Here's another song from my album "accidentals." It's inspired/adapted from a poem by my favorite Jesuit Priest-turned-poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins. The original poem is called Pied Beauty, and it goes like this:
GLORY be to God for dappled things—
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough; 5
And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change: 10
Praise him.
And here's my song:
For Dappled Things, a song
On a break with Jesus, a devotional thought
There's a simple line in Mark 6:31 that reveals the spiritual camaraderie that Jesus wants for us, and with us as his friends and followers. Earlier on in the chapter, Jesus sends out the disciples with the job of proclaiming the message of the Kingdom, and from the description of their mission, it sounds like it's going to be pretty hard rowing. Then here, a few pages later, they've returned and they're "telling him everything they did and taught in his name."
Already I find this picture so vivid and tender, Jesus gathering his friends back after a hard month or two of work, and sitting down with them as they pour out all the highs and lows of ministry. But then he says, "Come, let's go by ourselves to a desert place and rest a little." And he takes them off by themselves to a lonely place, an out of the way place, away from the press and demands of ministry, with the express purpose of resting a little.
They need it. He knows.
Of course, it won't turn out that way: the crowds track him down and follow him, but even so, it doesn't hurt to linger over his simple invitation: "It's been a lot of hard work telling people about me; come, let's find a quiet place alone and rest a bit."
Those of us in ministry--lay, vocational, bivocational, ordained or some combination of all 4--we need to hear that invitation on a regular basis, too. "Come," he says, clapping us on the back a bit, maybe, throwing a brotherly arm around our shoulder, "Come, let's find a quiet place and rest a bit together."
May we all have the grace to take him up on his offer.
Polishing Up My Proverbs 16 Crown of Glory (Part V): Christian Community as the Fountain of Youth?
They say that Okinanwa, a small island off the southern coast of Japan, has the highest rate of centenarians in the world. Proportionally, that is to say, more people in Okinawa live beyond the age of 100 than anywhere else on the planet. Not only do people live longer in Okinawa, but they also enjoy relatively good health into their centenarian years, with the lowest rates of age-related disease—coronary heart disease, stroke, cancer and so on—of any people-group in the world.
So remarkable is the Okinawan life-expectancy, that the island has become something of a tourist attraction for the Japanese, who visit it not to lounge on the beaches or to see the sights, but specifically and expressly for a first-hand encounter with a genuine Okinawan Centenarian. Imagine photo albums full of pictures of Japanese tourists doing the say-cheese-finger-V-thing, next to a bunch of Okinawan senior citizens, and you’ll get the idea.
Scientists have been scratching their heads over the phenomenon of Okinawan longevity for a while now. What, in particular, do the Okinawan people have going for them, that they are able to live so well for so long, well after the rest of the world, on average, has succumbed to the aches and pains of old age?
There are probably a number of active ingredients in the Okinawan elixir of youth. Caloric restriction and healthy diet seem to play a role (Okinawans simply eat less food than most Westerners, and what they do eat is mostly plants). Genetics and lifestyle are also factors (Okinawans are much more active throughout their lives, well into their senior years).
But in a study of Okinawan longevity that I read recently, a crucial factor stood out to me for special consideration, especially as it relates to my interest in developing a theology of aging. Put simply: Okinawan culture places a high value on old age. Rather than seeing it as the beginning of the end, Okinawans see old age as a badge of honour and a cause for celebration. Rather than shuffling the aged off to out of the way “homes” where they are left to live out their final years with other seniors, Okinawans make all kinds of space for the elderly in their communities, their families, their society. Rather than being treated like an inconvenience, the aged are cherished, respected, and, above all, embedded in the broader community.
Okinawans who have passed their 100th birthday, in particular, are given a great degree of freedom, respect and license. The centenarian years are viewed as a “second childhood”; and not in a condescending way, but in a permissive way, similar to how young children are humoured and admired and cherished as a vital part of the community. As I understand it, it’s not uncommon for the younger generation actually to vie with one another for the honour of getting to care for their centenarians in their old age.
Could it really be that growing old happens best in cultures that wisely embrace aging, that view it with healthy respect, even appreciation, that warmly and ungrudgingly welcome the fact of getting old, and have learned to celebrate the simple achievement of living long and well?
The mystery of Okinawan longevity suggests it’s so.
And so, of course, does the Bible. It’s not for nothing that the Torah instructs us to stand in the presence of the elderly (Leviticus 19:32). And it’s not for nothing that the New Testament instructs the young to cherish the old with special deference (See: 1 Timothy 5:1, 1 Peter 5:5) and further instructs the old to share the gifts of their age and experience generously with the young (see 1 John 2:13).
In the broadest strokes, the Bible paints a picture of a community where old age is seen as a profound spiritual resource, and where the bonds between young and old are strong and rich and reciprocal; and in that picture we see the spiritual flourishing of young and old alike, the thriving of community as a whole, a little glimpse of shalom.
A church with a robust, biblical theology of aging, I think, will adopt an attitude towards old age more like that of the Okinawan people—where the community makes much space and affords much dignity to the old—and less like that of the West—where the practice is, by and large, to remove the very old from community whenever the realities of old age become too great an inconvenience. To “stand in the presence of the elderly,” today, as a Christian, is to resist this modern, Western impulse to segregate by generation, and to do all we can to maintain those strong, rich, reciprocal bonds between young and old that are so vital to a shalom-oriented community.
We may actually find, in doing so, that our own experience of growing old becomes one filled with health and wisdom and vitality and joy.
Count it Loss (St Paul Blues), a song
Here's another song from my recent recording project "Accidentals." This one's about as straight-ahead a twelve bar blues tune as I've ever written. I'd had the music floating around in my head for a long time, and one day I sort of got thinking of what the Apostle Paul might sing, if he were to sing the blues. After riffing lyrically on a few lines from his letters, this is what I came up with. I call it "Count it Loss," or, with my tongue in my cheek, "St Paul Blues."
I count it loss, whatever was gain
I count it loss, whatever was gain
I count it loss, whatever was gain
I count it loss, whatever was gain
For the sake of knowing Christ, just to bear his name
He called me to take up my cross
He called me to take up my cross
He called me to take up my cross
He called me to take up my cross
And the treasures of this earth, just to count them loss
He promised me a glory crown
He promised me a glory crown
He promised me a glory crown
He promised me a glory crown
And He took my burdens up, just to lay them down
I count it loss, whatever was gain
I count it loss, whatever was gain
I count it loss, whatever was gain
I count it loss, whatever was gain
For the sake of knowing Christ, just to bear his name
I will not boast in anything
I will not boast in anything
I will not boast in anything
I will not boast in anything
Except the love of Christ, he’s my lord and King
I count it loss, whatever was gain
I count it loss, whatever was gain
I count it loss, whatever was gain
I count it loss, whatever was gain
For the sake of knowing Christ, just to bear his name
The One Needful Thing, a devotional thought
Before he sends them out to preach the Message of the Kingdom in Mark 6, Jesus gives his disciples these specific directions: "Take nothing for the journey except your staff, no bread, no bag, no money in your belts. Wear sandals but not an extra tunic ..." What stands out to me here is how these travel arrangements would have required his followers to, on the one hand, depend entirely on the provision of God in the moment; and on the other hand, to stay fully in the here and now. The extra tunic would be handy after the first one wears out. The bag of money would be useful if and when the next meal isn't quick to come along. And so on.
The idea, of course, is that the Message of the Kingdom is so urgent, so pressing, that any preoccupation with "tomorrow's necessities" shouldn't and can't distract us from this work in the here and now. (This actually puts Jesus teaching in Matthew 6 about not worrying for tomorrow into sharp relief: could the "worry about tomorrow" he’s talking about there be the stuff that distracts us from the urgency of doing Kingdom work today?
It’s tempting to dismiss Jesus's directions in Mark 6 with a "that was then, this is now" kind of of nonchalance, but actually, sending them out without money in the bag in that historical era, when 3 square meals were even harder to come by than they are now, would have sounded just as radical then as it does today. It gets you thinking about the "provisions for tomorrow" that we so often trust in, and the way these things may in fact be distracting us from the good work Jesus has called us to do today. At least, it should. But it should also leave us praying that God will keep our hearts focused on what is most needful in the here and now.
The Streets of Babylon, a song
Here's the next track from my most recent recording project, "Accidentals." I wrote this song almost 10 years ago now, one Sunday afternoon, after hearing Revelation 18:1-5 being read in church. I had Bob Dylan's "Hard Rain's Gonna Fall" echoing in my mind as I wrote, and was trying for that same sort of haunting, apocalyptic protest. I hardly think, of course, that I've even come close to Bob Dylan's prophetic vividness, let alone St. John the Divine's, but still, for what it's worth, I give you, "The Streets of Babylon":
I went walking, I went walking, through the streets of Babylon
Through her highways, through her alleys, in the streets of Babylon
I saw people, lost and broken on the streets of Babylon
I went walking, I went walking, though the streets of Babylon
And the people, and the people, on the streets of Babylon
They were dazzled, they were blinded by the lights of Babylon
And the pipers and the dancers seduced and led them on
They were wandering they were wand’ring on the streets of Babylon
And I heard a voice call to me, O Woe to Babylon
She is blind she is broken she is lost and forsaken
O woe to Babylon
Come out of her, O my children, flee to my arms
Be set apart, holy pure on the streets of Babylon
I saw merchants, I saw merchants, on the streets of Babylon
They were glutted in the luxury of the wealth of Babylon
And they bartered and they traded for the souls of Babylon
I saw merchants, I saw merchants on the streets of Babylon
And I heard a voice call to me, O Woe to Babylon
She is blind she is broken she is lost and forsaken
O woe to Babylon
Come out of her, O my children, flee to my arms
Be set apart, holy pure on the streets of Babylon
And the princes and the rulers they were drunk on Babylon
In her riches, in her power, on the wine of Babylon
Though the writing of her judgment was written on the wall
They paraded their corruption through the streets of Babylon
And I heard a voice call to me, O Woe to Babylon
She is blind she is broken she is lost and forsaken
O woe to Babylon
Come out of her, O my children, flee to my arms
Be set apart, holy pure on the streets of Babylon
Holiness Then and Now, a devotional thought
You can't study Jesus's life and ministry for long without noticing how often he confronts the prevailing notions of "holiness" in his day, which seemed to focus especially on ritual cleanliness and cultural purity. In 1st Century Judaism, that is to say, the "holy" were, in particular, the "clean" and the "separate," and whatever else Jesus was about, he seemed intent on pulling the rug out from underneath this superficial understanding of what made God's people holy.
We see a prime example of this in Mark Chapter 5, where Jesus performs three powerful healing miracles back to back. First, he exorcises a legion of demons from a man living out in the Gerasene cemetery; then (unbeknownst to him) he heals a woman who has been suffering 12 years from constant hemorrhaging; and finally, he resuscitates a dead girl, the daughter of a local synagogue leader. The thematic thread that ties all of these stories together is the compelling glimpse we get of Jesus, standing without apology or squeamishness, among the "unclean."
Think about it: the Gerasene demoniac is a) a non-Jew, living b) in the cemetery, and c) among the swine-herds, all of which would have made him repulsively "unclean" according to the Jewish customs of the time. Likewise, the bleeding woman have been considered ritually unclean by any 1 Century Jew who knew the Book of Leviticus well. So too the dead girl—for a Jew, contact with a dead body also led to ritual uncleanness. In one short chapter we come across pigs and pagans, disease and demons, blood and bodies. It's hard to imagine a less-clean travel itinerary, and yet Jesus—the holy, pure, Son of God—moves calmly, assuredly and altogether unperturbedly amid it all.
Again, what strikes me here is the way Jesus's Kingdom of God ministry so directly challenged the notions of holiness and unholiness, cleanness and uncleanness, purity and impurity that were woven deep down into the religious fabric of his world. And it leaves me wondering: what deep-seeded notions of "cleanness" and "uncleanness" are at work in my own heart, determining who I have contact with and who I don't, who I will embrace and who I won't?
When I start to ask those questions, I feel a nagging suspicion that his Kingdom challenge is as much for me now as it was for "them" back then.
Sow the Wind, a song
Every fall I try to do a recording project of original songs, as a way of challenging myself to continually grow in my musicianship and songwriting skills. This year's album is a collection of blues, country and rock inspired songs, most of which I've had in my notebooks for years but never really found a good home for. I'm calling it "Accidentals." You can check out the whole album over at bandcamp, if you're interested, but in the meantime, I'm planning to blog my way through the songs over the next few months here at terra incognita.
This first song goes back almost 10 years; I wrote it mostly as a satirical protest against the noise, pace and flash of contemporary culture, and partly as a comment on the church's acquiescence to it all. For what it's worth, I give you:
Sow the Wind
Let the lights shine bright enough
I won’t have to use my eyes, and
Let them sparkle, let them burn
I won’t have to see
Let the song scream loud enough
I won’t have to use my ears and
Let it thunder let it roar
I won’t have to hear
Sow the wind, abandon the light
Reap the whirlwind inherit the night
Sow the wind, abandon the light
Reap the whirlwind inherit the night
Let my heart race fast enough
I won’t have to stop and think and
Let it shudder, let it thrill
I won’t have to feel
Let the gold gleam glittering
I won’t have to look away and
Let it fill me to the brim,
I won’t have to die
Sow the wind, abandon the light
Reap the whirlwind inherit the night
Sow the wind, abandon the light
Reap the whirlwind inherit the night
Our cisterns are all broken, the reservoir is rust
The water’s black and muddied now, and the well is filled with dust
Sow the wind, abandon the light
Reap the whirlwind inherit the night
Sow the wind, abandon the light
Reap the whirlwind inherit the night
Polishing Up My Proverbs 16 Crown of Glory (Part IV): A Biblical Theory of Aging
It turns out that no one really knows why we age, exactly. To be clear: growing old is simply a matter of the chronological passage of time. That much is understood. But why we age—why, that is, our bodies should change, and especially, deteriorate as we grow old, why skin should lose its elasticity and eyesight its precision, why muscles should lose their tone and bones their density and mental processes their alacrity—medical science does not have an especially penetrating explanation for this.
In the words of that old Iron Maiden song (yes, Iron Maiden; kids, back in my day, the rockers were also the philosophers...): “There’s a time to live, but isn’t it strange that as soon as we’re born we’re dying.”
But why?
Why shouldn’t our cells be able to reproduce indefinitely? Why shouldn’t bones continually maintain their density, or muscles their tone? Why shouldn’t accumulated experience just keep sharpening our mental processes without end or limit?
Science can’t say, exactly.
At least, according to Doctor Andrew Weil, one of America’s leading gerontologists, science can’t. To be sure, there are theories. In his book, Healthy Aging, Dr. Weil surveys some of the best.
There’s the “Genetic Loss” theory of aging, for instance. Apparently, every time your cells reproduce, they lose tiny bits of genetic material from their DNA (humans lose approximately 0.6% of their heart muscle DNA each year, for instance). Over time, this gradual loss of DNA shows up in our bodies as, well, saggy skin, noodly muscles, brittle bones, and so on. On this theory, as best as I can tell, aging is kind of like a prolonged genetic mutation.
Then there’s the “Telomere Theory”. Telomoeres are the end bits of our chromosomes, and their job is to keep said chromosomes from genetically “fraying” (they’ve been compared to the plastic cap on the end of your shoelace). Telomeres have a tendency to shorten over time; and when they grow too short, they activate a mechanism that prevents further cell multiplication. Well: nothing says “old pair of shoes” worse than when the shoe-laces are all frayed.
The theory I found most interesting, however, is the “Reproductive-Cell Cycle” theory. The idea here is that, early on in life, our bodies naturally produce reproductive hormones designed to promote cell growth and ensure, especially, that we reach the age of sexual reproduction; but later in life, in a futile attempt to maintain sexual reproduction past our prime, these same hormones become disregulated and start to drive senescence instead (senescence is the fancy word for the way your body falls apart as you get old). In short: it’s our sex drive, actually, that’s killing us.
Well; I’m light-years from being an expert on any of this, but that was my lay-man’s understanding of Dr. Weil’s book.
And I’m not sharing any of this to be morbid. Or flippant. It’s just, in a previous post I spoke about the reverence the Bible has for old age, and how it tries to encourage the same in us; and it’s just possible my post may have elicited some knowing smiles or downright scoffs from readers who, like me, have passed a 40-something-eth birthday and are noticing for the first time that their bodies just won’t do what they used to do, and have begun to do all sorts of things they never did before, instead.
Reverence for old-age indeed!
So, any thorough theology of aging will eventually have to come to terms with the hard truth that, just because Proverbs 16 calls my quickly-graying hair a crown of glory, that doesn’t change the fact that the hair’s still grey. And thinning. And the fellow it’s crowning feels somewhat less glorious than he did back when he was 20-something and full of vim and vinegar.
When we do come to terms with this truth—the fact that old age involves loss and deterioration as much as it does growth and gain—we discover the flip-side of the Bible’s teaching on the matter. Regardless how medical science may try to explain the phenomenon, biblically speaking, aging is not only a gift from God, it is also a divine limit placed on us by God.
The definitive text on this one is Genesis 6:3, where God, in response to the seemingly endless proliferation of human sin, says this: “My Spirit will not contend with human beings forever, for they are mortal. Their days shall be a hundred and twenty years.” Here, I think, we have the first solid theological word on the aging process. Cells lose their genetic material over time, telomeres shorten and chromosomes fray, reproductive hormones eventually begin to wear down the very organisms they once helped to sexually reproduce, because God, in his wisdom, knew that we needed to have limits placed on us. And he saw what we might become without them.
In another definitive text, Psalm 90:10 underscores this basic idea. The context is again a reflection on God’s right response to human sin, and it says, “Our days may come to seventy years, or perhaps eighty if strength endures, but the best of them are but trouble and sorrow, for they quickly pass and we fly away.”
The Bible seems quite convinced on this one. God in his wisdom has placed an upper limit on the length of the human life-span. And spiritually speaking, healthy aging is about learning to live well, fully and wisely and contentedly, within those limits. For lack of a better image, aging is about the joy of colouring inside the lines of the human life-span.
It is interesting, of course, to speculate on the meaning of the Resurrection within this theological framework. Because all genuinely Christian theology must end, eventually, with Christ; and the promise of the empty tomb is in fact a resurrected body where, presumably, cells reduplicate without genetic loss and God binds up the fraying telomeres of the broken-hearted. But that is far more speculative than I wish to get today, except, perhaps, to say this: if the promise of the Gospel is indeed eternal life in Jesus Christ, then for Christians, it would seem, Christ himself actually replaces aging as God's divine limitation on human life.
Food for thought.
But while that simmers on the back-burner, let me just make my main point one more time. Biblically speaking, graceful aging—Proverbs-16-glory-crowned aging, that is—begins when we accept the reality of aging not simply as a divine gift to us, but also as a divine limitation placed on us.
Of course, for the wise, those two things aren’t really all that different, in the end.
Three Minute Theology 3.1: A Part of the System
Systems Theory is a field of study that crosses a range of disciplines, everything from ecology to economics. It looks for patterns common to all sorts of systems, whether they have to do with how families function, how the body regulates itself or what have you. Though these are all very different kinds of systems, still, there are things about how they function as systems that are the same.
For instance, many systems are self-correcting; that is, they respond to small changes in their parts, so as to maintain equilibrium in the system as a whole.
When you overheat, for example, sweat appears on your skin as your body tries to cool itself through evaporation. Systems theory would call this a form of negative feedback, something the system’s doing to limit change and maintain equilibrium.
Interestingly, sometimes negative feedback causes unintended consequences that intensify the changes, rather than mitigate them. If my temperature has risen because I’m embarrassed, the sweat stains under my arms may actually increase my embarrassment, causing my temperature not to fall but to rise.
This is sometimes called a revenge effect. When email was introduced into the workplace, it was expected to reduce paper consumption. It turns out, however, that now, since everyone in the office can print a copy of the memo, they all do. The revenge effect of email is that paper consumption has risen, not declined.
All this provides us a helpful way of thinking about something theologians call “the doctrine of original sin.”
Original sin refers to the Bible’s teaching that human beings are born sinful, not by choice but by nature, and because of this, we need God to do for us what we can’t do for ourselves, that is, to save us from sin.
This teaching comes from the book of Genesis, where it describes the first man and woman, Adam and Eve, eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Christians have always interpreted this story as an explanation for why human beings, as Adam and Eve’s descendants, are sinful, and how they got to be that way.
While this seems straight forward enough, it raises all sorts of questions about who Adam and Eve actually were, historically, and why I should be held accountable for something that happened thousands of years ago.
This is where Systems thinking comes in handy. Spiritually speaking, you might say, sin is not something we do as much as it is a system we’re part of, which, try as we might to change it, continually adjusts to maintain equilibrium.
Suppose, for instance, I learn about child soldiers being used to fight a civil war in a foreign country, and in an effort to do good, I start a social media campaign to bring the practice to an end. What if the reason the war is being fought is because that country is a source of the rare minerals needed to create cell phones and other wireless devices. Then in a twisted way, my social media campaign is actually perpetuating the war I’m trying to end, by creating demand for all those cell phones.
Maybe I install solar panels hoping to curb climate change, only to discover that no one knows what to do with the toxic waste produced by making solar panels. Maybe I try to curb gluttony by eating well, only to become prideful of my physique...
In the language of systems theory, we might say, sin is a negative feedback loop in the human system that makes it impossible for us, really, to “do good,” because the revenge effects of our best efforts seem only to cause other problems.
However we frame the doctrine of original sin, the point is that there is something very serious gone wrong in human nature that we just can’t fix ourselves. And like one Christian writer put it, this is the one Christian doctrine for which we have ample proof.
The Bible says it like this, that “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.”
Of course, it also goes on to promise that “All, too, are justified by his grace through Jesus Christ.”