Sorrow

Una Canción Nueva: Psalm 90:15

/ Robert D / Leave a comment

“Make us happy for the same amount of time that you afflicted us–for the same number of years that we saw only trouble.”

Psalm 90:15, Common English Bible

In October we remember Domestic Violence Awareness Month. I am reading and reflecting on both my experiences and the thoughts of others about domestic violence during this month. This action is important to me as a survivor of domestic violence.

The other day I spoke with two friends from my seminary who knew me for many years. We talked about the days when we first met. My friends told me the story of how they met my past wife. I heard their voices and felt compassion, love, and sorrow for the past and anger at the injustice they saw in the past and now.

My friends studied the Bible for many years and live with integrity. They had compassion for me when I didn’t know what happened when I wasn’t in the conversation with my ex-wife. My friends understand the words of Psalm 95. The above scripture is from the Revised Common Lectionary for next Sunday.

The past happened. Moments of the past sometimes cannot be repaired. We cannot possibly go back to those moments when terrible actions occurred. When we understand ourselves and the past, we may lose hope for the future.

My friends have compassion for me because they wish a future full of justice and hope. They want to see the good days we find in the Psalm for people who are afflicted with injustice and evil.

I need the same hope because the past is the past. I wish the same hope for you.

“Alégranos conforme a los días que nos has afligido y a los años que nos has hecho sufrir.”

Salmo 90:15, Nueva Versión Internacional

En Octubre recordamos el mes de concientización sobre la violencia doméstica. Estoy leyendo y reflexionando sobre ambas mis experiencias y los pensamientos de otra sobre violencia doméstica durante este mes. Esta acción es importante para mi como un sobreviviente de violencia doméstica.

El otro día hablé con dos amigos de mi seminario que me conocieron por muchos anos. Hablamos de los dias en que nos conocimos. Mis amigos me dieron el cuento de cómo conocieron a mi esposa pasada. Escuché su voces y sentí compasión, amar, y pena para el pasado y foriosa por la ijusticia vieron en el pasado y ahora.

Mis amigos estudiaron la biblia durante muchos años y viven con integridad. Tuvieron compasión por mi cuando no sabía que ocurrió cuando no estaba en la conversación con mi esposa pasada. Mis amigos comprenden la palabras de Salmo 95. La escritura de arriba es del Leccionario Común Revisado para el próximo domingo.

El pasado ocurrió. Los momentos del pasado a veces no pueden a reparar. No es posible que caminemos a esos momentos cuando las acciones malisimas courrieron. Cuando nos comprendemos y comprendemos el pasado, es posible que perdeamos la esperanza por la futura.

Mis amigos me tienen buena compasión porque les desean a futuro con justicia y esperanza. Ellos desean ver los buenismios dias que eoncontramos en el Salmo por las paersonas que tienen afligida con injusticia y mal.

Necesito la misma esperanza porque el pasado es en el pasasdo. Deseo la misma esperanza para ti.

Joy as a Subterranean Spring

/ Robert D / Leave a comment

“True joy is not a thing of moods, not a capricious emotion, tied to fluctuating experiences It is a state and condition of the soul. It survives through pain and sorrow and, like a subterranean spring, waters the whole life. It is intimately allied and bound up with love and goodness, and so is deeply rooted in the life of God. Joy is the most perfect and complete mark and sign of immortal wealth, because it indicates that the soul is living by love and by goodness, and is very rich in God.”

Quaker theologian Rufus Jones, “The Inner Life”, 1916

Today I returned two of my three kids to their mother after too short a visit. My ride home was marked by tears and a blessing as it was the first time in years I had not ridden alone. Upon reaching our destination I still had to wash off saline streaks from my face, but it was an improvement.

Jones wrote about joy filling our lives like a subterranean stream. Such watering keeps the soil moist even through moments where everything is dried out under the harsh light of sadness. I want to feel such joy in my life. I do feel such joy even if it feels fleeting at times.

God, grant me your joy.
Even as the harsh winds howl, 
soak arid taproots
and keep green in me the hope
by which my core first sprouted.

Grief and Pain

/ Robert D / Leave a comment

A couple of hours ago I made a mistake through my own stupid arrogance. Okay, it wasn’t that bad, I said something stupid to the neighboring minister when stopping by her office. I said, “I feel like the end of Advent is going to be quiet. I feel like I have paid my dues with Advent drama.” I didn’t knock on wood.

Two hours later I am on the phone with the doctor’s office for my children. One child is sick and the other has a head injury. I have been trying to get information through a phone call for days. I was told repeatedly that their mother wouldn’t tell me the information because I could get it from the doctor, The doctor let me know that they’ve never been given permission to share anything with me. Shared custody or not, there’s no medical information for Dad. All I know is that my eldest has a head injury and that my middle child needs medication to breathe more fully.

Why would I need to know more than that? Isn’t that enough for me to make medical decisions? When will there be medical decisions where I actually get to make a choice or even remain informed if even head trauma isn’t enough to qualify? I should have knocked on wood. More accurately, I should have assumed the worst earlier. You would think I would have learned by now.

I have been thinking about the pain this afternoon. Even as I prepare for the Longest Night Service on Thursday, I find myself coming back to the pain within. I was ready for a drama-free Christmas. I was neither wishing ill nor inviting the Krampus to visit my former partner. I was accepting of the fact that life simply means neither seeing my eldest this season nor seeing my kids on Christmas morning. I was even accepting of the fact that buying Christmas presents for them feels more and more like buying gifts for strangers. It hurt, but it was numb. Suddenly it is as if the bandages are torn away and my soul is bleeding again. I thought about it and turned back to a book I have been reading on and off again for a few years now.

“Following the initial numbing shock of disbelief in the immediate experience of loss, pain presses itself into our souls and bodies. It is sometimes more than we think we can bear. We seek ways to anesthetize ourselves. It hurts too much to allow that gaping hole in our gut to bleed unstaunched. We want to feel anything other than that pain. We want to fill the empty hole within with something—alcohol, drugs, sex, sleep, work, easy love, TV. We are vulnerable to anyone who will offer us a moment’s respite from that unspeakable gap within our soul…

Eventually though, we begin to feel again and the pain sets in. The pain reminds us we are still alive and in need of healing. It will come and go, visiting us when we least expect it. When you can feel the pain of sadness and loneliness, know that this signals that you are growing stronger. When we are not strong, the body numbs us and we don’t feel. If we feel the pain, we are gaining strength. Pain reminds us that something significant has happened. It reminds us that to be human is to feel. Only when we can feel the deep sadness of the loss can we ever hope to feel the deep joy of new life. Feeling is central to the ability to experience the fullness of life as it is being lived.”

Dan Moseley, “Lose, Love, Live: The Spiritual GIfts of Loss and Change,” pg 41

I am really hurting today and I understand, in part, what Moseley is saying here. If I couldn’t handle the pain, then my body, soul, and spirit would surely know enough to anesthetize the wound. Even if it couldn’t heal from the wounds in the past, my soul has become very good at cauterizing internal pain through things like exercise, poetry, eating, music, and even focusing my thoughts on the pain of occasional hunger. When you have no other way to advocate for yourself and when even your attorney has gone on vacation, what choice can there be here?

I get that it hurts and I wish that it wouldn’t hurt. I wish there was something I could do to make the pain go away, but there’s no really good answer other than to embrace the pain. If there’s one thing my former partner has given me, it is the gift of pain. I can hide away from it, or I can accept the simple things it teaches me.

  • I’m alive to feel this pain
  • I’m strong enough to experience this without going into shock
  • I’m alive enough to make choices to reach out to people who care about me
  • I’m alive enough to think about things like the meaning of pain, the lack of justice, and even anticipate the Advent of Christ to stand as the only just and righteous judge who can unfailingly stand in final judgment over situations like this one.
  • I’m alive enough to pray and seek after the Spirit even as the world denies hypothetical rights and shatters the hope of people who have already been broken by injustice

I’m reading Lamentations 5 in worship this Thursday. Lord, I feel it…

“15Joy has left our heart; our dancing has changed into lamentation. 16The crown has fallen off our head. We are doomed because we have sinned. 17Because of all this our heart is sick; because of these things our glance is dark. 18Mount Zion, now deserted– only jackals walk on it now! 19But you, LORD, will rule forever; your throne lasts from one generation to the next. 20Why do you forget us continually; why do you abandon us for such a long time? 21Return us, LORD, to yourself. Please let us return! Give us new days, like those long ago– 22unless you have completely rejected us, or have become too angry with us.”

Lamentations 5:15-22, Common English Bible (CEB)

“It was 10:30” Haibun

/ Robert D / Leave a comment

It was 10:30 PM, late at night, when the possum ran across the road. The dog was in hot pursuit and its human was a few steps behind. The human called out, but the possum was there, and the dog ran on in pursuit from behind the bush and brush. They tore across the road in an age-old chase repeated throughout time.

It was 10:30 PM, late at night, when the driver of the car listened to Defensive Driving advice from years before. The car went straight and the human and possum were unharmed. The dog in the rear of the car panicked and scrambled as the radiator began to pour fluid, the oil started to pour out, and the gasoline began to drip. The minister behind the wheel cried out and guided the car to the side of the road. He had been driving below the speed limit, but he didn’t see until the possum and dog broke through the brush onto the road. He was shaking as the gasoline fumes tickled his nose.

It was a few minutes after 10:30 PM, late at night, when the officer had a call to go to the site of an accident. He never had to put down a family’s pet before. He found the pastor who had been driving the car holding his dog as the one from the road screamed. He was shaking as he remembered the woman he almost hit and understood that if he had been a moment slower or faster, things would have possibly been far better or terribly worse. Why didn’t he stop for groceries? “All things in God’s time,” the officer told the minister who mumbled about free will half-heartedly. Even then, in the midst of grief, the minister knew this wasn’t the time to take away the officer’s comforting theology. He had practice at saying the right things even with a broken heart.

It was a few minutes after 10:30 PM, late at night, when the girlfriend hopped in her son’s car to come to the rescue. Just a few hours earlier the boyfriend behind the wheel had been helping her find a new car because her timing belt had gone awry in her steady old car. The car would be ready Monday, but it was the blackest of Fridays. It was nearly midnight when the borrowed car brought the two now carless people back to a quiet home with a frazzled dog. She sat with him until he was done shaking and crying about the fact that if things had gone wrong the dog owner could have died. She listened as he thought and sobbed about what would happen if the dog or woman had crashed through the window without setting things right with his son. It took a while.

It will be a little after 10:30, not so early in the morning thirty-six hours later, when the minister rises to share about how we, as a people, remember that Christ will come again in a moment. It will be a moment when he thinks about how the bell almost rang for him, a woman he doesn’t know, and did call home what looked to be a very enthusiastic dog whose family’s love showed he was a good boy. He probably won’t shed a tear, but he will hear the sound of a dog howling in the night.

Oh, when you come down
May that dog run home again 
to her happy tears.

Until you come down
May I never cause again
such awful pained cries.

The Stumbling Block

/ Robert D / Leave a comment

I wrote this poem while thinking of the passage from Matthew 18:6-9, which says that it is better to be drown in the sea than to cause someone else to stumble. I am trying to come to a place of peace with the frustration which is continuing to take root in me despite my best efforts. I am working as hard as I can to burn off the anger through diet, exercise, and even spiritual disciplines, but there are times when things are simply wrong and more than an irritation. There are times when people do real harm to you and that pain becomes a thorn in the side that will not go away.

Even if there may be divine punishment for the person who causes another person to stumble, it still hurts deeply to be the person with broken toes, scraped knees, and a noticeable limp. I don’t doubt for a second that all that is happening is noticed and noted in the Book of Life and any equivalent book with opposite purpose. It would still be nice if there could be some relief. 

Broken heart longs for them
The hugs, smiles, and dumb jokes
as joy is hard to coax
when you're alone

Prayers flow as I walk
Burn the anger with fat.
I look more and more flat
but rage lives on.

Walking, praying, fasting:
I curse this stumbling block
as on the Door I knock
and ask for help.

Even so, upon further reflection, a better passage to consider might be Romans 14:12-19 which is far more balanced in perspective. What I mean by balanced is that Paul does a decent job in Romans in balancing the concerns. Yes, it is wrong when someone else causes us harm, but Paul writes in a way that invites people to look inside before looking at one’s neighbor. It is not right for your neighbor to harm you, but first consider whether or not you will be ashamed when you give your account to God about how you lived your life and what you did, which is different from what your neighbor did to you.

So, how do I live with this pain in my side and sorrow in my heart? I see wisdom in Paul’s words in 2nd Corinthians 12:7-12. I have asked time and time again for this thorn to be removed, but it hasn’t budged. I guess that God’s strength is shown in my weakness, so I’ll keep trudging down the road while remembering the simple truth from a few verses earlier in Romans 14:7-10:

“We don’t live for ourselves and we don’t die for ourselves. If we live, we live for the Lord, and if we die, we die for the Lord. Therefore, whether we live or die, we belong to God. This is why Christ died and lived: so that he might be Lord of both the dead and the living. But why do you judge your brother or sister? Or why do you look down on your brother or sister? We all will stand in front of the judgment seat of God”

Romans 14:7-10, Common English Bible

This life I live with thorn-gifted pain is the life that I have to live. My “neighbor” may look at me with disdain or judgment, keep me from my children in defiance of the court order, and teach them that it is dangerous to speak with me (since I might call Child Protective Services if something goes wrong and the kids are in danger). Even with that sorrow and pain, I am called to live, so I will live. When the day of my death comes, even if I am alone I will die in the Lord with hope in my heart that:

“We have access by faith into this grace in which we stand through him, and we boast in the hope of God’s glory. But not only that! We even take pride in our problems, because we know that trouble produces endurance, endurance produces character, and character produces hope. This hope doesn’t put us to shame, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.”

Romans 5:2-5, Common English Bible

Thorn in my side or not, I will live in hope and I shall not be ashamed of the Lord. I will seek hope all of my days, even with broken bones in my soul, for God loves me and will make all of this right one day. Even with broken places in my soul, I am still fearfully and wonderfully made and God loves me. I am God’s child and I trust that my Parent will hold me as close as I wish I could hold my children.

A Prayer for the Brokenhearted and Upset

/ Robert D / Leave a comment

Written after a vote for the disaffiliation of several churches from the Upper New York Annual Conference. Several people, including me, are upset and hurting. People are having sleepless nights over the question of whether or not our liabilities will outweigh our assets after paying settlements under the Child Victim Act out of our reserves while these churches walk away from the settlement we made together as a community. Will we have enough to pay for pensions both for those who remain and for those who serve the new denomination in retirement? Individuals feel harmed, wounded, and are in pain.

What do we do in these moments? What do we do when we are upset or angry? What do we do when we raise our voice and still end up watching as others walk away despite our concerns? On my end, I acknowledge my pain, acknowledge where it hurts, acknowledge what I desire, and ask God to help. This descending syllabic poem (a nonet) comes from that place:

Broken hearted people ache within
as our life together shatters.
We once lived in communion.
For those who are angry
and those who are hurt;
mercy hungry,
seeking hope,
pour forth
love.

Thoughts after talking with a sick child…

/ Robert D

J: I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be sick.
Me: It is okay. Just because you are sick it doesn’t mean I don’t love you.

United Methodist friends, today is going to be rough. I didn’t sleep. Many of my friends didn’t sleep. We are tired, cranky, and a little bit tired of the arc of history being so long… I heard a speech on the livestream of General Conference yesterday about hearing the same arguments over and over… I sympathize. I am also very stubborn!

Young friends, we are birthing something new. If you have never raised a child, I will tell you that it takes a lot of patience. I cannot tell you how many times YESTERDAY I asked a toddler to stop pulling leaves off of the houseplant… Being a parent takes patience.

Older friends, do not be deceived. Something isn’t wrong just because our younger family in Christ is trying to do something new. To be honest, we have likely had siblings trying to help us through this struggle for decades. I know that is a truth for me.

Beloved family in Christ who are my age, we likely have decades to go before our time is done. We are the ones who can shepherd and support the generation after us. I can think of folks who shepherd and shepherded me along this path. Don’t give up.

Nothing can separate us from the love of Jesus Christ. Nothing,

Let us Ramble: Prejudice and Wisdom

/ Robert D / Leave a comment

When I was a young boy I visited with my relatives down south in Georgia. My grandfather’s sisters lived in a small town where they spent their days in a house that was quite large and quite ornate. I wondered at the house, the railroad tracks that ran past the front yard, and the massive properties on the side of the tracks on which they lived. As a kid I was more interested and terrified of fire ants than I was of the social situation, but even I noticed that the people who helped my grandfather’s sisters maintain the property came from the smaller homes on the other side of the railroad tracks. As an adult, it took me forever to realize that they looked different too.

I do remember hearing negative things. When things went missing it was never because they were misplaced. The “help” had taken them. Even when those things were found, it was still the fault of the people who came to help the two elderly women in their home. I realize now that there was a world of things going on behind the scenes. There were likely issues of race, prejudice, class, and economics at play. There were also questions of grief as two women lost the ability to control first their bodies and then their minds. I don’t excuse the behavior, but I did have the seeds of my first nightmares about Alzheimer’s disease in those days.

As an adult who is now removed nearly three decades from those events, I do not blame myself for having neither the wisdom nor the education to ask questions. What small child really knows enough to ask those questions? Furthermore, would my proper southern relatives have even taken me seriously? I do my best to act with the wisdom gained in my day to day life now, which is where this post originates.

I identify as a millennial but I am not a young adult. I have three children who I am raising to the best of my ability. I pay my taxes, dutifully pay off massive student loans, and understand that I cannot be bailed out of every challenge by my father. I do my best to be a constructive part of society. I also listen to a lot of complaints about millennials.

Perhaps it is my sensitivity to hearing people complain about my generation that caused me to notice something I found disrespectful the other day. Several folks that I know shared a couple of memes suggesting that eighteen year old students are spoiled. One or two of the folks pointed out that eighteen year old kids used to charge the beaches of Normandy and other folks pointed out that eighteen year olds used to serve in Vietnam. They proceeded to mock eighteen year old kids as being spoiled.

It begged a question in my mind. Who do they think serves in the Armed Forces today? Who do they believe are recovering from wounds from IEDs in hospitals and clinics or leaving children without parents after ambushes? What’s more, when they come to an age where they need care to live out the end of their lives, who do they believe will be the doctors or nurses? Who do they believe will care for the needs of their property? Who will teach their children? Who will serve in the fire departments, police forces, and even on road crews when they are no longer capable?

To me it was mind boggling. I remember my relatives saying that my grandfather’s sisters did not understand what they were saying about other people. I also remember a few choice moments when the generation who raised me made a few choice comments that were not so gracious. For all of the criticism of the people who came before, my own family has struggled to leave behind the bad habit of criticizing others for being different, whether that be in terms of race, age, ability, or education.

The memes gave me pause because it seemed as if another generation had been raised up to sit on their lawn and insult other people for having the audacity to live life differently than they once lived. What’s worse, I am almost certain that somewhere in my life I do the same thing. I might even be doing it now.

So, let me apologize for those moments when I forget the lessons I learned from the mistakes and missteps of my ancestors. Let me apologize for people who do not see what they are doing in their attempt to be funny, opinionated, or simply a part of a disastrous movement who wants to disenfranchise as many people as necessary to maintain the way things have always been. Let me apologize for the things that I will miss in my own heart and my own actions. Please forgive me.

Eighteen year old soldiers, students, and human beings… You have my respect. Please, live a life that is incredible and help me to live a great one as well.