Worship at 11

My work requires for me to drive around.  As I drive around in the buckle of the Bible Belt, I pass a lot of churches. A LOT of churches.  The first thing I notice are the messages these churches display on their portable signs. I chuckle at most. The next thing I notice are the times for their various services.  Although there is some variety, especially with contemporary churches, most signs advertise “Worship 11:00 am”.  The thing that strikes me is just how many churches of a multitude of denominations will be having their Sunday service at the same time.  The Southern Baptists, CBF Baptists, Independent Baptists, Primitive Baptists, Presbyterians, United Methodists, Methodist Episcopal, Unitarians, Disciples of Christ, Episcopalians, Church of the Nazarene and a multitude of others will be in “worship” at the same time.

Worship is a very personal thing. The dictionary definition is “The feeling or expression and adoration for a Deity.”  The synonyms include “reverence, veneration, adoration and exaltation.” No doubt many people are stirred during their respective church services

.

But what if you’re the Deity being worshiped? Do you adjust Your presence to each congregation at its particular system of beliefs and preferences? And no matter how bad the music and the sermon, are You obligated to attend and to participate?  And of the thousands of services going on simultaneously, how do You keep it all unscrambled?  The Methodists are singing “Peace, peace wonderful peace” while the Southern Baptists are singing “Onward Christian soldiers marching as to war.”  Which do You listen to? Then of course in the next time zone, You’ve got it to do all again. 

Over the years I’ve had many meaningful experiences with my Deity. Some of these experiences happened in church. Most of them did not.  But regardless of where and when these things happened, can I call it worship? There was that experience at Union University in Jackson, Tennessee during the Centrifuge youth weekend. I was touched so deeply, I put my head down and sobbed uncontrollably. But was that the worship of a Deity or was I just emotionally moved to my core? Is there a difference? As powerful as it was, it did not fit the definition of worship. What about that time I was sitting with friends overlooking a vast valley near Stockholm, Sweden.  I was filled to overflowing with the beauty and wonder of the moment.  But was that worship? By definition I have only worshiped once in my life. On June 28,1981 my Deity met a group of us one Sunday afternoon in a chapel at a 4H camp in Weston, W. Virginia. Our experience was intoxicating and simultaneous.  He “filled the temple” as surely as He did for the Israelites in Jerusalem—“reverence, veneration, adoration and exaltation.” There was even an agnostic among us who was as affected as any of us.

My question is are we being presumptuous to advertise “Worship at 11”? From my many years of spending thousands of hours in church between 11 and 12:30, my experience is that what happens is singing, praying and listening to sermons. But worship?  I guess truth in advertising would be “Church Service at 11”.

Some churches have gotten clever with things like,  "Worship at 10:59."  This not only gives God the opportunity to show up earlier, but the Baptists get a jump on  the Methodists to the Cracker Barrel.

Will you join me for a cup of Te?

“Something is mysteriously brought into existence

Long before Heaven or Earth are made

It is silent and shapeless,

It is always present, endlessly in motion

From it like a mother every living thing has come.

I do not know what to call it.

So I call it Tao.”  Lao Tzu

“In the beginning was the Word. 

And the Word was with God.

And the Word was God.”   John 1:1

“At this moment, what is it you seek?

Nirvana is right here before you.

Pure land is right  here.” From Song of Zazen by Master Hakuin (1685-1768)

Tao (pronounced Dow) is not a religion.  You can’t convert to Taoism.  You can study to understand Taoism and to benefit from the philosophy, but you can’t pretend to understand it. It is said of the Tao that if you can define it then it’s not the Tao. And before you think that Taoism or any “Eastern thought” is strange, look at the first verse in the gospel of John.   Read it slowly and deliberately. And read it literally.  What could the writer of John possibly mean by that?  The Word was God?

In Taoist thought and practice Te (tay) means the real you, your authentic self.  Volumes have been written about Te so I’m just going to leave it at that.  Te is you. You are born with Te.  Very quickly your self is blended with the people around you. You learn to react to their reactions to you. But what starts off as delightful baby-parent play quickly becomes a matter of survival. You associate their approval of you with your very existence.   Most of us grow out of this dependence over the years, but some  of us  continue to desperately need the approval of others to feel secure and whole.  We still think this approval is necessary for our survival. Our salvation then is Te, becoming our true selves again, that self we were born with.

The most difficult part of finding Te is that we allow the people around us to dictate our priorities.  Instead of doing the things that we value, that we find pleasure in, we spend our time living the values of the people around us.  We try to live up to everyone else’s expectations. We aren’t living our own  lives, but the lives of other people. You may think you have no choice about it. You have the job you have, you live with the partner you live with, you have the friends you have, etc. Although any of these elements can be changed, that may not be necessary. The good news is that Te is very possible right where you are. It’s not necessarily these people and circumstances that need to change; it’s you who needs to change.

This morning I was stewing on  the same things that I have been stewing about the last couple of weeks. These two things had all but robbed me of my personal joy. One was a personal issue and the other was an issue with my car.  You would think the personal issue would matter the most, but it was the combination that was interfering with my peace of mind. But this morning on my way to work the answer to my frustration came full grown in my head—“These things will work out how they work out and when they work out. There is nothing you can do about either.  All you can do is wait.” And today  I have given either situation little thought.

Over twenty five years ago my wife and I were at our church on a Sunday night.  There was nothing remarkable about the service.  It was a generic, routine Sunday night Baptist church service. Our pastor, an excellent preacher, was preaching an ordinary sermon,. He was talking about the manna in the wilderness when something happened to my wife.  She was immediately transformed.  I could almost say transfigured. She left that church a much different person than the person  who had entered that building less than an  hour earlier.  Nothing had changed, but everything had changed. Since she was a baptized Christian, instead of saying she was “saved”, we’ve called it her “new metaphor.”

But sometimes you do need a new job.  And sometimes you need a new partner.   And maybe you need to find some new friends. Our problem is that most of us live our lives like we think it’s a dry run, like we’re going to get another chance. Maybe we will get another chance, but what if this is it?  What would you do differently tomorrow if you thought this is it?

The “Word” in John 1:1 is generally translated “Logos” and “Logos” is generally translated “Jesus Christ.”  Now it’s beginning to make more sense. "In the beginning was Jesus..." In many Chinese Bibles “Word” is translated “Tao.’  “In the beginning was the Tao and the Tao was with God and the Tao was God”.  Okay, now it’s getting weird.

Finding Te is difficult, but not impossible.  It takes determination and practice to find your true self. If you can’t practice at work, then practice at home. If you can’t practice at home then practice on  the golf course or at Chick fil A with a good friend.  Find Te however and wherever you can.  Let Te find a foothold and then let Te expand into your whole life. And how do you know if you are finding Te?  Because you’ll feel better. You’ll feel a lot better. And the people around you will notice something different about you too. Now instead of seeking approval, you will seek communion and companionship. Nothing is different, but everything is different.

Thanks for joining me. It means a lot to me. Do you take cream or sugar with your Te?

Follow Your Bliss

Back in 1982 someone introduced me to Joseph Campbell with his book The Power of Myth.  Campbell is not really the author of the book. The book, which became a popular coffee table book, is the result of an interview with Campbell by Bill Moyers. This interview was done not too long before Joseph Campbell died.  The book would have a dramatic impact on me and I would go on to read many if not most of the books written by Campbell. In one of his books he said, “If there is an author you like, read everything he’s written.”  So I started with him.

In the Power of Myth and in many of his books he says, “Follow your bliss.”  This was difficult for me in 1982 because I was horribly discouraged at the time. If you knew I not only had a loving wife, but a beautiful one year old son, you might wonder “What’s the problem?”  I understand now that vocation, i.e. how you make a living, is not nearly as important as home and family, but at the time nothing else mattered except I was extremely unhappy with my work. I took my work very personally and I felt like a complete failure.

Because of the circumstances at the time, it would be later that I embarked on my journey of “following my bliss.”  The first thing I had to do was figure out what my bliss was.  In my case, since I felt like “bliss” was out of reach, I simply changed the adage to “Do what you enjoy.”  With that change, the journey toward “bliss” became manageable.

If any of us learns to do what we enjoy, we first have to enjoy doing something.  There has to be something that provides personal satisfaction.  It’s so easy to fall into a lifestyle of doing what’s necessary, doing what’s expected that we push enjoyment further and further into the corner. Once we learn or remember things we enjoy, the next step is to do them.  Maybe you have to go all the way back to childhood. So go to the arts and craft store and buy some paints and paper and start painting. Or get one of those boxes of 64 crayons with the built-in  sharpener. You know, the box all the other kids had.  Or go to Walmart and buy an inexpensive bicycle and a helmet.  You don’t need expensive clothes and guys you don’t have to shave your legs, just go outside, put on your helmet and ride your new bicycle down the street. Besides enjoying it, it's good exercise as well. You don’t want to paint or ride a bike? Then find something else you enjoy. Read a book. Call a friend. The point is to carve out time in the day for yourself.

Something else that can propel you toward enjoyment and bliss is to stop doing things that you don’t enjoy.  I realize there are some practical reasons this is not always possible.  The block to bliss might be a significant relationship that needs to end. As much as you don’t like your job, for example, there are house payments and mouths to feed. You can’t just walk away from your job. But you can start the process.  On the other hand, back in 1983 after a year of self-imposed torment,  I did in fact just walk away from my church job. I just quit. I didn’t just quit my job, I quit my career. I quit a lifetime of being a full-time minister.  After seven years of college in church music and only four years as a full-time minister, I would serve several churches on a part-time basis, but I would never be a full-time vocational minister again. 

Once you start routinely doing things that you enjoy, an amazing thing happens.  You start enjoying the things you do. Your enjoyment expands into your lifestyle. This is not to say that you’ll reach a state of perpetual bliss, but you can learn to enjoy your life. I now enjoy doing a lot of things. I spend time with my wife. I travel to see my family. I read. I write. I enjoy my camera. I listen to music with my Sony noise-cancelling headphones. I listen to Sirius/XM radio in my car.  I compose music on my synthesizer. I often share dinner out  with my wife and friends. And yes, I enjoy my job.  When I put it like that, I enjoy everything!

If I was willing to sit under a Bodhi tree for several days and contemplate my navel, I guess I could achieve perpetual bliss. For now I'm willing to forgo that and make do with enjoyment by sitting under my roof with my noise-cancelling headphones. Besides, if they had been available, I bet the Buddha would have tried them on.

Another Piece of the Puzzle

"John Spilsbury, an engraver and mapmaker, is credited with inventing the first jigsaw puzzle in 1767"  Internet sources

Many times our family beach trip was just that.  It was my immediate family that took up residence there, my mother and father, my brother and sister and me.  But often, especially on long holiday weekends, the house hosted everybody on my mother's side of the family. This group included my grandmother, my great aunt, my aunts and uncles and their children who were my first cousins.There were about twenty people total in a three bedroom house. I remember that it was crowded, but never suffocating. Men and women, boys and girls all found a place to eat and to sleep.

My aunt did something one July 4th that became an  immediate tradition.  She dumped the pieces of a 500-1000 piece jigsaw puzzle on a card table in the den  With no instructions everybody knew to participate.  Over the next several days whenever you walked by the table you were expected to stop and find a few pieces. Slowly a picture began to emerge from the miscellaneous pieces. By the end of the weekend the puzzle was done.  The picture was complete.

During the hottest part of the day, the younger cousins had to come up from the beach and take a nap. This was mostly to get out of the midday sun and give the adults a break.  As we got older, we were allowed to do something that was nearly as fun as much playing on the beach. Within walking distance of the house was an adolescent's treasure trove.  It was a beach store called the Seahorse.  The Seahorse was part gift shop, part saloon for the adults and part arcade. It was the arcade part that interested me. There were only about five or six machines, but that was plenty for me.  I don't recall ever having to wait to play. The machines that interested me the  most were the pinball machines and the baseball machines. In case you missed them, the pinball machines had real metal balls producing flashing lights and went ringing and dinging their way around the board, propelled by flippers on the bottom and sides. The ball finally disappeared into the machine. With the press of a button, the machine  popped up the next ball that the user put in play with a spring loaded plunger. The ball zoomed up into a loft of delightful lights and noises. And then it fell back into the playing surface. The object was to keep the ball alive long enough with the rubber bumpers and flippers to rack enough points to win a free game. Years later in Las Vegas as I played the slots with my wife in the Paris casino, I didn't want to win money as much as wishing I could win  a free game. Similarly the baseball games at the Seahorse had real bats and balls. The outfield included ramps where the ball could be launched into the seats for a home run.  A grand slam was like a fireworks display. The deep "thunk" of the free games was particularly satisfying. The machines only cost a dime, but it was still exciting to arrive at the store and find free games already on the machines.  Some kid didn't run out of money, but ran out of time. I always had more time than money, so those free games worked out well for me. Between the games already there and the ones I won, I could easily  play for a couple of hours on less than fifty cents. Even in "today's dollars", that wasn't very much money to  have that much fun.  The Seahorse, playground for decades for youth and adults, fell to condominium development years ago. Under the definition of "highest and best use", I'm sure it was a good trade.  But it's hard for me to believe the current use is much better than what I experienced as an adolescent.

While working a jigsaw puzzle, it's the picture that drives the process.  Can you begin to imagine trying to work the puzzle upside down?  It's the same pieces in the same shapes, but no picture. So as I piece together my childhood for you, it's the picture that drives the story. Imagine with me the picture of a family, not a perfect family, but a beautiful family in a beautiful place sharing days, weeks and months together. I said I was at the beach house with my mother's family. What about my father's family? Where were they?   They were never intentionally excluded, but they were never intentionally included either. Thinking about it now, I'm quite sure the Helmses felt like welcomed guests and not quite like family. It's like protons and electrons. They depend on each other for their existence, but they never meet. I was there, not by virtue of being a Helms, but by virtue of being a Redmon. My father, who had no Redmon blood, was welcome because he had the good sense to marry a Redmon. My mother was a Redmon by birth to her mother and to her father who bought the beach house  from sisters in 1947. My grandfather bought the house, which sits just across Highway 98 from the dunes and the beach, for about $2,500.00

When the picture of my life is complete, the pieces from Laguna Beach, Florida will take up a large part of the puzzle. It will be a  large part not just based on time, but of significance.

Soon the entire Helms clan who are descendants of my father and his brother will be gathering at a beach house in Alabama on the Gulf of Mexico. I'll be there not because I'm a Redmon, but because I'm a Helms.. We've  been asked to bring some food and refreshments.  I think I'll also take a jigsaw puzzle. By the time the weekend is over, we should have another beautiful picture to add to the story of our lives.

Drip Castles

"I"m gonna fly to where the sky meets the land
And the living is not planned
And the children can laugh just
Cause they're living."  Dan Fogelberg

After nearly twenty five years, I can finally begin to remember our family's beach house and beach without feeling pain and regret. It's one thing to own a house, it's quite another to say we owned a beach.  No, we had no deed to the sand and water.  But for years we were the only people who used "our beach" so it seemed like our ownership extended from the house, across Highway 98, down the dunes, across the sand into the Gulf of Mexico.

I was a happy child.  I was a very happy child. And why not? Wouldn't you be happy if you lived 90 miles from Laguna Beach, Florida and spent several weeks a year frolicking in the blue/green waters of the Gulf of Mexico?  Actually, I spent more time playing on the white sands than I did in the water.  Since before I can remember, my mother taught me how to make drip castles. I would first dig a hole near the water's edge.  I dug the hole deep enough for it to hit water and create a pool.  That wet sand became the brick and mortar of the castle.  I would pile up globs of the wet sand as the foundation and the central part of the structure. After a few minutes the wet sand dried like cement. Then I would pick up the wet sand with my  hand and let it drip through my fingers forming the turrets of the castle.  If I formed a large enough foundation, the castle could support quite a number of these turrets that surrounded the structure. The challenge then was to drip and connect these turrets with sand bridges forming porticoes around the castle. This was an intricate and painstaking process. After I was satisfied with my creation, I would build roads around the structure complete with moats and  draw bridges made of sticks and straw. The end result was a rather large masterpiece of sand and water. A drip castle. Many times beachgoers would stop to  admire my creation and ask me questions about how it was done.  I was always glad to show them how the drip process worked. It was not unusual over the next few days for me to see rudimentary drip castles all along the shore. No matter how large or ornate, all of the drip castles I constructed had one thing in common. That night the incoming tide washed them all away. The next morning all that was left was white sand. So I started over and did it all again.

But the most fun I had on the beach happened about a hundred yards west of our beach.  A large fresh water lake resided across Highway 98.  Overflow flowed through a culvert spillway onto our beach.  The stream it made was about three feet across and a few inches deep. However, the canyon it created could be two or three feet deep. This stream flowed from the lake, under the highway, across our beach into the gulf water.  The fun came in with what I did with the water.  Building a dam of sand was harder than it  may seem.  Piling up sand to block the stream started out easy enough.  But the more sand I piled up, the faster the water flowed in between those piles of sand on either side of the stream. This of course eroded the dam I was trying to build.  But if I worked hard enough, and I did, eventually I could cover the last hole and dam the whole thing. Now the water swirled and piled up behind my dam.  I continued to pile up sand on the dam so that the water would continue to rise up the sides of its cliff. The result was a swirling pool about three feet deep.   Besides the accomplishment of the dam itself, there was what I did next.  After I had enjoyed my dam all I wanted, with my index finger I made one small crevice in the dam.  Water flows downhill.  And water under pressure flows downhill fast.  What started as a single stream of water became a larger and larger flow.  Within minutes, the water that had been swirling behind my dam was roaring down the creek bed. It was flowing fast enough to  create ripples and erode the sides of the cliff.  Often the cliff walls would break and fall into the rushing water and be swept into the Gulf of Mexico.   So why was all this fun?  You'd have to ask a kid.

My mother and my aunt sold the "cottage" for their own financial reasons.  My wife and I were in no position to buy it. After belonging to our family for more than forty years, the deed to the "cottage" passed to complete strangers. Now when you drive by the house, there's a big sign on the dunes at the path to the beach that reads, "No trespassing. Owner's only."  So I guess they actually think they not only own the house, but own the beach as well. We pretended it was our beach, but we knew better. And anyone was welcome to use the path to gain access to the beach. But be careful what you think you own, because in time it will all be washed away.

Shortly before He left the earth, Jesus said, "In my house are many mansions." When I go to my reward, I don't want a mansion on a hilltop. Please give me a beach house big enough for my family and friends that is just across the road from the dunes of an incredible gulf. Please include plenty of pelicans and an occasional  school of dolphins. It will be nice if the house is right on the beach, but it's not necessary. Give me azure/green water that laps in gentle waves to the shore. Let the waves and current create an ankle deep sandbar that you can wade to in chest deep water. And give me miles upon miles of white sand glistening like diamonds in the sun. Since I'll have forever to build castles, I will need a lot of sand. And give me the stuff to make a big sign that reads, "Path to the beach. Everyone welcome." All but a few of supervising adults can stay in the house playing cards and telling family stories. The children can run down the dunes to the beach where they can  body surf, boogie board or play in the sand. And  Mama and I can create masterpieces together of dripping sand and water. I'm good at it, but it will take an eternity for me to be as good as she.

Out of the Mouth of Thorns

"How beautiful, this night in June!
And here, upon the velvet dune,
I weep with joy beneath the moon."  from Ballade to the Moon by Daniel Elder

For the past week I have enjoyed a thought, more like a waking dream.  As the thought has grown in my psyche, so has my joy.

I had not felt joy in several days.  Over the last several weeks my wife and I have experienced a bizarre series of losses that have sapped our good feelings  with each successive loss. Thankfully, none of these losses involves a death. And I apologize in advance to you if you have lost someone you love permanently.  In that case, our losses don't even rate. But they feel like they rate on some significant scale.The last loss of four occurred just last Monday.  We went together to see my counselor of twenty six years to gain some level of comfort in our collective pain. He always has the right words.  He always has the right amount of care and kindness. After we told him of the most significant loss, he said, "You're grieving.  You're going to have to let the process play itself out."  Then he dropped the bombshell. "And you need to know that I'm retiring." Twenty six years of being heard. Of being known. Of being understood. "I'm retiring in October."

These brambles were not important to me at the time.  They were just something I could see out the back windows of our beach house. Something that kept me from walking across the back yard.  They grew right up to the back of our house and grew across the way to the next house. These brambles, for lack of a better word, were very thick.  They were not only thick in consistency, but the stems themselves were very thick.  These scrubs were about four feet tall and had a fairly level top. like they had been pruned. They were like thorns gone crazy. I would like to tell you that they were thick with thorns, but I don't know for sure. I never got close enough to see. As many times as I saw them, I never actually looked at them. There was nothing particularly interesting about them to get my attention.

But this week I've been thinking about them. Several days ago the brambles came to me in a waking thought and the thought brought to me a strange joy. I have no idea why these scrubs would make me feel good to think about them, but they do. Well actually I do have an idea. Although I wasn't aware of them at the time, maybe they were aware of me.  Maybe they watched me through the window gleefully reading comic books on the big double bed. Superman.. Batman. Spider man and more. They heard with me the wonk wonk of the big black ceiling fan above my head. They saw the pink skin on my arms, neck and face from the morning swim under the blazing Florida sun. They witnessed the adult-enforced nap to give my siblings, cousins and me much needed rest and themselves a break  before accompanying our running  and stumbling back down the dunes to the beaches of the Gulf of Mexico.

After being in the family over forty years, the family beach house has long since belonged to someone else.  Any thought of it usually renews that grief, that immense loss. But not this time.  These brambles have restored to me a level of happiness. A level of joy. It's like for the first time in several weeks I can see through the fog of personal pain to better times, to better feelings. Maybe they're even telling me that all those words from twenty six years in that same room won't be forgotten.  That twenty six years of knotty convolutions of words and phrases will live on in my head and in my heart.  That I may forget the words, but that they won't forget me. Like thorns, they stick.

After I recovered from the shock, I told my counselor, my advocate that I wasn't too upset about his leaving  because I knew he would give me his phone number.  And to my surprise, he smiled and said, "Of course I will."

February 2019. Me: "Jim,  this is David." Jim:"Why am I not surprised."

Good Advice from College Football

"So take what happened, learn from it and move on."  Jeremy Pruitt

Jeremy Pruitt, the new head coach of the Tennessee Volunteers, was talking about last year's rather dismal football season and less than stellar seasons before that. He stated that there is nothing he nor anyone can do anything about it. Nothing but to do much better this season.

Last year I read about the  philosophy of one college quarterback.  His philosophy was simply "Next play."  No matter what happened on the previous play-- sack, fumble, interception, completion,  or whatever, he got up, got behind the center and ran the next play.

The "real life" applications are obvious and immense. Pruitt's words and the quarterback's philosophy require little commentary.  But I'm offering some commentary just the same. What if Pruitt's advice to himself and to us was all the advice we would ever get. Was all the advice we would ever follow.   How much happier would we be?  If we practiced this, how much mental and emotional pain would we avoid?  Just imagine how we would deal with a significant breakup, the loss of a job, a traffic accident,or a stray comment that hurt someone's feelings we care about.  The opposite of following this advice is that we not only continue to think about things we can do nothing about, but we build stories around them. Instead of allowing the thoughts and accompanying feelings to go  away, they get stronger. Obviously, in the case of the hurt feelings we can apologize, we can try to make things right.  But what if we can't?  What if, in spite of our best efforts, the person is still upset and stays upset?

The college quarterback has twenty five seconds to brush himself off and get ready for the next play. Thankfully, our clocks allow us much more time. However, maybe it would be to our advantage to have a deadline on thoughts and feelings before we were forced to move on. Before we are forced to deal with something else.

I don't know about you, but I am capable of not learning from what just happened, of not moving on, of berating myself and beating myself up. I had a counselor take up for me once after I  shared such a negative outcome and how badly I felt about it.  He said, "David, you made the best decision with the information you had at the time." The generic advice Pruitt and the quarterback are offering is the time-honored "Learn from your mistakes."  To learn from our mistake, we first have to admit that it was a mistake. We have to admit that we messed up. We have to reckon that humans make mistakes and since we are human, we make mistakes.  Once we get that settled, we can move toward learning from it.

Coach Gus Malzahn of the Auburn Tigers has another take on all of this.  Regardless of what's going on with the team or with the season, he tells reporters and fans, "I like where we're at."

So putting all of this together, we would all do well to "take what happens", "learn from what happens", "move on from what happened", prepare for the "next play" and enjoy "where we're at". And if we don't  want to be where we are, we should consider going somewhere else.