With a Little Help

“You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength, and all your mind. And, love your neighbor as yourself.”

“And who is my neighbor?”

Jesus tells the story we call "The Good Samaritan", recorded in Luke 10, then asks this:

36 “Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?”
37 The expert in the law replied, “The one who had mercy on him.”

Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.”

But, from whose perspective? I've always heard this "Good Samaritan" story told as if our neighbor is the guy that got mugged and lies along the road. He's the guy that we're supposed to be neighborly toward--loving him as we would love ourselves.

But wait a minute. Look at Jesus' question: "Which of these was a neighbor to the man?" Imagine for a second that you are the one left banged up and broken in the ditch. Along comes a guy, let's call him Mr. Rogers. You're surprised that he has humbly stopped to help. You say, "Won't you be my neighbor?"

My point is that maybe, just maybe, what Jesus is saying is that our neighbor is the person(s) we allow to help us, the one we become very vulnerable to. Seems to me that can be pretty challenging. I find it easier to be the helper than the helpee.

If you're still with me on this circuitous path of Pops' strange logic, let's take the next step. Let's assume I'm reading Jesus correctly and my neighbor is the person that I allow to offer me aid, then to love myself in that neighborly way means letting my inner Mr. Rogers be kind to myself, to give myself an occasional break, to lay a cold rag on my forehead, to bandage up even the occasional emotional booboo. It takes being a bit vulnerable.

That last sentence was so hard to type. I don't like the idea of vulnerability, of people seeing me in need of aid. I don't like admitting that sometimes I'm not okay, that maybe I need a little help from my friends, trusting the ones who wouldn't stand up and walk out on me even if I sang out of tune.

I just bought an e-bike. It costs more than my used VW Bus did back in 1970. The hardest part of buying an e-bike though wasn't the cost. It was admitting I need help. I've tried riding my single-speed cruiser bike around town, but there are some hills that I just can't make it up. Sometimes (almost all the time) the winds are too stout for me to peddle against.

With e-bikes there are two varieties: peddle-assist or throttle. If you choose the throttle model, you can actually ride with no assist at all, like a moped or scooter. Just get on and twist the throttle and off you go. With peddle-assist, you have to actually pedal, the motor just helps a little, sort of flattens out the hills a bit.

Salesman: "Do you want a throttle model?"

Me: "Who do you think you're talking to? I'm only 70-something. I just need a little help."

Still, I imagine that when people see me riding they may think, "Look at the old man go. He must be in excellent shape. Wait a minute! That thing has a motor!"

This post isn't an endorsement for e-bikes. It's a metaphor.

I read a column in the New York Times written by a young lady who, along with her husband, had suffered a horrible tragedy. They lost their little girl, Lucy, shortly after her birth. In the article she talked about her lifelong love of bicycling and how in the trauma after their loss she never rode. She also talked about their grief and the people who, with all good intentions, sought to offer aid. The article ends with this paragraph:

"Now with spring in like a lion, I’m back out riding. When hills come up on the horizon, I don’t let pride stand in the way. I crank up the electric-powered motor a couple of notches and allow it to give me a boost. Slowly, through every swerve and switchback, grief has given way to gratitude. But only because I have help moving through it."
-- By Jess Mayhugh April 18, 2024. New York Times.

AFTER THE "FALL"

I'LL ADMIT IT. The first words out of my mouth were not, "Help! I've fallen and I can't get up!" They were a rapid fire of the same mild expletive, repeated thrice; the same word I have heard uttered many times by my maternal grandmother. (As if that makes it acceptable.)

I quickly looked around to see if anyone had seen the wipe out or were holding the ears of their young to protect them from this wild old man yelling obscenities into the cold, wet night. Actually I didn't yell them. I couldn't even breath. The impact had knocked the air from my lungs. Fortunately there was no one around.

Quickly I gathered myself, found a way to stand up thinking: NO ONE SHALL KNOW OF THIS!

You see I'm sort of senior-adultish. Once a senior "has a fall", the assumption is that they will fall all the time. I can remember a few times being at the ER with my parents in their 90s. Along with the typical hospital bracelet with the bar code on it that they scan everytime they hand you a Kleenex or take your temperature, they would get a red bracelet that said "FALL RISK".

So concerned about being labeled a FALLER am I, that I don't want to even call it a fall. I can just imagine the others on the playground at recess yelling, "Fuller the Faller!"--sort of like the abuse Winnie-the-Poo must of felt just because of that one time.

Here's how it went down. We went to a basketball game to watch our oldest Grand-Girl lead cheers, which she does wonderfully. When we went in the gym the weather was nice. I was wearing shorts, a Tulsa Hurricane sweatshirt, Birkenstocks and boxers. As we were leaving a cold front had come in bringing icy temps and sheets of rain. My Amazing-Missus suggested I might go get the vehicle and pick she and the younger Grand-Girls up out front. So, as if I was twenty-something instead of seventy-something, I went racing across the dark, dark parking lot, hood up, glasses covered in rain. When WHAM. I tripped on an unseen parking curb that I swear had been installed since we entered the gym an a few hours earlier.

Apparently on the first bounce I hit my left knee and right rib cage. I think the best picture I can give is of the way we used to dive head first on a Slip N Slide when we were kids. I limped to the car and quickly checked that there was no blood and that all my joints were in place and working. Good! Other than being soaking wet, covered in parking lot soot and not being able to breath, there's no way My Amazing-Missus would ever know what had happened. My first senior Fall would be my own secret. Somehow though she caught on. Maybe the fact that I would moan with each inhale of air gave it away.

I came clean and finally decided to go to the ER to have things checked out. A few hours later I left with my bar code scanned for a bunch of x-rays and a single pill that would help me rest, which I had to take with three witnesses watching.

Thankfully, I escaped without a FALL RISK bracelet, which I'm taking as the official word that I am not one--yet.

It's been a few days now. I've faithfully iced the knee and ribs and done my deep breathing exercises although inhaling is still like a kick in the ribs.

The good news is that I can still be counted on to walk on my own, to go get the car on cold, wintry nights and trusted to carry the eggs from the store to the car. Just give me a few days for these old ribs to heal.

I have to say, I'm rather proud of myself that I took the Big Wipe Out (which is my name for the incident), bounced hard, learned not to run in dark, wet parking lots, and I'm still standing and limping just a little.

NON AGE

WANT TO KNOW THE SECRET TO ETERNAL YOUTHFULNESS?

I typed "non age" for the title because I thought it looked like a more compelling title. The actual word is "nonage" —a lack of maturity, sort of being stuck in a state of youth-hood.

"Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed nonage. Nonage is the inability to use one's own understanding without another's guidance. This nonage is self-imposed if its cause lies not in lack of understanding but in indecision and lack of courage to use one's own mind without another's guidance." --Immanuel Kant

Or, as my mother would say, "If everyone was jumping off a building would you?"

I started to title this entry: "SAPERE AUDE!" But that seemed like a sure way to guarantee no one will read the first sentence and beyond. But don't click away yet. Sapere aude is a latin phrase translated: Dare to know! Or, "Have the courage to use your own understanding," which Kant called "the motto of the enlightenment."

A bunch of years ago now, around this time of year, it was "Senior Sunday" in the church where I was the youth minister. I stood in the vestibule with the seniors all lined up in their caps and gowns ready to march in and be recognized for their attainments. The first young lady in line wore the stole of the valedictorian. She said to me, "I've been meaning to ask you a question. What is it we're supposed to believe about (insert any moral ambiguity)?"

"You're the valedictorian!" I thought to myself. "And we've talked and talked about knowing who you are and what you know to be true and what values guide you."

Now, I sit here typing this and I realize that Sapere Aude is a life-long journey. Not only is it never-ending, we shouldn't wish for it to be. We should fall in love and stay in love with the beauty of discovery. As Peter Fenton says, "Be a learn-it-all; not a know-it-all." The worst thing we can do is abdicate our journey of discovery to others. Not that we can't learn from others, standing on their shoulders, but we must not settle or sell out to a "party line"; ANY party line without exploring it, testing it, and knowing it empirically.

The word Dare in the phrase Dare To Know is so appropriate because it can be risky business. It might mean standing on your own, seeing from a different perspective, disagreeing with even significant others. It might also mean you'll have to admit your were wrong about something, or that you JUST DON'T KNOW EVERYTHING.

[NOTE: What I write here at About Pops is mainly introspection. I'm not preaching to anyone (at least not intentionally). This is a personal journal with a little soapbox for ranting built in.]

Now, a little more from Kant's essay on enlightenment:

"Laziness and cowardice are the reasons why such a large part of mankind gladly remain minors all their lives, long after nature has freed them from external guidance. They are the reasons why it is so easy for others to set themselves up as guardians. It is so comfortable to be a minor. If I have a book that thinks for me, a pastor who acts as my conscience, a physician who prescribes my diet, and so on--then I have no need to exert myself. I have no need to think, if only I can pay; others will take care of that disagreeable business for me... Thus it is very difficult for the individual to work himself out of the nonage which has become almost second nature to him. He has even grown to like it, and is at first really incapable of using his own understanding because he has never been permitted to try it. Dogmas and formulas, these mechanical tools designed for reasonable use--or rather abuse--of his natural gifts, are the fetters of an everlasting nonage. The man who casts them off would make an uncertain leap over the narrowest ditch, because he is not used to such free movement. That is why there are only a few men who walk firmly, and who have emerged from nonage by cultivating their own minds."

An undeniable fact I'm discovering: that while I may be mired in nonage mentally, socially and spiritually; physically I'm marching on to the inevitable. Let's sing the last verse of Joni Mitchell's "Both Sides Now" together:

But now old friends are acting strange
They shake their heads, they say I've changed
Well something's lost, but something's gained
In living every day
I've looked at life from both sides now
From win and lose and still somehow
It's life's illusions I recall
I really don't know life at all
I've looked at life from both sides now
From up and down, and still somehow
It's life's illusions I recall
I really don't know life at all

Not to misunderstand Joni or to question her life view, but this song does seem to reduce all to just two sides. Maybe she's acknowledging that tendency and also saying clearly life is not either/or; cut and dried.

Personally, I've been...
Republican and Democrat
Evangelist and Agnostic
Teacher and Student
Optimist and Pessimist
Liberal and Conservative
Happy and Angry
Pro Life and Pro Choice
Confused and Certain
Beautiful and Ugly
Hawk and Dove
Wishy and Washy
Pro and Con
Enlightened and sometimes living under a spell as if I had never had a thought, a belief or value of my own.

The truth is I've always lived in the gray in-between. That doesn't mean I have no certainty. I do. I tend to spend a lot of time in my own head. (Not recommending that.) And when I do, a question my self often gets asked by me is: Of what are you certain? Here's one:

Certainly moving to maturity and beyond nonage doesn't mean we forsake youthfulness. The innocent curiosity of that age is essential to the momentum, the enlightenment.

May you grow up to be righteous
May you grow up to be true
May you always know the truth
And see the light surrounding you
May you always be courageous
Stand upright and be strong
May you stay forever young
Forever young, forever young
May you stay forever young.

[verse 2 of "Forever Young" by Bob Dylan]

And, then this from the Psalmist: "Your word is a lamp for my feet, a light on my path."

Be enlightened my friends. That's the secret.

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