Before I get to my surprise, you will have to wade through this mess of thoughts, unless of course, you cheat and skip over it and go to the end. I wouldn't blame you cause that is probably what I might do. But then again, I might just wade through the cherry jello to get to the slice of banana. You truly cannot appreciate the slice of the banana unless you taste it with the jello.
Truly living life is a giant pinata party. We bang the thing blindfolded. We sense its swing; feel the brush against our hair, and so we take a whack again. Again, we do a round-about and swing; and we can hear the rope pull the pinata zipping up and down as if it were alive and trying to escape our baton's collision. And then suddenly, with that mysterious crack like close lightening, a shower of sweet delights rain down upon our head.
Pinatas are interesting because they represent our desire to conquer the "seven deadly sins:" Pride, envy, anger, sloth, greed, gluttony, and lust. The pinata is filled with grace once we break these seven inclinations that if not checked, will spoil the grace given by Christ by His saving sacrifice. Sorry to the "once saved, always saved" crowd. We are saved by Him, but we can put a monkey wrench into our own gift of grace and end up losing our ticket to the giant pinata party in the sky.
Some would rather say, "Living life is a 'catastrophe'." It is wrought with a kind of "violence" against our wills and therefore, it is violence against our very identification of who and what we are. In such a mind, "Life is a rape." We, in the developed world, to some degree are shielded from such an ongoing sense of "catastrophe" by virtue of the layers of education, culture, politics, laws, embedded dependencies on those mechanisms that guard against the sense that there is personal violence against my freedom to exist. But if we strip away those mechanisms, what is left is our solitary self, our sense of aloneness, and our clinging drive to reach out of this "existential" flesh imprisoned reality. God has no place in such a world. Therefore, hope has not place, and living life is an audacious enterprise filled with pleasure seeking, and self indulgence, or at best, a very fatalistic sense of what it means to be a good person. These are the thoughts of the atheistic existentialist, the Jean Paul Sartres and Albert Camus of the world. But these are the thoughts of the post nuclear age, the post Internet age, and the media saturated world of cell phones, ipads, and instant although brief distractions from that which is dreaded. In a sense, we are the pinata, being banged randomly by life itself until we bust and our entrails fall to the ground.
Much of the thought of this kind of misguided fatalism comes out of the tragedy of the 20th century's upheavals, most obvious are the two world wars, the depression, presidential assassinations, the Vietnam war, legal struggles of the third world, etc. etc. Going deep into the history of these events in time, it is easy to see why artists like Picasso internalized the tragedy of Guerrnica so that the mirror reflected back to the canvas a distorted sense of the real, and one that would make the artist turn in on himself. He, the person, became obsessed with himself and his genre to the point of completely obliterating any chance that he could be touched in the most intimate sense by the woman of the moment, true friendship, and eliminating from his thought vocabulary the sense of the source of his talent, namely, God. Even the Greeks of the ancient world in St. Paul's time allowed for the rare possibility that there was some "unknown God" waiting to be discovered. But Picasso eliminated even that possibility. His life expired after many failed relationships. His last vestige of hope for immortality Picasso placed in these paintings. Undoubtedly, interesting, I suppose, the beauty truly is in the eye of the beholder, and in today's Veblenistic ("conspicuous consumption") world, the joy of such paintings is not so much in the looking, but in the owning. Picasso's paintings reflect a vision of a world of half-truths, a one dimensional prison out of which the Gospel of the Absurd is excruciatingly proclaimed. "Carpe diem" unchained becomes the very lament of the character, Ulysses, in Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida, that an untuned and undisciplined vibration renders discord and eventually self destruction. Even the temporary exuberance of the vibrating discord like a drug addict gone unchecked and following his highest high, ends in the crash phenomenon we call catastrophe.
So then, is living life a catastrophe? Is it such a downer? Is everything futile? And if so, then should we not "carpe diem?" All of this points eventually to a moral discussion, but that is not what I wanted to do with this piece. Instead, I want to point in a completely different direction than life being such a pain in spite of the reality of "pain." Perhaps, our spiritual intuitions point us into what the atheists call a fantasy world made up of made up gods to give us a false sense of security. Or those same spiritual intuitions point us into the dancing world of "surprise."
C.S. Lewis wrote a wonderful book called "Surprised by Joy," in which he describes all the reasons to not feel joyful and yet somehow around the corner in the road is something unexpected that takes us out of our sense of doom and into a light that tells us a different story. J.R.R. Tolkein's "Lord of the Rings" is in fact very descriptive of the surprise of the Hobbit Sam when he awakens and sees Frodo whom he thought was dead, and he sees the wizard Gandolf whom he also presumed dead. He is in a soft bed. And he asks surprised: "Is everything sad in life going to become untrue?" It is Sam the innocent Hobbit who has gone through the crucible of all temptation, has seen sadness, has seen doom, and finally, is surprised by the joy of awakening to a new day.
For the past four years, my wife and I have been under extreme challenge. Those challenges are not over. Esther's father continues to struggle with dementia. Esther's mother continues to struggle with not being able to walk, and now both are challenged by being taken to a new place where they can be cared for and more importantly, they can be together. Part of the challenge of mother being in the nursing home was wondering daily if it would be a long day in the week in which no one would come visit. Part of the challenge for dad was having to be reminded each time we took him to visit mother what this was all about, all this going back and forth everything all in a tumble and so confusing, not knowing or remembering who's taking him and even to the point of wondering if he was at home or somewhere else. For the past four years, I have shared this challenge with Esther. And the challenge for her was in fact to carry the full burden of worrying about the cost of home care, as well as institutional care, in addition to the cost of running a household. The challenge for me was to "not have a job job". There is something in a man that feels unsatisfied unless he earns a wage. We seem to all want to get into a "groove." And yet, isn't that "groove" of life what we complain about the most when we have it? We complain about the humdrumness and boredom that goes with going to work on Mondays, and live in tense expectancy of punching out at 4:30 on Friday. TGIF! But I will tell you, when you are not in the groove, you long for it and would welcome the cycle of weeks. But because I have been out of the "working mans groove" for the past four years, I don't think I'll dread Monday's so much. Well, I hope I don't fall for the lie that everyday is the same and same as the next and life is a grind etc. etc.
Ok. Now for the surprise. It is a surprise to me. It is what Tolkien calls a "eucatastrophe". He, of course, was a philologist who was keen on coining words, especially for his psuedo languages he formed with all their rules of grammar to impregnate his work The Lord of the Rings with a sense of poetic rhythm that could be assimilated as "real." A "eucatastrophe" is the opposite of "the overturning" that a catastrophe is. "Eu" is the ancient Greek expression of surprise or transcendence or even, resurrection. It is used in the form "Eureka" and means "whoa", "OMG", Shiver My Timbers, Yikes, Wow.
The surprise is the surprise of a butterfly that knows he or she is a butterfly only after it becomes one. But it didn't know squat when it was a lowly caterpillar. One day it is a caterpillar, a earthbound worm like crawling bottom dweller worrying about whether it will be eaten that day by some bird, or some spider. Then the next day, it hammers its way through the chrysalis of its confinement and suddenly, it can fly. It is that rare species that but for its existence, there would be fewer dahlias, roses, zinnias, bougainvilleas, violets, baby's breath, lilies, daises, and plain old sun flowers.
On Good Friday, I interviewed for something more than a "job". I interviewed for an opportunity of a life time. It is not the pay that makes this opportunity so magnificent. It is the beneficiary of the work. The beneficiary of this opportunity is, the poor. "Ok, Tom," you say, "get on with it. Tell us. Don't draw this out forever." Well, the thing is that I continue to be surprised that the opportunity presented itself, that I was interviewed for such an opportunity, and one magnificent Good Friday at that. And that following Divine Mercy Sunday, on that following Tuesday, I was invited to lunch to be offered the opportunity. "Huh?" you ask surprised by the mundaneness, "The surprise, is a job? But no. It's not a job to me. It is "The Job" to me. It is a challenge to shine light into the dark alleyways of poverty, injustice, need, sorrow, the lives of caterpillars wanting to be butterflies. I will be a challenge to shine light as a light house into thick fog that rolls in from the sea of today's world of economics, joblessness, but where there is an undulating faith and hope waiting for the spirit of the Lord to be breathed upon those waters. It will be a challenge to walk among the dejected and rejected and know I have a chance to be rejected and dejected with them, and be joyful. It is precisely where my heart has been since ordination to the diaconate.
And so, the surprise to me is that I have been offered the opportunity to lead our Diocese' Catholic Charities organization. The title of the job is not important. But it is the surprise of my joy that I share. Once again I will begin putting to use my gifts and most of all, everything I have garnered these past four very humbling years serving my wife and my loving mother and father in law as a caregiver. I will continue to serve them, of course. But life will be different now that I will be in the working grind. Not! I will be in the working dance of life, and each day will be another day at the pinata party, another day telling caterpillars like me that someday we will fly. May the graces rain down upon all those with the greatest need. And may the butterflies dally a bit, a flit, and float, crossing the hills and valleys of wind and air until they reach the flower of their greatest desire.
Kick me someone, am I dreaming?
Blessings to all who read this long windedness.
Life is a Pinata Party
Truly living life is a giant pinata party. We bang the thing blindfolded. We sense its swing; feel the brush against our hair, and so we take a whack again. Again, we do a round-about and swing; and we can hear the rope pull the pinata zipping up and down as if it were alive and trying to escape our baton's collision. And then suddenly, with that mysterious crack like close lightening, a shower of sweet delights rain down upon our head.
Pinatas are interesting because they represent our desire to conquer the "seven deadly sins:" Pride, envy, anger, sloth, greed, gluttony, and lust. The pinata is filled with grace once we break these seven inclinations that if not checked, will spoil the grace given by Christ by His saving sacrifice. Sorry to the "once saved, always saved" crowd. We are saved by Him, but we can put a monkey wrench into our own gift of grace and end up losing our ticket to the giant pinata party in the sky.
For Some, Life is a Broken Pinata
Some would rather say, "Living life is a 'catastrophe'." It is wrought with a kind of "violence" against our wills and therefore, it is violence against our very identification of who and what we are. In such a mind, "Life is a rape." We, in the developed world, to some degree are shielded from such an ongoing sense of "catastrophe" by virtue of the layers of education, culture, politics, laws, embedded dependencies on those mechanisms that guard against the sense that there is personal violence against my freedom to exist. But if we strip away those mechanisms, what is left is our solitary self, our sense of aloneness, and our clinging drive to reach out of this "existential" flesh imprisoned reality. God has no place in such a world. Therefore, hope has not place, and living life is an audacious enterprise filled with pleasure seeking, and self indulgence, or at best, a very fatalistic sense of what it means to be a good person. These are the thoughts of the atheistic existentialist, the Jean Paul Sartres and Albert Camus of the world. But these are the thoughts of the post nuclear age, the post Internet age, and the media saturated world of cell phones, ipads, and instant although brief distractions from that which is dreaded. In a sense, we are the pinata, being banged randomly by life itself until we bust and our entrails fall to the ground.
Much of the thought of this kind of misguided fatalism comes out of the tragedy of the 20th century's upheavals, most obvious are the two world wars, the depression, presidential assassinations, the Vietnam war, legal struggles of the third world, etc. etc. Going deep into the history of these events in time, it is easy to see why artists like Picasso internalized the tragedy of Guerrnica so that the mirror reflected back to the canvas a distorted sense of the real, and one that would make the artist turn in on himself. He, the person, became obsessed with himself and his genre to the point of completely obliterating any chance that he could be touched in the most intimate sense by the woman of the moment, true friendship, and eliminating from his thought vocabulary the sense of the source of his talent, namely, God. Even the Greeks of the ancient world in St. Paul's time allowed for the rare possibility that there was some "unknown God" waiting to be discovered. But Picasso eliminated even that possibility. His life expired after many failed relationships. His last vestige of hope for immortality Picasso placed in these paintings. Undoubtedly, interesting, I suppose, the beauty truly is in the eye of the beholder, and in today's Veblenistic ("conspicuous consumption") world, the joy of such paintings is not so much in the looking, but in the owning. Picasso's paintings reflect a vision of a world of half-truths, a one dimensional prison out of which the Gospel of the Absurd is excruciatingly proclaimed. "Carpe diem" unchained becomes the very lament of the character, Ulysses, in Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida, that an untuned and undisciplined vibration renders discord and eventually self destruction. Even the temporary exuberance of the vibrating discord like a drug addict gone unchecked and following his highest high, ends in the crash phenomenon we call catastrophe.
So then, is living life a catastrophe? Is it such a downer? Is everything futile? And if so, then should we not "carpe diem?" All of this points eventually to a moral discussion, but that is not what I wanted to do with this piece. Instead, I want to point in a completely different direction than life being such a pain in spite of the reality of "pain." Perhaps, our spiritual intuitions point us into what the atheists call a fantasy world made up of made up gods to give us a false sense of security. Or those same spiritual intuitions point us into the dancing world of "surprise."
Life is a Surprise, a "Eucatastrophe"!
C.S. Lewis wrote a wonderful book called "Surprised by Joy," in which he describes all the reasons to not feel joyful and yet somehow around the corner in the road is something unexpected that takes us out of our sense of doom and into a light that tells us a different story. J.R.R. Tolkein's "Lord of the Rings" is in fact very descriptive of the surprise of the Hobbit Sam when he awakens and sees Frodo whom he thought was dead, and he sees the wizard Gandolf whom he also presumed dead. He is in a soft bed. And he asks surprised: "Is everything sad in life going to become untrue?" It is Sam the innocent Hobbit who has gone through the crucible of all temptation, has seen sadness, has seen doom, and finally, is surprised by the joy of awakening to a new day.
For the past four years, my wife and I have been under extreme challenge. Those challenges are not over. Esther's father continues to struggle with dementia. Esther's mother continues to struggle with not being able to walk, and now both are challenged by being taken to a new place where they can be cared for and more importantly, they can be together. Part of the challenge of mother being in the nursing home was wondering daily if it would be a long day in the week in which no one would come visit. Part of the challenge for dad was having to be reminded each time we took him to visit mother what this was all about, all this going back and forth everything all in a tumble and so confusing, not knowing or remembering who's taking him and even to the point of wondering if he was at home or somewhere else. For the past four years, I have shared this challenge with Esther. And the challenge for her was in fact to carry the full burden of worrying about the cost of home care, as well as institutional care, in addition to the cost of running a household. The challenge for me was to "not have a job job". There is something in a man that feels unsatisfied unless he earns a wage. We seem to all want to get into a "groove." And yet, isn't that "groove" of life what we complain about the most when we have it? We complain about the humdrumness and boredom that goes with going to work on Mondays, and live in tense expectancy of punching out at 4:30 on Friday. TGIF! But I will tell you, when you are not in the groove, you long for it and would welcome the cycle of weeks. But because I have been out of the "working mans groove" for the past four years, I don't think I'll dread Monday's so much. Well, I hope I don't fall for the lie that everyday is the same and same as the next and life is a grind etc. etc.
Ok. Now for the surprise. It is a surprise to me. It is what Tolkien calls a "eucatastrophe". He, of course, was a philologist who was keen on coining words, especially for his psuedo languages he formed with all their rules of grammar to impregnate his work The Lord of the Rings with a sense of poetic rhythm that could be assimilated as "real." A "eucatastrophe" is the opposite of "the overturning" that a catastrophe is. "Eu" is the ancient Greek expression of surprise or transcendence or even, resurrection. It is used in the form "Eureka" and means "whoa", "OMG", Shiver My Timbers, Yikes, Wow.
The surprise is the surprise of a butterfly that knows he or she is a butterfly only after it becomes one. But it didn't know squat when it was a lowly caterpillar. One day it is a caterpillar, a earthbound worm like crawling bottom dweller worrying about whether it will be eaten that day by some bird, or some spider. Then the next day, it hammers its way through the chrysalis of its confinement and suddenly, it can fly. It is that rare species that but for its existence, there would be fewer dahlias, roses, zinnias, bougainvilleas, violets, baby's breath, lilies, daises, and plain old sun flowers.
One Magnificent Good Friday
On Good Friday, I interviewed for something more than a "job". I interviewed for an opportunity of a life time. It is not the pay that makes this opportunity so magnificent. It is the beneficiary of the work. The beneficiary of this opportunity is, the poor. "Ok, Tom," you say, "get on with it. Tell us. Don't draw this out forever." Well, the thing is that I continue to be surprised that the opportunity presented itself, that I was interviewed for such an opportunity, and one magnificent Good Friday at that. And that following Divine Mercy Sunday, on that following Tuesday, I was invited to lunch to be offered the opportunity. "Huh?" you ask surprised by the mundaneness, "The surprise, is a job? But no. It's not a job to me. It is "The Job" to me. It is a challenge to shine light into the dark alleyways of poverty, injustice, need, sorrow, the lives of caterpillars wanting to be butterflies. I will be a challenge to shine light as a light house into thick fog that rolls in from the sea of today's world of economics, joblessness, but where there is an undulating faith and hope waiting for the spirit of the Lord to be breathed upon those waters. It will be a challenge to walk among the dejected and rejected and know I have a chance to be rejected and dejected with them, and be joyful. It is precisely where my heart has been since ordination to the diaconate.
And so, the surprise to me is that I have been offered the opportunity to lead our Diocese' Catholic Charities organization. The title of the job is not important. But it is the surprise of my joy that I share. Once again I will begin putting to use my gifts and most of all, everything I have garnered these past four very humbling years serving my wife and my loving mother and father in law as a caregiver. I will continue to serve them, of course. But life will be different now that I will be in the working grind. Not! I will be in the working dance of life, and each day will be another day at the pinata party, another day telling caterpillars like me that someday we will fly. May the graces rain down upon all those with the greatest need. And may the butterflies dally a bit, a flit, and float, crossing the hills and valleys of wind and air until they reach the flower of their greatest desire.
Kick me someone, am I dreaming?
Blessings to all who read this long windedness.
Tom, when we spoke I knew you were happy about this opportunity coming through, but "Shiver Me Timbers" takes my perspective about this calling to a whole new level!!
ReplyDeleteIn a much less intellectual manner of presenting a metaphor (which you know is my way : ) .... "Some days you feel like the bug and some days you feel like the windshield". I have all the confidence in the world that through your efforts future "clients" will not feel like pinatas, or wanting to swing blindly in the dark.
Congratulations!
God Bless you and Esther!
Yeah. "Shiver mee timbers!" I've always loved pirate and old sailor stuff; and for a guy who can't swim that is a little strange. Somehow I predicted that phrase would have an effect on you. I love your metaphor and your way. It is what makes us so compatible as friends. And yes....I would say I am going to have many more "bug" days than I can ever expect or want. In "It's a Bug's Life" I love the one that says: "Don't go into the light" zzzzzzzzzzzap! I suppose I'll have a view "zappy days" too. And if I do have "windshield" days, to forgo the mess, I'll just slow down. Take it easy bud. And thanks for the read. Give Linda my best.
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