I had to have our dog put to sleep today.
I have been dreading this moment for a while now. We got her from friends several years ago, and they got her from the pound so we don’t know her exact age but she was somewhere around 16 years old. I watched her body fail gradually, and finally reached a point where I realized that she was still alive only because I didn’t want to let her go. I don’t think I really wanted to admit that I was that attached to her. I finally reached a point where watching her suffer was more than I could bear, and I finally gave up my selfishness.
Emma was with us for several years, and when we got her she fit right into our family. We had just gone through the loss of our previous dog when our friends, who had her then, moved to Texas. She filled the space left so empty from our loss, and gave us a connection to our now absent friends as well, providing more comfort than we had anticipated.
She was there to provide entertainment when she would do something that was probably a normal dog behavior, but left us laughing all the time. When we got our cat they would play together constantly and we would just sit back and watch the show. She was present when our grandchildren were in the house and walked the hall nervously when they would cry, much like a parent might do. She was always ready to play with anyone at anytime, and I never really did her justice in trying to keep up with her. She barked when there was something to bark at, but only then. She always insisted on checking in with me when I sat down in the living room as well. She would roam the floor first and look for any edible treasures the kids had dropped first, and then come over and rest her head on my leg until I petted her for a while.
I suppose it was a combination of all these things that helped to form my attachment for her. Unconditional love and loyalty is so hard to come by in people that we find it more easily in animals who, once they bond with us, remain devoted to the best of their abilities. They don’t take into consideration the greater social, political, and moral implications of a relationship. They just know we like to see them at the door when we come home so they do it happily.
I understand that animals don’t fit into the whole structure of salvation, but they are part of God’s wonderful creation of which we are stewards and caretakers. A job, incidentally, that I believe we are failing miserably at. Animals often fill a void created by lack of human relationships, because we can ascribe any given attribute to that relationship. We don’t have to rely on feedback from the animal to improve the relationship, as with a human, to give that relationship more or less value, but we do have to provide for all their needs. I was responsible for every aspect of the relationship, but Emma was just being herself which was what we desired. Her presence fulfilled the need with no demands or expectations. She was happy to be around us. I realize as well that the value of the relationship with my dog originates with me. It is as valuable as I make it. My friend Cliff says that I should, “Think about what you learned from your dog.” It’s a good point, because I’m beginning to think that I would be better off treating people more like my dog treated me. I think God used her to give me life lessons which I will be learning for some time.
Because of all this letting her go was harder than I had anticipated. I watched as she struggled more and more each day to simply stand up. I realized at the end that I was really hoping that she would go on her own. I didn’t want the responsibility for deciding her life. I understand that in the case of humanity the responsibility for that choice can only be reasonably borne by God Himself. I am thankfully not adequate to that task. I could not bear that pain, for it is not in my power to offer anyone Heaven.
She walked into the house and kept stumbling as she walked across the floor. She came over to where I sat in the chair as was her custom, and laid her head on my leg a little more heavily than usual, and I knew. She was tired. It was time.
Some will say that she was just a dog. Just a pet. But she was more than that.
She was a present friend, and an unconditional comforter.
She will be missed.
©Dan Bode 2009
Monday, October 5, 2009
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Alligator Lizards
There are incidents in my childhood that I have simply been unable to forget. Most of these are capitol letter “Incidents”.
Like the Dead Alligator Lizard Incident.
Had I been a few years older I probably could have gotten biology credit in school for this one. Most kids have a low tolerance for boredom, and I was no exception. My friend Ron and I were sitting around one summer day with nothing to do, desperately trying to think of something before our mothers realized we were victims of inactivity. We had already tried the traditional forms of boyhood entertainment like catching bugs and throwing them into a spider web. Watching the spiders mounting frustration as it tried to get through the roly-poly’s armor was particularly fun, but even that no longer held our attention.
Finally we hit on the idea of catching some alligator lizards.
This was traditionally considered a weekend activity in our neighborhood, I don’t really remember why. Usually a large group of the neighborhood kids would all go down to an old abandoned paper factory a few miles from our neighborhood. The entire lot was overgrown with tall grass and weeds. There were several old fifty-gallon drums lying around there as well.
This was the lair of the alligator lizards. I don’t know if this was the actual name of the lizard or not. We just called them that because they were obviously lizards and they looked like alligators. They usually grew to a length of 12 – 18 inches. I don’t know why they chose this parcel of land as a suitable habitat either, but they were there. The minute you stepped off the sidewalk into this lot you could hear the unmistakable rustle of their movements as they sensed your presence. You could feel their eyes on you the second you entered their domain.
There really is no suitable explanation as to why we considered this entertainment. We came to the lot with a burlap sack and caught several of them. We would bring them back to the neighborhood and put them all in a wooden crate for a few hours and sit there watching them watching us. Wow.
What can I say, I was eight.
Anyway, this day Ron and I decided to go catch some lizards on our own since no one else was around. We grabbed a sack and headed out. We had found in the past that the lizards sometimes enjoyed crawling under the drums so as we entered the lot we headed for one of them right away. We had determined since I was the biggest, that I would be the one to move the drum, and Ron would wait and catch them in the sack.
What happened next was unique in all the adventures of our childhood.
Reptiles had always fascinated us. Lizards in particular were considered high on the interest scale. Any animal that had a tail that would break off and still move just to occupy the predator was pretty cool. I must take a moment here to point out that we really had the lizard’s best interests in mind. We were going to hand feed them all the bugs we could catch, we were even going to give them meat stolen from our own refrigerators. They were going to be very comfortable lizards.
I took hold of the rim of the drum and leaned back rolling the drum off to the side. Sure enough, there on the ground were two of the biggest alligator lizards we had ever seen. They were probably the parents of every other lizard on that lot. We had assumed they would not appreciate being exposed in this way, and we were right. They took off in different directions. One ran off into the weeds on the right, and the other ran straight at Ron. I don’t know if it was attacking Ron or it just didn’t realize it was heading for a person. At any rate Ron put one foot forward so he could bring the bag down to the ground. The problem was he put his foot directly into the path of the fleeing lizard. The lizard, seeing the sack coming down, veered off to avoid it and found itself in contact with Ron’s foot. Maintaining its momentum it continued in its quest for freedom and found what it must have thought was a temporary haven in that dark space that happened to be the inside of Ron’s pants leg.
Most kids our age had pretty decent reflexes, and Ron was no exception. When he realized that a very large alligator lizard had indeed run up his pant leg he did what anyone would have done in his situation. He screamed.
Before the lizard had gotten very far Ron had grabbed his leg at the knee and started vigorously shaking his leg in an effort to dislodge the lizard. I could see the end of the tail sticking out from under the cuff of his pants which led me to believe the lizard was hanging on to the front of his shin for dear life. It did not appear to be inclined to let go.
It was at this point that Ron’s scream descended from the realm of mindless terror to the level of barely coherent thought. He began to yell, “GET IT OFF! GET IT OFF!”
It was like a mantra. He kept repeating it over and over and over.
I began to realize that this was not an ideal situation. My mind was not working at the same speed as Ron’s since I was not under the influence of the fear induced adrenaline rush as he was. I turned my thoughts to the task at hand. In my mind there were basically two options for removing the offending lizard.
The first option required that I reach up into my friends pant leg and grab the lizard.
There were two problems with this option. The first was I didn’t know if the lizard would be able to turn around and bite my hand as I laid hold of it. It did have a good set of little teeth on it, after all.
The second problem with this scenario was that it simply wasn’t prudent to take the chance of being seen by someone I knew, while putting my hand up the pant leg of another boy.
So considering these factors I decided to follow through on my second option.
“Hold still!” I yelled. I needed him to stop shaking his leg.
Still holding his leg at the knee, he planted his foot firmly on the ground.
“Ready?” I asked.
“Just get it out!” he replied.
“OK, Here goes”
I kicked him in the shin.
His shin was well cushioned so he felt no pain from it. I can’t say the same for the lizard, although it was certainly a quick death. As the initial shock of what I had done wore off he said, “Eeeeewwwwww! Eeeeeeewwwww! Why did you do that?!”
“I didn’t want it to bite me.”
“Eeeeeeewwwww! It’s all wet! GET IT OFF! GET IT OFF!”
He pulled his pants leg up as far as he could, almost to his knee, and I reached up and peeled the lizard off of his shin. He was right, it was wet.
To be honest I was impressed with the condition it was in. Considering what it had just been through it was, even so, an intact specimen. If my interests had taken a turn to taxidermy at that point this would have been a pretty good practice piece. After I got it off and started looking at it, Ron’s interest was piqued as well.
“Wow! Hey that’s pretty neat! You can see everything!” He said as he grabbed a handful of grass and started wiping off his leg.
We considered trying to keep it long enough to show our friends, but we couldn’t think of a good way to preserve it. No mother that we knew of would allow us to keep it in the freezer, and we thought it might start to smell if we took it home to just dry in the sun. In the end we opted to give it a simple burial there in it’s homeland. We dug a shallow grave in the dirt and made a pattern of a cross with rocks over the spot. We thought it was the right thing to do.
From then on we never went back to catch lizards by ourselves again. Large groups were the way to go because there were more people available to herd them. One “Incident” in this area was enough. There were other “Incidents” as well, and we learned a great many lessons from them like: don’t put a sealed soda can in an incinerator, don’t jump off the roof using a blanket as a parachute, or never put gas in a coffee can and light it and then try to put it out with water. Things that often ensured our survival in this world. And they kept us in good physical condition from running away from whatever we did. We were fortunate that we only had to learn our lessons once.
But hey, at least we learned.
©Dan Bode 2000
Like the Dead Alligator Lizard Incident.
Had I been a few years older I probably could have gotten biology credit in school for this one. Most kids have a low tolerance for boredom, and I was no exception. My friend Ron and I were sitting around one summer day with nothing to do, desperately trying to think of something before our mothers realized we were victims of inactivity. We had already tried the traditional forms of boyhood entertainment like catching bugs and throwing them into a spider web. Watching the spiders mounting frustration as it tried to get through the roly-poly’s armor was particularly fun, but even that no longer held our attention.
Finally we hit on the idea of catching some alligator lizards.
This was traditionally considered a weekend activity in our neighborhood, I don’t really remember why. Usually a large group of the neighborhood kids would all go down to an old abandoned paper factory a few miles from our neighborhood. The entire lot was overgrown with tall grass and weeds. There were several old fifty-gallon drums lying around there as well.
This was the lair of the alligator lizards. I don’t know if this was the actual name of the lizard or not. We just called them that because they were obviously lizards and they looked like alligators. They usually grew to a length of 12 – 18 inches. I don’t know why they chose this parcel of land as a suitable habitat either, but they were there. The minute you stepped off the sidewalk into this lot you could hear the unmistakable rustle of their movements as they sensed your presence. You could feel their eyes on you the second you entered their domain.
There really is no suitable explanation as to why we considered this entertainment. We came to the lot with a burlap sack and caught several of them. We would bring them back to the neighborhood and put them all in a wooden crate for a few hours and sit there watching them watching us. Wow.
What can I say, I was eight.
Anyway, this day Ron and I decided to go catch some lizards on our own since no one else was around. We grabbed a sack and headed out. We had found in the past that the lizards sometimes enjoyed crawling under the drums so as we entered the lot we headed for one of them right away. We had determined since I was the biggest, that I would be the one to move the drum, and Ron would wait and catch them in the sack.
What happened next was unique in all the adventures of our childhood.
Reptiles had always fascinated us. Lizards in particular were considered high on the interest scale. Any animal that had a tail that would break off and still move just to occupy the predator was pretty cool. I must take a moment here to point out that we really had the lizard’s best interests in mind. We were going to hand feed them all the bugs we could catch, we were even going to give them meat stolen from our own refrigerators. They were going to be very comfortable lizards.
I took hold of the rim of the drum and leaned back rolling the drum off to the side. Sure enough, there on the ground were two of the biggest alligator lizards we had ever seen. They were probably the parents of every other lizard on that lot. We had assumed they would not appreciate being exposed in this way, and we were right. They took off in different directions. One ran off into the weeds on the right, and the other ran straight at Ron. I don’t know if it was attacking Ron or it just didn’t realize it was heading for a person. At any rate Ron put one foot forward so he could bring the bag down to the ground. The problem was he put his foot directly into the path of the fleeing lizard. The lizard, seeing the sack coming down, veered off to avoid it and found itself in contact with Ron’s foot. Maintaining its momentum it continued in its quest for freedom and found what it must have thought was a temporary haven in that dark space that happened to be the inside of Ron’s pants leg.
Most kids our age had pretty decent reflexes, and Ron was no exception. When he realized that a very large alligator lizard had indeed run up his pant leg he did what anyone would have done in his situation. He screamed.
Before the lizard had gotten very far Ron had grabbed his leg at the knee and started vigorously shaking his leg in an effort to dislodge the lizard. I could see the end of the tail sticking out from under the cuff of his pants which led me to believe the lizard was hanging on to the front of his shin for dear life. It did not appear to be inclined to let go.
It was at this point that Ron’s scream descended from the realm of mindless terror to the level of barely coherent thought. He began to yell, “GET IT OFF! GET IT OFF!”
It was like a mantra. He kept repeating it over and over and over.
I began to realize that this was not an ideal situation. My mind was not working at the same speed as Ron’s since I was not under the influence of the fear induced adrenaline rush as he was. I turned my thoughts to the task at hand. In my mind there were basically two options for removing the offending lizard.
The first option required that I reach up into my friends pant leg and grab the lizard.
There were two problems with this option. The first was I didn’t know if the lizard would be able to turn around and bite my hand as I laid hold of it. It did have a good set of little teeth on it, after all.
The second problem with this scenario was that it simply wasn’t prudent to take the chance of being seen by someone I knew, while putting my hand up the pant leg of another boy.
So considering these factors I decided to follow through on my second option.
“Hold still!” I yelled. I needed him to stop shaking his leg.
Still holding his leg at the knee, he planted his foot firmly on the ground.
“Ready?” I asked.
“Just get it out!” he replied.
“OK, Here goes”
I kicked him in the shin.
His shin was well cushioned so he felt no pain from it. I can’t say the same for the lizard, although it was certainly a quick death. As the initial shock of what I had done wore off he said, “Eeeeewwwwww! Eeeeeeewwwww! Why did you do that?!”
“I didn’t want it to bite me.”
“Eeeeeeewwwww! It’s all wet! GET IT OFF! GET IT OFF!”
He pulled his pants leg up as far as he could, almost to his knee, and I reached up and peeled the lizard off of his shin. He was right, it was wet.
To be honest I was impressed with the condition it was in. Considering what it had just been through it was, even so, an intact specimen. If my interests had taken a turn to taxidermy at that point this would have been a pretty good practice piece. After I got it off and started looking at it, Ron’s interest was piqued as well.
“Wow! Hey that’s pretty neat! You can see everything!” He said as he grabbed a handful of grass and started wiping off his leg.
We considered trying to keep it long enough to show our friends, but we couldn’t think of a good way to preserve it. No mother that we knew of would allow us to keep it in the freezer, and we thought it might start to smell if we took it home to just dry in the sun. In the end we opted to give it a simple burial there in it’s homeland. We dug a shallow grave in the dirt and made a pattern of a cross with rocks over the spot. We thought it was the right thing to do.
From then on we never went back to catch lizards by ourselves again. Large groups were the way to go because there were more people available to herd them. One “Incident” in this area was enough. There were other “Incidents” as well, and we learned a great many lessons from them like: don’t put a sealed soda can in an incinerator, don’t jump off the roof using a blanket as a parachute, or never put gas in a coffee can and light it and then try to put it out with water. Things that often ensured our survival in this world. And they kept us in good physical condition from running away from whatever we did. We were fortunate that we only had to learn our lessons once.
But hey, at least we learned.
©Dan Bode 2000
Monday, August 3, 2009
Priorities
John 12:8 “You will always have the poor among you, but you will not always have me.”
There are some things we will always have, both good and bad, but Jesus overcomes all things. He is more important than the best and the worst that we experience. We devote our time and energy to those things that have the greatest impact on our lives. We see sickness and health, wealth and poverty. All these things have a great impact on us for good or bad, and all of them can, by their impact, distract us from Christ. The essence of our relationship with Christ is that while all these things affect us at different levels we need to deal with Christ first and all other things through Him, not before or after Him.
The sequence of events in how we deal with any occasion in our lives determines the impact they have on us for Christ.
Occasionally, in some form or another the question is asked of me, “With all that you have been through why do you hold on to your faith?”
I think the answer to that question lies in what my priorities have become. I simply cannot bear to imagine my life without my faith. I’ve been there and done that. I have changed too much to go back and find satisfaction in a world without God. It would be barren and lifeless. I can no longer tolerate the world’s value system. I think about what offends God and I care about it. These things were once the furthest things from my mind. At the same time I have also reached a point where, while I love, fear and respect God, I have also come to understand that He allows questions. He allows challenges from us, for that is how we learn submission to Him. He can overcome any challenge. It is we who fear challenges to God, because we fear that He cannot meet them. We apply our own limits to God which automatically makes Him inadequate for our needs.
In his book “Reaching for the Invisible God.” Philip Yancey quotes Kathleen Norris.
“One so often hears people say, “I just can’t handle it”, when they reject a biblical image of God as Father, as Mother, as Lord or Judge; God as lover, as angry or jealous, God on a cross. I find this choice of words revealing, however real the pain they reflect: if we seek a God we can “handle”, that will be exactly what we get. A God we can manipulate, suspiciously like ourselves, the wideness of whose mercy we’ve cut down to size”.
In ancient times it was common practice for a farmer to worship gods that were representative of the things he had to deal with. Hence there were gods of the soil, of the sun, the rain, the harvest. He sacrificed to it in the way he saw fit and made up his own priestly rules. His god’s influence ended at his property line.
By cutting God down to a “manageable” size we attempt to make Him into someone who is our individual ideal of “enough” to satisfy our personal needs. Yet God, being limitless, is more than enough; our need, also being limitless, can never be filled by a god of our own making.
I don’t love God enough.
I don’t love my wife enough.
I don’t love my children enough.
It can never be “enough” when the source that satisfies your need is limitless.
A limitless source supplies a continuous need. A limitless source will also provide a limitless means of expression. There is always more available to give through Christ.
We are the Beloved of God. We must never desire less than He offers us. We must not maintain a minimal faith.
When our faith reaches a point where we have had “enough” then we have begun the slow and painful spiral down to death. A real faith recognizes that there is never “enough” to satisfy our thirst. True faith is never satisfied. It always searches for one more thing to believe, one more wonderful piece of evidence that proves for me once again that God loves me.
Sometimes that search takes us into areas of our lives that we would rather not go.
In the midst of my selfishness and pride I discover that my humility gives me value. In the midst of my anger I find that a peaceful heart will accomplish more.
In the midst of all my wonderful “Christian Activities/Ministries”, I find exhaustion that forces my dependence on Christ.
In the aftermath of a cruel and bloody crucifixion, I find the pearl of the Resurrection. The latter is not possible without the former.
Sometimes the greatest treasures are the ones left unused and forgotten in the corner of the attic, covered with dust. They are the things of my childhood that were left behind with the advent of “maturity” in my social lexicon.
Many times when I am helping to care for some of the children in our church nursery, I will attempt to get them interested in some of the toys in the arsenal. Sometimes they can be a pretty hard sell, but most of the time there is something that will catch their fancy. In the process of using a random toy to catch their attention I have to admit that it gets my attention instead. Sometimes I use a particular toy to get their attention because it’s a toy I want to play with. I keep thinking to myself, “Why didn’t we have toys like this when I was a kid?” (Although I have to admit that if Elmo doesn’t shut up soon he’s gonna get his batteries yanked.) And for a little while I give up the weightier theological/social/important matters that occupy my thoughts and try to pretend that I barely know how to walk. I try to learn all over again instead of rehashing the same old information. The “big” things will all still be there when I get back to myself, because “You will always have the (fill in the blank)…” But Christ is bigger.
My priority then is to become the child Christ called me to be. To regain some of the purity of spirit that I had before I was influenced by the rest of the world. When Christ called us to be like children, I don’t think he necessarily meant for us to be blindly trusting. He wants us to trust Him completely, but He wants us to come to Him with no regard for the limitations this world would place on our relationship to Him.
When the children wanted to be near Jesus the adults were trying to hold them back. He told the adults to let them come.
“Then little children were brought to Jesus for him to place his hands on them and pray for them. But the disciples rebuked those who brought them. Jesus said, "Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these." When he had placed his hands on them, he went on from there.” Matthew 19:13-15. If there was one sound that I had to think of that inspires joy in me I would have to say it is the sound of a child who is just learning that he or she has a voice. They have not yet learned to form words. Every sound they make is an experiment. Every sound is the embodiment of wonder. God knows what kids are like, and He enjoys it. Children are capable of understanding the intimacy that God desires to have with us while still acknowledging Him as the Creator of all things. Children first want to be loved. Christ first wants to love us.
Be like a child.
I want Him to enjoy my presence as well, and so I attempt to be the kind of person He is making me to be.
Our lives take on a weird cycle. We start out as children wanting to be adults so we can do more, and then we become adults who want to be children so someone else can take all the responsibility and we can go back to enjoying life.
Christ calls us to exactly that life, but the joy of life He desires for us is based on Him rather than the empty, selfish pursuits of the world. By the world’s standards we need “things” and “stuff” to be “happy”. We must be “visible” and “prominent”. And when we have bought all the “things”, and got all the “stuff”, and become “visible” and “prominent”, we find ourselves withered, dried up, and lifeless, dying for nothing.
The world wants me to have a relationship with Christ on its terms not on God’s terms. The world doesn’t want to actually know anything about our relationship with God. It’s enough for them to know I have that relationship as long as they don’t have to hear it. That’s enough for them.
It’s not enough for God. God is not silent about what He wants from us. “You will always have the …”, but you have God first. He wants you more than any need anyone else has, and your satisfaction in life will be greater when you seek out His desires for you before your own, or the world’s.
I don’t always want to do that though. Sometimes my desires are in direct opposition to my faith. Sometimes I collide with my faith, and it shakes me to my core. Because while I am fickle and flit to and fro amongst all the “things/stuff/values/…garbage” that the world offers, my faith being a gift of God, remains firmly fixed on God. I drift further and further from it at times, but I remain attached with this “spiritual rubber band” called my conscience that can only stretch so far before all of my justifications for doing the things I do can’t be stretched any further and I get yanked back to that rock hard and fast. I collide with my faith. After I have slammed into it and the stars have cleared from my eyes I finally get back on top and realize, “Wow! The view is so much better from here!”
It’s much easier to see the benefit of my faith in the aftermath of a crisis than in the midst of it, but it’s always what I hold on to the hardest in the difficult moments. Anything else would crumble beneath me. I know this from experience.
So now instead of trying to be a child of this world, I strive to be a child of the next sitting in the lap of the God of Wonder…
©Dan Bode 2004
There are some things we will always have, both good and bad, but Jesus overcomes all things. He is more important than the best and the worst that we experience. We devote our time and energy to those things that have the greatest impact on our lives. We see sickness and health, wealth and poverty. All these things have a great impact on us for good or bad, and all of them can, by their impact, distract us from Christ. The essence of our relationship with Christ is that while all these things affect us at different levels we need to deal with Christ first and all other things through Him, not before or after Him.
The sequence of events in how we deal with any occasion in our lives determines the impact they have on us for Christ.
Occasionally, in some form or another the question is asked of me, “With all that you have been through why do you hold on to your faith?”
I think the answer to that question lies in what my priorities have become. I simply cannot bear to imagine my life without my faith. I’ve been there and done that. I have changed too much to go back and find satisfaction in a world without God. It would be barren and lifeless. I can no longer tolerate the world’s value system. I think about what offends God and I care about it. These things were once the furthest things from my mind. At the same time I have also reached a point where, while I love, fear and respect God, I have also come to understand that He allows questions. He allows challenges from us, for that is how we learn submission to Him. He can overcome any challenge. It is we who fear challenges to God, because we fear that He cannot meet them. We apply our own limits to God which automatically makes Him inadequate for our needs.
In his book “Reaching for the Invisible God.” Philip Yancey quotes Kathleen Norris.
“One so often hears people say, “I just can’t handle it”, when they reject a biblical image of God as Father, as Mother, as Lord or Judge; God as lover, as angry or jealous, God on a cross. I find this choice of words revealing, however real the pain they reflect: if we seek a God we can “handle”, that will be exactly what we get. A God we can manipulate, suspiciously like ourselves, the wideness of whose mercy we’ve cut down to size”.
In ancient times it was common practice for a farmer to worship gods that were representative of the things he had to deal with. Hence there were gods of the soil, of the sun, the rain, the harvest. He sacrificed to it in the way he saw fit and made up his own priestly rules. His god’s influence ended at his property line.
By cutting God down to a “manageable” size we attempt to make Him into someone who is our individual ideal of “enough” to satisfy our personal needs. Yet God, being limitless, is more than enough; our need, also being limitless, can never be filled by a god of our own making.
I don’t love God enough.
I don’t love my wife enough.
I don’t love my children enough.
It can never be “enough” when the source that satisfies your need is limitless.
A limitless source supplies a continuous need. A limitless source will also provide a limitless means of expression. There is always more available to give through Christ.
We are the Beloved of God. We must never desire less than He offers us. We must not maintain a minimal faith.
When our faith reaches a point where we have had “enough” then we have begun the slow and painful spiral down to death. A real faith recognizes that there is never “enough” to satisfy our thirst. True faith is never satisfied. It always searches for one more thing to believe, one more wonderful piece of evidence that proves for me once again that God loves me.
Sometimes that search takes us into areas of our lives that we would rather not go.
In the midst of my selfishness and pride I discover that my humility gives me value. In the midst of my anger I find that a peaceful heart will accomplish more.
In the midst of all my wonderful “Christian Activities/Ministries”, I find exhaustion that forces my dependence on Christ.
In the aftermath of a cruel and bloody crucifixion, I find the pearl of the Resurrection. The latter is not possible without the former.
Sometimes the greatest treasures are the ones left unused and forgotten in the corner of the attic, covered with dust. They are the things of my childhood that were left behind with the advent of “maturity” in my social lexicon.
Many times when I am helping to care for some of the children in our church nursery, I will attempt to get them interested in some of the toys in the arsenal. Sometimes they can be a pretty hard sell, but most of the time there is something that will catch their fancy. In the process of using a random toy to catch their attention I have to admit that it gets my attention instead. Sometimes I use a particular toy to get their attention because it’s a toy I want to play with. I keep thinking to myself, “Why didn’t we have toys like this when I was a kid?” (Although I have to admit that if Elmo doesn’t shut up soon he’s gonna get his batteries yanked.) And for a little while I give up the weightier theological/social/important matters that occupy my thoughts and try to pretend that I barely know how to walk. I try to learn all over again instead of rehashing the same old information. The “big” things will all still be there when I get back to myself, because “You will always have the (fill in the blank)…” But Christ is bigger.
My priority then is to become the child Christ called me to be. To regain some of the purity of spirit that I had before I was influenced by the rest of the world. When Christ called us to be like children, I don’t think he necessarily meant for us to be blindly trusting. He wants us to trust Him completely, but He wants us to come to Him with no regard for the limitations this world would place on our relationship to Him.
When the children wanted to be near Jesus the adults were trying to hold them back. He told the adults to let them come.
“Then little children were brought to Jesus for him to place his hands on them and pray for them. But the disciples rebuked those who brought them. Jesus said, "Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these." When he had placed his hands on them, he went on from there.” Matthew 19:13-15. If there was one sound that I had to think of that inspires joy in me I would have to say it is the sound of a child who is just learning that he or she has a voice. They have not yet learned to form words. Every sound they make is an experiment. Every sound is the embodiment of wonder. God knows what kids are like, and He enjoys it. Children are capable of understanding the intimacy that God desires to have with us while still acknowledging Him as the Creator of all things. Children first want to be loved. Christ first wants to love us.
Be like a child.
I want Him to enjoy my presence as well, and so I attempt to be the kind of person He is making me to be.
Our lives take on a weird cycle. We start out as children wanting to be adults so we can do more, and then we become adults who want to be children so someone else can take all the responsibility and we can go back to enjoying life.
Christ calls us to exactly that life, but the joy of life He desires for us is based on Him rather than the empty, selfish pursuits of the world. By the world’s standards we need “things” and “stuff” to be “happy”. We must be “visible” and “prominent”. And when we have bought all the “things”, and got all the “stuff”, and become “visible” and “prominent”, we find ourselves withered, dried up, and lifeless, dying for nothing.
The world wants me to have a relationship with Christ on its terms not on God’s terms. The world doesn’t want to actually know anything about our relationship with God. It’s enough for them to know I have that relationship as long as they don’t have to hear it. That’s enough for them.
It’s not enough for God. God is not silent about what He wants from us. “You will always have the …”, but you have God first. He wants you more than any need anyone else has, and your satisfaction in life will be greater when you seek out His desires for you before your own, or the world’s.
I don’t always want to do that though. Sometimes my desires are in direct opposition to my faith. Sometimes I collide with my faith, and it shakes me to my core. Because while I am fickle and flit to and fro amongst all the “things/stuff/values/…garbage” that the world offers, my faith being a gift of God, remains firmly fixed on God. I drift further and further from it at times, but I remain attached with this “spiritual rubber band” called my conscience that can only stretch so far before all of my justifications for doing the things I do can’t be stretched any further and I get yanked back to that rock hard and fast. I collide with my faith. After I have slammed into it and the stars have cleared from my eyes I finally get back on top and realize, “Wow! The view is so much better from here!”
It’s much easier to see the benefit of my faith in the aftermath of a crisis than in the midst of it, but it’s always what I hold on to the hardest in the difficult moments. Anything else would crumble beneath me. I know this from experience.
So now instead of trying to be a child of this world, I strive to be a child of the next sitting in the lap of the God of Wonder…
©Dan Bode 2004
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Berserker Faith
In Danish history the Vikings were known as a bloodthirsty lot. They were particularly adept at pillaging and plundering neighboring areas. They kidnapped whole villages for slaves when manual labor was necessary. They were not likely to top anyone’s list of “people to get to know better”. Yet, as bad as the reputation the Vikings had created for themselves was there are accounts of warriors among the Vikings who were even more highly feared. They fought in such a way that they could only be stopped at the cost of many enemy lives.
They were called Berserkers. They were given the name “Berserker”, which means “bear shirt”, because they wore shirts made from bear skin.
Shortly before, or during, battle Berserkers gave themselves over to a “battle rage” that allowed them to fight with such abandon that they were left surrounded by a field of enemies who had been pierced, hacked and bloodied to such a degree that the only sure thing about them was that they were, or soon would be, dead. The Berserker in his rage desired only one thing: to remove their threat. They were in his way and they had no place there. The only solution was their removal and the only way to accomplish that was with the battleaxe in his grip. Shields were split and limbs hewed until there was simply no one left. No sense of his surroundings remained to him; his only awareness was of the world within reach of his weapon. His fellow warriors always stayed clear of him in battle for he would recognize none of them when the red mist of his fury clouded his vision. His style of fighting was never described as graceful, nor did it reflect any sense of “finesse”. It did, however, get the job done.
But there was one thing about the Berserker that always struck me as his most effective trait in battle: The Berserker always fought with no thought to his own defense. He never actively parried an enemy’s weapon. If it happened to be in his way he merely batted it aside as he brought his own weapon into play. If he took a wound it went unnoticed until the battle was over and the rage had left him.
The Berserker, in his frenzy, was motivated by one thought: Move forward.
Clear a path. No defense. Attack is the only option. Never back up. There is no retreat.
It’s ironic that as long as there was an obstruction in front of him the Berserker refused to stop. He stopped only when the path was clear, and there was no one left to resist him.
The thought struck me one day, as odd as it sounds, that in many ways my faith should be characterized by some of the same properties that the Berserker displayed.
For instance; he fought with no thought to his own defense.
How often do I hesitate to share my faith out of fear of being attacked in response, or being asked a question that I can’t answer?
What if I practiced a defenseless faith?
The thing about being a Christian is that God is bigger than anything we can comprehend.
Most of our defenses are built to guard against attacks against our own integrity based on our own sins. God forgave us in order to neutralize their threat, to remove the need for self defense. His forgiveness is meant to complete us; for if His forgiveness is all that truly matters then the accusations of our fellow sinners are meaningless.
The other part of our defenses deal with our insufficient knowledge of God.
He does not require us to defend Him. He’s a big God; He can take care of Himself. He is able to answer the big questions. When we attempt to defend Him we tend to do it by judging the intent and motivations of those attacking Him, and yet He tells us “Judge not” because we are not qualified to judge.
The human standard of judgment cannot be overcome by a human standard of forgiveness. The capacity to forgive must be greater than the standard of judgment in order for justice to be complete. The one who judges must have the authority to either implement the punishment, or forgive the offense completely. The standard of judgment must also be consistent, which takes it completely beyond the ability of man, because every person judges by their own standard. Only He has the authority to apply the penalty of that judgment. And because He is capable of defending His judgments and actions we need not fear the attacks that come from those who are judged. Our only job here is to let them know they have an Advocate when their attacks have failed and they are left defenseless.
Only God has the capacity to truly forgive so only He is qualified to judge anyone, which is to my great benefit, because if all of my sins were known to my fellow man I highly doubt that I would be considered a Godly man by human standards.
I am extremely fortunate that the standard for being Godly is determined by God. It was the prophet Samuel who said of David, “...the Lord sought for Himself a man after His own heart.” (1Samuel 13:14) It was not a designation given by man to man. And when I look at the people God used to do such great and Godly things in this world in most cases I find myself completely unimpressed by their character. In fact, I find (surprise, surprise) that they are actually a lot like me; weak, inconsistent, and prone to failure requiring repentance. So while you might think that God’s standard is harder to live up to that man’s, I find that when Christ said, “My yoke is easy and my burden is light.” (Matt. 11:30) it has a much greater meaning when I realize that while God’s standard is indeed higher than man’s, God Himself provides the means to reach it.
Man’s standard is like the Pharisees rule book for living in Jewish society; it requires a lot of work and produces no reward. You feel like you must be doing something, but you have nothing of value to show for all your efforts.
Another applicable trait is that anything blocking the Berserker’s path only motivated him further to overcome it.
When I find something that causes me to falter in my pursuit of a closer relationship with Him it seems I more often find myself sitting down and bemoaning the fact of the obstacle’s presence rather than finding a way to neutralize it.
When we are presented with an attack on God it does hurt us, because what hurts Him would hurt His children as well, but they should not leave us cowed. If I am asked a question I can’t answer, I simply find the answer and I am prepared for the next time. If it’s an answer I don’t like, but God said it, well that’s the answer, and I am back to letting God say what He’s always said. He’s pretty good about being consistent. We aren’t, but that’s a different issue. Part of our problem is that we keep trying to make God more “palatable” to the world at large, and this requires that we change His answers to be more “politically correct”. We start reinterpreting what He has clearly said about something so that it sounds entirely different.
This is unacceptable. God cannot be required to conform.
God gave us His word to apply to our lives not just theorize about how it should be used. The Pharisees of Jesus time took this to a higher level of mediocrity with a series of laws that attempted to control every minor function of the every day lives of the Jews.
This actually put the Pharisees in a position of complete dependence on the society they sought to control. They only dealt with “spiritual” things and lived off of the well being of their society. They became, in effect, parasites. They created more obstacles than they destroyed.
The Word of God is applicable to our lives. It has an impact on what we do and how we act when we actually listen to what He says, and then do it. So often in my own life I have found that I didn’t start honestly applying God’s word to my life until I had absolutely no answer of my own and no control over what happened, and those are the times that I learned most clearly that He has every intention of taking care of me despite my insistence that I can do it all by myself.
So having said all this and making all these really rather odd comparisons, I have to wonder where my faith is on the spectrum of strength. It seems to fluctuate quite a bit.
The grace of God is a wild, uncontrollable thing, and what I need is a faith to match it.
Imagine a faith which my enemies would fear simply for being the opposite of all they have been told by the world. For the world will believe anything that allows them to continue their inevitable slide toward death.
Dorothy Sayers, a great English writer and contemporary of C.S. Lewis once wrote: "In the world it is called Tolerance, but in hell it is called Despair, the sin that believes in nothing, cares for nothing, seeks to know nothing, interferes with nothing, enjoys nothing, hates nothing, finds purpose in nothing, lives for nothing, and remains alive because there is nothing for which it will die."
I need a faith with which they would fear I might kill them, but which ultimately would be the death of me in the end.
It would be a faith in which I would approach my enemy with the open arms of forgiveness knowing that he would not grant me the same. Knowing that once my forgiveness was offered I could easily be dead or injured, for this faith would require no defense. Knowing that as I approached him with the full armor of God that while the Breastplate of Righteousness would protect my soul, it might still be allowed to be pierced in order that my heart might bleed grace on his hands.
It would be a wild faith.
An uncontrollable faith.
A raging faith.
A Berserker Faith.
©Dan Bode 2006
They were called Berserkers. They were given the name “Berserker”, which means “bear shirt”, because they wore shirts made from bear skin.
Shortly before, or during, battle Berserkers gave themselves over to a “battle rage” that allowed them to fight with such abandon that they were left surrounded by a field of enemies who had been pierced, hacked and bloodied to such a degree that the only sure thing about them was that they were, or soon would be, dead. The Berserker in his rage desired only one thing: to remove their threat. They were in his way and they had no place there. The only solution was their removal and the only way to accomplish that was with the battleaxe in his grip. Shields were split and limbs hewed until there was simply no one left. No sense of his surroundings remained to him; his only awareness was of the world within reach of his weapon. His fellow warriors always stayed clear of him in battle for he would recognize none of them when the red mist of his fury clouded his vision. His style of fighting was never described as graceful, nor did it reflect any sense of “finesse”. It did, however, get the job done.
But there was one thing about the Berserker that always struck me as his most effective trait in battle: The Berserker always fought with no thought to his own defense. He never actively parried an enemy’s weapon. If it happened to be in his way he merely batted it aside as he brought his own weapon into play. If he took a wound it went unnoticed until the battle was over and the rage had left him.
The Berserker, in his frenzy, was motivated by one thought: Move forward.
Clear a path. No defense. Attack is the only option. Never back up. There is no retreat.
It’s ironic that as long as there was an obstruction in front of him the Berserker refused to stop. He stopped only when the path was clear, and there was no one left to resist him.
The thought struck me one day, as odd as it sounds, that in many ways my faith should be characterized by some of the same properties that the Berserker displayed.
For instance; he fought with no thought to his own defense.
How often do I hesitate to share my faith out of fear of being attacked in response, or being asked a question that I can’t answer?
What if I practiced a defenseless faith?
The thing about being a Christian is that God is bigger than anything we can comprehend.
Most of our defenses are built to guard against attacks against our own integrity based on our own sins. God forgave us in order to neutralize their threat, to remove the need for self defense. His forgiveness is meant to complete us; for if His forgiveness is all that truly matters then the accusations of our fellow sinners are meaningless.
The other part of our defenses deal with our insufficient knowledge of God.
He does not require us to defend Him. He’s a big God; He can take care of Himself. He is able to answer the big questions. When we attempt to defend Him we tend to do it by judging the intent and motivations of those attacking Him, and yet He tells us “Judge not” because we are not qualified to judge.
The human standard of judgment cannot be overcome by a human standard of forgiveness. The capacity to forgive must be greater than the standard of judgment in order for justice to be complete. The one who judges must have the authority to either implement the punishment, or forgive the offense completely. The standard of judgment must also be consistent, which takes it completely beyond the ability of man, because every person judges by their own standard. Only He has the authority to apply the penalty of that judgment. And because He is capable of defending His judgments and actions we need not fear the attacks that come from those who are judged. Our only job here is to let them know they have an Advocate when their attacks have failed and they are left defenseless.
Only God has the capacity to truly forgive so only He is qualified to judge anyone, which is to my great benefit, because if all of my sins were known to my fellow man I highly doubt that I would be considered a Godly man by human standards.
I am extremely fortunate that the standard for being Godly is determined by God. It was the prophet Samuel who said of David, “...the Lord sought for Himself a man after His own heart.” (1Samuel 13:14) It was not a designation given by man to man. And when I look at the people God used to do such great and Godly things in this world in most cases I find myself completely unimpressed by their character. In fact, I find (surprise, surprise) that they are actually a lot like me; weak, inconsistent, and prone to failure requiring repentance. So while you might think that God’s standard is harder to live up to that man’s, I find that when Christ said, “My yoke is easy and my burden is light.” (Matt. 11:30) it has a much greater meaning when I realize that while God’s standard is indeed higher than man’s, God Himself provides the means to reach it.
Man’s standard is like the Pharisees rule book for living in Jewish society; it requires a lot of work and produces no reward. You feel like you must be doing something, but you have nothing of value to show for all your efforts.
Another applicable trait is that anything blocking the Berserker’s path only motivated him further to overcome it.
When I find something that causes me to falter in my pursuit of a closer relationship with Him it seems I more often find myself sitting down and bemoaning the fact of the obstacle’s presence rather than finding a way to neutralize it.
When we are presented with an attack on God it does hurt us, because what hurts Him would hurt His children as well, but they should not leave us cowed. If I am asked a question I can’t answer, I simply find the answer and I am prepared for the next time. If it’s an answer I don’t like, but God said it, well that’s the answer, and I am back to letting God say what He’s always said. He’s pretty good about being consistent. We aren’t, but that’s a different issue. Part of our problem is that we keep trying to make God more “palatable” to the world at large, and this requires that we change His answers to be more “politically correct”. We start reinterpreting what He has clearly said about something so that it sounds entirely different.
This is unacceptable. God cannot be required to conform.
God gave us His word to apply to our lives not just theorize about how it should be used. The Pharisees of Jesus time took this to a higher level of mediocrity with a series of laws that attempted to control every minor function of the every day lives of the Jews.
This actually put the Pharisees in a position of complete dependence on the society they sought to control. They only dealt with “spiritual” things and lived off of the well being of their society. They became, in effect, parasites. They created more obstacles than they destroyed.
The Word of God is applicable to our lives. It has an impact on what we do and how we act when we actually listen to what He says, and then do it. So often in my own life I have found that I didn’t start honestly applying God’s word to my life until I had absolutely no answer of my own and no control over what happened, and those are the times that I learned most clearly that He has every intention of taking care of me despite my insistence that I can do it all by myself.
So having said all this and making all these really rather odd comparisons, I have to wonder where my faith is on the spectrum of strength. It seems to fluctuate quite a bit.
The grace of God is a wild, uncontrollable thing, and what I need is a faith to match it.
Imagine a faith which my enemies would fear simply for being the opposite of all they have been told by the world. For the world will believe anything that allows them to continue their inevitable slide toward death.
Dorothy Sayers, a great English writer and contemporary of C.S. Lewis once wrote: "In the world it is called Tolerance, but in hell it is called Despair, the sin that believes in nothing, cares for nothing, seeks to know nothing, interferes with nothing, enjoys nothing, hates nothing, finds purpose in nothing, lives for nothing, and remains alive because there is nothing for which it will die."
I need a faith with which they would fear I might kill them, but which ultimately would be the death of me in the end.
It would be a faith in which I would approach my enemy with the open arms of forgiveness knowing that he would not grant me the same. Knowing that once my forgiveness was offered I could easily be dead or injured, for this faith would require no defense. Knowing that as I approached him with the full armor of God that while the Breastplate of Righteousness would protect my soul, it might still be allowed to be pierced in order that my heart might bleed grace on his hands.
It would be a wild faith.
An uncontrollable faith.
A raging faith.
A Berserker Faith.
©Dan Bode 2006
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Baldness
I’m bald. There’s just no two ways about it.
I came to accept the fact of my follicular barrenness many years ago. I had a lot of time to prepare since I had a receding hairline in high school. It is said that the gene for baldness is passed down through the mother’s side of the family, and my mother’s father was from all reports bald by the time he was 28. Although, I do have a few hairs left up there so I guess I should consider myself fortunate at 48 to have held out against the inevitable recession for a little while longer. My older brothers all still have hair on top, and I applaud their good fortune.
Now, I don’t want anyone to think that I am bitter about my hair loss. I learned to accept it long ago. I tend to grow hair on my body instead. My wife once said that the only places I don’t have hair are the top of my head and the bottom of my feet. That’s not to say I wouldn’t rather have hair up there simply because I don’t want to have to wear a hat whenever I go out in the sun. Sometimes I forget the hat and get sunburned anyway and then it starts to peel and people think I have a really bad case of dandruff. Oh well. Being bald has made me more aware of what other people think of it though. I have seen the lengths some men go to hide their baldness, and quite frankly, I am appalled.
The first method is, of course, the Combover. You know, letting the hair grow long on one side and then combing it over the top to try to make it look like there’s really hair there. Let me be frank here.
Guys – it looks dumb. Everyone who sees you knows you’re bald, and in a stiff breeze when the hair gets blown off it looks like a helmet standing on it’s side.
Then there’s the hairpiece. Every time my wife and I are out and about she can always tell if a guy is wearing a hairpiece, then she points it out to me and laughs. “That looks so phony!” she says. She’s right. I have yet to see one that looks truly natural.
There’s also Rogaine, which works for some, and not for others depending on what kind of baldness you are afflicted with. If you don’t mind forking out the monthly cost and then having to put the stuff on your head everyday I guess it’s ok.
Another solution is the hair transplant. I have seen the news shows that detail the lengths some people will go to replace their hair. It is in a word: horrifying. In one procedure they put water balloons under your scalp and fill them in order to stretch the skin of the scalp where you have hair growing. When the scalp is sufficiently stretched the balloons are removed and the excess folds with the active hair follicles are cut out and then sewn back on to the areas where there is no hair. Too much pain involved for me. And what if one of those balloons springs a leak? I don’t know how anyone else feels about it, but I wouldn’t want to be seen in public while all this was going on either. Can you imagine walking down the street with big bulges in the back of your head that sloshed when you moved? I suppose you could just put on a Star Trek uniform and tell everyone you were shooting a movie.
In another procedure they take little “plugs” of follicles from the hairy part of your scalp and sew them into the bald area. It looks like the aerial view of farmland. Nice neat little rows.
On top of all this after it’s all done there is no guarantee that it will work. The little follicles may not like the new spot and not grow. Or some may grow and some may not. Your growth pattern may then resemble the pattern of a waffle iron. What a pleasant thought.
All this is done because somehow some of us were convinced that the presence of hair determined whether people liked us or not. Let me be the first to let you know something: if they don’t like you without hair, they probably won’t like you with hair. Throw all the money at it you want to, but know that hair replacement does not equal personality adjustment.
Since I am bald I tend to notice when someone else is bald. It’s kind of an unspoken bond. It’s like when you get a new car and you start to notice other people driving the same kind of car. You never noticed how many there were until you got one.
So now we come to the heart of the matter.
I was in church a few weeks ago, and we were sitting towards the back. We usually sit in the back. It’s an old habit we developed when our daughters were babies. We wanted to be close to the door in case we needed to make a quick getaway to change a diaper or something. Anyway, as I was listening to the sermon, and I was listening, I noticed there are a lot of bald guys in church. Obviously they are secure in their baldness or I wouldn’t be able to see their shiny pates. I also noticed something else about them: a lot of them had sores on top of their heads from where they bumped there head on something. I noticed it because I had one too from when I was climbing the ladder in the garage and bumped my head on an exposed rafter.
But I realized something else too. I knew that just because I could see sores on the bald guy’s heads didn’t mean they were the only ones with sores on their heads. People with hair bump their heads too; they just have something there to cover up the sore. I noticed all of this because I had it in common with them. I recognized in them the same thing that was in me.
It is like that with our sins.
We often look at other peoples’ sins and shortcomings and we judge them accordingly. But we fail to recognize that the reason we can see their sins, and speak of them with such authority, is not that we are somehow better than they are as we like to think, but rather that we are guilty of the same sin. We recognize the same faults in them as in ourselves, and we seek to distance ourselves from them by seeming to be above them. Just like getting a hair transplant we seek to find a way to cover our flaws. We look for something to divert attention away from ourselves. We seek a way to look better on the outside rather than seek an internal change. Seldom do we hear a sermon and seek to apply it to ourselves first. It’s usually a good message for someone else to hear. “If only so-and-so were here. He really needs to hear this.” Never mind that we ourselves are guilty of what we accuse that person of.
When Christ said, “Do not judge so that you will not be judged.” (Matt. 7:1) He wasn’t kidding around. He’s the only one qualified to judge me or save me. My job on this earth as a Christian is not judgement, but reconciliation. I must show others that despite my flaws it is still possible for me to draw near to God because of His sacrifice, not my supposed superiority. I must show them that I am not greater than them, or higher up on some eternal ladder of performance. Because I am guilty of the same sins as them I am in need of the same remedy. Not the same method of covering up, but the same method of change.
There’s something else about bald heads: they are highly reflective. If you are walking towards someone with a bald head and he looks down, the glare can be somewhat blinding. The idea is that they reflect light, but they aren’t the source of it. And they are capable of reflecting that light even when they have a sore on their head. Despite our flaws, or hurts, or sins, God still uses us. Our effectiveness is in our willingness to be exposed and used.
So, next time you’re tempted to look down on someone, don’t look down your nose at him or her. Shave your head and look down and help to light their path.
©Dan Bode 2000
I came to accept the fact of my follicular barrenness many years ago. I had a lot of time to prepare since I had a receding hairline in high school. It is said that the gene for baldness is passed down through the mother’s side of the family, and my mother’s father was from all reports bald by the time he was 28. Although, I do have a few hairs left up there so I guess I should consider myself fortunate at 48 to have held out against the inevitable recession for a little while longer. My older brothers all still have hair on top, and I applaud their good fortune.
Now, I don’t want anyone to think that I am bitter about my hair loss. I learned to accept it long ago. I tend to grow hair on my body instead. My wife once said that the only places I don’t have hair are the top of my head and the bottom of my feet. That’s not to say I wouldn’t rather have hair up there simply because I don’t want to have to wear a hat whenever I go out in the sun. Sometimes I forget the hat and get sunburned anyway and then it starts to peel and people think I have a really bad case of dandruff. Oh well. Being bald has made me more aware of what other people think of it though. I have seen the lengths some men go to hide their baldness, and quite frankly, I am appalled.
The first method is, of course, the Combover. You know, letting the hair grow long on one side and then combing it over the top to try to make it look like there’s really hair there. Let me be frank here.
Guys – it looks dumb. Everyone who sees you knows you’re bald, and in a stiff breeze when the hair gets blown off it looks like a helmet standing on it’s side.
Then there’s the hairpiece. Every time my wife and I are out and about she can always tell if a guy is wearing a hairpiece, then she points it out to me and laughs. “That looks so phony!” she says. She’s right. I have yet to see one that looks truly natural.
There’s also Rogaine, which works for some, and not for others depending on what kind of baldness you are afflicted with. If you don’t mind forking out the monthly cost and then having to put the stuff on your head everyday I guess it’s ok.
Another solution is the hair transplant. I have seen the news shows that detail the lengths some people will go to replace their hair. It is in a word: horrifying. In one procedure they put water balloons under your scalp and fill them in order to stretch the skin of the scalp where you have hair growing. When the scalp is sufficiently stretched the balloons are removed and the excess folds with the active hair follicles are cut out and then sewn back on to the areas where there is no hair. Too much pain involved for me. And what if one of those balloons springs a leak? I don’t know how anyone else feels about it, but I wouldn’t want to be seen in public while all this was going on either. Can you imagine walking down the street with big bulges in the back of your head that sloshed when you moved? I suppose you could just put on a Star Trek uniform and tell everyone you were shooting a movie.
In another procedure they take little “plugs” of follicles from the hairy part of your scalp and sew them into the bald area. It looks like the aerial view of farmland. Nice neat little rows.
On top of all this after it’s all done there is no guarantee that it will work. The little follicles may not like the new spot and not grow. Or some may grow and some may not. Your growth pattern may then resemble the pattern of a waffle iron. What a pleasant thought.
All this is done because somehow some of us were convinced that the presence of hair determined whether people liked us or not. Let me be the first to let you know something: if they don’t like you without hair, they probably won’t like you with hair. Throw all the money at it you want to, but know that hair replacement does not equal personality adjustment.
Since I am bald I tend to notice when someone else is bald. It’s kind of an unspoken bond. It’s like when you get a new car and you start to notice other people driving the same kind of car. You never noticed how many there were until you got one.
So now we come to the heart of the matter.
I was in church a few weeks ago, and we were sitting towards the back. We usually sit in the back. It’s an old habit we developed when our daughters were babies. We wanted to be close to the door in case we needed to make a quick getaway to change a diaper or something. Anyway, as I was listening to the sermon, and I was listening, I noticed there are a lot of bald guys in church. Obviously they are secure in their baldness or I wouldn’t be able to see their shiny pates. I also noticed something else about them: a lot of them had sores on top of their heads from where they bumped there head on something. I noticed it because I had one too from when I was climbing the ladder in the garage and bumped my head on an exposed rafter.
But I realized something else too. I knew that just because I could see sores on the bald guy’s heads didn’t mean they were the only ones with sores on their heads. People with hair bump their heads too; they just have something there to cover up the sore. I noticed all of this because I had it in common with them. I recognized in them the same thing that was in me.
It is like that with our sins.
We often look at other peoples’ sins and shortcomings and we judge them accordingly. But we fail to recognize that the reason we can see their sins, and speak of them with such authority, is not that we are somehow better than they are as we like to think, but rather that we are guilty of the same sin. We recognize the same faults in them as in ourselves, and we seek to distance ourselves from them by seeming to be above them. Just like getting a hair transplant we seek to find a way to cover our flaws. We look for something to divert attention away from ourselves. We seek a way to look better on the outside rather than seek an internal change. Seldom do we hear a sermon and seek to apply it to ourselves first. It’s usually a good message for someone else to hear. “If only so-and-so were here. He really needs to hear this.” Never mind that we ourselves are guilty of what we accuse that person of.
When Christ said, “Do not judge so that you will not be judged.” (Matt. 7:1) He wasn’t kidding around. He’s the only one qualified to judge me or save me. My job on this earth as a Christian is not judgement, but reconciliation. I must show others that despite my flaws it is still possible for me to draw near to God because of His sacrifice, not my supposed superiority. I must show them that I am not greater than them, or higher up on some eternal ladder of performance. Because I am guilty of the same sins as them I am in need of the same remedy. Not the same method of covering up, but the same method of change.
There’s something else about bald heads: they are highly reflective. If you are walking towards someone with a bald head and he looks down, the glare can be somewhat blinding. The idea is that they reflect light, but they aren’t the source of it. And they are capable of reflecting that light even when they have a sore on their head. Despite our flaws, or hurts, or sins, God still uses us. Our effectiveness is in our willingness to be exposed and used.
So, next time you’re tempted to look down on someone, don’t look down your nose at him or her. Shave your head and look down and help to light their path.
©Dan Bode 2000
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Tea Time
“How about if you take me to tea?”
It was a response to an innocent question I had asked my wife. Little did I know what it would involve. We had asked each other what kind of activities we would most like to do, regardless of whether the other liked them or not, and then we each determined what we would be willing to do from each other’s list.
I wanted to go to a restaurant that served a lot of red meat.
My general disposition is: Meat, potatoes, Soda; don’t bother me: I’m eating.
My wife has daintier tastes. I chomp, she nibbles.
So we’re talkin’ tea, huh? I can do that.
“Sure I’ll take you out to tea. I know this great little neighborhood coffee shop that serves tea too. We can go there…..”
“No, no, no. Not just going and having tea anywhere. There is a special place to go for it. This is High Tea.”
This was beginning to sound ominous. High Tea? With Capitol Letters? Are there drugs involved? Do they spike it or something? Hey, is this legal?
“High Tea is a Victorian tradition.”
“Do I have to wear a tie?” I whined. I hate ties. I don’t even know where the last tie I bought about 10 years ago is anymore. I would have to clean the closet for that. Cleaning the closet could take weeks, maybe even months. Maybe there was a way out of this after all.
“No you don’t have to wear a tie.”
Curses! Foiled again.
“You go ahead and call the place. I think you have to make reservations.”
Reservations? To drink tea?
I called the place, and sure enough you had to make reservations.
“Do you have any openings for this Sunday?” I asked.
“Oh no. Our weekends are booked up for the next 4 months.”
What is going on here? We’re talkin’ tea, for cryin out loud!
“Uh, ok. Well, do you have anything available during the week?”
“Oh yes. We should have some available then.”
“Good. How about Tuesday?”
“Yes we do. We have tables available in all of our sessions that day.”
Sessions? Does this include psychoanalysis or something?
“What are your “sessions”?”
“We have eleven to one, one to three, and three to five.”
“Uh, ok. How about the three to five on Tuesday?”
Two hours? How much tea do they expect you to drink?
“All right. We have you on our books for Tuesday from three to five.”
I thanked her and hung up. This was getting curiouser and curiouser.
I told my wife, and she was very happy to be going. She had apparently wanted to do this for a long time.
The day finally came, and we arrived at the tea place. It was a Victorian kind of gift shop as well, and in the middle of the store was a large gazebo type garden setting. There was a mural painted on the back wall that showed a peaceful garden. Several tables were set up with china tea cups and saucers.
I felt like a bull in a china shop. I was afraid if I moved too suddenly I would bump a shelf that would fall over with a domino effect and destroy the store. However, the hostess saw us and asked us if we had reservations. We were the only ones in the place at that point so I didn’t really think it made much difference anyway. We were seated at a table for two and given menus. There were a lot of teas. Usually I just opted for whatever was available as long as it wasn’t herbal. Herbal tastes like last weeks lawn clippings. This time they had some that sounded ok, and it was different from the usual teabag. I ordered my tea and a cheese and fruit plate. Sue ordered her tea with a dessert plate.
The tea came first. They gave each of us our little tea pot. I almost started singing that teapot song I learned as kid, but it doesn’t really sound good in bass.
I have always laughed when I would see someone pickup a tea cup and stick their pinky out, but here I was faced with a dilemma. The handle on the teacup was too small for me to fit any of my fingers through. I tried, but there was just no way to force my finger through that handle without breaking it, and the china looked expensive. I am used to handling a coffee mug that has room for me to get at least two of my fingers through the handle. I found that if I held the handle of the cup between my thumb and forefinger I could manage it ok, but then I didn’t have any place to put my other fingers. And guess what happened to my pinky? It stuck out! Grrr. I was trying to figure out some way to drink this tea in a masculine style. I briefly toyed with the idea of just taking the lid off the pot and drinking straight out of that, but that would have embarrassed Sue. I found a solution when I realized that the teacup was well suited to the palm of my hand, so I just held the whole cup rather than the handle. It was hot and somewhat painful, but, by golly, my pinky didn’t stick out.
Then our food plates were served.
By this time I was getting used to the concept that this was a “dainty” event.
Sue’s “dessert plate” consisted of about four cookies, a chocolate candy, and a miniature turnover. It was very tastefully arranged and looked very nice, but in terms of actual food content there was probably about 2 ounces on the plate.
My plate consisted of several varieties of cheese, fruit and crackers. At least my plate was full. It actually wasn’t bad. There was only one cheese on there I didn’t like. It was brie. It just tastes too weird for me, and when it melts it looks like something the dog coughed up.
They had listed on the menu another item called “tea sandwiches”. I had been warned ahead of time by a friend that these were in no way to be considered “sandwiches” in the sense that I thought of them. They were “dainty”, and were not to be confused in any way with the normal deli sandwich that I was picturing. I saw the truth of this when I looked to see the waitress standing behind the counter duck down and stuff a whole sandwich in her mouth.
“Wow you got a lot more than I did.” Said Sue.
“Yeah. Guess I lucked out on that one.” I replied.
After we were done eating she asked, “So are you full?”
“Are you kidding?” I asked. It was only cheese and crackers after all. Not even any meat. How could that be filling? There is no such thing as a filling meal to me if it does not contain meat. I was ready for the main course, but that was all there was.
This presented a problem for which I had a quick solution.
“Let’s go to a restaurant for dinner.” It was 5:15.
“You just ate!”
“That was just an appetizer! I have to have more than that.” This is where my mom would have started telling me about all the starving kids in Africa when I was a kid. The last time she said that to me I took the rest of the sandwich that I didn’t want to eat and put it in an envelope addressed to “all the starving children in Africa”. I wasn’t joking either; I really wanted it to go to them. I doubt the mail man appreciated the sentiment when he opened the mailbox that I had dropped it in.
But before I could even think about going to a restaurant I had to figure out how to get out of the store. This was a challenge.
My wife has always loved the “Victorian” style of decoration, and since this was that kind of store there was no such thing as a straight line to the exit. They had specialty teas of course, and soaps and candles and stationary and utensils and flowers and china and clocks and baskets ….and…and… I forgot the rest. We brought some of it home (sigh). This was pretty expensive tea.
Well, we made it out of there a few minutes after they closed. They locked the door behind us.
Now it’s my turn. There’s a steakhouse in a neighboring town that I’ve been hearing about for years. All they serve is steak. Big steak. Nothing but steak. Really good steak. There’s sawdust on the floor. They don’t serve tea or anything remotely similar. They have big knives and forks. They have big mugs that I can hold with all my fingers!
Probably after that I’ll be ready to handle another High Tea.
©Dan Bode 2002
It was a response to an innocent question I had asked my wife. Little did I know what it would involve. We had asked each other what kind of activities we would most like to do, regardless of whether the other liked them or not, and then we each determined what we would be willing to do from each other’s list.
I wanted to go to a restaurant that served a lot of red meat.
My general disposition is: Meat, potatoes, Soda; don’t bother me: I’m eating.
My wife has daintier tastes. I chomp, she nibbles.
So we’re talkin’ tea, huh? I can do that.
“Sure I’ll take you out to tea. I know this great little neighborhood coffee shop that serves tea too. We can go there…..”
“No, no, no. Not just going and having tea anywhere. There is a special place to go for it. This is High Tea.”
This was beginning to sound ominous. High Tea? With Capitol Letters? Are there drugs involved? Do they spike it or something? Hey, is this legal?
“High Tea is a Victorian tradition.”
“Do I have to wear a tie?” I whined. I hate ties. I don’t even know where the last tie I bought about 10 years ago is anymore. I would have to clean the closet for that. Cleaning the closet could take weeks, maybe even months. Maybe there was a way out of this after all.
“No you don’t have to wear a tie.”
Curses! Foiled again.
“You go ahead and call the place. I think you have to make reservations.”
Reservations? To drink tea?
I called the place, and sure enough you had to make reservations.
“Do you have any openings for this Sunday?” I asked.
“Oh no. Our weekends are booked up for the next 4 months.”
What is going on here? We’re talkin’ tea, for cryin out loud!
“Uh, ok. Well, do you have anything available during the week?”
“Oh yes. We should have some available then.”
“Good. How about Tuesday?”
“Yes we do. We have tables available in all of our sessions that day.”
Sessions? Does this include psychoanalysis or something?
“What are your “sessions”?”
“We have eleven to one, one to three, and three to five.”
“Uh, ok. How about the three to five on Tuesday?”
Two hours? How much tea do they expect you to drink?
“All right. We have you on our books for Tuesday from three to five.”
I thanked her and hung up. This was getting curiouser and curiouser.
I told my wife, and she was very happy to be going. She had apparently wanted to do this for a long time.
The day finally came, and we arrived at the tea place. It was a Victorian kind of gift shop as well, and in the middle of the store was a large gazebo type garden setting. There was a mural painted on the back wall that showed a peaceful garden. Several tables were set up with china tea cups and saucers.
I felt like a bull in a china shop. I was afraid if I moved too suddenly I would bump a shelf that would fall over with a domino effect and destroy the store. However, the hostess saw us and asked us if we had reservations. We were the only ones in the place at that point so I didn’t really think it made much difference anyway. We were seated at a table for two and given menus. There were a lot of teas. Usually I just opted for whatever was available as long as it wasn’t herbal. Herbal tastes like last weeks lawn clippings. This time they had some that sounded ok, and it was different from the usual teabag. I ordered my tea and a cheese and fruit plate. Sue ordered her tea with a dessert plate.
The tea came first. They gave each of us our little tea pot. I almost started singing that teapot song I learned as kid, but it doesn’t really sound good in bass.
I have always laughed when I would see someone pickup a tea cup and stick their pinky out, but here I was faced with a dilemma. The handle on the teacup was too small for me to fit any of my fingers through. I tried, but there was just no way to force my finger through that handle without breaking it, and the china looked expensive. I am used to handling a coffee mug that has room for me to get at least two of my fingers through the handle. I found that if I held the handle of the cup between my thumb and forefinger I could manage it ok, but then I didn’t have any place to put my other fingers. And guess what happened to my pinky? It stuck out! Grrr. I was trying to figure out some way to drink this tea in a masculine style. I briefly toyed with the idea of just taking the lid off the pot and drinking straight out of that, but that would have embarrassed Sue. I found a solution when I realized that the teacup was well suited to the palm of my hand, so I just held the whole cup rather than the handle. It was hot and somewhat painful, but, by golly, my pinky didn’t stick out.
Then our food plates were served.
By this time I was getting used to the concept that this was a “dainty” event.
Sue’s “dessert plate” consisted of about four cookies, a chocolate candy, and a miniature turnover. It was very tastefully arranged and looked very nice, but in terms of actual food content there was probably about 2 ounces on the plate.
My plate consisted of several varieties of cheese, fruit and crackers. At least my plate was full. It actually wasn’t bad. There was only one cheese on there I didn’t like. It was brie. It just tastes too weird for me, and when it melts it looks like something the dog coughed up.
They had listed on the menu another item called “tea sandwiches”. I had been warned ahead of time by a friend that these were in no way to be considered “sandwiches” in the sense that I thought of them. They were “dainty”, and were not to be confused in any way with the normal deli sandwich that I was picturing. I saw the truth of this when I looked to see the waitress standing behind the counter duck down and stuff a whole sandwich in her mouth.
“Wow you got a lot more than I did.” Said Sue.
“Yeah. Guess I lucked out on that one.” I replied.
After we were done eating she asked, “So are you full?”
“Are you kidding?” I asked. It was only cheese and crackers after all. Not even any meat. How could that be filling? There is no such thing as a filling meal to me if it does not contain meat. I was ready for the main course, but that was all there was.
This presented a problem for which I had a quick solution.
“Let’s go to a restaurant for dinner.” It was 5:15.
“You just ate!”
“That was just an appetizer! I have to have more than that.” This is where my mom would have started telling me about all the starving kids in Africa when I was a kid. The last time she said that to me I took the rest of the sandwich that I didn’t want to eat and put it in an envelope addressed to “all the starving children in Africa”. I wasn’t joking either; I really wanted it to go to them. I doubt the mail man appreciated the sentiment when he opened the mailbox that I had dropped it in.
But before I could even think about going to a restaurant I had to figure out how to get out of the store. This was a challenge.
My wife has always loved the “Victorian” style of decoration, and since this was that kind of store there was no such thing as a straight line to the exit. They had specialty teas of course, and soaps and candles and stationary and utensils and flowers and china and clocks and baskets ….and…and… I forgot the rest. We brought some of it home (sigh). This was pretty expensive tea.
Well, we made it out of there a few minutes after they closed. They locked the door behind us.
Now it’s my turn. There’s a steakhouse in a neighboring town that I’ve been hearing about for years. All they serve is steak. Big steak. Nothing but steak. Really good steak. There’s sawdust on the floor. They don’t serve tea or anything remotely similar. They have big knives and forks. They have big mugs that I can hold with all my fingers!
Probably after that I’ll be ready to handle another High Tea.
©Dan Bode 2002
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