Tomorrow's Bread

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It is obvious what kind of life develops out of trying to get your own way all the time:

repetitive, loveless, cheap sex;
a stinking accumulation of mental and emotional garbage;
frenzied and joyless grabs for happiness;
trinket gods;
magic-show religion;
paranoid loneliness;
cutthroat competition;
all-consuming-yet-never-satisfied wants;
a brutal temper;
an impotence to love or be loved;
divided homes and divided lives;
small-minded and lopsided pursuits;
the vicious habit of depersonalizing everyone into a rival;
uncontrolled and uncontrollable addictions;
ugly parodies of community.

I could go on.

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THOSE AREN’T MY WORDS. Are they my thoughts, sentiments, tendencies? Is it self-indicting to say, “Yes, maybe so.”

Do the words seem disturbingly descriptive of our divided world?

I’m sure of this: life is not either-or, black-or-white. Despite cultural pressure to reduce everything to absolutes we all know that’s ridiculous. Life happens in degrees, in shades, and at the risk of losing what small audience I might have: it’s relative too. It’s nuanced.

That doesn’t take away from the power of the picture, the validity of the argument, the truth of the message: as we move toward selfishness—trying to get our own way all the time—a kind of life develops that is fertile ground for all that crap the passage describes.

I’m not one for fatalistic, bleak, this-is-the-end worldviews. But, for some reason this lyric from the song “Lola” by The Kinks comes to mind (which I’m taking out of context to serve my own purposes [like we do sometimes]):

It's a mixed up, muddled up, shook up world, except for Lola
La-la-la-la Lola

I don’t claim to know why Lola’s world was more clear, more categorized. It seems his/her world was most mixed and muddled. It’s nuanced.

[By the way, let me recommend clicking here to check out a superb, modern version of the song by Mona Lisa Twins]

Let’s go back to the very first sentence of the passage and the phrase: “…life develops out of trying…”

The good thing about realizing that life is a process, that it develops, is that it is NOT a matter of throwing switches. Each of us can make choices, we get to become more selfless, moment by moment, step by step, shade by shade. And if we mess up, there is grace. We get to try again. We can count on having tomorrow’s bread. We have a blueprint and a model. There are footprints along a path we can follow. It a path that leads to self-giving, serving, and loving others as we ought to love ourselves.

Some will say I’m stretching the facts, twisting the “truth”, bending ethics and playing with fire. I’m aware of Carl Sagan’s epigram: “It pays to keep an open mind, but not so open your brains fall out.”

We are all human after all, created by the Creator in that image. From first breath to last we live by degrees and shades, sometimes understanding, many times not.

To borrow more words, these are from Simon & Garfunkel:

I have squandered my resistance
For a pocketful of mumbles
Such are promises
All lies and jest
Still, a man hears what he wants to hear
And disregards the rest

Guilty?

Those words? The ones from the passage I used to begin this essay? Those are from the Bible, from a letter of Paul the apostle, Galations 5:19-21 (The Message).

I’m aware that by sourcing The Message there will be those who dismiss it as invalid and maybe even heretical. I understand the love and allegiance of many old saints to the King James Version of scripture. I grew up hearing and reading from KJV. But, during my first coming-of-age, a version came along called The Living Bible. I became a fan. And when hardcore KJV folks dismissed it as a “paraphrase,” as if that were something the devil or the methodists might create, I dug in even more.

My teenage rebellion pretty much consisted of choosing The Living Bible over The King James, having long hair, playing drums in a rock and roll band, chewing gum in class, flashig a peace sign in the youth camp picture… I’ll wrap up this confessional with: and etc.

I’ll admit it now, that at times, I missed the feeling of the familiar words of the KJV when hearing passages like the 23rd Psalm. But this paraphrase called The Living Bible felt, well, alive somehow. In more recent years, The Message version has been the one I read most. I can picture Jesus and those with him talking in words that seem natural and genuine and unpretentious. I realize, it’s all nuanced.

I was reading an article this week and found this worth pondering:

“It is an open question how much Greek of any kind Jesus’s own circle understood or used. Nearly all of the words attributed to them are thus in a language they may never have voluntarily uttered, belonging to a cosmopolitan civilization they may well have despised.”

The author of the article, Casey Cep was quoting Sarah Ruden who has written a carefully translated take on the four Gospels simply titled “The Gospels: A New Translation.”

Cep observes, “Sacred literature is rightfully loved and cherished, but too often that love can creep toward idolatry, shaping the text into something fixed and static, when ideally it is shaping us every time we encounter it.”*

To this day, if asked to quote The Lord’s Prayer, I would do it in the King James Version, just as I learned it so many years ago. It is beautiful. But what if, just maybe, Jesus used a different word or phrase? What if, for example, he said:

Give us day by day tomorrow’s loaf of bread…

Can you feel how powerful that is?! I know it doesn’t seem that different from “Give us this day our daily bread…” But it is!

From her studies of Greek, Aramic and Hebrew and context, that is how Sarah Ruden believes Jesus might have said it. I hope she is right.

Consider it: while it is amazing to be able to ask for our daily bread, how life-changing is it to be able to ask for tomorrow’s loaf of bread today? Imagine being a hungry beggar or child, it’s night and time for bed and you go there with the knowledge that tomorrow’s loaf of bread will be on the table.

It’s nuanced. It’s a glimpse at the possibilities of how we might find fresh perspective and inspiration along the way as our lives develop. Open mind, open hearts, open eyes, open ears. Take a risk. Tomorrow’s bread will be on the table.

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*Cep, Casey (April 28, 2021). What We Can and Can’t Learn from a New Translation of the Gospels: Sarah Ruden aims to return familiar texts to the fresh clay from which they were made. The New Yorker. www.newyorker.com

A CARNATION CORSAGE

THERE IS A WORTHWHILENESS TO SPECIAL MOMENTS. I didn’t really see it at the time. We seldom do.

Last Saturday, we had a long-awaited memorial for my mom. She passed in December; COVID. In these days I’ve been thinking about her. One of my memories is her propensity and priority of making special moments for others. It was a clear theme in the stories her grandchildren told about her at the memorial. Many others would have stories to tell. I want to tell this one.

A tradition among churches during my first coming-of-age was something called The Annual Sweetheart Banquet, usually around Valentine’s Day. I experienced numerous ASBs, among various denominations. The format was pretty much the same except when it came to the program. Some churches allowed and encourgaged dancing. I know this because I was a drummer in a group that played gigs like ASBs, Teen Towns, Mixers, etc. There was no dancing though at baptist ASBs. Usually, there was a speaker, maybe a friend of the pastor or maybe the pastor himself, who would tell corny jokes like: What did Winnie The Pooh and John The Baptist have in common? Same middle name.

There would be a dinner prepared and served by the ladies of the church—usually ham, scalloped potatoes, green beans, Jello with something suspended in it like carrot slivers, and cake. At each placesetting there would be a little cup with candy hearts and another with mixed nuts. There were a lot of red construction paper hearts glued to white paper doilies. Maybe the church pianist would play “dinner music” on the somewhat tuned piano in the fellowship hall; a piano that normally only played tunes like “Onward Christian Soldiers,” but on this night might play, “I Left My Heart In San Francisco.”

Teens (as we were known then) would dress up and maybe pair up with a “date”. This is where my mom focused and excelled. She seemed to think it vital that everyone have a date whether they wanted one or not. There wasn’t much to the whole date thing except for having the moment memorialized in a photo of the happy couple standing beneath a heart-shaped arch.

Arranging dates was so important to my mom that I can remember her pimping me out as an escort for dateless young ladies to their own ASB; maybe she was the daughter of a friend or a girl from the school where mom worked. Mom would choreograph the whole thing. She would make ready my wardrobe: a starched shirt, slacks, shined penny loafers, my madras sportscoat and a skinny black tie. In the refrigerator next to the eggs was a clear plastic box containing a carnation corsage for me to give the young lady.

This was before Don McLean juxstaposed the young naivete of an innocent carnation moment against the hard realities of life in his lyric from “American Pie”:

I was a lonely teenage broncin' buck
With a pink carnation and a pickup truck
But I knew I was out of luck
The day the music died

I wasn’t a broncin’ buck and didn’t have a pickup truck. Fact is, being pre-16, mom would drive me to pick up the date. I would walk to the door wondering if the girl was also getting money to buy a new Beatles’s album for doing this. Clearly my mom was the most excited about these contrived encounters. She wasn’t hoping for a spark that might lead to something bigger. She just wanted a couple of young people to feel special for a moment—the kind that comes from dressing up, sweaty palms, maybe a new friend, a photograph and a memory.

And who knows, maybe it brought back a sweet thought for her of a skinny young soldier from Louisiana, asking a cheerleader from Okmulgee, Oklahoma for a couples skate.

FAIR QUESTION

Definition of nerd
: an unstylish, unattractive, or socially inept person especially : one slavishly devoted to intellectual or academic pursuits —Merriam-Webster.

“Pops, are you a nerd?” queried Nora, Pops’ six-year old grandgirl.

I laughed and thought about it—wondering what her idea of “nerd” is. Surely there is some confirmation bias at work here. Then I realized that even having a thought like that confirmed it: if not a nerd, surely I have some tendencies. Although, as the kids say these days, I don’t identify as a nerd. Even here at 70, I still like to think I have a certain cool.

Nora herself is one cool kitten, one of those kinds of people whom you don’t want thinking you’re a nerd.

I’ve already admitted to being curious about her confirmation bias (The tendency to interpret new evidence as confirmation of one's existing beliefs or theories. —Oxford Languages), so I dug in:

“What do you mean by ‘nerd’ Nora?” I asked.

Her intellectual sister Harper stepped in, “Oh, she saw a picture of Daddy (my offspring) when he was young. He had big glasses and buck teeth and she thinks he was a nerd.”

So, she’s wondering if I carry a nerd gene? Maybe she’s concerned that she too might someday manifest nerdiness?

I’m no soothsayer, but I don’t see that on her horizon.

Making my case for non-nerdness, I explained to her that I did play in the band (but at least I was a drummer). I am an introvert, but I like people; on a case-by-case basis. I do love to read and given the choice of going to Chuck-E-Cheese or a bookstore, I’ll choose the bookstore every time. (Of course, given a choice I would choose most any place over Chuck’s.) (I realize that Chuck’s might be a source of employment for the young that might tend to score high on the nerd scale. So, good for you Chuck E.) I do wear glasses. I do love the Big Bang Theory, but I haven’t been in a comic book store in years and I have no clue or curiosity about quantum chromodynamics.

By this time her inquisitive interests moved on, but I was left wandering why I didn’t want my grandgirl to think I was a nerd. Probably has something to do with my own confirmation biases which are much more ingrained in me that her’s are in her.

And after all, doesn’t it take a bit of grandfatherly nerdiness to help a grandgirl tether her iPad to another connected device so she can secure enough coins to restore life to some imaginary app dweller?

Hey, maybe that’s what she was asking all along! She wasn’t so much worried about an embarrassing potential flaw in her old Pops— just wondering if I had the tech skills to solve her 21st century quandary.

EMILY, JOHN & NOBODY

MAYBE I WAS WRONG. Someone said THE search is for significance, and it made sense at the time, so I concurred and set out on the journey.

Now? I’m not sure that’s correct, it’s certainly not necessarily real. Or, maybe it’s the picture of “significance” that’s fuzzy. How do you know if you’ve reached it? What does it look like? Is it fleeting? Are we falsely equating significance with fame or renown?

For today, for me, the worthwhile search seems to be for “belonging”, at least that’s my opinion. Maybe I’m wrong. I’m thinking that our significance comes from being in community, in family; being loved and cared for and cared about, and in caring for others—belonging. Even if your only membership is in the club for Nobodies: membership two.

#260
By Emily Dickinson

I'm Nobody! Who are you?
Are you – Nobody – too?
Then there's a pair of us!
Don't tell! they'd advertise – you know!

How dreary – to be – Somebody!
How public – like a Frog –
To tell one's name – the livelong June –
To an admiring Bog!

[Note: click this for in interesting article on Ms. Dickinson’s poem.]

I’m a big fan of Abraham Maslow’s “Hierarchy of Needs”—not an expert, just a fan. It has helped me make sense of life for many years. Here’s a refresher:

First there is the need for Safety and Security.

Secondly, once we feel safe and secure we can take a risk or two, put ourselves out there and seek to Belong somewhere—meeting the need to Belong.

Next, Esteem needs. Taking a few more risks in hopes that someone will say, “Way to go! I’m so glad you are who you are.”

Finally for Maslow there is seeking to meet the need he calls Self-Actualization. My understanding is that at this point we can look at our lives and say something like, “I was born for this.” It’s where we sense a calling; where our gifts and passions converge.

Significance can be found all along that journey. Feeling safe and secure, for example, can be hugely significant especially for the abused and marginalized.

I’ve always thought of Maslow’s hierarchy as something like a mountain where you move upward step by step, stage by stage until you reach the summit (one that not everyone reaches). Now as a Medicare card-carrying Senior Adult, it seems to me that as we age we move back down the mountain.

I don’t mean to brag at all when I say that I reached self-actualization. I found my life’s calling and was able to spend my best years caring and nurturing young faith pilgrims, young artists, young soul searchers, hopefully providing safe and secure environments for them, offering them a meaningful place of belonging, affirming and encouraging them, and creating a path to help them discover themselves and move toward actualization.

As I wrapped up that work in a planned, formal sense, I found myself appreciating those sentiments that said, “Hey you’re old, but you’re still my friend, you’re still Pops.” You know—Esteem level stuff.

And also Belonging level stuff. Clearly this is more important than ever: family, friends, and my buddies I meet with every week at The Quarantine Tavern. We need those people who still love us and want us when we become “men of a certain age.”

Do we ever return to that place in life where our greatest need is Safety and Security? Definitely. As I watched my Mom and Dad pass, there came a moment where that was all they needed. Mom especially. Ultimately, we could not offer her safety from COVID, or from a final loneliness. I have no doubt though that until her last breath she knew she belonged. And I know that in her next breath after that last one in her physical body she heard the words, “WELL DONE!” How’s that for the ulitmate dose of Esteem?!

You’ve got to be careful with things that have stages and steps. It’s easy to get the idea that life can be compartmentalized, that it all happens in an orderly, structured way. It doesn’t.

Making too much of categories and formulas can become a self-fulling prophecy. For example I know that I am an INTP in the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. If I’m not careful I can become paralyzed in my own thinking and isolation.

Remember John Lennon’s song “Nowhere Man” recorded by The Beatles:

He's a real nowhere man
Sitting in his nowhere land
Making all his nowhere plans for nobody

It’s kind of like that if I’m not careful.

I like this advice from Albert Einstein:

“Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning.”

Yikes this is turning into a crazy stream of consciousness. Let me abruptly wrap up with this from “Nowhere Man”.

He's as blind as he can be
Just sees what he wants to see
Nowhere man, can you see me at all
Nowhere man don't worry
Take your time, don't hurry
Leave it all 'til somebody else
Lends you a hand

Or; in the words of Barbara Striesand,

“People who need people are the luckiest people in the world.”

[Note: click this for an interesting look at the song Nowhere Man]

[One More Note: click this for an arrangement of John’s song by one of my favorite duets The MonaLisa Twins.]