It's Like Having God Around

While my husband and I do not currently have any pets, we have had several in the past including four dogs, three cats, several parakeets, and even a guinea pig for a short while. I know pets can be loyal, and some would even claim--more loyal--than a spouse. While continuing to read Anne Lamott's Blue Shoe during the Christmas holidays, I found this line: "There's nothing like a good dog . . . It's like having God around, isn't it?" I love stories about the faithfulness and loyalty of pets. While I have not yet seen the current film Marley and Me, I have already read a review that suggests it will have some teary moments in it.

My favorite story recently concerns a good friend of ours who has had two knee replacements in the past year. As part of the treatment, he must lie in bed for at least six hours a day with a motion machine attached to his leg to provide bending exercises. The dog in the family, according to our calculations in human years must now be somewhere between 98 to 105. The cat Frisky's fur is stiff, he is thin, and his back is bent. Yet he insists on sleeping on a towel at the foot of his master's bed during this time of his master's recuperation.

Dogs, of course, are not the only animal to be so loyal. My daughter's partner lost her dad to colon cancer several years back. His cat performed the same loyal act as Frisky. Nursing homes also report that some of their live-in cats instinctually know when a patient is dying and also sleep at the foot of the patient's bed during the weeks before death.

While these examples of pet loyalty can never actually replace having the knowledge and belief that God is around, they are nonetheless still very comforting.

The Sacred Messiness of Life

I recently heard a Rabbi speaking of his book entitled Yearnings: Embracing the Sacred Messiness of Life. I think I have only recently begun to truly learn that I have no control on how life will go. In my book The Skagway Connection, which is the story of my spiritual journey, I write of the messiness of my own childhood. This messiness includes almost all of the favorite topics of confessional writing: divorce, alcoholism, sexual abuse, clinical depression, poverty, several home environments, and other various and sundry subjects. My hope was that, once I became an adult and survived the above situations, my life would be perfect. I had to think again.

I have found that in recent years many of the old challenges from the past have re-entered my life. These have included, among others, divorce but also some new ones such as acknowledgement of sexual orientation, the possibility of gay marriage, a grandchild who has two mothers and two fathers, the threat of violence to a close family member, and grandchildren (and potential grandchildren) who are in counseling. Life is indeed somewhat messy.

What gives me comfort in confronting new challenges, however, is examining the sacred messiness of the Bible's most popular figures: Abraham, Jacob, David, and others. Abraham, the great patriarch of the Old Testament lied about Sarai being his wife in order to protect himself from harm. Jacob was a deceiver who literally stole the family birthright from under his brother Esau's nose and later dreaded meeting his brother again even after many year had passed. David was an adulterer who fathered a child with another man's wife and later had her husband killed by putting him on the front line for battle. All of these characters are fully human--as are we.

As I think about life today, I realize that I have spent far too much time in my life trying to have a perfect life while at the same time also judging others for their imperfect lives. I hope to embrace life and all of its potential messy challenges as the new year approaches.

The Point of Life

I have been reading Anne Lamott's 2002 novel entitled Blue Shoe. At one point in the protagonist's musing about her messy life (ex-husband that she still sleeps with, a mother who is increasingly becoming more and more senile, a father who perhaps fathered a child with a young girl, two children who show signs of anxiety, and loneliness as a single mother), she quotes Kafka. Never one to be a beacon of life during his relatively short life, Kafka said, "The point of life is that it ends." I would rather think, as a Christian, that the point of life is that it never ends. Of course, we are all realists to know that physical life ends, but, according to the Scripture we have spent our lives subscribing to, a never-ending life of joy awaits us in eternity.

I suppose all of us think about our mortality more as we age and the brief transience of our lives. A holiday movie that addresses this issue beautifully is currently playing: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. While I have not seen the movie as yet, I have read the F. Scott Fitzgerald short story upon which it is based. Its key point is that we need to enjoy and savor the moments on earth that we have. The movie supposedly is more of a love story as the characters age--one forward and the other backward--and the very short time we have to love each other.

The church that I currently attend believes the kingdom of God is on this earth; my previous church believes the kingdom of God is in eternity when all will be perfect. Since I am an amalgamation of all my religious teaching, I believe both ideas are possible. We need to work on this earth to fulfill Christ's view of His kingdom: a place of justice and peace. We also need to keep in mind that the point of life may not be that it ends, but that it is just beginning.

Tracking Jesus

The news has been filled the past week with stories of baby Jesus statues that have been stolen from their places in manger scenes throughout the United States. One church has lost three thus far: an $1800 imported Jesus made in Italy, a $500 replacement made in the U.S., and an inexpensive rubber doll. It is currently attaching a GPS system inside the 4th doll in order to track it should it also disappear. Evidently, teens think stealing Jesus is a rather amusing adventure during the Christmas season.

Today on Christmas Eve day, we are told by numerous weather people that we can also track the presence of Santa as he goes around the world with his sleigh and reindeer delivering presents to good little boys and girls. Currently, as I write, he is over Japan. While I think the use of GPS systems has kept many people on the right track, I don't think we need them to discover either the presence of Christ or Santa. As Christians, we know He has been in our hearts for many years.

This morning in the Bible I was reading from Acts, chapter 17, which is set in Athens, and centers on the Apostle Paul's sermon on Mars' Hill. Addressing both the Athenians and the foreigners, Paul speaks the following words: "He (God) is not far from each one of us; for in Him we live and move and have our being . . . ."

Although we are assured of these words, many of us act as if we need a GPS system to find Christ. We go about our tasks each day rather blindly, depending upon ourselves and our own strength to accomplish our goals. It is only when we perceive Christ has somehow disappeared from our lives that we begin fretting and seeking Him once again. For 2009 we need to hold Him close so that He doesn't seem so far away. We do not need a GPS system.

Justice--In a Minute

America has traditionally been known as being a nation in a hurry. This fact has been borne out in many areas recently such as driving by a fast food establishment for a take-out dinner, driving by to leave clothes for cleaning, driving by to check out a DVD, and even driving by to go to church or to get a flu shot. I suggest that we also consider drive-by courts, similar to Judge Judy's, but much faster--perhaps to obtain justice in a minute or so.

My first experience, after sixty-four years of life, within a courtroom took place this week in Little Rock. A very close relative had made an accusation and filed a police report a few months back with the police department. The charge for the defendant was aggravated assault and third degree battery. My husband and I chose to observe the proceedings and lend as much moral support as we could. We had assumed testimony would be heard and then a decision would be rendered by the judge. Instead, when we arrived in the courtroom, we were all informed that the decision had already been made by the judge, the defense attorney, and the prosecutor BEFORE the trial. My relative was asked if he still wanted to proceed with the testimonies; he said "yes," knowing the outcome ahead of time but wanting to get the trial on record. The judge ruled shortly that the trial would be suspended for a year. Evidently, this move is to allow the defendant either to behave and quit threatening to kill everyone involved, or to go ahead and be violent again. Frankly, I would have preferred that the three decision-makers take more seriously spousal abuse and violent attacks. I now see why the police get discouraged with the judicial system.

Other observations I have about justice-in-a-minute decisions are that most of the defendants in court that day were minorities--either African-American or Hispanic. I am not one to say that shoplifting, petty theft, not paying rent, and other crimes are related to race or culture. I do believe, however, that the relationship between economic need and crime is strong. Until we as a society can provide decent wages and an adequate standard of living, this trend will continue.

Another observation I have concerns the number of domestic battery cases that came before the judge for their minute of justice. The women, without fail, claimed that whatever violence that took place in the family structure was their fault. I somehow doubt it. Once again, we see the difficulty of abused women actually testifying against their significant others. It is simply easier to claim fault and walk away with the accused hand-in-hand, the no-contact order forgotten, only to wait for the next violent fight.

Perhaps I am naive to believe justice can exist in America. I do not believe, however, it can be doled out in a minute, or less.

Extreme Measures

Due to the challenging economic times which America, and the rest of the world, finds itself in, many are taking extreme measures to make ends meet. The media have been reporting on a number of stories that might give us pause. One occurred on the Today show yesterday morning concerning a baby who died because his mother was trying to stretch his baby formula by adding an overabundance of water. The baby evidently weighed two-thirds of his ideal weight when he died. The mother had no idea that her baby could die from such a measure.

Another report tells us of the dropping sales in the meat industry, including poultry and fish. People are eating less meat and more potatoes and pasta. Obesity rates are destined to increase yet again. Though I do not have direct evidence, I am assuming also that people in retirement are also trying to conserve on their food in order to buy their prescribed medicines. Since my husband was in the "doughnut" hole the final three months of this year, I have been sharing my blood pressure medicine with him until 2009. At that time he can buy more at his plan's regular prices. A couple of his doctors were gracious enough to provide him samples for his other two prescriptions until the new year.

All this is to say that, at this point, my husband and I have made few sacrifices, i. e. eliminating Starbucks lattes from our list of preferred activities, cutting down the number of restaurant meals per week to one, and trimming our Christmas gift budget. Economists have just announced that we have already been in recession for one year. My prediction is that we will be in a depression for the next five years or more. I hope I am wrong.

The government is simply printing billions of dollars in order to flood the economy with money. I believe Germany also took these extreme measures back in the late 1930's. Let's just hope, and pray, that history does not repeat itself.