets). In the background the seemingly ceaseless chatter of the radio provided a stark contrast. Traffic accidents, domestic disputes, routine violence served as background for, “The Awakening of the Heart by the Mindfulness of Death and the Moment of Death.”

There is probably not a more sacred time than when we pierce the veil on Pascha and join in with the eternal chorus in proclaiming Christ’s victory over death Then we enter into the glory of Bright Week when the whole world resounds with Christ risen. But even then lurks the mundane, the ever-encroaching blackness seeking to convince us we have no hope, that our faith has no firm foundation.

This past weekend I stood by the body of a woman who died from injuries sustained in an automobile accident. When I arrived she was lying on the side of the interstate on a backboard, wrapped in a sheet. Helping to put her in the hearse was an insignificant act, but it somehow felt sacred. It was right to help restore dignity to an undignified demise. To the people caught in the miles-long traffic jam, this was an aggravating delay. To us it was, unfortunately, not all that unordinary. To her family and her husband (who was driving the vehicle) it will be a day seared into their memory. A routine trip turned eternal.

Yesterday morning I drove my daughter to a three day learning field trip on one of the barrier islands. It was a wonderful time watching her rise to the challenge of spending three days away from Mom and Dad. I was thinking about how much I absolutely love her and how my love, no matter how intense or deep, is but a shadow of the love our Father has for us. Then upon my return to the office I saw the reports of the killings at Virginia Tech. Most of the victim’s parents had probably had moments like the one I just had. Now the anxiety and uncertainty would be devastating. The profane crashed into the sacred in a most violent way.

But I rejoice that it also works in the opposite direction. Even those who profess little or no faith have moments of sacredness thrust upon them, in the embrace of their child, in acts of unexpected kindness, in rainbows, in the consolation and true forgiveness the Pennsylvania Amish offered to the family of the man who murdered their children.

When the despair seems about to overpower me I remember that we are called to be the salt and the light, to season the world with our example and to bring the light of love and forgiveness to every dark corner of the world and of our hearts. When enveloped by the utter darkness of the deaths of 32 innocent people, we must shine brighter.

We live in a profane world edging closer everyday to being flooded by a tide of apathy, hatred and evil. We are called to stand in the breech. We do not have the right to hold grudges, to seek revenge, to hate those who hate us. With prayer, with love, with almsgiving, with forgiveness we must seek the sacred.

Thinking Blogger?

This blog is the recipient of two (both undeserved) Thinking Blogger Awards, one from From Wittenberg to Athens and All Stops in Between and one from Deb on the run. I read both of these blogs daily and enjoy them immensly. Both Deb and Dixie are thoughtful and kind Orthodox woman who have been tremendously generous with their encouragement and support.

Here are the instructions:1. If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think.2. Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme.3. Optional: Proudly display the ‘Thinking Blogger Award’ with a link to the post that you wrote.

My first choice has to be Glory to God for All Things. Well written and well reasoned. We can all learn something from Fr. Freeman’s insightful entries. This is Orthodox blogging at its finest.

My second choice is Wisdom of the Desert for it’s beauty and simplicity. I take a look every day.

My third choice goes to Irenic Thoughts. The author is an Episcopal priest and a personal friend. It is my belief that he is on his way to Orthodoxy, but he won’t admit it.

My fourth choice goes to the ubiquitious ORTHODIXIE. A fine man who clearly loves his family and his faith. And what a sense of humor!

My last and ceratinly not least choices (yes I am fudging a bit) are Dixie and Deb.

I was guided by my own blogging habits when making these selections. These are the blogs I visit most and the ones where I am most likely to leave a comment.