Somewhere Between Omps Grocery and County Line Store

Somewhere between Omps Grocery and the County Line Store the farms disappear. Just past the Cacapon River Bridge on 127, a hard right onto Gaston Road takes you to the one-lane bridge and the last of the open fields. Regaining the highway, you are in the mountains. In the summer, houses seem few and far between, but now, in winter, the privacy screen is down. The valley spreads out before you with its isolated freeholds, and clusters of cottages cling to the mountainside at every switchback. They are hidden in the shadows for most of the year, shielded from prying eyes within blankets of green, then red and yellow, then brown. Not now.

We are watching a house collapse. We first noticed it last winter, sitting just off the road. Brown (or once tan) asphalt siding and gray asphalt shingles make it hard to see down among the trees, even in winter. How long it has been abandoned, I can’t say. But nature’s advance has been quick and ruthless. Ivy and Virginia Creeper found footholds on the walls and soon broke through, invading every unguarded space. Rain followed. Now moss, mold, and mildew spread like dark stains over all of the exposed surfaces. Sometime this past summer, the roof partially collapsed. The right side of the house has now caved in upon itself. Each time we pass we expect to see only a heap of wood and building materials lying amidst the weeds and brush and young trees reclaiming the yard.

I stopped once. I walked down the embankment, but it was too wet to go near the house. I was there for another reason, anyway. A pickup had missed the curve and rolled into what had once been someone’s front yard, spilling its load of all-terrain vehicles. No one was hurt, so I got back in my car and drove on home to my own house clinging to the side of a mountain. But I was uneasy with questions. Who lived here? Did they raise children here? Why did they go? But these are private people, reserved people, mountain people. I haven’t earned the right to ask such questions. Someday, but not yet.

Why they left makes no difference to the forest. A house needs to be lived in, to be heated and cooled, to be humid and dry, to be sealed against the elements, and to be cleaned inside and out. The weeds need to be cut back, a perimeter established against the woodland’s insatiable desire to fill every open space. Left unattended, nature quietly and inexorably reclaims its own. Even us.

A life needs to be lived, and it needs to be lived with great intention. It is true that the world is too much with us, rushing us forward at breakneck speed, filling every moment until we collapse wearily at the end of the day into our favorite chairs. Done! Finally, done! Here is the danger, not only in the pace of modern life, but also here in the quiet evenings when we seek refuge in mindless entertainment. Anything to drown out the crush of other peoples’ demands – family, friends, co-workers, employers. Resentment, frustration, boredom, and loneliness find a foothold and spread like dark stains across the soul. Embittered souls are born and marriages die unnoticed in the easy chair to the sound of white noise. We watch lives collapse. Nature reclaims its own.

There is a remedy. It is the inner life, but it must be cultivated. The soul will be filled. Prayer, Scripture reading, meditation: these are the tools that prune the garden of our souls and establish the perimeter, the demilitarized zone that keeps the mind and heart clear for the presence of God. There is a reason that Psalms begins:“Happy are those who do not follow the advice of the wicked, or take the path that sinners tread, or sit in the seat of scoffers; but their delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law they meditate day and night.” Delighting in God, meditating on his word, and making room for God in our lives are the first steps toward renewal. It is the intentional seeking for God in the silence of one’s own soul. And it comes with a promise: “They are like trees planted by streams of water, which yield their fruit in its season, and their leaves do not wither.”

Somewhere between Omps Grocery and the County Line Store, among the forested mountainsides, I leave the valley behind. Somewhere between the rush of the day and the claims of weary sleep, among the gardens of prayer, I leave the world behind for the true home of the soul. God reclaims his own.

This Is Fire

Last night Mitzi got out her new blow torch and lit a candle for the kitchen table. It pops and roars like an oxy-acetylene welding rig. Whenever she lights it off, I expect her to burn through the glass Yankee Candle holder to the oak beneath. It has to be the most powerful BiC lighter we have ever owned. I bought it last week as a replacement for the anemic lighter we used last year to light the fireplace. On its last legs, the old lighter sputtered and maddenlingly went out just as I touched the fire logs. No pitiful orange flame now. Nope, this is a genuine blue beast, the kind you can feel good about. I suspect Mitzi of wandering around the basement when I’m not there, looking for a couple of pieces of scrap steel to weld.

I used to think that welding was a manly thing – that is, until I took a metal sculpture class and found myself the only male in a group of about six women. Six women in elbow length gloves, leather aprons, and dark goggles lighting off torches at 6,000 ˚ F and attacking bits of metal in all sizes and shapes with one object in mind: to create something new and beautiful. That’s a human thing, whether it’s done with sound and fury in a metal shop or hushed, pantomimed movements in a floral design studio. Created in the image of God, we are, ourselves, compelled to create, to make something lasting and meaningful.

I found I didn’t care for metal sculpture. I’m more suited to repairing trailer tongues than making beautiful designs, and I like the coarse company of pipefitters, welders, and sheet-metal workers. And I have also learned that work done with pride can be both beautiful and lasting. A welding instructor once told me that a good weld will last forever. I don’t know about that, but I do know that joined-metal is more likely to break somewhere other than the bead, much like a healed fracture is stronger than the bone around it.

This season we pause to remember that in a stable in Bethlehem, God fulfilled a promise to Isaiah: “Look, I am about to do something new; even now it is coming, Do you not see it?” (Is 43:19, HCSB) On that Christmas night, God entered the world. As John put it, “the Word became flesh and took residence among us.” (Jn 1:14, HCSB) Heaven and earth, divinity and humanity are joined and all of creation is raised to a new level. What’s more, we are promised that same event in our own lives: the joining of heaven and our piece of earth, divinity with our humanity. Much around us may shatter, but the welding together of the Holy Spirit and our spirit is eternal.

There is a reason God’s agent of renewal, the Holy Spirit, is portrayed as a rushing wind and a tongue of fire. It takes raw power to transform a life, a power beyond anything we possess. An acetylene torch is a sickly thing, with a yellow flame and a smell of rotten eggs. It is only when you turn the valve and let the oxygen flow that you hear the roar and see the tiny, perfect blue-cone dancing off of the welding tip. Here is power. Here is fire.

This Christmas Baby Jesus lies on my mantel in His porcelain manger. But this is more than a baby; this is power; this is oxygen to turn our lives into white hot fire.

An Air Electric and Violent

In April of 1843, Ralph Waldo Emerson travelled to Washington, D.C. He recorded a cryptic but still salient observation in his journal: “I went to Washington and spent four days. The two poles of an enormous political battery, galvanic coil on coil, self-increased by series on series of plates from Mexico to Canada and from the sea westward to the Rocky Mountains, here terminate and play and make the air electric and violent. Yet one feels how little, more than how much, Man (sic) is represented here.”

Anyone following current political debate, regardless of the topic of the moment, concludes that not much has changed since Emerson’s visit. Issues and players come and go, but as my mother used to say, “The more things change the more they stay the same.”

What stays the same is the condition of the human heart. I suppose if we were to be transported to an earlier era, regardless of the time and place we chose, we would find the same forces at work: arrogance, jealousy, greed, and blind ambition – the common currency of politics. Motives so common that we take them for granted until some crisis acts as a lens to bring their destructive power into the clearest focus. There is little wonder that Congress’ approval rating has fallen below ten percent, yet they seem incapable of the kind of plain dealing that leads to problem solving.

I would like to exonerate the public, to picture us as innocent victims, but we bear as much of the blame as our elected representatives. We have demanded more services and less taxes, giddily applauded ballooning home values, consumed more foreign goods for ever cheaper prices, and watched silently as mill after mill closed and neighbor after neighbor joined the unemployment line. It isn’t only in Washington that people aren’t represented.

The way out is not clear. But one thing is certain: the change must start with us. In his introduction to Steppenwolf, Hermann Hesse’s Germany is caught between two worlds, two eras, where the past makes little sense, the present is turbulent, and the future is dark. People caught in such circumstances find no firm ground on which to stand. We live in such an era. The industrial economy moved to foreign shores, the information economy proved to be a figment of futurists’ imagination, and the service economy never was. We are left with a rust economy.

In spite of all that, we have reason to hope. As Christians we are promised one unchanging reality: Jesus Christ. The writer of Hebrews reminds us that God is with us no matter what the external circumstances of our lives. And he brings us a message we need to hear again and again. Do not be afraid. “He himself has said, I will never leave you or forsake you. Therefore, we may boldly say: the Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid. What can man do to me?” (Heb. 13:5b-6) As Thanksgiving approaches, let us remember the ways in which God has blessed us in these difficult times, and in the midst of our thanksgiving prayers lay claim to the promise that he will continue to guide us through these times.

There are indeed galvanic forces at work in the world creating an “air electric and violent,” but we are not helpless. We are represented by the one who sits at the right hand of God and “He always lives to intercede for them.” (Heb. 7:25b)

Tiggers Don‘t Like Honey

“’Tigger took a large mouthful of honey … and he looked up at the ceiling with his head on one side, and made exploring noises with his tongue and considering noises, and what-have-we-got-here noises … and then he said in a very decided voice:

“Tiggers don’t like honey.”’

In this chapter from A.A. Milne’s The House at Pooh Corner, Tigger and Pooh eventually stumble on something Tigger does like. After misadventures with haycorns and thistles, Tigger finds that Extract of Malt works very well for breakfast, dinner, and tea. The whole of Christopher Robin’s gang finds this more than a little amusing because, as everyone knows, Extract of Malt is Roo’s Strengthening Medicine. This charming story, like most of Winnie the Pooh’s adventures is more than it seems at first reading. We are different from one another, and the differences present themselves very publicly in our personal likes and dislikes, the causes we embrace, and the religions we adopt. Unfortunately we are regularly confronted with Poohs who want to fix us, want to remake us in their image, want to ensure conformity. In short, differences are not to be tolerated.

The current insistence on political correctness in public discourse and on college campuses is symptomatic of this deeper malady: the inability or unwillingness to see the world from another’s point of view. It reveals itself in the refusal to differentiate between those things that really matter and those things over which we may agree to disagree without rupturing the bonds between us. Tolerance and compromise, once hailed as the peculiar genius of the American people, have become terms of derision and contempt.

We ought to see a different model at work in the church. Sadly, we mirror the society around us. The ecumenical promise of Vatican II becomes more and more distant. We tout the coming of a post-denominational world while building ever higher walls around our own denominations and attempting to force conformity at all levels. The result is a predictable rise in strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, dissensions, and factions. You may recognize these as the works of the flesh roundly condemned by Paul in his letter to the Galatians. You may also recognize these as descriptive of the diatribes launched by religious leaders at one another and all too often, descriptive of the public remarks of politicians angling for the evangelical vote. Both undermine our witness to the Gospel.

We have a common set of beliefs. They are expressed in the ancient creeds of the church. Beyond that lies the realm of adiaphora: those things over which we may agree to disagree. How we disagree and how far we allow those disagreements to separate us are critical questions as we attempt to witness to the truth of Jesus in an unbelieving world. So far, we haven’t done a very good job finding that common ground.

Healing the breach requires more than a change in attitude. It requires fundamental shifts both in the way we view ourselves and the way we view others. It requires humility, and it requires that we take Paul seriously when he says that “love is patient. Love is kind; love does not envy; is not boastful; is not conceited; does not act improperly; is not selfish; is not provoked; does not keep a record of wrongs; … rejoices in the truth.” (1 Cor. 13: 4-6, HCSB) And, lest we forget, love is the great commandment.

Healing witness begins with everyone of us acting out of genuine love in every aspect of our lives. Love must recognize the differences between us, but it must not allow those differences to separate us. Paul might have added to his Corinthian list: love finds a way to peace. A peace founded on the acceptance of one another as we are without any attempt to force change; a peace that allows tiggers not to like honey, no matter how much Pooh does.

Abundant Recompense

September 11 is fast approaching. Just last night I saw newly released footage of people jumping from the towers, preferring the long fall to the flames. Disturbing as the images are, they are becoming less visceral, more remote. I have always been fascinated by our inability to recall painful things. It seems to be a safety mechanism, a switch that turns off sensations. Try to remember the pain of an accident or surgery. You find that you can’t. You may recall that you were in pain, but you cannot recall the pain itself. Nevertheless, traumatic events (felt collectively as are terrorist attacks or individually as is the death of a loved one) are markers. There is now a before and an after. In the moment, we are changed. Yet that change is subtle, often taking years to declare itself.

Since 9/11, we have engaged in three wars, suffered through storms and earthquakes, and still struggle to recover economically. None of these things have had an equal impact on all Americans. Just as we weren’t all present in the Twin Towers or in the west wing of the Pentagon when the planes struck, we haven’t all been to war or sent loved ones off to fight; we haven’t all felt the devastation of Katrina; and we aren’t all jobless. Yet, we are all changed. We have grown fearful, grown cynical, grown callous.

In the midst of this brooding winter of our souls, there is reason for optimism. I find a growing faith in many of the people I meet. The events of the past few years have forced many of my generation to reexamine their lives. They are not satisfied with what they see. They long for something to believe in, for something to give themselves to in the midst of unfulfilling careers, failing marriages, and uncertain finances. Perhaps Erikson was right; the final life-task is to make sense of the past. For many that means a return to a faith they abandoned in adolescence, embracing a forgiving God of unconditional love who is the only anchor in this unforgiving world.

As for me, I don’t long for my youth. With Wordsworth, I find the calmness of old age abundant recompense for what has been left by the wayside in the intervening years.

That time is past,
And all its aching joys are no more,
And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this
Faint I, nor mourn nor murmur; other gifts
Have followed, for such loss, I would believe,
Abundant recompense.

We will remember 9/11 with fitting tributes to all who lost their lives on that day and all who have sacrificed so much in the past ten years, but we cannot go backwards to the way things were. There is a before and an after, and the changes have not fully declared themselves. As individuals we can do little to change the flow of history, but we can ask ourselves: Who and what will I become? When Jesus addresses the rich young ruler, he tells him to go and settle his accounts, “Then, come, follow me.” All of us have accounts to settle; all of us have pasts to reconcile. There may be losses, but other gifts will follow, and there will be abundant recompense.

“Come, follow me.”

Raising the Debt Ceiling: The Blue Screen of Death

There are few things more irritating than being forced to start an otherwise routine morning by having to rebuild your computer. Of course I don’t mean physically rebuild anything. I mean reinstall software, restore data from backups, reconnect to myriad email servers – all of the details that make for a functioning office laptop – not to mention the maddening process of synching to your iPhone and iPod both of which require you to reload your cds the old fashioned way. All of this because of the blue screen of death. You know, that harbinger of trouble which warns you that even if you successfully reboot, lurking somewhere in the background is a major purchase. So it was for me recently. A trip to the nearest Staples resolved the problem. Thank heavens for sales and coupons.

Sometimes we are not so fortunate. Sales and coupons aren’t available, but the expense must be met, however painfully. The last few months in Washington have been both an example and a warning – an example of what happens when government lives above its means and a warning of what happens when partisan politics and ideology collide with the need to find practical solutions to problems. The looming default was a blue screen of death for the American people. Like the infamous REGISTRY_ERROR, it called for us to reboot our thinking about the role of government and about what is or is not sustainable in the current economic climate. The only fix for a blue screen REGISTRY_ERROR is to reboot from backups. Unfortunately we don’t have those backups – not in political will, economic reserves, or civility in government. Civility may seem the least important of the three, but it is the one on which success in utilizing the others depends.

There is a reason that among the works of the flesh, Paul lists: hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, and dissensions (Gal. 5:20, NKJV). Such attitudes and behaviors are all too visible in the current debates, and they make practical problem solving impossible. Paul was not writing a theological treatise to the Galatians. He was warning them in graphic language of the destructive forces at work among them. His solution: stop it. Meet one another in love and find the common ground. That’s what peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control mean when applied to real world encounters between human beings. Anything else is a prescription for failure.

Christians are called to model a different reality. We are called by Jesus to unity, and we are called to exhibit that defining characteristic of Christianity in a loving witness to an unsaved world. When we take an ideological position and swear to defend it against all comers, we become witnesses to the power of the flesh, not to the power of the Spirit, agents of brokenness, not of reconciliation. And in the end, we elevate winning above the common good. Now is not the time for it. Christians are called upon to address a widening range of destructive powers. We can only do so if we seek common ground. That ground is the historic Christian faith as defined by the ecumenical creeds of the church. Beyond that lies the realm of adiaphara – those things about which we agree to disagree.

Our secular, contentious world needs a voice of reason, a voice of unity – in the market place, in the school, and in the halls of government. We are called to be that voice of reason, and we are called to exercise that voice in love. The blue screen of death calls for practical problem solving, not ideological warfare. As President Grover Cleveland once said: “It is a condition which confront us – not a theory.”

Ride Tiger, Miss Mountain

Wenyen is the classical Chinese literary language that still finds its way into modern writing, including newspaper and magazine articles. Like the liberal sprinkling of English essays and editorials with Latin phrases, wenyen announces to the reader that the author is an educated writer of Chinese. The only defense for sending the reader to the dictionary – in any language – is that sometimes the unfamiliar word or the Latin phrase is just the right word or thought. Precision is important in writing. Wenyen, on the other hand, is imprecise. The short sayings, often in parallel couplets, are designed to evoke images, to work directly on the brain without the need to be parsed and analyzed. That is why they can be so powerful, why they still find a place in modern writing, and why their imprecision increases rather than inhibits understanding.

One of my favorite snippets of wenyen is: Ride tiger, miss mountain. It came to mind often during my recent visit to China. Beijing, when set next to Shanghai and Hangzhou, seems a sleepy little government town of twenty or so million people, but there is a restless energy evident there as well as everywhere else I went in China. The reforms set in motion by Deng Xiaoping, privatizing many industries and creating a socialist market economy, have opened the doors to major corporations and entrepreneurs alike. The result seems to be a frenetic race to gather as much as possible: wealth, possessions, property – anything that can be accumulated. The price is being paid by the Chinese people. Nowhere in the world have I seen fouler air or dirtier water, and one has to look far and wide to find worse traffic jams. Every hotel I stayed in had a permanently affixed placard in the bathroom: “Tap water is not potable. Boil before using.” And, yes, I know we live in Washington and have the worst traffic in America, but imagine six (6) beltways all jammed at once, not to mention the decibel level. More importantly, life in China seemed, for the most part, to lack an essential element – joy. All of this frenetic energy in pursuit of what? Riding a tiger, one misses the mountain.

The meaning is clear. Caught on the back of a racing tiger, one has only to fearfully hold on for dear life. There is neither time nor opportunity to look at the scenery. Mountains, lakes, and picaresque villages fly by unnoticed. Ride
tiger, miss mountain. The subtler meaning is one of balance. The preacher reminds us in Ecclesiastes that there is a time for business, but there is also time for loving, for embracing one another, and a time to be still. The preacher goes on to say: “Better one handful with tranquility than two handfuls with toil and chasing after the wind.” ( Eccl. 4:6, NIV) We in the West have both hands full of the tiger’s coat, hanging on for dear life, just like the Chinese, and just like the Chinese, we are chasing after the wind. Every summer I remind people to take a real vacation, to put aside work and worry, to enjoy the beauty of the world around them. Every summer I note how few people listen to my advice. The result is anxiety, impatience, anger – all things that war not only against our own spirits but the spirits of those around us. So, again, I encourage all of us to make time this summer for family, for relaxation, and for the healing of inactivity. These are things that renew. Riding a tiger ultimately destroys not only the rider but all those in his path. I leave you with a piece of Western wenyen. “He that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind.” (Pr. 11:29a, KJV)

Hatter or March Hare?

“What sort of people live out here?” asks Alice of the Cheshire Cat. Waving his paw, in what I always picture to be a languid, dismissive way, he gives her a choice between the Hatter and the March Hare – both mad, quite mad. Alice, very reasonably, doesn’t want to live among mad people, but the Cat is not deterred because he knows the truth: “’Oh, you can’t help that,’ said the Cat: ‘We’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.’” Alice’s further adventures prove the point. Terms like “mad as a hatter” or “mad as a March Hare” mean little to us, but they resonated with an audience familiar with the effects of mercury poisoning and the erratic behavior of rabbits in spring. Lewis Carroll told a delightful children’s story and satirized 19^th century British culture. We may use different metaphors but our world is often as mad as Wonderland – certainly as mad as Carroll’s England. But like Alice, we Christians judge the Cat to be too cynical and keep searching for the sanity lying just around the corner.

It would be nice if the world were predictable; if people acted the way we think they ought to act; if only good things happened to good people; if there were no bandersnatch or jabberwock lurking in the dark corners. The world is not so regulated; people are not so accommodating. Both surprise and hurt us. What’s more, if we are honest with ourselves, we must admit that we are not so regulated or accommodating either, at least those of us not on Prozac. We’ve learned to navigate through a difficult world. How we react to things and what coping and defense mechanisms we adopt are not determined at birth. We acquire them, and we rarely question their validity. Unfortunately, much of what we learn is neither helpful nor healthy. Sometimes, a whole society, a whole age, is characterized by a kind of collective madness, having internalized a set of rules and norms that, though proven again and again to be self-destructive, are clung to tenaciously.

We need look no further than the post-war generation for an example. Those of us who came of age in the sixties remember the exhilaration we felt casting off all of the outmoded restrictions, the Victorian moral restraints, and what we saw as the hypocritical religious practices of our parents. There was a naïve but palpable hope for change. It came. Cold War children became Vietnam protestors. Higher consciousness became a drugged stupor. The brave new world turned into a job in a cubicle and 2.5 children. Baby-boomers returned to the fold: suburbanite consumers. But as we approach our middle-sixties, something is noticeably missing. Meaning.

In his seminal work, Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl pointed out that meaning is the essential without which a full life is not possible. That meaning, though internalized, has to come from a commitment to something beyond the self, something greater. We became the un-churched generation, and we taught our children to follow in our footsteps. In so doing, we robbed ourselves of the one thing that can sustain meaning through all of the vicissitudes of life: God. Try as we might, we have not found a substitute.

In this Easter season, we are reminded that God has not left us hopeless. He continues to call the world back into his embrace, welcoming his prodigal children, ready for them to experience his goodness and grace for themselves. Most won’t. We are all too much children of habit, unwilling to revisit what we thought settled. In the midst of plenty, we go hungry. Christians need not choose between the Hatter and the March Hare, we are called to be a witness to both that there is a sane alternative, there is hope for a brighter future, and there is joy. Ironically it is not those who throw off all constraints who are free. It is those who embrace the reality of the world as God made it, who live in it as he intended, who are truly free to grow into the people they have always had the potential to be: interesting people, alive people, growing people. These are the people who really reflect Jack Kerouac’s “mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes ‘Awww!’”

Going about on Stilts

As I write this a score of Middle Eastern nations are in an uproar. Some racked with protests and civil unrest, some in the throes of civil war. Serious questions arise as we in the West struggle to make sense of the chaotic events. Who and what will follow? We have seen enough revolutions in our time to know that not all change is for the better. Certainly, there is no guarantee that future governments will be either stable or pro-Western – both highly desirable outcomes if you live in the United States. The consequences of all of this unrest for those directly involved and for us may indeed be unpredictable, but the causes of unrest are not so obscure. The Middle East, as we have known it, is the domain of dictators. Sooner or later, dictatorships fail to create the kind of society demanded by their subjects. Jobs, shelter, food, and personal security drive revolutions, not philosophical questions about the merits of democracy.

What has always fascinated me is how hard this lesson seems to be to learn. In some cases dictators may retain control for a lifetime. But long-lasting dictators are exceptional, and their successors are rarely so fortunate. Peaceful transitions are rarer still. Even rarer is the man or woman who can resist the temptations posed by power. It is the seemingly irresistible will to power that creates despots of all kinds, from the classic political ruler to the office autocrat. Wherever two or more are gathered, there will be a hierarchy. And where there is hierarchy there is power.

Jesus understood this. His own disciples vied for power, even his inner circle (those already in a privileged position) were not immune (Mark 10: 35-45). Bitterness and dissension followed, just as it does in every situation where an individual or a small group attempts to dominate others. Jesus warned his followers to avoid lording it over others. Instead, they were to be servants of one another. Peter writes: “Do not lord it over those in your charge, but be examples to the flock.” (1 Peter 5:3) This advice to leaders of the church applies equally to leaders in all walks of life, whether corporate executives or supervisors of casual labor. It is not a proscription against the use of authority; rather, it is a prescription of how and to what purpose authority is to be exercised, i.e. for the good of the organization and for the good of the individuals involved. With few exceptions, successful enterprises are the result of teamwork. And highly performing teams are only possible in relationships defined by trust and mutual respect.

Trust and respect are always lacking in those organizations where individual egos are allowed to compete for dominance and unrestrained ambition is encouraged. Ambition can spur us to great things; it can also feed our egos to our own destruction. Perhaps there is no greater delusion than to think that, of all men and women, because of birth or position or circumstance, we are entitled to be most favored. Of such thoughts, dictators are made. It would benefit us all to remember the words of Michel de Montaigne: “Tis too much purpose to go upon stilts, for, when upon stilts, we must yet walk with our legs; and when seated upon the most elevated throne in the world, we are but seated upon our bottom.” (III. 13)

In Need of a Good Editor

I’ve been waiting several weeks for the arrival at the library of the latest novel in a series by a popular author. It finally arrived, and I was able to check out a copy. As is often the case, nowadays, I was disappointed.  The plot and characterization were well enough executed, but the book could stand a good editor. It was at least a third longer than it needed to be, with sentences in every paragraph that would never have survived the red pencil of a Ross, a Thurber, or a White. Granted, the legendary standards of the old New Yorker are rarely met by today’s publishers, but I don’t expect to encounter run-on sentences, incomplete thoughts, and pronouns with no discoverable antecedents in a work by an experienced author, released under the imprimatur of a major publishing house. I suppose that there are at least two factors involved. First, in any successful series, the economic pressure to provide the public with the next installment overrides both the author’s and the publisher’s commitment to quality. Second, the more commercially successful an author, the less scrutiny his or her manuscript receives. (This is clearly a non-sexist problem – both genders offend equally.)

Few of us are best-selling authors, and even fewer of us have editors to catch and correct our mistakes, either written or verbal. The consequences, however, go far beyond a badly written book. There is good reason for the often repeated confession: Forgive me for the things I have done and left undone, and for the things I have said and left unsaid. Much in this world can be forgotten, but our thoughtless utterances often follow us for a lifetime. They cannot be taken back or edited out like dialogue in the draft of a novel. Once spoken, they remain in the minds of both the speaker and the hearer. How often have we been awakened in the early morning hours haunted by thoughts of our unkind or unguarded remarks, the wounds still visible on the imagined faces before us? We needed a good editor.

In the fourteenth and fifteenth chapters of Romans, Paul provides good advice. He admonishes those stronger in the faith to bear with their weaker brothers and sisters by avoiding quarrels. His argument can be neatly summed up: What does it matter if you win the argument if you injure someone in the process? Is the matter that important to you? or are you determined to show your superior knowledge regardless of the cost? Paul reminds us that those standing before us bear the image of God and should be treated as fellow children of God. Therefore, count the cost before speaking.

Lent is a good time to count that cost. Like a too fat novel, much of what we say could be edited out with no loss in communication.