Merely Surviving

Pin It I watched the film version of Cormac McCarthy's The Road last night, Truitt snoozing docilely in my lap and the kids playing Battleship in the other room. I'd read the book several years ago, working my way through it fits and starts, unsettled by the sadness of its story and message. It's one of those works, though, that deserves a second, closer look. There is so much there in way of character and symbol, image and theme.

The film version was no less beautifully "written" than the text, the actors and cinematography all poignant words on the screen. There was this one scene that tugged at me, a flashback where the protagonist recalls a pivotal conversation with his wife. In it, she raises the question of survival in their post-apocalyptical world. They live in a world where humanity is all but non-existent, and existence itself is marked by constant struggle for food, shelter, and protection from bands of cannibals. As a mother, she comments that the day their son was born was both the best and worst day of her life. She means to end her life as soon as she has the opportunity.

"It is not enough," she tells her husband, "to just survive." Unspoken is her desire to live fully, and see her son live as well.

Later, as they make their way through a barely recognizable ash-strewn world toward more southerly climes, the father pauses for a brief stroll through memory lane in his old childhood home. While his son looks on in confusion, he touches a doorframe that bears the faint measurements of a growing boy. He reveals the holes in the mantle where stockings once hung. He traces the pattern of a sofa cushion lovingly. His son,though, does not and cannot understand his attachment to these things. He has never known this childhood. His own has been filled with tramping through a barren world, scavenging for meals, flinching from human contact. He does not know what it means to have holidays, and relationships, and comforts.

He knows how to survive. But is he truly living?

It's hard to envision a world such as this. As a mother, I hate to think of a time when my children would need to be consumed with survival over living. There's a Suzy Sunshine part of me that holds on to a faith in the greater good of the human race...I have to believe that we wouldn't simply give way to that tiny terrible ego that's in us all, but would instead take whatever circumstances we were dealt and turn survival into living.

Whoa...unto the Hypocrite

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Your religion is what you do when the sermon is over. ~Quoted in P.S. I Love You, compiled by H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

It’s ironic that we have a kind of heavenly theme going on here at Four Perspectives this week. Ironic because I’ve been thinking a lot about something that we talked about in my Sunday School a few weeks ago. I say my Sunday School class because I actually teach the class which is, again, ironic since I’m not really convinced I understand the gospel well enough to teach it to anyone else. But it’s the 14 to 18 year-olds so we can kind of…learn together.

Anyway, we’re studying the New Testament this year, which I have found to be a little tricky sometimes to translate into teen-speak. First of all the speech patterns in the New Testament are just hard. I don’t know if it’s the translation from Latin or Greek or whatever language it was originally written in to English, but it can be very stilted sometimes and awkward to read. I’ve always kind of thought of it as the scriptural equivalent of reading Shakespeare. Plus it’s hard sometimes to get the kids to engage in what is essentially a history lesson about the life and ministry of Christ. There’s not always a general theme of the day, sometimes it’s just a story about what happened and what he did. But on the other hand it’s the first time I’ve had to teach the New Testament, chronologically that is, and studying it has given me a lot to think about. Some of these thoughts coincide nicely with acceptable doctrine and some others probably veer off a little into blasphemy. Ok, maybe not blasphemy, but certainly occasional irreverence.

For example, I’ve mentioned before that I’m still not sure I agree with the Lord’s chastisement of Martha when all she wanted was for Mary to help her out a little bit. But through more reading I've realized that maybe the problem wasn’t so much that Martha wanted Mary’s help, it was that she was judging Mary for not helping – which I have to admit sounds familiar. I find myself wondering too with all of the blind people that Jesus heals, did they ever have a hard time adjusting from being blind to suddenly having their sight? They don’t really mention that anyone freaked out. And not that they wouldn’t have been grateful, I’m just saying it must have been tremendously disorienting.

But none of that is actually the thing I’ve been thinking about. A few weeks ago the lesson was from Matthew 23. In this chapter, Jesus is dressing down the Pharisees for being hypocrites. The Pharisees were the chief priests and elders of the Jewish people. They were pretty critical of Jesus because he was very unorthodox; healing people on the Sabbath, not stoning the woman taken in adultery and generally just for claiming to be the Son of God. But rather than worry about what the Pharisees thought of him, Jesus pretty much spent the whole of Matthew 23 telling them that everything that they are doing in their lives to show how righteous they were to the world was complete crap. It was crap because their intention with all of their tithes and offerings sermons and prayers wasn’t to prove their devotion to God, but for all of their works to be seen of men.

The dictionary says hypocrisy is pretending to be what one is not or pretending to believe what one does not. I think that anyone who has ever been involved with any organized religion can sometimes pretend to believe something that you may not have a sure knowledge of. Sometimes we go along with tradition or convention because it is simply the easiest thing to do. And I don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing to do – it’s just difficult to sustain. Eventually performance needs to converge with belief otherwise the devotions and offerings become hollow and can turn into something we do just for the admiration of other people.

But with all due respect to Jesus, I also think that sometimes it can be the other way around.

In my readings about hypocrisy for this lesson, I came across an idea: hypocrisy is the opposite of integrity, which is not just honesty but unity of personality. I found myself wondering, do I have unity of personality? Do I behave one way with some people and another way with others? I have to say….I think I do.

I have a friend that is going to come and teach at the detention center school for a few weeks this summer. He’s a little apprehensive about this because it’s a completely different venue than he’s used to plus it’s, you know, it's a detention center. So I asked him to come by so I could show him around a little bit, he could meet some of the guys and just acclimate a little bit. This friend has known me for a long time and knows that I am not what you would call a jolly soul. I am not Miss Merry Sunshine. It takes a concentrated effort for me to shake off the little black rain cloud, put on a happy face and not just find a shadowy corner from which to observe and make sarcastic (and sometimes snarky) comments. I mention this because as I was introducing him to the guys he saw me being, well, other than I usually am. I was happy, I was smiling, I was, dare I say, friendly. He mentioned this as we were walking back to my office – as in “who the heck are you and what have you done with Mel? I have to admit that he was right. I decided a while ago that the guys have plenty of other people in that environment to tell them what is wrong with them and that it just wasn’t my role add to that. So, I do make a concentrated effort at work ( with the students anyway) to be cheerful, engaging, encouraging, happy and generally happy to see them.

But does this make me a hypocrite?

Technically I suppose it does. It’s definitely schizophrenic Mel syndrome and not unity of personality. But I like to think it helps the guys…and I think it helps me too. I have a quote hanging up in my office that says; Misery is easy. It’s happiness that takes work” and I do have to work at being happy. But with this job I have incentive to make that effort at least a little bit every day and I find that it has been good practice.

Jesus said to the Pharisees in Matthew 12:25 that Every city or house divided against itself shall not stand. I believe that – I really do. Actions should converge with beliefs just as faith without works is dead. But just maybe, even though I'm faking it a lot of the time, if I keep working at it, the happier house will be the one that becomes stronger and that will be the one that will stand. Even Jesus might approve of that kind of hypocrisy.

Garage Sales or Garage Swaps?

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GUEST BLOGGER: Nancy

I blog about the blessings and absurdities of everyday life. I am a writer, a reader, a bike wife, a mom, and a music fan. They don't call me Aunt Blabby for nothing... 

Looks like spring has finally come to stay. The robins are chirping, the allergy-prone are sneezing, and every weekend the street corners in my neighborhood are blooming with garage sale signs, as households attempt to part with the detritus of another year of American accumulation.

I understand the concept of a good, sinus clearing garage sale, one that leaves the seller (slightly) enriched and clutter-free. It's just never been the outcome of any garage sale in which I've participated.

When I was growing up in suburban upstate New York, the Neighborhood Garage Sale was one of the social events of the year, a day where everyone sat out in their driveways in folding chairs and making change from a shoebox full of cash, all the while yelling affectionate insults at their neighbors about the quality of their items for sale.

On the appointed Saturday morning in June, nearly every driveway in the Virginia Colony subdivision was filled: racks of outgrown clothing, bikes with bent frames, boxes of books and record albums. Like lions stalking a slow-moving antelope, cars that we didn't recognize would cruise slowly up and down the streets before we'd even opened for business at 7:30 am, stopping with the wheels on someone's lawn to issue forth a passenger who would examine a floor lamp or treadmill before hopping back in to move on down the line.

My mother had a pricing system honed through years of practice. Each item had a little white rectangular tag marked with the initials of the family member who'd put it up for sale, and the price. The cashier on duty (also my mother) would take the buyer's money, peel off the label and stick it on the appropriate page in a wirebound notebook, one for her, one for my dad, and one for each of the three kids. Over the course of the day, as the hagglers descended and tried to talk us down on price for wilted stuffed animals and rickety chairs, I'd sneak a quick glance to see how much I'd earned.

That number in mind, I'd hop on my banana seat bike and cruise up and down our street trying to figure how I could blow my newfound fortune on something else. Maybe Carol Flannigan is selling her 10-speed, or Lizzy Cooper is finally parting with her Madame Alexander dolls! If there are parents and educators out there worried about the deterioration of a child's math skills over summer vacation, I heartily recommend setting the child loose on a garage sale with a budget of $7.89. They'll be doing long division and multiplication like MIT students in no time, figuring out how to get spend every penny of it (but not a cent more.)

The trouble is that as the day wound down, the parents began doing the same thing. Mom would stroll off down the street to see what was happening at the Melich's house, and when she got back she'd tell Dad to go take a look at the table that was still sitting in the driveway over at the Crane's, wouldn't that work better in the upstairs hallway than the one they already had? In the meantime Mr. Meyer would stop over and take a couple of swings with the aluminum tennis racket Dad was selling, mentioning how his old racket got broken when his son used it as a golf club. "Got change for a $5, Nance?" he'd ask, reaching into a worn out leather wallet.

By the time the sun set on our community garage sale, our neighborhood would have completed a massive transfer of goods, with a net change in wealth of exactly zero. It was Potlatch, Rochester -style.

Which is why I don't do garage sales. I can't afford that kind of de-cluttering.

Are You there, God? It’s Me, Teachinfourth

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I’d always been taught that there was a God.

I’d been told that he was our Father. I’d been taught that he lived in heaven and was always looking down on us, giving us help and guidance along the journey we take along this road known as life.

Without question throughout my adolescence I believed this. I never doubted that God was there; I never mistrusted that He wasn’t. I knew that He was orchestrating the pathways of the stars and planets - The Creator, The Navigator of the universe itself, intertwining our lives together in a masterpiece we would someday look upon and understand the true beauty of...

That is, until recently.

Now, it wasn’t as if I woke up one day and simply decided that God did not exist; it wasn’t anything like that…it was that I just started to wonder when I looked up into that big space above me.

I think it may have started with the death of Arlene.

I remember it like yesterday, sitting alone with her in the silence as the minutes passed on. In one of her more lucid moments she looked over at me and began to cry. “I don’t want to die.” She whispered, the tears flowing down her cheeks.

I cried, too. Knowing that there was nothing I could do as the cancer slowly ate away at her body from the inside out.

I was powerless.

She was scared.

And so was I.

After an excruciating few weeks she was finally whisked away from this mortal frame, and I was left behind.

I think that it is in moments such as these that people seem to find themselves dithering one way or the other. They either seem to find solace in the belief in the afterlife, or they carry a bitterment and anger directed toward the heavens – possibly even to question the very existence of a higher being. Perhaps the need for a God.

I recall a scene from the movie Signs when Mel Gibson’s character, Graham, is consoling his brother, Merrill, when he is in a moment of distress. In his character’s words:

People break down into two groups. When they experience something lucky, group number one sees it as more than luck, more than coincidence. They see it as a sign, evidence, that there is someone up there, watching out for them. Group number two sees it as just pure luck. Just a happy turn of chance...what you have to ask yourself is what kind of person are you? Are you the kind that sees signs, that sees miracles? Or do you believe that people just get lucky? Or, look at the question this way: Is it possible that there are no coincidences?



As the years compress themselves together like the body of an accordion, I find myself slipping from one group to another. I discover that in my life, though having traveled a myriad of pathways and scores of years, I find myself wanting more, wanting the knowledge it to be deeper than it was.

I look at the heavens; I think of a world where there is no God.

It is a terrifying thought.

I have no voices that speak to me. I have no angels that descend from the heavens bearing tidings. I see neither grand miracles nor seas being parted—making way for me to pass through as the armies mount behind me.

Yet, I look upon the world around me, I see the looming splendor of the majestic mountains. I breathe in the heavy scent of lilacs and stand beneath the towering Redwoods. I feel the warmth of the setting sun on my face as it turns to gold and melts into a skyline of liquid indigo and buttery maroon. I stand at the edge of the ocean and feel the salty air as it coats my nostrils and the waves pound upon the shoreline and reverberate in my chest. I gaze at the billions of stars as they burst forth from the shadowy skies like handfuls of glitter blown about by the winds of spring. I stand in the midst of a thunderstorm as the rain drenches my skin, feeling the torrential downpour saturate me as the ominous clouds twist and moil overhead and jagged streaks of lightning shatter the skies.

I’ve been taught that God is our Father. I’ve been taught that he lives in heaven and is always looking down on us, giving us help and guidance along the journey we take along the road known as life.

Without question throughout my adolescence I believed this; I never doubted that God was there. I never mistrusted that He wasn’t; I knew that He was orchestrating the pathways of the stars and planets - The Creator, The Navigator of the universe itself, intertwining our lives together in a masterpiece we would someday look upon and understand the true beauty of…

I Love You. Please Go To Sleep.

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Dear. God.

And I don't mean that in the irreverent "OMG!" sort of way, but rather a prayerful, on-my-knees sort of way.

It's been nearly three weeks since Truitt was born. I haven't had a nap since the Tuesday after I came home, which would be...let's see...precisely ten days ago. Do you realize what ten days with no nap feels like when your child does not sleep at night? He alternately smiles (and I am thoroughly convinced it is not gas, but a precocious sense of the absurd), coos, fusses, screams, guzzles milk, poops, pees, blinks, watches CMT, sticks his hand down my shirt to grope me, and pees or poops some more, necessitating another diaper change. This is usually around the time he falls asleep, naturally. All of this generally occurs over the course of a two hour span of time, two to three times per night.

I can't nap during the day because there's just too much to do--laundry, making bottles, picking up yesterday's mess, making supper--all of this to take care of the other members of our family and just to keep myself sane with some semblance of order, honestly. And to keep it real, Truitt really doesn't sleep all that much during the day, either.

I am coming to the realization that I was pretty spoiled with Autumn and Lawson as infants. They were what I'd term "low-maintenance." They'd be finished with a bottle within ten or fifteen minutes and you could lay them down in the crib, where they'd drift sweetly off to sleep for another five or six blissful hours. Not so with Truitt, this child of my heart. He clings to contact, falling asleep in my arms and jerking to instant alert upon being laid in the crib, demanding that I spend just a little more time holding him, even as my back aches, and my arms feel like spaghetti, and my eyes are heavy with three a.m. grit. I almost wonder if the urgency of his need isn't linked somehow to the power of my own longing for him all those months ago.

I know God is smiling at me, full of gentle good-humor when I feel like screaming in the middle of the night, "Was it really necessary for you to fill your britches right then? Couldn't you save it for, say, the five a.m feeding?" He's smiling, and in the face and form of that wriggling baby is the knowledge sent: this too shall pass. So enjoy it.