***

Dear Readers of sailerb:

Greetings! Brent asked me to provide an update on the situation that he so eloquently and graciously wrote about in early December. At that time, I was literally days away from the foreclosure auction of my home. I had filed an application requesting a loan modification, but everyone involved (from the lender to mortgage adviser) acknowledged that there was no chance such a request would be approved. And then, last week, I learned that my mortgage modification request qualified for a relatively new government program . . . and I have been approved! Just like that! It will be a tight squeeze financially, so to speak, but I will be able to remain in my own home. “Thanks be to God!” seems inadequate in this situation, but what else can I say?

I want to give my deepest gratitude to many of you who helped make this possible through your gifts of both finances and time as you asked God to intervene; now that God has opened the door, I am able to walk through it because of your help. As Brent wrote, I was very reluctant to have him share my story. I have always worked and paid my bills, so having to go on government disability and then not being able to meet my financial obligations is something that makes me feel ashamed and embarrassed. I am reminded, however, that in weakness we find strength . . . strong hands that support us, hold us up, gently move us forward. These hands come from from God and from those he uses to intervene in our lives in the middle of calamaties and times of hopelessness. Thank you, friends, for being his hands extended into my life.

Thoughts of spring get me excited for warmer days and nights, longer days, open windows, golf, walk-runs, road trips, thunderstorms, exploring the area. Winters, even mild ones, are tiresome and trying, especially after the holidays. Winters also leave us tending to abdicate the present in favor of wishing for the future; of course, when we long for the future, that future is unattainable, since we nullify ourselves in the present.

Winter, for many of us, is a season of anxious anticipation for what’s next, a season to be endured in deference to something which does not yet exist. We tend to not like winter and its burdens: utility bills, shoveling, road conditions, wind chills, bundling up to get the mail. For three to five months, cold weather dictates our lives and we gripe about it.

Quoth a certain, venerable J.W. Sirvio: “Man, I hate winter!” Indeed, we do. Yet, for all our pining for longer, warmer days and greenery, how often do we live in a winter mentality?

We talk about the future, about the changes we want to make, the places we want to go, the things we have to do, and it’s not inherently wrong to do so. What is wrong is how utterly paralyzed we get in this moment while we daydream aloud about lofty dreams and ambitions. It could be May, replete with chirping songbirds and blooming flowers, and we could be living in early January mindset: desolate, frozen and wishing for anything other than this moment. This moment is what we have, so what are we doing now to influence toward the future we want? Destiny is one thing, but destiny seldom, if ever, guides the chosen frozen to paradise. Some cliché about the thousand-mile journey starting with one step seems apropos. It’s true.

We are ultimately responsible for the future we want, this is a lesson I learned in the wake of a partial lifetime of winter spent amongst charismatic, fundamentalist Christians, whose un-liturgy and eschatological fatalism leaves them waiting for a springtime of rapture and an eternal summer without the trials and tribulations of life here. All the while, the unsaved get what they deserve. Some were nice, perfectly decent people, while many were just sociopaths and creeps. All of them didn’t seem to mind perpetually shoveling the driveway of their lives.

Every day leads us to the future, thus, regardless of the season, it is incumbent upon us to be people of purpose, actively working toward whatever it is we want, and being sensitive to the fact that sometimes we just don’t know what we want. Through it all, we ought to realize that what matters more than our dreams and ambitions is not a what at all, but who. After all, the future ultimately is not comprised primarily of things, but people, people who can completely change the landscape of our dreams and ambitions. Those who are surrounded by loved ones seldom tend to care about the temperature outside.

Spring will come, those buds on the trees will bloom, we’ll put away the heavy coats and sweaters for shorts, tees and sandals. But if we don’t make each day matter, if we don’t invest ourselves into our ambitions and those with whom we generously share our lives, our hearts will remain in icy desolation. This is the future, as is this…as is this…

Hope without actively striving toward fulfillment is hoping against hope: that future that will never come. It, ironically, makes doubt a stronger enemy, despair a much more attractive companion. In short, it leaves us scraping the ice off our sidewalks in flip-flops, even more discontented with our lot in life.

This is not the time to idly wait for the seasons to change, this, however, is the time to move toward what you want, who you want to stand with you for the rest of your life, where you want to be, what you want to accomplish. This is the time to dare to be something greater, to live toward spring while the world around you freezes to death in winter.

I am also adamantly opposed to the current SOPA/PIPA legislation. Not because I hate big business–remember, I work for The Man–or because I think ‘fair’ means that people pay differently for taxes or are entitled to receive something for nothing; it doesn’t. I oppose this legislation because it is ripe for governmental overreach. Freedoms of speech and to earn a living or make a profit cannot and must not be prioritized in a way that potentially eradicates one or the other, which necessarily includes the until-recently-honored economic principle of laissez-faire, both for citizens and corporations.

So, sailerb, typically a place for opinions, but not for politics, stands with those who oppose censorship as well as those who believe that corporations and industry can, are able to and even occasionally do the right and responsible thing, just like you and I can. Thank you. –b.

***

“In essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty, in all things charity.” — [attributed to] Augustine of Hippo

“It may or may not be Augustine, but regardless of who said it, that person was, at least for the moment, full of crap.” –b.

I’ve touched on this topic before, but never set my cross-hairs on it until today. This phrase–which upon further review, looks less and less like Augustine, because the man was very much a man of opinions–is frequently employed by Christians who are either unable or unwilling to see that their positions are wrong in the face of scrutiny. These same people like to employ other phrases in similar situations: something about ‘speaking the truth in love’, ‘agreeing to disagree’, or, when a person feels particularly attacked, to unleash ad hominems about ‘Christlike-ness’, ‘bitterness’ or being ‘judgmental’.

I think I may revisit each of these respectively down the line, but I haven’t yet decided. For the moment, though, let’s focus on this nonsensical garbadage.

The first and most glaring problem is that if there is disagreement between parties, there is then necessarily a fundamental disagreement on what is essential. We’re letting alone trivialities or barstool debates–questions about governmental systems, most valuable players or greatest records of all time. Ironically, though, the best example of this is found in the Baseball Hall of Fame voting process: there are vast discrepancies between what people think should qualify players for the Hall. There are some of those whom I loathe who waste their ballots by leaving them blank; no one deserves entry because none of them were as great as Ruth, Aaron, Mays or Mathewson. The absence of statistical criteria leaves a vacuum where opinions are able to form, perpetuate and petrify on the system. Then it becomes a rule of men rather than the rule of truth, the pursuit of the favor of the electorate rather than the pursuit of truth and the avoidance of falsehood.

If a Calvinist believes that the spiritual gifts ended with the close of the apostolic era, while a Pentecostal believes those gifts are still active and employed to minister to the world, this is no mere ‘oh, well’ shrug of the shoulders. How God interacts with Christians and the world is a serious question that has to have a definitive answer, especially since the charismata is employed regularly around the world. The same goes for the creation-evolution debate; we can’t have it both ways. It’s intellectually dishonest to leave it alone in the name of unity and liberty.

Moving forward, not only do we have troubles with what is essential, but we claim liberty in the non-essentials while readily marginalizing those with whom we disagree. Bonhoeffer’s ethics of, aptly, unity come into play here: if there is internal disunion, anything subsequent to that initial point of disunion will be fragmented somehow. Hence, Catholics in Central Wisconsin tend to view charismatics as a freakish cult, fringe fundamentalists view Catholics as the Great Whore of Babylon. Advocates for anthropogenic global warming view skeptics with churlish disdain; defenders of the faith view skeptics as irritating gadflies. Notice a trend? The last thing that matters in this situation is what is actually true.

We’d rather hurt others’ feelings–or worse, not hurt others’ feelings–than move together toward the truth. We’d rather build a 51% consensus to crush the 49%. We go after the ivory tower not because it is a detached and isolated place, but because we want the chance to administrate. We’re not interested in liberating the Bastille, we want to run it with brutal efficacy.

And if there is no agreement on what is essential, and we are all-too-eager to put heads to the stump, how is any of this demonstrable of charity?

If we want to truly care for people, we will work toward the truth. Not to lord it over others, but in the understanding that knowledge and understanding is worth pursuing, and that what we learn is able to empower humanity to be better. What is worse: the systems of modernity and its parameters, or the anarchy of opinions and perspectives? One is a guide, the other is, frankly, a straitjacket.

If we want to truly act with humility, we will work toward the truth. The truth empowers us but it does not grant the right to rule over others. Stan Lee, in this respect, was right: great power, great responsibility. It is an insistence on being right in the face of valid and devastating criticism that most clearly demonstrates hubris. There is a difference between being right and being beholden to truth that is more than mere semantics. The one who is concerned with truth will admit when one is wrong; the one who insists on being right will resort to adolescent tactics and ad hominem. (And I admit that I’ve been guilty of both, as we all have.) The most humbling, perhaps humiliating reality is this: not everyone can be right, but everyone can be very, very wrong.

How is it that we’ve never had more access to information and education while having also never been so foolhardy?

So, while it sounds nice–let’s focus on the basics and accept our differences and love each other–this is little more than a pie-in-the-sky kind of glib notion which only serves to underscore and, in some cases, militarize our differences than it ever will do to unify us. For we do not in actuality embrace unity in diversity, we endorse difference for difference’s sake, which will inevitably only tear churches, citizens, nations religions and continents apart. It’s a Missouri compromise, a contentious and anxious sign of things to come, and it’s what happens when opinion is elevated about fact-truth: Division in the essentials, restriction in the non-essentials and, in all things, contempt.

It’s the postmodern compromise, one that is ill-fitting to the man to whom the line is attributed.

[* - in doing a spell check prior to publishing, this word got the red underline treatment. i told you it has no meaning! --b.]

In the days I was not a part of the First Assembly Youth League, I simply resorted to reading a chapter a day. Never mind the fact that the chapter and verse breaks in the scriptures are largely arbitrary, I was fulfilling my sacred duty! For this reason, the minor prophets, Psalms and those little books at the end of the Bible were delightful, Isaiah, Leviticus, Jeremiah and the gospels were a pain. And no one ever touched Revelation, that was for pastors who were well-indoctrinated with Walvoord’s eschatological dispensationalist horsecrap.

Long books and long chapters, bad. Short books and chapters, good. It’s being a good, pragmatic little Jesus freak, emphasis on freak.

It was ten years ago tomorrow that one of the most surreal, wonderful, horrifying, beautiful, regrettable– and short–chapters of my life abruptly ended.

I was in my third year at a Bible college in Minnesota, Christina was in her senior year at UWSP. We met through my stint as an intern at the church where I grew up in the summer, during which I first became exposed to and active in campus ministry. When I returned to school for the fall, we kept in contact, and eventually developed a very unique relationship. It wasn’t merely friendship, nor was it explicitly romantic–though there were those elements present. It was somewhere in between, in the way that a lot of inter-sexual friendships are when someone is in late adolescence or early adulthood. She was more courageous than I was: she actually told me how she felt. I was a coward and wouldn’t (or perhaps couldn’t) share my feelings.

On January 16, 2002, Christina was killed in a car accident returning to school for the spring semester.

I had just finished my first day of classes in Minnesota and was settling in to get a head start on readings for class when I got the call around 11.30 that night. I drove home that night and the next week and a half was a blur of sleepless nights, long conversations, tears and laughter, several hundred miles of travel, one funeral, one memorial service and bizarre experiences which threaten to defy description. I was asked to speak at both the funeral and memorial service, both of which remain to this day some of the most difficult things I’ve ever had to do. I only knew her for eight months or so, and yet she was one of my very best friends.

Every year around this time, I think back and remember my friend, those experiences, the ways in which our little community banded together and the ways in which we’ve drifted apart, because that’s what life does. For whatever reason, the ten-year mark was a different beast altogether. I’ve found myself that much more emotional about it, more uneasy, more mournful. There’s nothing about the number ten that should make this anniversary any different from the others that have preceded it, but this time is more painful, and I can’t explain why.

Tomorrow will pass, those of us who haven’t forgotten will pay our respects in our own ways. But the moment we take life and all its nouns for granted is the moment we begin to treat it as we did our ironically-named devotions. The chapters, however long, do not matter: the content does. One can read the scriptures regularly for years and never come away with anything meaningful, whereas a person can engage the story and not be able to come away unscathed. One can go through life for him or her self and finish with nothing, or we can engage this life and allow it to affect us in the way that only life can, in all its beauty and terror, its glory and despair, joys and sorrows.

And anyone in the right place at the right time, for reasons left only to God or the fates, can, given the opportunity, completely upend life as you know it. The short chapters can be just as profound, if not more so, than the long ones, if we’re seeking content and substance and not the fulfillment of an obligation. Then again, if we’re going for content, what difference does it make how long a chapter may or may not be, anyway?

Time is nothing compared to the depth of relationships. If my experience and loss taught me anything, it is to care more for people than anything else, a less I frequently tend to have to remind myself. I’ve learned to let go of relationships or people which take me for granted or do more harm than good, and to embrace those who infuse me with life and vision. I no longer see people as objects, but as potential and stories. My reason for being is finding ways to make that story epic, and to realize potential in others. In so doing, my journey becomes something greater, and what is actualized is far more than anything I could engineer on my own.

In this respect, the effect Christina had on me lives on. When we live courageously, we never die; we endure in the people we love. A decade later, the words I write are inspired by a person I knew for eight months. Immortality is pursuing the wind if we do so while neglecting to let the people in our lives know how much they are valued and loved. Life is too fragile and too short for anything less.

That said, if we give ourselves over to selflessness and unrelenting passion for those in our lives, we need not worry about our place in history. People matter more than posterity, and those who have truly been remarkable in understanding this usually end up the stuff of legend, precisely because they’re not worried about it. Who, by worrying, can add an hour to his life?

Let others be your legacy and, though your name may be lost in time, you will never be forgotten.

Good night, Christina. I still miss you.

On Monday, the Base-Ball Writers Association of America–a cabal of sports writers so self-styled as vanguards of the game most of them never played that they, as a matter of purity, keep ‘base’ and ‘ball’ separated in their acronym, the BBWAA–announced that the association had elected long-time Cincinnati Reds shortstop Barry Larkin to the Hall of Fame. He joins the late Ron Santo as the two entrants into Cooperstown this summer.

Larkin’s credentials are solid enough: over the course of 19 seasons, Larkin spent the first part of his career known as the best shortstop in the National League not named Ozzie Smith. 12 of those 19 seasons saw Larkin representing the NL in the All-Star Game. In 1995, he was named the league’s most valuable player. Many of those seasons in Cincinnati were spent on underachieving teams, but Larkin remained a model of consistency. He spent extended times on the disabled list: four seasons he failed to reach 100 games in a season. Given better health circumstances, along with the benefit of a full 1994 season, he would have almost certainly reached 3000 hits. It’s a great career, rightly recognized by the writers as worthy of the Hall of Fame.

So, the writers pretty much got it right this time. Though there’s still a deeper problem with the election system.

ESPN writer David Schoenfield nails it here but it’s worth mentioning again, especially since I’ve harped on this for several years now in the space reserved for the HOF conversation: the writers are allowed ten nominees to list on their respective ballots. Some use all ten, but it seems that many only seem to name a handful, and a few are rumored to return their ballots blank on an annual basis. NBC’s Bob Costas, a sports journalist I generally respect, has publicly given voice to this opinion, saying that he advocates a small Hall, even endorsing going so far as to yank some players enshrined in Cooperstown out in order to protect the Hall’s sanctity.

The problem, as Schoenfield notes, is that history is not on their side, and neither is the future: the Hall will get bigger because the game will continue to be played, and a few of those participants will do so in extraordinary fashion. Certainly, the game may not see another Lou Gehrig, Rogers Hornsby, Bob Gibson, Hank Aaron or George Brett. Then again, it may not see another Anthony Young, who famously set a major league record for consecutive losses, or a Craig Paquette, whose uninspired career is etched into my mind after years of playing Strat-o-Matic (and having him ride the pine to fill a roster spot.)

The BBWAA seems to neglect the fact that there is a bell curve in place in baseball, as there tends to be anywhere metrics are applied: it’s not the elite and everyone else (though their ivory tower positioning would seem to indicate a level of projection here that I will hereafter let alone); it’s the elite, the middle, and those who just weren’t very good. For every Robin Yount, there have been a few Richie Sexsons, and those Sexsons, there has been a few more Geoff Jenkins, and for those Jenkins, a few Rob Deers, and for those Deers, a Glenn Braggs. And, as time marches along, the bell curve will only shape itself more and more. While, indeed, only a few deserve entrance into Cooperstown, that same bell curve is in place amongst the elite. While we have Ruth, Cobb, Musial, Young and Alexander, we also have Rizzuto, Mazeroski, Youngs, Brooks Robinson and Nellie Fox. The Hall is only as good as those on the latter side of the curve, not the former. On this point, I’m sure the writers would agree with me. Any actions which would demonstrate anything contrary–and it seems that these actions are most pronounced this time of year, oddly enough–to that is impure, adulterated snobbery.

The point is that, once there, there is no first or fifteenth ballot demarcation. Immortality is immortality. And while Barry Larkin is deserving, the idea that the writers felt compelled to make him wait three years after eligibility before granting him admittance is more becoming of grade school Red Rover than it is the supposedly serious and sacred winter liturgy of deciding who is worthy of being ‘well done, good and faithful servant’ and who needs to wait another year and who gets booted to Veterans’ Committee limbo.

None of this can truly be taken seriously as long as Buck O’Neil is not granted entrance the Hall of Fame, particularly in the light of the fact that baseball in post-O’Neil Kansas City has all but disappeared in the urban core.

There are other causes célèbre to champion–I firmly believe Pete Rose and Joe Jackson belong in the Hall–but a man whose encyclopedic knowledge of the Negro Leagues and sincere passion for African-American youth, both academically and atheletically, whose absence has left a gaping vacuum at Kansas City’s Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, demands to be immortalized more than just having an honorary seat at Kauffman Stadium. Admittedly, this isn’t an issue for the writers anymore, but warrants mentioning nonetheless. Someone who can should start a campaign to put Buck’s name on the regular ballot next year, just in time for the crop of steroid era stars to become eligible. Rather than dithering and bickering over the role of scientific engineering in players P, E, or D, take one slot of ten and make a protest vote for a man whose love for people was channeled through his love of the game.

(The likelihood of an actual member of the BBWAA reading this? About as good as me being able to join the BBWAA. Still.)

Before things get really cluttered in the next few years, let’s keep what good mojo we have going and get Jack Morris, Tim Raines and Jeff Bagwell in there, too.

Congratulations to Barry Larkin, whose resume is certainly worthy of the Hall of Fame. And congratulations to the writers for doing it right in his regard. Don’t think you’re off the hook, though. Not yet, and not by a Mark McGwire-getting-elected long shot.

So, what does one do when there is no muse from which to draw? One makes the absence of the muse itself a muse.

You see, if there is awareness of a noun, then the reality of the matter is that the awareness of that noun shapes the way in which we see the world. The best and most concise example of this is found in the film Inception: if I ask you to not think about elephants, as Arthur asked Saito, one will default to thinking about elephants. This is because the concept of an elephant is there in the mind, affecting the way in which we understand the world around us. While we may not conjure up hallucinations of elephants, and we are still able to process what is going on in our respective worlds (for the sake of this matter, assuming a naive epistemic or even critical realist worldview; I do realize the door I left wide open there for the philosophy set), what will fill our mind is that which was requested to be verboten.

So it is with everything for which we may have affection: from the ones we love to a muse for a blog post. It is not that that noun is absent, it is just not here, which alters the way we process things. If you’ll pardon a brief theistic aside, God may not be omnipresent, and I don’t think God is; but those who claim to follow Christ are to be God’s dynamic presence in the world. So, as emissaries, we are God’s presence, or we are supposed to be. Quite a different conception than the typical City of God/Christendom approach, with greater personal responsibility and, frankly, more adventurous than a lame existence bound by the constraints of hegemony. A similar, non-denominational point can be made for the way one lives life: ennui is an excuse to remain in neutral and dulls one’s awareness to one’s vast potential to lead a dynamic, meaningful life for others.

And this is, I think, the perfect approach to life: in all things, being able to derive meaning from apparent meaninglessness. The very idea of this entry is courtesy a dear like-minded friend who reminded me of this very thing. Writing about having nothing to write about is in itself a subject, and an idea which can be explored and meandered through: since the muse is not present, we are yet thinking of the muse and able to go forward.

The muse’s presence in my life enables me to, and it is brought back precisely and paradoxically because it is not there. It is not, and yet is. p and ~p, with a friend bridging the gap and reconnecting me to the source. I find this to be a remarkable thing.

So it is with any number of things. The absence of baseball makes me excited for a new season for the Milwaukee Brewers. The prospect of returning to Memphis in a few months and seeing old friends makes me long for Beale Street musicians and Rendezvous barbecue. Seeing the first sign for Wisconsin on the road in December made me excited to return home. Being gone for a week made me long for my new home. Reading the scriptures inspires me to return to studying them. It’s not that the grass is greener on the other side, but that I place value in those things, and ascribe value to the people with whom those things are connected. The things themselves are only things, the people with whom I share those experiences matter most.

Even writing this, then, is not because I love writing (though I do.) It’s because I love to share my writings with the people who read them, because you matter far more than I do. And it is my singular honor to be a part of your life. Your absence–near or far, alive or alive elsewhere–moves me to strive to be better. Even if writing is about writing nothing at all, it’s not for writing; it’s for you. The well is never dry.

What is left unsaid can be fairly easily inferred from here.

Consider a murder that has taken place. A journalistic axiom says that if the story bleeds, it leads. If the suspected murderer is a working-class person, the story will lead. If the suspect is a high-profile athlete, industrialist or politician, it will lead and lead for some time. The undercurrent is that a person has lost his/her life under nefarious circumstances, but the salacious part remains with the perpetrator.

In short, while all the interrogatives matter, it is who that matters most. Not that anyone seems to care anymore.

In a society where people are, tacitly or otherwise, taught to act on their impulses, the priority is placed on what, where, when, why and how. The who is already established: the self. With utter disregard for other people, we engage in behavior we otherwise wouldn’t, in places we otherwise wouldn’t go, at times we otherwise wouldn’t and often go to extraordinary measures to quell our roaring anxieties. With no clear, unified sense of purpose or concern, we flail about.

And while it would be low-hanging fruit to decry a culture which appreciates substance abuse and vain, a-philosophical living, the truth is that American religious practice falls into the exact same template. As I’ve maintained regularly in the past, there’s a reason Sunday morning gatherings are referred to commonly as services, as in goods and services. What, where and when generally matter most; who and why don’t.

Who and why should matter most, if we’re taking into consideration these primarily, then we are better equipped to live for someone other than ourselves, and also examine why it is we will do what we intend to do. It is maintaining control and accepting responsibility in a time when people slave away to cut loose and look to dodge accountability as much as possible.

This is where I find myself, with an increasing disdain and hatred for selfish mediocrity and a culture which expects its participants to justify themselves with whats, wheres and whens. If I’ve read the gospel correctly–and I’d like to think I have–the point of it all is that other people matter more than I do. And that’s a good starting point for any philosophical system, let alone a religious construct. The who should never be the first person, the who is always those of the second and third variety. The why is then sorted out by default–if it’s not for myself, then it’s not about me, either, when it comes to why.

I have met too many people for whom the only cause worth being a martyr for was themselves. In the last few weeks–and in particular, the week I spent back in Wisconsin–of personal reflection and internal struggle, I find that the last person worth dying for is the one I look at in the mirror every morning. And the realization is not that I’m worthless or a rotten human being, but that the words of Christ are true: humankind can demonstrate no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. And by friend, we’re not talking about drinking buddies or the posse that mysteriously shows up when times and fortunes are high. After all, they’re the first ones gone when things go south. At risk of subjecting myself to root fallacy criticism, ‘friend’ comes from a root word in which is implicit affective love and devotion. I think we would do ourselves a favor by reclaiming the original meaning, but that’s a separate matter for another day.

I didn’t make a resolution for the new year, instead I made a decision before 2011 ended to end mediocrity in myself and live to inspire that in my friends. This isn’t about me; it’s about a culture in the skids and people not settling for anything less than extraordinary. Take a look around: is there anything at this point in time, in this societal context, that really justifies you or me hitting the cruise control and zoning out until the kids graduate? The kids may not have a school to graduate from, and you might not be able to afford a tank of gas at that point, anyway.

For years, we’ve been taught that status matters: what, where and when counted at any cost, and who (first person included) was on the back burner. If there was a better time for who to matter most and at any cost, I can’t think of one.

The status quo–clauses justifying subjects, using what to define who–will no longer be acceptable. This is my resolution; my one-man revolution. It’s time to turn that pyramid back upside down. It’s time for extraordinary.

***

my best to all of you in the new year. for many of us, 2011 was pretty crappy, and the things that transpired in my life over the past year helped ignite the re[s/v]olution. my hope is that you will, like me, strive to make 2012 different, and different for the better. –b.

***

I’ve never understood why New Year’s Eve is such a big deal. When I was little, I was in bed. As a child, I watched Dick Clark on TV (I shamelessly ripped off his sign-off salute; thanks, Pyramid!) and as a youth, I did those lock-in/all-nighter things. I think I only made it through the whole night once or twice, anyway. When I got my license, I chose to leave those events when they got, well, too boring. Once, my youth pastor stopped me on the way out. (By way of a brief dossier on the man: he was an unapologetic ex-marine autocrat who epitomized the style-over-substance ‘theology of ministry’ and gladly took credit for things that were entirely out of his control while side-stepping any and all criticism, deflecting all that who whomever happened to be the most convenient target: lay leaders, college students, even the youth themselves. Semper fi…for the Lord.) He gave me the warning that leaving would mean I would not be allowed back. Ummm…let me think about thisokseeyalaterbye! Why should I stay awake, when what I’m supposed to stay awake for isn’t worth losing sleep over in the first place?

New Year’s celebrations are ostensibly about celebrating a new year: by turning a calendar page, everything is different, a clean slate, a newborn ushered into the world in a champagne fountain and by dropping a giant ball. In reality, counting down the new year is an exercise in vanity and self-sanctification: by accepting the narrative, revelers justify a year of normalcy and mediocrity by getting wasted–baptism?–because the digits at the end of the timestamp go up by one.

We don’t celebrate the newness of the year; we’re trying to forgive ourselves for not doing more with the old one. Epilogomena.

Don’t believe me? Consider the shared societal anxiety toward the end of 1999. Nearly every single one of us was convinced that something–subtle or severe–was going to happen: the power would go out, financial records vanish, computers crashing worldwide, apocalypse. (Apologies for the resolution quality in that link. Seldom does the Zapruder film look like 1080p.) It’s an extreme example, but it’s enough of a reductio ad absurdum to tell us that New Year’s Eve is a misnomer; what we’re really doing is drowning our sorrows on Old Year’s End.

(Also, while I’m thinking of it, a brief EDITORIAL ASIDE: our church hosted a transcendent, unintentionally-comedic y2k awareness event at which an expert of some sort discussed, with breathless seriousness, contingency plans and stockpiling months of canned food and water. This meeting also happened to draw out the until-then unknown militia demographic in the 715 who, during the Q&A portion of the meeting began asking, in increasing volume and furor, about stockpiling guns and ammunition. I wish I were making this up. Needless to say, given how far we’ve devolved as a society in a scant 12 years hence, I’m confident we won’t have to worry about what y3k might do. I digress.)

Face it: people don’t get plastered at christenings, they do so at wakes.

Similarly, weddings aren’t a commencement of new life anymore, if they were were to begin with; but the shackling of two people together, a loss of freedom for the perceived–or, I suppose, actual–shared misery of monogamous existence.

And in so doing, we show just how terrified we are of our shared future, shared fate. We abandon the present to forget the past and, simultaneously, damn the future. One of the very few churches in the world I support and can endorse knows the score: they’re doing pancakes and virgin Bloody Marys on 1 January, calling it Hangover Sunday. At least they’re catering to a crowd; and know with whom who they’re supposed to be interacting.

I apologize in advance for invoking Bono but, indeed, nothing changes on New Year’s Day. The present is always with us, it is always here. The lunacy of tacitly assigning importance to dates and times–and then tacitly deciding those important dates and times are so important that there is no personal responsibility to be assigned to them at all–is no better exemplified than what is planned to take place in two days. Or in hard-line abstinence, for that matter: what difference does it make if an engaged couple has sex days before the wedding? What difference does it make if they get married and don’t have sex? The value is placed on precisely the wrong nouns. It’s who, not what or when. As it is with anything else in life. When the what or when determines the who, then we wind up precisely where we are, as persons and as a society.

In the interest of fairness, this is not exclusively a condemnation of secular rite and ritual, but of churches who insist on doing the same thing in an equally self-important self-righteous way: lock-ins, prayer meetings, midnight movies, etc., for they are already suffocating under their self-imposed eschatological burden of epilogomena. There are no innocent parties here.

So, I offer my suggestion for new year’s resolution: starting now, live in a way that requires no need to apologize for your existence by deluding yourself into thinking that you’ve earned the right to have a hangover on Sunday. This year will die, as has every year that has gone before, and every year that will follow until the end of time. The only noun that will ever be most important is person over place or thing. We don’t live because we die, we die so that others live. In so doing, we defy epilogomena and choose to be present, and ascribe value to everyone over ourselves.

vous êtes mon cadeau; vous êtes mon futur.

Going home isn’t always what it’s cracked up to be.

In about 28 hours from now, after my last work shift of the year for The Man, we Sirvio three–human and canine alike, will begin our journey home, back to Central Wisconsin. We look forward to a week at the original Chateau Sirvio, not worrying about work hours. 2011 has been a very trying and wearying year, and to say that my threads are showing is an understatement. A week’s worth of rest probably won’t be what I really need, but it will be adequate, if for no other reason than it has to be.

I’ve needed that sisu on more than one occasion this year. I also needed that sisu before we finally left the 715 for what we thought were greener pastures in Kansas City…and again when we needed to pack up and eventually move to Mecca. Going home is wonderful and terrible all at the same time: while it is where I grew up, it isn’t home anymore. It is there where I and my family’s honor were sullied and my not-yet-birthed career got the partial-birth treatment; where we were knifed in the back by people who claimed to care about us. It takes nothing more than sisu to return to a place where people tried their damnedest to declare us persona non grata, to walk about unafraid of who might see us. That anxiety is still there, though, years after the fact.

All that aside, home isn’t much of a concrete concept anymore. Sure, there’s a house where I grew up, my parents are still there, a few friends and mentors, 20+years of memories in the middle of the mitten. As my experiences took me around the country, though, and I began to develop meaningful relationships with people in Minnesota, Missouri, Florida and went through a graduate experience where I met very dear friends who are scattered across time zones, the familiar became strange, the strange, familiar. I will always have a connection to the place where I grew up, but it isn’t home.

Home is not a geographic place, it is a relational place: home is wherever I am loved and may love.

I could be in the middle of nowhere Nebraska–redundant, I know–and if I were with my puppy, I’d be fine. I couldn’t have endured what I did post-Florida without my wife. sisu may come from within, but it operates best in a community where it is allowed to be drawn out. (Upon further review, perhaps sisu is something akin to the fire I referenced in last week’s post. Never occurred to me until now. Huh.)

And tomorrow night, when the clock strikes 2 and most of the world is in bed, it will take considerable sisu to park the car, finish loading the other car and get on the road north, knowing that the other side of St. Louis (and a nap, as the co-pilot takes over, while Seneca sleeps through it all) are only three hours away, but true rest is that much further. We Finns are good at extraordinary endurance beyond endurance of the physical, mental and existential varieties. But even the hardiest Finn, like anyone else, needs rest in its myriad forms.

Many of you may not be where I’m at with regard to home, and I envy your ability to have a place where home is home and nothing can bother you there. You are blessed with a haven, and you should be grateful for such a gift. Perhaps you are where I’m at, feeling like you’re fighting an army of tanks in the woods. Perhaps Christmas itself will be a battle. My heart goes out to you, and I encourage you to endure, regardless from whence your bloodlines come. Your rest will come somehow, some way; somewhere, someday.

Make no mistake, I am looking forward to coming back home. I haven’t seen my parents in months, the elder brother Sirvio and his family in longer. I hope to make a brief return to Milwaukee, my beloved place of birth where I haven’t been in three years. Mostly, I hope home will give me the chance to re-center myself and come back here in 2012 ready to face what challenges may be waiting for me then, ready to continue becoming the person I want and need to be. sisu gives me hope that whatever is on the other side is going to be better than my lot now, and that attaining being (that is, coming as close to it as possible on this plane of existence) is not an exercise in futility, but a demonstration of the power of unusual endurance and God’s graciousness through it all.

Onward.

***

sailerb will be off until the Wednesday after Christmas. Safe travels, and may your time away from life for the holidays be restful. Thank you for reading, and happy Christmas to you all. –b.

I’ve been haunted by the images of the [im-?]patient spouse waiting for her husband to return from war for months now, and when I thought of examples similar to Advent outside of the religious world, I was surprised I didn’t automatically default to Penelope. Our [simplified] romantic notions of the hero’s return to his family stem pretty much directly from the Odyssey.

And she, unlike the Church’s attempts at impatient meddling, waits with purpose, with defiance.

For those of you who may have forgotten the mythology portion of junior high English class or never got around to reading the Odyssey–or never saw the outstanding O Brother, Where Art Thou?–the Odyssey is the tale of Odysseus, who fought in the Trojan War and took 10 years to return home. In the meanwhile, his wife Penelope stayed home, refused numerous suitors, most with ulterior motives. Feminist critics have, I think rightly, reinterpreted Penelope from being merely the dutiful, loving wife to being a pillar of strength in a culture which expected her to remarry and move on.

It is the uncompromising nature of Penelope that stands in stark contrast to both the state of ancient Israel before the birth of Christ, as well as the decidedly mediocre state of the Christian church. She defies the suitors, those who would tell her to forget Odysseus. Her resistance is based on principle; in the absence of knowing her husband’s fate, she waits. The waiting is seared into cultural history in the now-classic pose: head resting on hand, legs crossed, staring into the sea.

The church’s waiting for her savior, on the other hand, is far more passive–limited cultural engagement or meaningful interaction, escapist in nature, legs anything but crossed. It waits not out of principle, but out of a bratty need to be justified for its generations of established social retardation. Further, as I suggested a few weeks ago at the outset of the Advent series, we Christians aren’t entirely sure for what exactly we’re waiting.

So let’s instead focus on Penelope and her waiting-as-defiance.

The prophetic voice in history–religious or otherwise–is necessarily counter-cultural. It manifests itself in varied ways, be it the Oracle of Delphi, Isaiah, Joseph Smith, Thecla or even in the advent–pardon the pun–of blues and jazz. All of the aforementioned, leaving alone the matter of whether or not they were legitimate, spoke in ways that often defied the societal flow. Penelope’s waiting was a giant middle finger to a culture which expected her to acquiesce to what her suitors expected from her, to give up on Odysseus and remarry and do what good widows do: turn the estate over to another man.

A few weeks makes sense. Months, too, even a few years make sense. Ten years, though, is extraordinary. We’re not talking about someone who is simply in love with her man, but someone who is existentially committed to settle for nothing less than the best, even if the best means never getting it and never settling for anything at all. With a clear sense of purpose, then, waiting is noble and failure to compromise admirable.

The advent, then, was never supposed to be a rescue, but a coronation: as commitment to a person is not the rejection of others but the affirmation of the one. To wait without purpose is to act without purpose, equally vain and self-destructive. Ennui with the e-brake on.

So while some amuse themselves in self-destructive ways–purposelessness is self-destruction–or dull their sensitivity to a world which has done so in kind, the church rushes about its business of self-importance in much the same way, failing to recognize that we are no different than the world from which we claim to be sanctified.

All the while, Penelope waits for a sail to broach the horizon. And so will I.