bentleystewart

[bentleystewart]

Called to Return; Called to Redeem Moral Injury

Bentley Stewart

Covenant Presbyterian, Palo Alto

June 23, 2013

Called to Return; Called to Redeem Moral Injury

Luke 8:26-39

Once again, good morning and thank you for your warm hospitality.  First, please join me in thanking Jose for leading us in worship and making sure that I’m doing what I need to be doing for the service.  I am humbled that the Rev. Dr. Boles entrusted me with this invitation, because after all I am a mere seminary student.  On that note, I bring you greetings of grace and peace from San Francisco Theological Seminary.  Please come visit us.  We also are a warm community and we have an absolutely gorgeous campus. 

Currently, we are on summer break.  Some of us are doing summer school.  Some have summer jobs.  Some of us are busy keeping our children occupied while they are on summer break.  This means shuffling between summer camps and Vacation Bible School programs, with some day trips to the beach, the mountains, or museums sprinkled into the mix. 

Summer break began one month ago.  However, summer officially began last week with Solstice.  But, for me and many others, summer begins with Memorial Day Weekend.  While officially the holiday that we observe to honor soldiers who died in battle, it got me thinking about the soldiers who return from battle as fractured versions of their former selves.  

This is due in large part to two experiences.  My family attends Sleepy Hollow Presbyterian Church in San Anselmo.  Recently, a young woman who was raised in that church, stood up with a plea for help.  Her boyfriend of several years has returned from Iraq suffering from Traumatic Brain Injury and she is at a loss with how to support him.  Also, a fellow student who is a veteran of two tours in Iraq said “people put yellow ribbons on their cars that claim that they support the troops but do they support veterans?” 

Your bulletin has the title of this sermon as “Called to Return.”  The more specific theme that I’d like to share with you today is “Called to Redeem Moral Injury.”

Memorial Day unofficially marks the beginning of the longer days of summer that allow for evening walks and picnics.  Oh, and on hot days, when it’s too warm to be outside, there are the summer blockbusters at the local theater. 

Summer blockbusters, you know the films don’t you; enormous budgets devoted to splashy special effects but often low on substance? 

Nearly thirty summers ago, there was the summer blockbuster Rambo.  Like many summer blockbusters, it had a famous Hollywood star, Sylvester Stallone.  Like many summer blockbusters, it was a sequel.  In fact, the first in a string of sequels, each more violent than the last.  Our hero is complicated.  He’s a Vietnam Veteran who has never adjusted back into civilian society.  In fact, he’s ended up in prison.  He’s given a chance for early parole if he’ll go back to Vietnam on a search and rescue mission for some Prisoners of War.  This is a chance not only for freedom from prison but for resolution to a tragic past.  It’s a story about longing for redemption.  The longing for redemption is a beautiful thing.  This longing for redemption is perhaps part of the human condition.  Unfortunately, the movie perpetuates the tragic myth that redemption can be won through violence. 

Humanity consistently behaves as if violence and war are the paths to security and peace.  One fifth of the Federal Budget of the United States is spent on Defense and International Security; AKA the Military Industrial Complex.  After a decade of military conflict in Afghanistan and Iraq, we have more than two million veterans who have returned home.  They brought with them a myriad of challenges.   Some are missing limbs.  Many are suffering Traumatic Brain Injury.  Even more suffer from the milder form of TBI, Post Concussion Syndrome.  There is also the psychological diagnosis of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.  In addition to the alphabet soup of TBI, PCS and PTSD, I’d like to bring to your awareness the concept of “moral injury.”

Unlike PTSD, moral injury is not a diagnosis.  Moral injury results from perpetrating, or merely witnessing, acts — or failures to act — that transgress deeply held, communally shared moral beliefs and expectations. 

Moral injury can happen when there is a betrayal of what’s right by someone who holds legitimate authority in a high-stakes situation.  That person who’s betraying “what’s right” could be a superior — or that person could be you. Maybe it’s that you killed somebody or were ordered to kill. Or maybe it was something tragic that you could have stopped, but didn’t. Guilt and shame are at the center of moral injury.

More and more, therapists are finding that these psychological injuries of war must be treated differently. Medications and exposure therapy, the gold standards for treatment of PTSD, do not work by themselves for shame and guilt.  Shame begets alienation.  Veterans frequently have difficulties adjusting back to civilian life.  They believe, understandably, that nobody will be able to relate to what they’ve been through.  So, they isolate themselves from family and friends.   Many vets have difficulty finding work.  For all these reasons, and more, many vets struggle with substance abuse.   Therefore it shouldn’t come as any surprise that approximately 33% of homeless males in the U.S. are veterans, or that veterans are twice as likely as other Americans to become chronically homeless.  According to a 2007 study by the Homeless Research Institute, veterans represent 11% of the adult civilian population, but 26% of the homeless population.

When Jesus travels across the Sea of Galilee, he arrives in gentile territory.  He is greeted by a man who lived naked amongst the tombs.  Isn’t it strange that it’s always the demons that recognize that Jesus has been sent by God?   When Jesus asks the demons their name, the response is “Legion.”  Legion was a Roman military term for five to six thousand soldiers.  That’s a lot of demons. 

Talk of demon possession makes many of us uncomfortable.  We’re embarrassed by those passages in the New Testament.  A psychiatrist at the hospital where I used to work frequently stated that he had never encountered somebody who claimed to be possessed by demons whose difficulties couldn’t be explained through psychological, physical or organic causes. 

But remember the text doesn’t simple say lots of demons.  It says Legion.  For a people living under the occupation of the Roman Empire, Legion would have sounded alarm bells.  This man represents all the people who have been colonized, oppressed, victimized, and tormented by the Empire. 

So, today we wouldn’t call it demon possession.  We’d talk about mental illness.  There would be diagnoses of disorders and syndromes.  Perhaps, we’d speculate about addictions or broken families of origin and failed school systems.  If so, we might begin to look at larger social ills: our materialism and our militarism.  If so, maybe, eventually, we would look into the mirror and think about our own consumerism that never seems to satisfy our greed or put an end to our fears.  In addition to syndromes, addictions and disorders, our demons are phobias and isms:  racism and sexism; homophobia and xenophobia; anti-Semitism and Islamophobia.  Yes, we are still possessed by a Legion of demons. 

This man is released from the Legion.  I like that.  There are a couple of things that I don’t like.  I don’t like that the swine herders loose all of their pigs.  Of course, I don’t like that because while I want peace and justice to come to all, I don’t want that justice to cost me my comfort.  But, I am bothered most that Jesus refused to let the man come with him.  He wants to be with Jesus; to follow Jesus.  He wants to be a disciple and Jesus sends him back to the community that used to lock him in chains because they didn’t know how to deal with him.  That doesn’t seem fair.  After all, the demons begged to go into the swine and that request is granted.  The man begs to go with Jesus and that request is denied.    

Of course, many of us look to Jesus for an escape from our troubles.  I know that I do.  Many people’s faith is about Jesus rescuing them into heaven far away from this fallen creation.  However, Jesus taught us to pray for God’s will to be done on earth as it is in heaven.  Jesus sends us back into our broken communities telling us to proclaim all that God has done for us.  We are called to bear witness to how God has transformed our lives. 

God has transformed your life, right?  I mean, why else would you be here on a beautiful Sunday morning?  It is summer after all. 

God rarely offers escape from our problems.  Rather, God’s presence emboldens us to face our problems.  God expands our moral imagination and gives us the courage to strive for God’s beloved community in the here and now.

Our veterans are returning home to us.  Engineers are improving on prosthetics all the time.  Physical and occupational therapists are gifted at helping our soldiers suffering from TBI at regaining function.  Mental health therapists have made gains in treatment of PTSD.  Of course, there aren’t enough resources for all of the veterans and navigating the bureaucracy to gain access to the scarce services is a trauma in its own right.    

I think there are ways that churches can step in the gaps.  And I hope we do become better advocates for our veterans.  But I think there is another gift that we bring to this challenge.   Remember, I told you about moral injury.  Moral injury causes guilt, shame and alienation.   Dr. Jonathan Shay claims that moral injury shrinks “the moral and social horizon.” When a person’s moral horizon shrinks so do a person’s ideals and attachments and ambitions.  This is a desperate problem that faith communities are uniquely equipped to address. 

The God of grace expands our moral horizons.  We are a forgiven people; forgiven so that we may extend forgiveness and love to others.  We engage in sacraments and rituals that create community, that cleanse us from guilt. that liberate us from shame.   The apostle Paul calls us ambassadors of the ministry of reconciliation.  We worship a God who redeems all things, reconciles all things, and restores all things. 

            Oh, it doesn’t matter if there is a Legion of demons that taunt us and threaten to oppress us.  We are sent deep into the suffering world that God desperately loves to bear witness to the presence of the living God that is at work redeeming all of creation.

      Benediction: Franciscan Fourfold Blessing

  May God bless you with a restless discomfort with easy answers, half truths and superficial relationships, so that you will seek truth boldly and love deep within your heart.

  May God bless you with a holy anger at injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people, so that you will work tirelessly for justice, freedom and peace among all people.

  May God bless you with the gift of tears to shed with those who suffer from pain, rejection, starvation, or the loss of all that they cherish, so that you may reach out your hand to comfort them.

  May God bless you with enough foolishness to believe that you really CAN make a difference in this world, so that you will be able, with God’s grace, to do the things that others claim cannot be done. 

[bentleystewart]

The Freedom of Recess

Galatians 4:19 – 5:1

19 My little children, for whom I am again in the pain of childbirth until Christ is formed in you, 20 I wish I were present with you now and could change my tone, for I am perplexed about you. 21 Tell me, you who desire to be subject to the law, will you not listen to the law? 22 For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by a slave woman and the other by a free woman. 23 One, the child of the slave, was born according to the flesh; the other, the child of the free woman, was born through the promise. 24 Now this is an allegory: these women are two covenants. One woman, in fact, is Hagar, from Mount Sinai, bearing children for slavery. 25 Now Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia and corresponds to the present Jerusalem, for she is in slavery with her children. 26 But the other woman corresponds to the Jerusalem above; she is free, and she is our mother. 27 For it is written, "Rejoice, you childless one, you who bear no children, burst into song and shout, you who endure no birth pangs; for the children of the desolate woman are more numerous than the children of the one who is married." 28 Now you, my friends, are children of the promise, like Isaac. 29 But just as at that time the child who was born according to the flesh persecuted the child who was born according to the Spirit, so it is now also. 30 But what does the scripture say? "Drive out the slave and her child; for the child of the slave will not share the inheritance with the child of the free woman." 31 So then, friends, we are children, not of the slave but of the free woman.1 For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.

Father Abraham had many sons Many sons had father Abraham I am one of them And so are you So, lets all praise The Lord. Right arm, left arm Right leg, left leg Father Abraham had many sons Many sons had father Abraham I am one of them And so are ... ...wait, many of you don't identify as a part of the male gender. I wonder, do you identify as a son of father Abraham? And there are other difficulties with this Hokie Pokie of Abrahamic Faith. Both songs are great fun, as they invite you to dance about. However, one plays with putting your whole self in and your whole self out, while the other hides what Paul suggests. It is your mother not your father that determines whether you are in or out. Are you a child of the free woman and therefore heir to the promise? Or, are you a child of the slave girl? If so, you can't inherit a share of the promise. Oh Paul, funny Travelling tent maker, is that what you meant?  In a riff on the Hokie Pokie, is that what’s all about?

You see, I’m worried about Paul.  I was taught in school that you best be careful when talking about somebody else’s momma. 

I walked two blocks through my neighborhood to school.  Other students took a bus ride across town.  They were picked up on the other side of the train tracks on the other side of a street named Division.  These children were picked up in front of their neighborhood’s school that had been shut down so that my neighborhood’s school would be in compliance with the Federal mandate to integrate.  The educator, bell hooks, concedes that often this meant access to newer, better, and more resources and supplies.  She also lifts up and laments what was lost.  She claims that the African American schoolhouse was a laboratory for emancipatory resistance to the dominant culture.   Whereas, integration functioned as the assimilating tool of Empire.

Recess was different. 

We were integrated for the classroom, but it was recess where we figured out what that meant.  Play is the work of children.  Yes, we got book learnin’ in class.  The playground is where we tested that head knowledge.  The teacher struggled to inspire us with the Declaration of Independence.  On the playground, we explored whether freedom revealed truth in our bodies.  Yes Paul, for freedom we have been set free.  But what does that mean?

I think Paul accidently happened upon the game the Dozens.  The Dozens, that game of vocular jocularity.  A trading of insults.  A game of degrading one-upmanship.  Mostly, it was “yo’ mamma” jokes.   As in, “yo’ mamma is so fill in the blank that ….”

And, let us be clear.  It was never “yo’ mamma is so beautiful that the stars sing of her glory.”  Oh, but it was poetic.  It was raucous.  It was full of hyperbole.  It demanded mental acuity, verbal dexterity, and rhythmic creativity. 

Whoever said “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me,” never played the Dozens.  Or perhaps, they did.  For the Dozens was training ground.  It taught you how to keep your wits about you as the world tries to strip you of dignity.  In the midst of mocking hoots and hollers, you must not succumb to the shame.  You must not succumb to fight or flight.  You must stand firm for it is for freedom that you have been set free. 

Paul is talking about people’s mommas.  And in the parlance of the playground, “liar liar pants on fire.”

Where in your Bible does it talk about Hagar being at Mount Sinai?  Wasn’t it Sarah’s children that were given the covenant at that mountain? 

But Paul doesn’t even explicitly name Sarah.  Because Paul’s not actually talking about Sarah.  Nor is he talking about the actual Hagar.  He states this is an allegory.  It is all metaphor.  This is the only time the word allegory appears in the whole Bible.  Which makes me wonder, was Paul trying out a literary device?  And given that we have no record of him doing it again, perhaps he was not pleased with his allegorical experiment.

He was borrowing a genre from the Hellenistic empire and sampling familiar riffs from the Hebrew canon.  The drama of Isaac and Hagar; Sarah and Ishmael; is deconstructed by the poetry of Isaiah. 

In Isaiah, there is a barren woman who has no husband.  Remember Sarah is barren and Hagar has no husband.  So, Paul is talking about neither woman; or maybe a conflation of both women.  Paul’s playing a dangerous game.  He’s intent is to break us free from biblical literalism.  He’s shouting “don’t confuse the finger that is pointing to the moon, for the moon.”  It is for freedom that we have been set free.

Unfortunately, by naming names and then using them as metaphors and ciphers, he models using people as means to the end of obtaining that freedom.  People still do this.  Now, on the playground of Facebook, people, supposed adults, still play the Dozens.  No more jokes about “yo’ momma,’ we label each other with the epitaphs: racist, communist, ignorant, bigoted, unenlightened, entitled, selfish. 

Not only in social media; we also play these honor shame games in international politics.  One could misappropriate Paul’s words to defend keeping Palestinians behind walls and checkpoints.  Self-righteously believing that Hagar’s heirs have no right to share in our freedom. 

Oddly in the previous chapter, Paul declares that in Christ, there is no longer Jew or Greek; slave or free; male or female.  This disconnect in Paul reveals the tension felt by many of us.  We live in the already and the not yet.  We are already set free but we are still living in a fragmented world. 

I feel that Paul tries to gloss over the differences and fragmentation with pseudo-spirituality.  He talks of a Jerusalem above, a pie in the sky.  But we are flesh and blood living on the ground.  We need a spirituality that is born out of our lived experiences.  We need a spirituality that has meat and gravitas. 

Inspired by Paul, we need to put an end to this dichotomy of flesh and spirit. 

In the fullness of time, God became flesh and dwelt among us.  When Jesus preaches to his largest crowd, he scares most of them away by telling them that they must eat of his flesh.  We are a flesh and blood religion.  “This is my body broken for you.” 

We are offered salvation in the flesh, through the flesh, for the here and now.  Our response is often fight or flight.  We run away, we hide, we deny, we betray, we beat, we whip, and we crucify the flesh that offers our flesh freedom. 

The cross is not God’s punishment meant for us but transferred to an innocent scapegoat.  The cross is our rejection of God’s offer of salvation for the here and now in and through the flesh.  Jesus absorbed the hoots and hollers of the mocking mob and stated “forgive them for they know not what they do.” 

The shame of the cross is not where the story ends.  There is an empty tomb.  God’s not done with the project of redeeming the flesh, because there is a bodily resurrection.  We are the body.   We are the children of the promise of the resurrection.  It is for freedom that we have been set free.  Stand FIRM.  STAND firm.  Stand firm, in that freedom. 

With the grace of God, may it be so.   

[bentleystewart]

Compassion for Members of God's Family

“Sheep Go to Heaven, Goats Go to Hell” ~ Cake

            Today’s passage comes from the 25th Chapter of the Gospel according to Matthew …I went for the liturgical rhetoric because I incorporated part of this passage when I preached at Sleepy Hollow Presbyterian Church last Sunday.  While Sunday focused on verses 35-40, today I encounter the whole parable, verses 31 – 46.

            Here’s part of what I said Sunday (more or less):

“We are called, individually and corporately, to concrete and courageous acts of compassion.  Jesus is calling us to acts of mercy to particular people that the society continues to push to the margins.  Jesus is calling them ‘the least of these’ because that is how we think and treat them.  ‘Them’; excuse me, that’s how we treat these children of God.  Remember, Jesus says ‘whatever you have done for one of the least of these that are members of my family.’  Jesus is confronting us with society’s biases, our biases.  Jesus is placing up our biases next to divine kinship which is how he sees people. 

“He’s stating ‘when you treat people with dignity out of respect for their sacred worth then you have seen me.  You have entered into my way that it is truly life-giving.’” 

            In reading the full parable, something that sticks out is what is not said.  When Jesus speaks to the ones on his left, “the goats,” he refers to the “least of these” but there is no mention of divine familial relationship.  Perhaps, we just are to remember it from when he tells “the sheep” and infer it here.  Or maybe, that’s precisely the point.  When we forget about our divine kinship, we only see “the least of these.”

            What claim should “the least of these” have on my life?  Am I my sister’s and my brother’s keeper?  These are different questions.

            Depending on the language family, the word “compassion” has different nuances.  Latin tells us it means to suffer with.  The Sanskrit word most often translated as compassion is karuna, which means something like “mournful, lamenting distress.”  Interestingly, but not surprisingly, as Buddhism gets Westernized, compassion becomes “wanting the best for someone.”  In Semitic languages, such as Hebrew and Aramaic, which Jesus probably spoke, rechem is a variant of the word for womb.  To be compassionate towards someone is to be oriented to them in such a way as if they had come from your womb, as if they are your children.  To be compassionate is to have wombish disposition for the world. 

            I might give some charity, voluntarily of course, for the least of these.  Family has a different claim.  And how we treat the family of the king has nothing to do with volunteerism. 

            I’m sensitive to the limitations of the word “king:” patriarchy, colonialism, feudal aristocracy, and on it goes.  However, if I’m honest, I don’t like there being a king that’s not me.  It’s an authority issue.  I can feel good about my generosity, when it is charity.  When it is divine mandate, there is less opportunity for feel good.  Oh, there’s less opportunity for pride.

            Last night, I got sucked into a Facebook thread about taxation.  “Isn’t a progressive tax unfair?  Doesn’t it amount to stealing?”

            What’s shocking to me is that more and more this position is being vociferously preached by people of faith.  One of their arguments: government shouldn’t take over the role of the church. 

There are two problems with this argument:

·         As the tax burdens have been lessened over the last thirty years, churches have not seen an increase in giving.  Sure the December rush to get a write off still occurs.  But ask Church treasurers, giving continues to go down.  Therefore, churches have less to give away to missions.

·         Additionally, the American church has been hijacked by consumerist culture.  Churches not only have less to give, but their budget percentages reflect a greater “us,” really “me,” focus.  There’s increasingly less and less for people outside the church walls.   

So, how is the church doing?  Can it replace the government?

Habitat for Humanity, the faith-based charity, has built a total of 30,000 housing units in the US since 1978.  Praise God!  (I mean that sincerely). 

However, the US Department of Housing and Urban Development provides Sec. 8 housing vouchers for low income families (30% of income paid as rent, rest of rent subsidized).  This government program benefits 1,400,000 households annually (millions of more households are eligible for this subsidy but cannot access it due to the limited funds for the program.)

According to Bread for the World, a Christian Organization aimed at policies affecting hunger, the total food aid provided to needy Americans by private charity amounts to 6% of all food aid provided by the US government.

I recently read of a church that raised, in one day, enough money for a new building.  They did it debt free and they credit as the key to their success that for every dollar they raised for the building they were also raising a dollar for mission.  That’s right; they received double what they needed to build.  And, they did it one day.  BTW, this wasn’t in my lifetime.  This was nearly 60 years ago. 

If the king returned today, would we, the church, be sheep that are herded to the right?  Or, the goats on the left?

[bentleystewart]

Love, Autonomy and Mental Health

“Very truly, I tell you, when you were younger, you used to fasten your own belt and to go wherever you wished. But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go." John 21:18

Who would sign up to be led where they do not want to go?

I marvel at people who seem to profess faith without a bit of catch in their voice.  I mean, how does one willingly respond to the call of discipleship without any resistance?  I wonder do they have better insight into the life they are gaining or are their current lives so miserable that they jump at somebody else leading.

Or, is it, as I suspect, that nobody took them to the fine print of the call to discipleship.  You are taken, or carried away, to where you do not wish to go.  Seriously, why? I mean, seriously!

This verse saved my life.  Not only this verse.  But this verse was key.

A little over twelve years ago, I stopped sleeping.  It was my first manic episode since getting married eleven months before.  I had self-diagnosed with bipolar over seven years before.  I never told anybody.  This was my reluctant coming out circus. 

Two weeks ago was Mental Health Awareness Week.  Today is my thirteenth anniversary.  They go together because my family, and particularly Janel, saved my life.

Twelve years ago, while soaring up to the third heaven, summoned by the angels of my biochemistry, I knew I needed help.  However, I was scared; downright paranoid. 

I remember John Herman, our pastor at Desert Palm UCC in Tempe, flew back from visiting his gravely ill father to pick me up from my first of three hospital trips that week.  He was the first person to witness me admit that I suspected that I had bipolar.    

He took me to his office.  We sat for a long time.  It must have been a really long time, because even in a manic state, I knew it was a long time. 

He absorbed my endless banter.  He sorted through the rubbish of my word salad.  He latched on to the fact that I kept returning to the Peter story.  I was over identifying with that narrative.  How would I answer the question, “Who do you say that I am?”  Would I, like Peter, get the answer right and then immediately screw it up?  Would I brashly confess devotion and then demonstrate denial?

He guided the conversation back to my family.  I knew, and he knew that I knew, I was going to need help in order to be the kind of husband and father I hoped to be.  Bipolar in college, while single, is a good time.  It wasn’t working for my family.

“Are you ready to go where you do not wish to go?”

The question hung in the air.  The needle slid off the record.  I was free from the onslaught of my verbal diarrhea for the first time in days.   

            “For my family, yes.”

            You see it is my commitment to discipleship, the claim of authority that scripture has on my life, my covenant with Janel, and my call to be a father that liberates me from the mental illness of autonomy. 

            I am sick with the idea that I can run my own life.  It is a chronic illness that flares up in my own life almost daily. 

            Fortunately, I still have friends that hear me.  With the gentle brushes of an archeologist, they sift through the mire of what I think is giving me freedom.  They find me and it is their love that frees me to love.

            Janel and I wear wedding bands inscribed in Hebrew.  It is the first line of Ruth’s covenant vow to Naomi.  “For unto where, you will walk, I will walk.”

            Thankful for all the people that support Janel and I in our wild and precious journey together; everybody knows who got the better deal and yet everybody knows that Janel loves a challenge. 

            Grace and gratitude. 

[bentleystewart]

Knowing the Voice of G-d

“the sheep follow him because they know his voice.”  ~ John 10:4

            My eldest’s voice has changed and continues to change.  I’m reminded of this most when I call his cell phone and get his voice mail.  He hasn’t changed his outgoing message in more than a year.  I get startled and weepy every time I hear this voice from the past.

            I latch on to small words for a season.  Everyday words that we use casually and we are confident in their meanings intrigue me.  Most recently, I was fascinated with the word “walk,” for about a year.  Before that, it was briefly “sight.”  And, before that, it was “hope” for almost two years.  Lately, it is “voice.”

            In fact, I’m writing this blog post instead of working on a paper about “finding voice” and “listening others into voice” as a metaphor for resurrection. 

            Yesterday, I had the privilege and weight of preaching.  Sometimes writing sermons comes easy for me.  This wasn’t one of those times. 

            One of my favorite quotes from one of my favorite authors kept popping up in various places in the various drafts of the sermon manuscript.  I love the quote, but I resisted using it because it almost feels trite from overuse.  It’s the Buechner quote about vocation:

“the place that God you is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” 

BTW, I ended up using the quote three times.

            Many who know and love the quote have never read it in its larger context, which is about discerning God’s voice from all the other voices clamoring for our attention: the voices of family; society; ego. 

            I started and abandoned this discernment project four months ago.  We were in the midst of deciding whether to uproot our family and move from Central Florida to Northern California so I could return to studies at San Francisco Theological Seminary.  I always knew what I wanted.  I was just going through the perquisite period of prayerful discernment.  Was I open to God leading in another direction?  I don’t know.  Was this choice where God was leading?  A lot, beyond my control, had to happen for this to work.  Does that mean it is of God?

            Now, I’m returning to the discernment project, but with a different focus.  The Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) has a discernment packet for those considering the call to be a church planter.  The call to ministry is ridiculous enough.  In fact, many in seminary are still wrestling with the call to ministry.  The call to seminary is so massive that it doesn’t need the extra crazy weight of “and then what?”  So, church planting has to be absolutely “toys in the attic” bonkers.  It requires discernment on steroids.

            Step One of this discernment packet is thirty days of reflecting on selected passages of scripture.   It has taken me four months to get to the seventh day of the thirty day challenge.  It has taken me many years to own that I feel a strong pull towards new church starts.  And yet, I still don’t like saying it.  I don’t want to plant a church.  And yet, I feel called to pastor a faith community that I don’t think exists …not yet. 

            John 10:1-13 is the passage for day 7 (of the fourth month). 

I love that Jesus says “I have come that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”  For many people, ranging from the religious to the anti-religious, with many ‘spiritual but not religious’ in between, religion reduces life.  Religion sucks the air out of the room.  Religion flattens imagination.  Religion is suspicious of intelligence.  Religion destroys curiosity.  Religion fosters prejudice. 

All the while, Jesus proclaims an invitation to abundant life.  This is one of the reasons that I’m already praying for a not yet community. 

Right before I left Orlando to return to SFTS, a dear friend asked me if there were people at this seminary who believed in the Bible.  This beloved family member who has known me my whole life is concerned that I will continue to be led astray down the liberal path where “the thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy.”  (Those are the words that come right before the nice words about abundant life).  I saw red.  I went hot.  I said something like:

“We take the Bible seriously, not literally.  In fact, it is because we take the Bible seriously that we read the whole thing, over and over again.  We study the historical context.  We study the work of archeologists and anthropologists in order to get a better understanding of the world in which the texts were first written and read aloud.  We take the Bible so seriously that we know that to take it literally is to reduce the Bible to dead dogma and miss the living Word of God that breaks open the stoniest of hearts and calls the community into ever more faithful discipleship.”

I am grateful for the community of faith, the mentors and family that nurtured me.  They loved and guided me into my own profession of faith in God through Jesus, in whom I find my way, my truth, and my life.  The taught me to listen to the voice of God.  Many of them know that I believe that I’m being faithful to my understanding of where that voice is leading me.  In my narcissistic moments, I imagine that they have prayer meetings in hopes that I wake up and hear the voice calling me back to their fold.    

I hear their voices from time to time and I get weepy.  I’m grateful for the faith that they handed down to me and which we all still hold dearly.  I’m grateful that we continue to come to table refusing to let our different understandings of faith divide us, when the truth of our faith claims us all.  And, I’m sad that their understanding of the faith is like the hymns they taught me.  The tunes are familiar and still sing deeply into my soul, while the words belong to a religion that flattens life rather than invite to a life, abundant.

So, am I following God’s voice or a thief’s?  How do I know?  How does anybody know for certain?

We walk by faith, not by sight.  (I told you I liked those words).   

[bentleystewart]

The Politics of Fairness

“…but, it’s not fair.”

My mother always calmly responded to this all too frequent protest of mine with the truth that “life is not fair.”  I had no come back to this Jedi mind game.  Of course, life isn’t fair.  However, aren’t we supposed to strive for fairness? 

Is the current tax code fair?  Is it fair to pass on so much debt to our children?

Budgets are moral documents.  Is ours fair?

Could a budget ever be fair?  After all, “life is not fair.”

Perhaps, it is not about fairness.  Perhaps, it is about leaving it better than you found it.  I worry that I’m not giving my children the same opportunities my parents gave me.  

Many of us share this concern and it grows into a fear of scarcity that rips us apart.  We fear that there isn’t enough and that there never will be enough.

The good and right desire to provide for my family can be perverted into a fear of scarcity.  If there is not enough for me and mine, than I need to get mine now.  If lots of people operate this way, I become afraid that everybody is after mine.  All of this fear of scarcity makes scarcity a reality.  Our fear that the world is becoming worse actually motivates behaviors that ensure that the world is becoming worse.

There are good people of all political persuasions who give of their lives to make the world a better place.  They use their time, their talent and their resources to make a better world and they vote their values.  Sadly, there are people of all political persuasions who are only interested in getting more for themselves.  They, too, vote their values.  The fact that all of these votes count the same is both fair and unfortunate.

Once again, it is not about fairness. 

I know many people who are brilliant and talented, who have worked hard, taken risks, and made sacrifices to build amazing businesses.  I also know people who appear to squander everything they are given and behave as if they are entitled to more.  Why should the first group pay for the second?  It is not fair.

Of course, most people don’t fall into either of those groups.  They work hard.  They pour their talents and efforts into someone else’s business.  Hopefully, they are well compensated.  Sometimes they are.  Often they are not.

So, what is everybody’s fair share?

When I was only 19, the Rev. Dr. Mattie Elizabeth Hart broke away from her lecture notes and stopped class to say to me in her anglophile southern accent, “Bentley, you have been given much, much will be required of you.”

In other words, “life isn’t fair.”

We live in the wealthiest nation the world has ever known.  We are addicted to and bored with the staggering technological innovation going on all around us.  Most importantly, we are participants in the longest democratic experiment in history. We stand on the shoulders of giants.

Do you have a belly button?  You are NOT self-made.

We have been given much and therefore much will be required from all of us to leave behind something even better.  It’s not about fairness.  It’s about relinquishing the fear of scarcity in favor of cultivating greater opportunities for human flourishing for each other and all of those that follow. 

[bentleystewart]

I simply adore my sister

If you were born in the 70s or 80s (and are female) I presume zero explanation is needed for the title of this post. You were either the “Be Fri” or the “St Ends”, and you were probably one (or both) multiple times. For some reason I found the “Be Fri” to be the more popular, cooler girl in the...

[bentleystewart]

Remembering Promises to Prosper (on Day Six; part One)

I like to think that I have a remarkable memory.   I believe this because frequently others have remarked on it.  One thing my memory reveals to me is that my memory used to be better …crisper. 

I’m the family historian.  For years, the extended family on my mother’s side gathers on Thanksgiving and other times throughout the year, but always on Thanksgiving and at rotating houses.

“Bentley, at whose house was Thanksgiving that year?  Were we in Jacksonville or St. Pete?  And, who all was there that year?  And, who stole that hambone that year?”

My grandfather was a chef.  He made exquisite bean soup.  The recipe required a hambone.  Everybody wanted to take the hambone home to make Papa Gus’ soup. 

Except for the hambone, I could answer all of those queries with certitude.  The hambone was always a mystery.  I could remember who accused whom.  I could remember the logic of the accusations and whether it was supported by any forensic evidence. 

In recent years, people have confessed to taking the hambone from differing annual gatherings.  So, the mystery is still being revealed. 

My confidence in my memory is waning.  It takes longer to recall certain memories and details have become fuzzy; a yellowing of my mental pictures. 

My children have damaged my certitude in my memory.  Partly, because parenting children causes brain damage.  Also, both boys have razor sharp memories and we all don’t remember things the same way.

I have come to put a lot of weight in Carter’s memory.  Leighton’s is still being tested, but trust me his memory is really good …just highly subjective. 

Perhaps, Carter has mastered better the skill, that skill that all of us revisionists who claim to be objective learn, of hiding his biases.  More convincing is that he’s self-possessed with conviction that he remembers correctly.   

 I don’t know where he gets this.

The other day, while in the car running errands for Carter’s latest camping adventure, he and I were reflecting on our memories.  Not specific memories; rather, we discussed how we understand our memories to work and how it is that we know that we know.  Yep, we’re those kinds of geeks.

We both confessed that neither of us have photographic memories.  I can remember what book, or article, in which the information was contained that I’m trying to recall.  Sometimes, I can remember exactly where on the page the particular sentence is.  But I can’t see it and then read it.  I can remember how and where I was sitting and if I highlighted the sentence or made notes in the margin; or, if the sentence stopped me cold and I put the book down and went for a walk to process.  I can see the page with all of the type, but I can’t make out the words.

I told him that my memory is more phonographic than photographic.  This is how I managed to squeak by in college, even though I stopped buying all the books my sophomore year.  (I needed beer money).  I don’t recommend this. 

I could remember verbatim, well almost, what the professor had said in a lecture.  I learned that whatever the professors said was actually more important to them than what was actually written in the books they assigned. 

My memory is aided by tone of voice.

However, I’ve realized that I’m not as good remembering telephone conversations as I am with face to face interactions.  I do better if I can remember posture and gestures and any other movements or background noise, in addition to tone.  Counter-intuitively, I remember better when I can focus on (and be distracted by) more details than less.

My memory is highly contextual.  Or put differently, it is more dynamic than static; more relational than substantive. 

This detour down memory lane was supposed to be an introduction to my reflections on Jeremiah 29:11-13, those will now have to be posted later as part two of day six. 

You see, what had happened was …I saw the scripture citation and immediately thought of the verse “for surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope.”  However, I wasn’t certain I was remembering the right passage.  I was confident that the verse was in that neighborhood if not precisely at that address. 

So, I had to look it up.  I guessed correctly.  My static substantive memory is good, but fuzzy.

I then had to ask does the truth of this verse cohere with my memory.  Or asked another way, are my memories of how the dynamic living God moves in and through my relationships and circumstances offering valid testimony that points to this truth?

I often hear people say that “there are no coincidences.”  By this, I think they mean that everything has a purpose; or, that there is a reason. For some, everything has to have purpose or it is all absurd.  They equate reason with meaning. 

I think life contains some absurdity but that doesn’t eliminate meaning. 

Requiring purpose from every event is to reduce meaning and demands static and substantive memories, which most of us don’t remember as accurately as we would like to believe.  If we engage the dynamic, relational type of memory, larger themes emerge.    

While I believe it is futile to assign meaning to every circumstance in life, I do believe that God is at work in the midst of the randomness of circumstances, life, and all of creation, redeeming it for the good purposes of God. 

Do we succumb to fears of future scarcity and hardships that evoke memories of disappointment or do we trust the promise of a future filled hope that enables us to recall all the ways that God has provided for us?

[bentleystewart]

A Prophet’s Call?

***I wrote this three years ago when I was discerning whether I felt called to go back to seminary. I was using a discernment tool for potential church planters designed by Hope Partnership of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). On this day, I was supposed to journal on the verse below and suddenly, I was writing about abortion.****

“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you.”  Jeremiah 1:5

This evocative phrase opens the call of the prophet, Jeremiah. It follows a pattern of other call narratives: God calls, prophet tries to sidestep the call by listing their inadequacies and diminishing their abilities, and God states (basically) that God equips the called rather than calling the equipped. 

When facing challenging circumstances, when you have to do what you know you should do but desperately want to avoid, this verse is comforting. God’s got your back. God knew you before all of this. It can steady the nerves, more than any other self-soothing, to believe that God appointed you for this task in this time and place. 

…and so, the call narratives have become a template for devotional piety when facing crises.

I wonder if these call narratives are used as frequently by people trying to discern their own vocation by comparing them to their own stories of being called. I wonder what they have to say about my own sense of calling.

I certainly identify with feeling unworthy. But, I don’t know what to make of being “consecrated before birth.” Is this for Jeremiah only? Or, is this declaration of sacred worth wider? Is this for all the prophets? Or, does it also include all the faithful who serve God? Or, does God have a purpose for every human being and therefore we’ve all been consecrated? 

More recently, Jeremiah 1:5 has had special meaning for some Pro-Life activists. I don’t want to write about abortion. I don’t like talking about abortion or even thinking about it.

But of course, this is a call narrative about a reluctant prophet. So, being squeamish isn’t a good excuse for avoidance. 

In high school, I was adamantly Pro-Life. I had tee-shirts. I knew the truth and you needed to hear it from me.

Now I’m much more conflicted and far less confident. I’ve studied the beautiful coherence of Catholic teaching on the seamless garment of life.  And yet, I believe that abortion should be legal. I believe that, for some women, the choice of whether or not to terminate a pregnancy will be the most difficult decision they will ever make. They should be given the space to include (& exclude) whomever they wish for support in navigating their future. 

It’s a choice full of unknowns. No matter how much you are aware that bringing a child into the world is a difficult undertaking, the reality is always far more than you imagined. Also, you can’t even begin to fathom how God will transform you through the life of your child.

I’m not looking for a debate. Really, I’m not. And most efforts to persuade me on this issue actually galvanize me. I imagine, at this point, that’s true of all of us.    

All these legislative efforts (redefining personhood, transvaginal ultrasounds, etc.) to chip away at Roe v. Wade have activated my convictions. 

I believe abortion should be legal because I believe it should be as safe as possible -- safe from back alleys. I believe this choice should also be safe from protesters with their grotesque signs and shouts of shame, safe from coercive ultrasounds, and safe from legislators’ obsession with denying access. 

One day, while wearing one of my tee-shirts that boldly declared “Choose Life,” a friend said to me, “I agree with you. We just disagree about which word should be emphasized.”

I’m not sure either word should get more weight. And to muddy the waters further, I’m not even sure that choosing life always equates to the same decisions. 

[bentleystewart]

Here's the Church, Here's the Steeple ~ Day Four Part Two

...open the doors, where are all the people?

Some people don't go to church because at some point the church wounded them.  This wounding runs the spectrum from hurt feelings to being the victim of abuse.  Some wounding is part of wounded people being in relationships with each other.  However, abuse counters the will of God and is antithetical to the gospel; and therefore, should never be swept under the rug.  The church must confront the sins of her past and present to become a movement of wholeness in a fragmented world.   

Some people don't go because it is boring.  I'm of mixed feelings on this argument. Often, it is boring.  I remember from my Young Life days the mantra of its founder, Jim Rayburn, "it's a sin to bore a kid with the gospel." However, I don't think the answer is gospeltainment. 

First, the church can't compete with Hollywood or even Bollywood.  More importantly, spirituality teaches us to focus on the transcendent, on others, really anything other than ourselves.  Entertainment reinforces our belief that it really is all about us. 

Some don’t go to church because they can’t reconcile their heads and hearts.  They can’t square their modern sensibilities with a tradition that has been stained by antiscientific superstition; not to mention sexism, racism, and genocide. 

Some turn away from the churches that preach with certitude a premodern worldview, because they don’t want to participate in pathological delusions.  Others find the hyper rational churches that give ingenious, albeit revisionist, explanations for the phenomena that the “primitives” experienced as miraculous to be spiritually arid.

There is another alternative.  One doesn’t have to divorce head from heart and either choose superstition over science or empirical facts over spiritual depth and meaning.  However, seeking reconciliation between head and heart might be futile.  At least, it has been for me.

Going to a church service doesn’t yield reconciliation.  Rather, it’s a time when I’m confronted with the absurd disconnects and invited to hold the tension between head and heart.   Life is full of ambiguities that we diligently avoid and ignore.  Why choose to take time out weekly to wallow in the ambiguity?  

Why indeed?  

Perhaps, it is because that strange tension births a space where we can imagine a reality beyond current circumstances.  We reclaim our identities as children of a wandering Aramean.  We are blessed to be a blessing in the world but not of the world.

[bentleystewart]

"Here is the Church, Here is the Steeple" on the Fourth Day

...open the doors, where are all the people?

This cheeky, alt version of the Sunday school rhyme would make me giggle as a child.  (Please hide your surprise).

Of course, when I look around at half full pews, I don't have to ask where all the people are.  They are doing things I'd like to be doing.  They are sleeping in and having brunch with friends.  They are at the beach.  They are taking their dogs to the park. They are doing things that I don't like to do, but should be doing, like exercising and gardening.

There is a more salient interrogative than where; why.  Why is church peripheral to many people's lives?  I'm not asking why people of other faiths don't attend church.  I'm curious about the people profess to be spiritual and when you do some digging you realize that their spirituality flows out of and within the large stream of Christianity. 

(I’ll explore a few of the “whys” in part 2).

First, what do I mean by church?  I don’t mean the physical building with a steeple of nursery rhyme fame.  A corrective to the popular tendency of equating the church with a building is the hymn “We Are the Church,” which succeeds didactically more than aesthetically.   The chorus goes: 

I am the church.

You are the church.

We are the church together.

All who follow Jesus,

all around the world,

yes, we’re the church together.

There’s also the verse that goes after the rhyme directly:

The church is not a building.

The church is not a steeple.

The church is not a resting place.

The church is a people.

“Now, isn’t that special?”

I’m neither talking about a building, nor the people of the Church Universal.  I mean participating in the life of a faith community that nurtures one another in their discipleship journey and through which they offer their gifts to the world. 

One important aspect of the faith community’s life together is worship, which may include smells and bells, speaking in tongues, or 3 point sermons.  Worship can be as loud as a rock concert or can explore the vastness of silence, as in a Meeting of Friends. 

After stating the church is not a building, I don’t want to fall into the trap of equating the whole of the life of a faith community to a worship service.  It doesn’t need to be a service at all.  Except, I do think it needs to be a regular gathering where people are reminded of whose they are and reoriented to postures of praise, gratitude and generosity. 

Worship should include and incorporate the gifts of everyone. 

  “everyone whom God has given the skill and know-how for making everything involved in the worship of the Sanctuary as commanded by God, are to start to work." Moses summoned Bezalel and Oholiab along with all whom God had gifted with the ability to work skillfully with their hands. They were eager to get started and engage in the work.”  (The scripture passage for fourth day of this discernment project is Exodus 36:1-7).

[bentleystewart]

Day 3 ~ The Ridiculous Predicament of Theology

Because I’m too lazy to actually find my copy of the book, let alone find the quote in the book, I’m going to rely on the accuracy of the internet for these words from Frederick Buechner:

“Theology is the study of God and his ways. For all we know, dung beetles may study man and his ways and call it humanology. If so, we would probably be more touched and amused than irritated. One hopes that God feels likewise.”

While I wish for more inclusive language for God and humans, I love this insight.

If we could cull the wisdom of the ages and cobble together the best of theological profundity, what would we have?

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the LORD.” Isaiah 55:8

I love theology.  I dig reflecting on life, art, experiences, food, pretty much anything and everything through a lens of spirituality that perceives the sacred in the ordinary.  The examined life of making meaning over coffee and beer is the life for me.  However, all of it reveals a lot about how I think that God moves in and through life, the universe, me and my circumstances.  But what does it reveal about what God may or may not be doing?  What does all the God talk get us?

While preparing this post, my mind kept wandering to the term Moralistic Therapeutic Deism, a term coined by the sociologist Christian Smith, in Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers (2005).   According to (the interweb reviews of) the study, today’s teenagers view God as a "divine therapist" whose chief goal is to boost people's self-esteem.

The beliefs of MTD are:

1. A god exists who created and ordered the world and watches over human life on earth.

2. God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions.

3. The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.

4. God does not need to be particularly involved in one's life, except when God is needed to resolve a problem.

5. Good people go to heaven when they die.

Is my faith any different from MTD?  If so, how?

I mean, I would never claim that the central goal of my life is to be happy.   But what does my life reveal?  Many of my decisions are about happiness.  Making my family happy makes me happy.  Making others happy makes me feel good about myself.  Even delaying gratification, which I’m not very good at, is still about happiness.

Perhaps, I’m a MTD.

I affirm the value of therapy.  I believe that God is interested in our wholeness and wellness, but that’s different than just feeling good about ourselves.  It is about growing a soul. 

Additionally, I do believe that God wants a moral creation, where we value the sacred worth of one another.  However, I believe that God is actively engaged in this process ….this ethical revolution.

In short, I’m not a deist.  I profess to be a panentheist.  While the Creator and the creation are not the same, God animates all things.  God is the air in which we move and breathe.  God is active in and through all things.

I  don’t subscribe to Moralistic Therapeutic Deism.  At this moment, I describe my theology as Panentheistic Soul-growing Revolution.

I certainly hope that's what God is doing. 

[bentleystewart]

My wife makes me giggle

Ok it must be Friday, did I just blog about a binder? In poem form?

[bentleystewart]

All art is autobiographical; the pearl is the oyster’s autobiography.

Federico Fellini and other great creators define art

[bentleystewart]

The spiritual path is about what we give up, not what we get. We seem to always want to get something, spiritual insights or experiences, as a kind of commodity. But dont these wisdom traditions teach us that, in essence, theres nothing to get?

Tim Olmsted, “The Great Experiment”

[bentleystewart]

Did you hear the one about ...Day 2

A priest and a rabbi enter a bar …   …and that’s why the second tattoo is of a duck.   I know, I never could tell a joke well.  My dad was a master joke teller.  He once told me that the way he knew he had crafted a good joke was if he heard it being retold, unknowingly, to him by a third party in the next few weeks.  I didn’t inherit that gift.      While I can’t tell a joke, occasionally, I can spin a good yarn, and at times I can hold my own in engaging in some witty repartee.  I know humor better than I can produce it.  Janel is the funniest person I know and when I tell her that she states that I’m a good audience.    I love comedy, but I’m not very funny.   I devour poetry, but I write bad poetry …mostly.   (There’s a few that don’t make me gag on the sentimentality).      Jokes and riddles, poems and parables, proverbs and aphorisms, while each are genres in and of themselves, are all part of what the Hebrews called mashal.   So, mashal is any short memorable form of speech.  Its purpose can be to entertain, to educate, to inculcate moral virtues.  Mashal makes us laugh and sometimes cry with laughter, and on rarer occasions, just cry when we are confronted with a world that isn’t as it should be.  It makes us think and make new connections and see things in new ways.  At its most profound level, mashal inspires and challenges us to imagine new ways of doing and being.    This is all a long introduction to the fact that today’s scripture reading for my discernment project is Proverbs 22:17-21 and that I have much deeper appreciation for parables over aphorisms.  I like poetics more than proverbs.  I love praying the Psalter.  However, after the book of Psalms, I usually skip over Proverbs and move into the existential angst of Ecclesiastes.    I had more thoughts about yesterday’s passage from Isaiah.  I thought about writing that today instead of reflecting on boring old Proverbs.  Then I remembered that only 48 hours ago I committed myself to a disciplined process of discernment.  So, I am reluctantly listening to Proverbs.   Verse 17 of the 22nd proverb begins the third major section of the book, known as “the words of the wise.”   Really?  We all want to be wise.  But who wants to be on the receiving end of wise words?  I want to pontificate and wax philosophic but I don’t want to listen to you tell me what I know I should do but don’t want to do.    “Incline your ear and hear my words and apply your mind to my teaching  …so that your trust will be in the LORD.”    Apply your mind to the teaching.  This is not mindless following of rules.  Faith is not blind devotion.     Even the boring aphorisms are there not to indoctrinate us, but rather to teach us trust.  And trust is risky.  What if, when I incline my ear, I hear words that may be good for me that I don’t want to hear?  Actually, that’s not a “what if.”  We have proven that hypothesis.  To be on a walk of faith or in any covenant relationship is to be called upon to make sacrifices and go where you don’t want to go.  To incline an ear is to risk.  It is to take a leap of faith.  It requires trust that, while what you think is good might be exchanged for something wilder than you can imagine, in all manner of ways it shall be well.   

[bentleystewart]

There are so many lives I want to live, so many styles I would like to inhabit. In me sleeps Zorba's concern to allow no lonely woman to remain comfortless (Here am I Lord, send me), Camus' passion to lessen the suffering of the innocent, Hemingway's drive to live and write with lucidity, and the unheroic desire to see each day end with tranquility and a shared cup of tea. I am so many, yet I may be only one. I mourn for all the selves I kill when I decide to be a single person. Decision is a cutting off, a castration. I travel one path only by neglecting many. Actual existence is tragic, but fantastic existence (which evades choice and limitation) is pathetic. The human choice may be between tragedy and pathos, Oedipus and Willy Loman. So I turn my back on small villages I will never see, strange flesh I will never touch, ills I will never cure, and I choose to be in the world as a husband and a father, an explorer of ideas and styles of life. Yet perhaps Zorba will not leave me altogether. I would not like to live without dancing, without unknown roads to explore, without the confidence that my actions were helpful to some.

~ Sam Keen