Not Venial Sins

My Creative Process class includes an assignment to create something during each of the next 35 days.  Many years have past since I wrote poems on a regular basis--I was in my 20's when I did so (I'm now 70).  My project will be to write a short poem each day and post it on this blog. I hope you will find them interesting. 

Not Venial Sins

I've heard it said that old age is when you look back on life
And regret the temptations that you did NOT yield to.
Oh yes, I have my share of those,
Yet my major sins are of a different order
Not venial sins so much as embracing - instead of life -
A clammy death of nameless fears--
Of treacherous undertows
Threatening to expose the simple truths
Of passion's vernal reticence and innocence
Now framed and shackled in ugly shame.

 

Print Page

Fitting Room

What do you do when you feel like you don't fit in?
a. I don't let it bother me.
b. I act like it doesn't bother me.
c. I try even harder to fit in.
d. I back off or quit trying.
e. I find somewhere else to fit in.
(Serendipity Bible 10th Anniversary Edition, page 1546).

The most important thing to recognize is that neither blame nor umbrage is called for when one does not fit in. The group that I do not fit into (say a gathering of nuclear physicists or brain surgeons) does not suggest that the group is to blame for my feelings of alienation. Likewise, it should not be assumed that I feel any umbrage whatever for not fitting into these groups whose intensity of focus I do not share.

Now in ordinary life I do not fit into exclusive country clubs nor do I fit into parties where alcohol flows freely. But here again, neither blame nor umbrage is necessary.  The world is so abundant in interests that we all should feel free to find our own niche without any emotional freight sabotaging feelings or relationships.  There is great expanse in God's universe and many abundant blessings.

Print Page

Essential Acceptance

Where is the hardest for you to feel accepted?
a. in my family
b. at school
c. at church/youth group
d. at parties/social gatherings
e. by the opposite sex
f.  into groups of cliques
(Serendipity Bible 10th Anniversary Edition, page 1546).

It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena....  
--Theodore Roosevelt (http://www.joyofquotes.com)

In the past, acceptance meant survival. It still extensively does so. Without acceptance many social functions of humanity could simply not be addressed or accomplished. Therefore, the absence of acceptance is one of the most stressful of all dilemmas. Even though it is unlikely the single-minded critic will ever accept us, we must stand firm in the knowledge that there are souls who do – even if secretly and from afar.

Print Page

Counter Strategies of Service

On a scale of 1 to 10, what degree of meaning have you received from your work (or other main activity) at the following times?
a. right now
b. five years ago
c. 10 years ago
d. when I was most fulfilled – at the time I was doing________.
(Serendipity Bible 10th Anniversary Edition, page 1544). 

With a few exceptions, I have been blessed with a sense of significance in all my tasks.  The exceptions occurred within periods when I was a student in middle and high school, to some degree when I was in undergraduate school, and sporadically during my year of teaching in Miami (Carol City).  At all other times–even during dry spells–I was extensively able to summon a sense of significance and meaning primarily through service to customers as variously defined (including but not limited to humanity and the Godhead).

This means that stressful situations have been redeemed through a sense of service– bringing with it a sense of accomplishment and peace. Sometimes this has required quite an intentional choice of determinative attitude–a refusal to give in to the angst of meaninglessness through counter strategies of service. In all these matters in terms of value and bearing, Christianity has underwritten the logic and raison d'être of the service ethic.

Print Page

An Awesome Payback to Make

What is the longest you have been without food or drink: Three days? Three meals? Three hours? Why? How did you feel? (Serendipity Bible 10th Anniversary Edition, page 1544).

I am 70 years old and have never been unintentionally without a meal. That is an awesome fact to contemplate. It is a great testimony to the environment in which I was raised with its loving families, peaceful communities, stable institutions, all within a prospering homeland. Any time I feel tearfully oppressed by a maudlin self-indulgent pity, I should contemplate this simple fact. I have been blessed as perhaps relatively few in human history.  Certainly, people so blessed have an awesome payback to make.

Print Page

Passing the "Bizarre Test"

A bizarre sensation pervades a relationship of pretense. No truth seems true. A simple morning's greeting and response appear loaded with innuendo and fraught with implications.... Each nicety becomes more sterile and each withdrawal more permanent. (– Maya Angelou, Singin' and Swingin' in and Gettin' Merry like Christmas quoted in The President's Devotional by Joshua Dubois, June 12).

When Jesus was brought to trial, he was basically quiet before the Sanhedrin; yet Stephen spoke very boldly. How do you decide when to speak and when to be quiet before opposition? (Serendipity Bible 10th Anniversary Edition, page 1541).

 
The answer to the latter question is found in the former quotation. Pretense is the key. For Jesus to have acted as if his trial were anything but a foregone conclusion would have required pretense.  For Jesus to have spoken as if anything he said could have even remotely been persuasive or could have affected the outcome of the trial would have been utter pretense and would have constituted complicity in falsehood.  Jesus was a man of integrity so essentially remained silent. In most any situation this can be the key as to whether to speak or not to speak. If to speak would overcome one with a sensation of the bizarre arising from pretense and the hoodwinking of truth, it is best to remain silent.

 

Print Page

Elemental Beginnings

To fully understand Jesus, what is needed in your life besides well-rehearsed knowledge? How do people hold on to religious rituals and heroes today, while missing the whole point of what those ceremonies and people represent? (Serendipity Bible 10th Anniversary Edition, page 1540). 

Like in most matters, a purely intellectual understanding without a substratum of experience including pain and complexity and compassion is simply a strawman caricature playing with pickup sticks.  Rituals and hero worship can be a blatant attempt to sugarcoat reality. I have limited knowledge regarding the details in which American independence was won and the Constitution established. But clearly an essential number of these early framers were creators--not strawmen, not caricatures. Reality was too much with them.

They of necessity had the stern stuff of which creativity is made--gutsy curiosity; a persistence that learns from mistakes; vivid perception; willingness to embrace ambiguity, paradox, and uncertainty; combining knowledge with imagination; cultivation of fitness and  elegance in deriving principal and structure; and an appreciation for systematic interconnectedness.**

In short, the most important freedom of the nation's founders was first and foremost the freedom to aptly frame reality and to imagine a hopeful future.

[**refer to "The Seven Da Vincian Principles" in How to Think like Leonardo da Vinci by Michael J. Gelb.]

Print Page