Learning the Language

It was the best of times and it was the worst of times! I didn’t do very well in High School. There were many linking factors, but I will mention only 3. In our family, we were taught that hard work, focused on earning a living and based mainly on 2 secondary, yet essential elements, would make all the difference in life. There was never a long chat about either of these important fundamentals to a successful life, until after I was married. Oh, I got the frequent lecture about dedication to what was right, meaningful and necessary, but not before I had made a choice to follow my heart and not just a mindless dedication to empty adult labour. I left a job that I had had for several years; I was married, had children and a mortgage, which meant responsibilities and that was unforgivable. I later learned that I was seen as a failure in life. Those were harsh words and did nothing to either lift or support one in life’s endeavours. I digress! Those two secondary elements that could be applied were constancy and consistency. It seemed to others that I was perhaps failing in both!

While traversing through my early education, I stumbled along with poor management of my available resources. I nevertheless did make it through, and fortunately, there were those in my educational journey who saw, for some reason, more potential than I did. I have often related that my two majors in school were girls and sports. The girls were never too much of a success in my teen years and sports played a major role until I needed to get a job, which included after school hours that were needed in order to make working worthwhile. So this brings me to the 3 factors, to which I have alluded already, the first being sports, then girls and finally work. I was good at sports, but when work precludes any hope of being available to take part, then that major peters out. Being disqualified from continuing in my advancement in sports and then delimited by the need to work, I lost also ground with girls, until I met my wife to be.

But education was not totally lost on me! What the administration saw in me was an innate ability to take in information and file it for future use. I did, like most people, have deficiencies and mine was the fear of written tests. You probably know, or have heard of someone, who is just like that, maybe you are yourself. The odd thing was that I loved to learn. I read things that most didn’t; I explored science, technology, and my mind was a constant canvas of ideas and possibilities. That by some was seen to be my downfall. I was a radical, a dreamer and would not amount to much. But words, once foreign became of second nature to me and I often wrote both prose and papers on philosophical matters confronting both myself and others in my sphere of experience. Most were eventually burned, as I felt the pressure to perform according to other’s expectations, rather than my own. I was obdurate and lacked focus… I was becoming sanctimonious and obtuse, but I had to learn the language of dissimulation to see through the fog of criticism in order to find my own path. How’s that for a mouth full of academic criticism. I again digress, but with some forethought!

The road to adulthood, and then finally some level of wisdom in old age can be long and arduous, but much can be learned from its passage. In my early pastorates (churches where I ministered) there were three kinds of people. First, there were those who loved to dissect/analyze my messages; to correct miss-pronounced/misused words, correct my use of verb tenses and sometimes Biblical references. These were the teachers, who in their mind would make me a better person/pastor. Second, there were those who loved to chase rabbit paths in their minds, when something early on in the message or study sparked an incident or problem totally unrelated to the meaning or direction of the presentation. These dear folks were the searchers who felt that an answer might be found in questions, about their focus in life, rather than the immediate meaning of what God had for them, to be found in that message they were missing. The last were those who were a combination of several elements, a few being appreciation/love for their pastor, a reverence for the work being done and a desire to be of assistance by joining in the planned strategies to enlarge the Kingdom, as we went about the Father’s Work. The people in the third category were the Disciples of Christ. These categories of people have been present in both my pastoral work and in the administrative tasks both in academia and local government, with different labelling.

So… why the title “Learning the Language”? I have used two elemental examples in my thoughts thus far. One component was a reflection from my youth, where formulation of mind and language don’t seem to have that pronounced importance to most at the time. The second component was a reflection of how I transitioned into adulthood and a particular part of the workplace. We often hear words which inadvertently have double entendre. What is said and meant by the words we speak may often have a totally different meaning to those to whom they are spoken. For example: “It is important to think before you speak!” is an often used soft criticism, but when considered as an association to weakness or deficiency in one’s life, that statement may do much damage! Ok… I know that some are saying that he must be expecting us to tiptoe through life and take note of our circumlocution as well as our intentions, in consideration of the hearer! YUP! It bodes well for us to imagine life as others are experiencing it by times. Learning the language is not just so we know that obdurate is pigheadedness, or becoming sanctimonious is feeling morally superior to others and that word obtuse…well, it means to be insensitive and slow to understand. There is so much more. Insecure persons who already think themselves to be inferior in thought and speech can be crushed by what was not meant to do so.

I am not trying to say that having a good handle on The English language is the most important of our challenges in life, but I am pointing toward a broader perspective on the meaning of language as it affects others. I remember some formal Academic Board Meetings where tempers flared and words were spoken that were neither uplifting nor tolerable, within the forum in which we met. It was my duty as Chair to handle such outbursts and it was always my policy to do so with these individuals in private. Added to this, I most often chose a time and place that may have sometimes been considered by many to be too far-related to the event where the offence had been committed, to be effective. I was not always so prudent, and like most others, I could, in my own worst moments, be found to be worn down and wearied by the indolence/complacency of some, in other venues. We lose our consciousness of the present environment when we allow ourselves to be depleted in our sensitivity to others, not only that but also the veracity of the present. It is too easy to be drawn in by what “seems to be”, rather than spending time in meaningful evaluation, without prejudice, before we react. Even then it is easy, by virtue of our own past, (the environmental circumstances of our life’s path) to be found wanting. To know the difference between what is correct and what seems right in our mind's eye can enlighten a mountain of difference sometimes.

Language is not always oral in nature by any stretch of the imagination. I have mentioned in the past that I suffer from depression. Some of my family members have lectured me for not using drugs to level out my mood swings, and what some will be able to identify as paralysis, by times. I have a plaque (sign) on my wall that has great meaning in my life. It says: “PRAYER- When life becomes too hard to stand, kneel!” It is not just the words… it is the reality of knowing that behind that statement is the truth that I must surrender myself, my self-assurance, my personal strength and obdurate personality to Him who created me and who has the answers. My wife jokingly tells me I talk too much, and my parishioners used to tell me I preached too long. Today, those who call upon me, when needed sometimes to speak in Church Services, will in good fun pull out their pocket calendars and wave them as I begin to preach. I will tell you this with tears flowing down my cheeks that it matters not, because I have always wanted to be what God has planned for me to be, even when Satan has tried to make me become something else. I hear sincere voices from time to time, telling me with such love, that I am the best preacher they have ever heard. This means so little, for my answer has always been; “God gives the message I am only the speaker.” There are so many loving hearts, yet in opposition, there are so many that turn away with unrelenting hearts and minds, that continue to disparagingly condemn both the Word and the messenger.

What’s the language then, you might ask! It is like going into a very foreign country, as I have several times, to lecture and preach. If we enter into “the work” meaning whatever God has for us and we claim the superior position, we have missed the mark. We must present ourselves as Him; His hands and feet, His voice and personhood (though God is spirit and above any human identification, other than in Christ!), meaning His propensities and things that declare His image. I include this portion of Scripture: 1 John 4:7-12.

7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. 10 In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. 11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.

Our ability to walk in love without dissimulation is of primary importance to us, and for the most part we seem to miss the mark. Families are collapsing, lives are being ruined and children are losing hope as the world becomes a “harder”, “looser (more easily lost)”, “faster”, “complicated” and “uncaring” place to live.

These are only a few adjectives that could be listed but are perhaps 5 of the most distressing as I see them. Is there a generation that cannot survive the change? No, I don’t think so, but this somewhat rhetorical question begs the reader to wonder, does it not, if we care about the changing tide? Today, I am walking too close to the edge for my own comfort. I am examining the elements of my own life that have been scrutinized and evaluated due to the roles I have played in life. I don’t like to look back and I mention that because I know the subtle irony of those words my father once spoke to me, “Looking back won’t bring it back!” Moments of regret, along with the pain of knowing the distress I may have caused others when I spoke or acted beyond my intention (scope of strategy), adds sorrow, even today, to my life. Looking back can flood our minds with good and bad memories.

It is then, the language of God’s love, that brings me back. It is the Spiritual medication that soothes my soul and revives my life to tenable usefulness. Don’t get me wrong, there are those who are as fully faithful, trusting and believing as I am, but who still need more, (that God also provides) to help them be whole. That is the most important language one will ever learn. No matter the word, action or deed, God’s love is always there. We may not understand it, we may not realize the depth of it, and we may not always place our full confidence in it, but He “IS” nevertheless always there. Romans 8:38-39:

For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Today is just another day. I have been challenged by the silence of late and now a “still small voice” has been telling me not just to get up and eat, but be refilled and assured that when God gives, I must once again speak! Remember that we all live somewhere along the edge, but going even nearer there, in search of Him, is worth the walk. And remember too… I am praying for you!!!

When the Music Stops

There is never too much time to prepare for adolescence. I was a gangly kid, skinny as a fence rail and had little to no confidence. Oh, I put up a good front. I have said many times, on many occasions, that I have been a terrible introvert that got either turned inside out or upside down, I am never sure. Life does carry with it the need to grow up, but one scarcely thinks about the need to stay a child. The main push in life is to prepare for adulthood. A wise (well maybe radical) instructor I had in Technical College once told the leaving Electrical Construction Class; “The great plan for life, you will one day find, has been poorly planned.” He went on to tell us that if life were to be more productive, the first 40-45 years of life should have been designed for play, exploration, and finding one’s self. As good as that sounded, my psyche had already been both primed and tuned to hard work, and toward support of the nuclear family; described as “a couple and their dependent children, regarded as a basic social unit”

Life for most then has become a constant round of the experience of hardship, the ecstasy of highs in life, and oft times long droughts of mundane constancy. In my old age, I am finding that the cycle of life has held everything I need to know about survival, but for the impending ending of it all. Ok, that sounds morose I know. But, there is a lighter side to all this, I promise.

Did you go to dances in your adolescence? Perhaps you still do, at one level or another! Like most young men of my social and economic background (both semi-rural and poor) I began this juncture of life with a healthy fear, planted by conservative parental guidance and harsh peer pressure. Stresses created by the moral codes of Church and faith directives, confronted and in direct opposition to natural human urges toward a desire for both female companionship and some element of fun in life, can almost tear a teen in puberty apart! That may be overstated, but it borders on the absolute for most!

Never the one for just blurting out anything beyond the need to know, I found myself in a quandary, trying to establish some knowledge of, “What happens then?”. Ok, I am not talking about how I got my sex education here; this is about the mechanics of meeting a girl, how to ask her out and when the music stops… literally, what happens next? You see, the simple answers, or what seems so apparent to most, can be a vast desert of despair to a young person seeking guidance on what should be the most natural of life events. But, it is not; in my case life was underscored by a huge lack of confidence. It doesn’t take a brain surgeon to realize that environment sometimes has a cynical plan, directed by some of the players in life, to drag you down and bury you in self-doubt and crushed by ridicule. Even when the playing field has been drawn, the players are dressed and ready for action, there is often the presence of cliques, power strategies and of course the ever-present stealth of that greatest enemy, jealousy. We don’t like to address the negatives, but it is good to face them, do our best to understand the dynamics of their presence and live both through them and beyond them if we are to not just survive, but on to succeed in living.

Youth today are under great strain; greater perhaps than ever before in our past few generations. I know that is a reoccurring theme for me! The need to perform well, make elevated and financially significant strides in life, and thus establish a well-polished and socially groomed presentation for the world, is not just a goal, but a mandated “must accomplish” directive for most. I know I digress again! My perception of the process in life is that we must both acknowledge and understand the processes that get us to where we find ourselves at present, so as to more beneficially prepare us for the future. Today’s generation, without a doubt is finding themselves in that position. Who is really taking the time, or has the time to know what, where and when our youth are functioning at more than a reasonable level within a healthy, secure environment outside the home? I will leave that to your own thoughts and ruminations.

Life then is tenuous at best; we know that much, without too much prompting. Going to that first dance at our Town Hall was likely the most daring and scary adventure for me of anything to that point. I had never been on a date, never danced and the only thing I had going for me was that I loved music. Word had it (the rumour mill) that lots of guys went to the dance without a date, and there were generally plenty of girls there waiting to be asked to dance. Mustering the courage to ask, after watching the gyrations (I didn’t know what to expect as a sheltered novice) of those who kept time to the music, was no easy task. That pool of self-doubt seemed like an endless sea engulfing me, so I only stood and watched for much of the evening. It took a few more few dance nights to get my courage up and I finally asked a school mate to dance. Little did I know at the time that she was as nervous as I was! But, the enduring question still remained… “What do I do when the music stops?”

Moments of embarrassed fidgeting, apologies for not being the best dancer and “thanks for the dance”, were my best attempts and off she went, and Edwin left the building. It was a long time before I tried again and that same girl asked me to dance the very next attempt I made at attendance. Trial and error seemed to work, but there is more to the story. I never understood then the concern I had for the ending of the music and what was either expected or desired after one has heard the music, responded in chorus with another human; in that case on the dance floor. What exacerbated the situation was that I had received all the warnings, the prompting to be morally sound in judgement and of course the loudest, “Stay out of those dark corners!”

Time healed many wounds, many disappointments and prepared me for most of the fears that I would face throughout my life. What actually begins to prepare us for loss of grandparents, aunts and uncles, parents, and some cases siblings and spouses, long before their expected departure? We tune our lives for certain expectations like a musician tunes their instrument. Somehow during those events in life, like the breaking of a carefully tuned string in the midst of a concert, reality snaps to the forefront, and our state of mind may gauge our readiness and response. Today I am able to laugh at the insignificance of my flight from the dancefloor that night so many years ago, assessed against mountains of stress I have had to face since, and yet live on.

To face imminent loss, to fear the outcome of what might be, and then to live through it is no simple task. Fleeing from the Town Hall at that young age, trying to look as though I had everything in control, I was doing my level best to just breathe. People often ask how I am doing. It is clearly out of a desire to know my state of health, state of mind, and perhaps even if I am content with life in retirement. “Are you keeping busy?” “Are you doing any preaching these days?” One that often disarms me is; “Oh Hi Edwin, I was thinking of you the other day… are you interested in taking an interim position for a few months anywhere?” The kindness is poured forth from internal caring perhaps, but depending on my state of mind that day, the words may hold more a sense of curiosity that those intended to be empathetic in nature. So, while memories echo back from my youth, I am sometimes facing that Town Hall crowd on the way out, while the curious asked their questions; “Isn’t the band great tonight?… you’re not leaving early are you?” Confused now? Without overstating the stated, we are not always in complete control of the past. Most will know what I mean when triggers cause us to doubt our decisions or motivations.

We vacillate between our ability to be courageous or bolting in fear, throughout life. Those trivial exercises in preparation for life can prepare us for the pitfalls, disappointments and tragedies, but what is most often left out, is something I have mentioned before. It is the foundation of a faith base that is capable of carrying us when we can’t stand; keep us together when we are falling apart. It matters not our age when the music stops… for it will, it does and what we do next makes all the difference. Human nature has shown that we are capable of living beyond the disappointment of anything that takes away our momentary joy. That could be taken as a very unfair statement, and seem to trivialize circumstances. The moment when fear of the aftermath, that draining fear of hearing ourselves say’ “What am I going to do then, or now?” is not trivial… it is life-altering.

Putting away the fear, the anger, even to a certain extent the process of equating blame; for that is a real problem in and of itself; there is that critical point looming before us when we will have to face the world once again. I used to wonder how people moved on, how the process of letting go was manifest with such grace and ease.  Then I entered the study of human psychology and learned how our innate systems of defence and recovery can get us through. Yes, it is true; the human heart is capable of bouncing back, of putting a good face on the situation and ploughing on into the future. There is more to that then a mere knowledge that whatever the circumstance we find ourselves in, and hearing the words, “it will eventually be OK!” We love to put a gloss on everything, to dress up our agonies, put on a happy face, while inside we are eaten up by that self-doubt and fear. I could never get beyond the pain. A bit of a self-disclosure there eh! Well, it is true. In weakness and despair, I fell back to my roots and that root system was found in my faith.

Here’s the kicker though (the hard line taken by many that often makes a decision seen something less than meaningful), turning to God as an act of faith and comfort, is seen as weakness. It didn’t take me long in a university study to that see that humanism was the basis of most academic thought. My naivety in life, even though I worked in the toughest of conditions, had not prepared me for that confrontation with confusion, and as I confess now, it nearly broke my resolve to enter the ministry.  The music stopped not once but hundreds of times, as I was confronted by not only the humanism of others but my own inability to cope with the heartlessness and deviousness of humanity. It all sounds quite terrible doesn’t it; so unlike the usual stuff, I write about! But, It was dismantling, it is, it always will be; so I cry out to God, “What now, what next, how can I carry on?”

That first dance was just the beginning. Many will know I’ve lost a child, faced death in a distant country, wandered in the wilderness of regret and despair and tears would not stop the pain only my faith helped. Turning to God is not a weakness, it takes courage to let go of who and what we think we are and then take hold of the only one who truly understands. I’ve gotten so tired of listlessness, paralyzed by both stress and distress, while my needs were being designed, defined and refined by the well-meaning others. The greatest help I have ever received from others were in those moments when they came alongside of my pain and prayed; not a demeaning, sympathetic discourse, but from a heart that hurt like me; for me, not out of pity, but because my pain was their pain.

It has often been said that today God has no hands or feet, no voice or personhood; He is the silent God, once alive now dead. When the music stops, and it does, we may go deaf and blind to the potentials yet remaining. We need not to persist in that state if we reach out to He who has always been there and forever will be. I had started writing this a couple of days ago and the processing of thought was interrupted over the weekend by a family visit. Then, last night my wife asked if we could watch the movie, “The Shack”. Odd how God’s presence, in unexpected ways, can match the need of the moment? No, I am convinced that life is neither mere happenstance nor just providence working its magic. That movie underscored once again the meaning of love, God’s love and His desire for us to allow forgiveness for both self and others in the worst of times. Loss of anything, jobs, health security or separation from loved ones in divorce, death or indifference can make the music stop. How you handle those moments may be gauged by either “Karma” or a more fruitful trust in God’s plan.

I leave you with these faithful words from Scripture that have helped me immensely; “For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.” Jeremiah 29:11-13 - New International Version

I pray God will allow me to be His hands, feet and voice for someone when the music stops… and it does! Remember, I will always be praying for you!