From the heart

I went to church today. No, I am not a Christian—I don’t even have an unreservedly high opinion of Jesus—but I enjoy studying religion. I also enjoy being in groups in which people speak from their hearts. So, I go to church sometimes, or at least to Sunday School. If a church has two services and Sunday School during each of them, I go to Sunday School twice and skip church. In Sunday School, I learn; in Sunday School, I contribute; in Sunday School, I hear other people’s stories; in church I am just another member of an audience that is listening to a speech, and I am probably bored.

Joanne is 75 and goes to First Christian. I met her two weeks ago, and right away she loaned me three books. People who loan out books without even knowing where to go look for them are different cats than I, and I love them for that difference. I also love Joanne for other reasons. I love her because she is impish, sprightly, speaks her mind, punches the preacher on the shoulder when they disagree, has a sense of humor that goes right over most people’s heads, and most of all, because Joanne loves me.

Today’s lesson was from the Psalms. I’ve read that there are monks all over the world who get out of bed every morning at two a.m. and stand on marble floors in unheated chapels just to chant from the Psalms, but I don’t know why. Granted, it is a book of praise, but much of that praise was a thinly veiled attempt to persuade God to grant the speaker health, wealth, and happiness while annihilating his enemies; and the praise was interspersed with warnings that God would look awfully bad if he didn’t do these things. Today’s text was from Psalms 19:

“The heavens are telling the glory of God… Day and night, they keep on telling about God. Without a sound or a word, silent in the skies, their message reaches out to all the world. The sun…moves across the skies as radiant as a bridegroom going to his wedding, or as joyous as an athlete looking forward to a race. The sun crosses the heavens from end to end, and nothing can hide from his heat.”

Parts of the Bible, I abhor; other parts touch me down deep. Even when I don’t believe the Bible’s words, I cannot escape its power.

Peggy grew up much as I did. We both went to fundamentalist churches three times a week, only it was her parents who took her, while it was I who took me. The day she left home was the day she left church. I’ve never left. For years I tried, but I always went back, so I finally stopped fighting it. When I’m in the mood to go, I go; when I’m in the mood to stay home, I stay home. Mostly I stay home, but when I do go, I take my heart with me, sometimes to one kind of church, sometimes to another. My only requirement is that people feel free to speak openly. The participants in a recent class were asked to summarize what they thought about the Bible in one sentence, and one woman said, “The Bible is bullshit.” I thought it an odd statement, standing alone as it did, but I liked the fact that no one blanched.

During our study today, Joanne talked about how, years earlier, she came home from a wedding to find that her husband had packed up half of everything they owned and left. She didn’t know what else to do, so she started getting up early each day and reading from the Psalms. The ancient writer seemed to be expressing the misery that she felt in her own heart. Morning after morning, she would read and cry until, after many months, she was all cried out. I pictured Joanne, alone in the wee hours in her half empty house, crying, and I started to cry. Wanting to hide my tears, I searched the Bible in my lap for verses that might help me understand what Joanne had found that comforted her.

“In my distress, I screamed for the Lord…and he heard me…
The Lord is my fort where I can enter and be safe…
The Lord is my rugged mountain where I can hide…
The Lord is my rock where no one can reach me…
The Lord is my tower of safety…
The Lord is like the strong horn of a mighty fighting bull…
The Lord gives me the surefootedness of a mountain goat…
The Lord leads me along the tops of cliffs…
How I love Him!”

The second class today only had eleven people and started with a check-in. Martin, who had been in the Bataan Death March said that last week, for the first time, he had been able to bring himself to hug a Japanese. I thought of how that must have felt to him after 65 years of suffering, and I started crying again. The only other visitor was a woman who was seated beside me, and she too started crying, noticeably so. Someone asked her if there was anything we could do for her, and she said that her marriage had just ended, and that she felt as if her world was falling apart. Two more people now had tears in their eyes.

When the class ended, everyone held hands in a circle. Someone thanked God that I had come. Someone else asked God to heal my shoulders. I knew that both classes had been more meaningful because I was there, and that felt really good.


Part 2

I grew up in the fundamentalist Church of Christ. When I was twenty (I'm going to be rounding off a few numbers), I joined the Episcopal Church. A few years later, I joined American Atheists, wrote articles for their magazine, and was named non-resident editor. When I was forty, I became a Unitarian. When I was fifty, a Catholic. When I left the Catholic Church, I saw that my relationship to churches was as much of a joke as Elizabeth Taylor’s relationship to marriage, and I vowed to stop pretending that I had it in me to be faithful. I had imagined that the simple act of joining would open me to some insight or experience that I couldn’t otherwise obtain, but it never did.

The advantage of growing up in the Church of Christ is that I learned far more about the Bible than most churchgoers. In a recent class at First Christian, everyone was given five obscure stories and asked which ones were from the Bible. I was the only one of thirty people to get them all right. The Church of Christ didn’t use literature about the Bible: all we studied was the Bible. Kids were drilled on it. We would work our way from the front to the back, and then start over again, year in and year out. It didn’t hurt any that I also studied the Bible in college. I haven’t looked at it much in decades, yet I learned it so well that I could pass for a clergyman, which is what everyone expected me to become.

I can only attend very liberal churches. Fundamentalist Christians aren’t free to express doubts in church just as fundamentalist atheists aren’t free to express doubts in their organizations. People who belong to liberal churches are all over the board regarding belief so the concept of heresy is nonexistent.

I washed out of my first Catholic confirmation class because the priest didn’t welcome my questions. I went across town to a church that had a liberal priest, and I did okay there except for my relationship with the sponsor who was assigned to me. He quickly decided that I had no business being a Catholic, but he didn’t stand in my way. In fact, he did everything I could have expected except to put his heart into our time together.

I had wanted this most ancient of churches to show me a side of Christianity that I had overlooked, and I had wanted it to accept me, but I saw nothing new, and my acceptance depended upon how well I kept my mouth shut. After my confirmation, I left the Catholic Church.

Most churches are like political parties in that you only belong if you believe the same things that everyone else believes. I can see the sense in this, but it contradicts any promise of inclusivity. Because they agree among themselves, church people have no idea how exclusive they appear to someone like myself.

I am a pantheist. The reason a lot of people object to pantheism is that pantheists don’t believe that the universe contains any more or any less that what atheists believe it contains; pantheists just call the universe God whereas atheists simply call it the universe. The difference, for me, is a matter of reverence. I find within myself an implacable impulse to worship, and this impulse makes me constitutionally unable to be an atheist. Yet, most versions of theism leave me cold. Theists typically believe that God hears prayers, performs miracles, provides guidance, and cares about justice. These are comforting ways to look at the world, but I see no reason to think they are true. I am nonplussed as to how anyone can think they are true. Yet, most theists are no better able to doubt than I am to believe.

The books that Joanne loaned me were from the Cotton Patch Version of the Scriptures. It is a serious translation from the original languages, and was made by Vernon Jordan in the 1960s. The thing that Jordan did differently in his translation was to use Southern U.S. vernacular, and to substitute Southern locations and groups for Biblical ones. For example, in the Cotton Patch version, Jesus preferred the company of bootleggers and black prostitutes to that of the white elders at First Church; Pilate was the governor of Georgia; and Jesus was “lynched” in Atlanta.

I was a teenager in the South during the ‘60s. I watched crosses burn in the yards of “troublemakers,” and I saw groups of men standing guard in the doorway of my church “to keep the niggers out.” Had some white preacher called the church elders “white-washed tombs,” and said that he preferred the company of Yankees and whores to that of “Good Christian White People,” his life most certainly would have been in danger. Just as the Jews of Christ’s time believed that Gentiles were unclean, I grew up believing that sinners and black people (but especially black people) were inherently stupid, filthy, immoral, and germy. I sanitized the sinners of the Bible while standing in self-righteous condemnation over the ones in my own neighborhood. I was a Pharisee, and I didn’t even know it.

Something else struck me about Jordan’s translation. In fact, it figuratively knocked me to the floor. I am speaking of the difference between Jesus and Paul. If Jesus can be thought of as an itinerant hippie who wore tie-dye and spoke of love; Paul can be considered an IBM executive in a white shirt and black tie. Jesus was directly accessible to his followers; Paul erected a hierarchy that still stands between Jesus and his followers. The church might have died without his organizational skills, yet much was lost because of them. Thomas Jefferson made his own New Testament by throwing out everything that Jesus didn’t personally do or say, and I can see the merit in that.

Doctor Baxter and Nurse Bonnie

I was telling my neighbor, Ellie, and her fourteen-year-old son, Josh, about my upcoming surgery. Ellie said that Josh had to do a certain number of volunteer hours for a school assignment, and that he could help me out with anything I needed done. “Well…I won’t be able to wipe my butt for six weeks…” I said lyingly. Josh continued looking cool, unruffled, maybe a little bored (I see him practicing this look on his way to school each morning).

Unfortunately, Josh knows me too well to believe anything I say. That wasn’t always true. When his family moved here, Josh was nine. One day, he was in the street with his remote controlled car. “Hey, Snow, look at this,” he said as he rolled the car several times. “Dude, I enthused, “that is like SO TOTALLY COOL that I’m going to try it with my van.” Here I got into the van while Josh looked at me in horror (this was before he discovered the importance of looking cool no matter what). “He’s just kidding you, Josh,” Peggy said. Damn kid hasn’t trusted me since. Go figure.

Peggy will be out of town for two weeks out of the five following my surgery. I wouldn’t mind this so much were it not for the dogs. Friends, neighbors, and lodge brothers are always willing to help out, except when it comes to the dogs which, ironically, is what I need help with the most.

My fantasy is that the dogs will help me. Specifically, Bonnie Blue Heeler would act as my nurse since she would look really cute in a starched white uniform and a nurse’s hat. There are only two things against it. One is that post-surgical odors scare the bejesus out of her, making it impossible for me to get anywhere close. The other is that she won’t wear clothes. At a Christmas party one year, Peggy tied a red ribbon around Bonnie’s neck before Bonnie knew what was happening. Bonnie was so humiliated by the ensuing laughter that she ran from the room and wouldn’t let Peggy come near her for hours. Though this happened ten years ago, it thoroughly discouraged us from ever again dressing Bonnie—that and the fact that she has extremely strong jaws and uses violence as a first response to interpersonal conflict.

My other fantasy is that Baxter Black Schnauzer—being a boy and all—would serve as my physician. He would look cute in a white lab coat with one of those round mirror thingy’s on his forehead, and his Nietzsche-like moustache would accentuate his scholarly appearance. Since he will wear clothes, the dress-up part is doable. The downside is that he’s an all-around idiot (Peggy vehemently disagrees with this assessment) and doesn’t exude an iota of the customary doctorly arrogance.

Such considerations make it clear that the dogs will be a liability rather than an asset. All I can think to do is to lock them in the garage for two weeks, and take them a little food if my head should clear sufficiently between doses of Percocet and vodka. Then again, maybe Peggy could tear open a fifty-pound bag of dog food and dump it on the garage floor on her way to the airport. They would immediately eat it all, throw it all up, eat the vomit, throw that up, and so on until her return. With luck, I wouldn’t have to buy another bag of dog food for at least a year, by which time I should be well enough to carry it home.

Two weeks from today

I am grateful for the kind words that my last post elicited. Your advice was valuable in that it told me of your caring, and because it confirmed that the advice I had given to myself was the best advice available. Sad to say, advice is not necessarily easier to accept because it is good.

Even so, my last entry—and your responses—calmed me remarkably, and allowed me room to think of things other than my fears, things like other people, for example. Self-absorption is like a whirlpool in that the lower I descend, the faster and tighter the maelstrom, and it is good to be out of the middle of that maelstrom, at least for now.

The thing that scares me most about this surgery is that, like all surgeries, it is a violent act. In this case, it is so violent that it will take months to recover from the wound. I recoil in fear. I think that, surely, there is a better way, a way that is gentle and encourages healing rather than treating my shoulders as if they were enemies to be conquered and enslaved. It was with this hope that I cancelled the surgery last September, but I have found no other way. I wasted a little money on herbs, a bit more on massage, a lot more on acupuncture, and a whole lot more on physical therapy. The bitter truth is that some problems don’t respond to gentle methods.

I take my shoulder to the surgeon with the same mind that I take my dog to the vet. I know that the vet might hurt my dog in the short term in order to help it in the long run, but my dog cannot understand this. All my dog knows is that it was afraid and hurting, and that the man I have taken it to is hurting it more. Nothing I can say will make that okay. Like my dog, when my shoulder hurts, it screams, and I cannot reason with it. I want it to know that I am sorry; I want it to know that I am doing my best to help and that I would never hurt it without reason, but words cannot reach it. There is my rational mind, and there is my animal body, and they sometimes seem very far apart.

"Gloom, despair, and agony on me; deep dark depression, excessive misery"

I mowed today for the first time this year. I’ll mow once more before having shoulder surgery in late March; then I won’t be able to mow for months. This surgery takes a year for a full recovery, and I will never regain normal strength and flexibility. What’s more, both shoulders need the surgery, but only one can be done at a time. I’ve cancelled it once, and I’m tempted every waking hour to cancel it again. I can’t say I’m terrified, and I can’t say I’m devastated; but I can say I’m close.

Three years ago, I had knee surgery. Before that surgery, I could hike twelve miles up and down mountains, but my knee would swell a little, so I thought, what the hell, knee debridement is a simple and commonplace operation and, after I have it, I can hike without pain. Since the surgery, I haven’t been able to hike at all, and there are even days when I hurt too much to take the dogs for a walk.

Before having knee surgery, I liked surgical options. My thought was: “If something’s bothering you, don’t beat around the bush, get a surgeon to cut it out—what could be simpler?” I’ve since observed that one kind of surgery can be life threatening yet cause little pain and offer a full and speedy recovery, while another can have a low mortality rate but a significant risk of disability and chronic pain. This realization is similar to one I had as a boy when I would get so sick each winter with colds that I would wonder how, if a minor ailment could make me feel that bad, I would ever be able to hold up against something that might actually kill me. I was relieved to learn that people die everyday of things less annoying than a cold.

Now, I don’t know how I am going to hold up to months of being unable to use one-arm followed by the same thing all over again when I have surgery on the other. A local woman survived having both arms ripped off by a gasoline auger last October, and I tell myself that I should be thanking my lucky stars I’m not her; but reminding myself that I could be worse off never seems to make me feel that much better about how bad off I am. If it were that easy, few of us would ever be put out by much of anything, there being few things so terrible that they couldn’t be worse.

By day and by night, fear rolls over me like a fast train. If it were any greater, I would be hysterical. I say to myself that I am not six but sixty, and sixty is plenty old enough to have become a barbican of strength. I say to myself that I should be limpid, ataractic, eudaemonious, and there is no excuse that I am not. So I say, but berating myself for being afraid only makes me less able to summon my strength.

I feel damned if I do and damned if I don’t have surgery. I’m in pain when I am awake, and pain often awakens me at night. Sometimes, it’s terrible in its intensity, and can stay that way for weeks making it almost impossible to think of anything other than how much I hurt. There have been times when I could scarcely bear to walk because even the gentlest steps were too jarring, and sleep would only come when I was exhausted and would only last for a few minutes before the pain awakened me. Yet, I’m fairly functional most of the time, and the pain is tolerable if I don’t use my arms much.

If the surgery works, I’ll eventually be without pain. If the surgery fails, I’ll be partially disabled, and there’s a 10-25% chance (estimates vary) that the surgery will fail. But if I don’t have surgery, my tendons, which are 80% severed, will eventually break, and the ends will pull apart, making repair impossible.

I had three surgeries last year. Two of them involved biopsies. In the second biopsy, the surgeon went through the front of my throat to get to my vertebra. My fear when I had to get out of bed at 4:30 in the morning to go have my throat cut is beyond my ability to describe. As it turned out, I didn’t have cancer, and I was almost as good as new the next day. Even though my worry then was that I might die, that was preferable to my present fear that I might be permanently disabled and in pain.

Last week, I met an athletic looking man twenty years my junior who had the same surgery in November. He said he was in so much pain for the first two weeks that even Percocet didn’t kill it, and he still can’t raise his arm high enough to shake hands. He looked utterly beaten and demoralized, the living image of my worst fears. Sure, my own surgery could turn out worse than that—I could die—but he represented my worst-case scenario of that which seems easily believable. He even had the same surgeon, not that I’m jumping ship now, this being my fourth orthopedist and the only one I like and trust.

The hysterical seriousness of life

We got the Camry.

“Why?”

Because I told Peggy I would go along with whatever she wanted, and she said she wanted the car enough to ignore the arbitration clause.

“Why were you willing to go along with what Peggy wanted?”

Peggy used to walk to work. Last August, the hospital at which she works moved nine miles away. She tried taking the bus—too long. She tried biking—too far and too dangerous (the streets are busy and she often commutes in the rain and the darkness). When busing and biking didn’t work, she started driving our 3/4-ton van (see photo) but was intimidated by its size. Getting a car was my idea because she works hard at a stressful job (L&D nurse), and I wanted her commute to be happy and relaxing. The bottom-line about getting the Camry is that I value Peggy more than I value standing on principal.

I received four calls from three people from the dealership the day after I walked out of the paper signing. One said that Kendall’s could force me to buy the car. They all said that no one else ever had a problem with the arbitration clause, so I shouldn’t either. They all said that my reluctance to sign implied that I didn’t trust them. They all said that the arbiter wasn’t one they chose but one that was assigned to them by the State of Oregon. I doubted that the State of Oregon assigns arbiters to car dealers, but I called the Department of Justice anyway and verified that I was right.

I will bike to the dealer’s on Monday with a bank check, put my bike in the trunk of our Camry, and drive home. Peggy will be out of town with a friend that day. Taking care of our business affairs is my job. Otherwise, I would have to go earn a paycheck. We’ve lived that way for many years—she makes the money, and I do everything else. The only time it gets awkward is when people ask what I do. Peggy has a title, but what could I possibly offer as my title? Now that I’m old enough to look like I’m retired, I just tell people I’m retired. It’s not true, but it’s easy. Not only do I value Peggy above principal; I value convenience above principal, at least sometimes.

Now for some late night miscellany.

Things—like this whole weird car-buying experience—go easier when I can think of life as a game because thinking of life as a game takes the edge off. When the stakes are lowered, the outcome doesn’t seem so deathly serious.

If I could go through life on a three drink high, that would be about right. The trouble is that a three drink high doesn’t last long. I’ve often wondered why, if after three drinks, I feel like I would like to feel all the time, I can’t hang onto that feeling when I’m not drinking. It’s like the old hippie belief that psychedelics can lift you to a higher level of consciousness. That might be true, but then they drop you back to where you were. I learned this when I came to the realization that people who did a lot of psychedelics (or a lot of liquor) were as messed up as everyone else, often more so.

I’ve always been flexible about principals. For example, if a store clerk gives me too much change, I might keep it or I might not. It depends upon how I feel about the store. If I respect the store, I’ll return it; if I don’t, I won’t. Whether I was given one dollar too much or a million dollars too much would make no difference (if the amount was a million dollars, I would really hope I was in a store that I didn't respect). Sometimes, I’ve gone to the wall over principals that other people didn’t think were important. Other times, I’ve been okay with doing things that other people thought were wrong.

Today is my birthday. I am sixty. March 1 is the best possible birthday. If you tell someone that you were born on September 23 or January 11, they just nod and look bored. If you tell them you were born on March 1, they say, “RAAAR! RAAAR!” They do this because the sounds in March 1 flow like martial music. Some people will even stomp their feet and drum their hands. One man got so excited that he couldn’t bear the agony of his ecstasy, so he jumped in front of a freight truck (the truck wasn’t actually moving, but he didn’t know that). After this happened, I started being careful about where people were when I told them it was my birthday.

Just as March 1 is the best possible birthday, 1949 is the best possible birth year. I’ve already gotten to live in three half centuries, and that’s the same as being 150 years old. When I was a kid, I felt sorry for people who weren’t born until 1950 because they always seemed so childish. Peggy wasn’t born until 1951, but that’s okay because it means that she will always be a nymphet and men are really into nymphets, in a manner of speaking. Sometimes, I lord it over Peggy because I was born in the half century that preceded hers. I’ll say, “Peggy, I was born in the same half century as two world wars. Your half century just had a lot of piddling little wars; how embarrassing that must be for you.” Peggy never seems much impressed by this line of thinking, which is why I have to keep presenting it to her. I figure that someday, she will get it and say, “Ooooooh, you’re my big, strong man. I don’t think I would have been tough enough to have survived two big wars the way you did.”

I care some that I am getting old, but I wouldn’t be keen on going back either. It’s like everybody says, “I wouldn’t mind being young again if I could take everything I’ve learned with me.”

Now, if old people think they’ve learned a great deal, why do young people hold their wisdom in such low esteem, sometimes even dismissing their opinions simply because they are old? Maybe it’s because old people have also lost a lot, things like the ability to play and to be spontaneous…also the ability to remember quickly…and to see and hear well…and to move fluidly; the list just goes on and on.

This means that young people are right in thinking that old people are an irredeemable mess, but then young people are too, come to think of it. That’s just how people are. You’ve got old and doddery, and you’ve got young and dumb, and you can’t even choose your poison. It would be enough to turn Joan of Arc into an atheist if she had lived long enough. The advantage of dying young is that you get to avoid a lot of aggravation.

Such bummer thoughts are why it’s important to think of life as a game, as something like checkers, say, so that you can enjoy playing it without getting overwrought about whether you’re winning or losing. Life is also like a conveyer belt. We all fall off sooner or later, so why clench your teeth about something that is about to end anyway?

I know why. The reason is that time seems drawn out when you’re suffering. All this stuff about life being a game sounds hollow when you’re lying awake in pain at three a.m., and you have no hope for feeling better the next night, or the night after, or any night in the future. In fact, you worry that you might feel even worse, and you don’t know how you can bear it if you do. Happiness is over in a heartbeat while misery just keeps on keeping on, and misery makes it damn hard to say that life is a game.

But what’s the option? Some might argue that God ordained it all, and so it all has a purpose. Okay, fine. If you can believe that, it might do you a lot of good, but it doesn’t mean squat to me. I don’t think life means anything more or anything less that what any of us thinks it means. Life is not serious unless we think it is, and life is not a game unless we think it is. There is life and then there are our thoughts about life, and we cannot know how closely the two coincide. Even so, we can't not think, and my thought is that the meaning of life, and therefore the worth of life, is entirely subjective. My worth comes from Peggy, nature, my dogs, my friends, my writing, and from those moments when I feel happy or when something touches me so that my heart melts. But all of these things are transitory; I don’t believe in anything that is lasting. Could I be wrong? Yes. Any of us could be wrong about pretty much anything. There’s always room for humility.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AO9dbmJ_2zU