Whatever you do…

I am sure I have posted on this topic before, but it’s an issue that seems to trouble me frequently. I am not a Biblical scholar by any stretch of the imagination, so I don’t have any intellectual context to interpret the quote from Jesus that goes something like, “whatever you do to the least of my brothers, you do unto me.”

It seems to me if you take the life of Christ seriously, you’d have to pay close attention to this statement. There is also some references to giving up what you have and following Jesus – remember – the guy that had too much and couldn’t give it up? So if you take these two statements as the gospel within the Gospels, what implications are there for how you live?

As a husband and father, my instincts tell me to look after my family first in many aspects of my existence. Sure, I can help the least of my brothers but it will be right after I try to make sure my family is comfortable, safe, entertained, educated, healthy, etc. Surely Christ wouldn’t want me to help the least of my brothers and have my kids not getting their comfort/entertainment/education/health? Or would he not understand? Maybe being a parent is trying to teach your kids to serve the least of their brothers and worry a lot less about the other things parents provide their children.

I’ve heard the quote interpreted in several different ways as to who is the least of your brothers. I tend to think of it in terms of resources and choices. There are financially poor here in the Twin Cities and there are poor people nearly everywhere else. Some are clearly poorer than others and some of made choices to put themselves in their situation and others have had no real choices. Who are the LEAST of my brothers?

Another twist on the least of my brothers interpretation is that it’s about poverty or a deficiency and there are many people who are deficient in some capacity even in the tawny metropolitan suburbs. Maybe helping the least of my brothers is helping a rich godless person have faith. Maybe helping people who don’t get along develop and improve relationships counts as helping the least of my brothers.

Here’s what I am worried about:

“Dan, we are sorry, you can not enter the gates of heaven. As you are well aware having read the Gospel, you were to help the least of your brothers and give up what you have and follow Christ to get in. Wasn’t’ that clear enough for you? We thought we spelled it out so there shouldn’t be any doubt on what to do. Tough luck, you took a stab at it, but serving your family and your rich neighbors instead of the poor, is going to cost you. Hope you don’t mind extreme heat for all of eternity.”

Tsetse Fly

Do you ever look back at past demons in your life? You know those things that used to trouble you but now maybe seem ridiculous.  For many it was the monster that was either under you bed or in the attic.  I remember a couple of demons I had that make me laugh now.

One of my demons for awhile was the dreaded tsetse fly.  I saw a film in school about how the tsetse would give people sleeping disease and mess up the animals as well.  I am not sure if I was drifting off when the said it was only in Africa or I just assumed the flies in Africa could fly to southern Minnesota.  I do know the effect was a short, but intense fear of all flies for awhile.  The film we saw showed people who were essentially turned into zombies after the fly bit them and I most definitely wanted to avoid this horrid end.   So I avoided flies as much as I could for a stretch.

I also remember another incident involving an alien.  There was a stretch growing up – maybe in the mid to early seventies where UFO’s were being sighted with regularity.  I think it was right after streaking was big but before bicentennial fever took over.  Anyway, with very regular reports of UFOs and abductions in the news, a relatively young kid was naturally fearful when going out by himself at dark.  About this same time I started a morning paper route.  I’d wake up before six in the morning and deliver about 12 StarTribune newspapers over about a two mile route (I’d hate to calculate my wage for that gig). 

Anyway, one morning I am picking up my bundle of papers and I look back at our garage window and there were three lights looking back at me.  As I stared at the eyes and nose of an alien in our garage, I was paralyzed with fear.  As I moved the eyes seemed to follow me.  I don’t know how long it took me to figure out that the eyes were a by-product of the street light and a pine tree but I am pretty sure people got their paper late that morning.

I grew out of these fears and others but think about to what extent I’ve replaced them with other fears that may be an equal waste of energy.  Maybe the larger question is for all of us, what is it we should fear if we have faith.  Should we really fear losing money in the stock market or having enough money to retire or not achieving career advancement?  If we are, as Christians, striving to be more Christ like, maybe the question is what would Jesus fear?  Perhaps this is an unfair question given we are not divine, but I tend to think many of us fear or worry too much about things that don’t matter. 

Contrived One-Man Conversations

I was driving down the road the other day and caught myself having a conversation with a person (a real person I know) who wasn’t in my car.  It was all in my head.  As I thought about it more and more I realized I do this all the time.  I started wondering if other people do the same thing.  Do you have a conversation with someone you know even though they aren’t there?

To be clear it’s typically not so much a conversation as it is a diatribe.  It’s me talking about something and assembling comments meant to be provocative, funny, or maybe absolutely outlandish about something.  I suppose when you get right down to it, it’s a lot like a blog, but you don’t type the brain traffic, you only run it through this imaginary conversation.

So is this out of the norm?  Am I dysfunctionally coping with the tension between needing social interaction and my introverted tendencies by having contrived conversations in solitude?  I do often like being alone.  When I drive, I rarely play music when I am in the car and don’t listen to the music when it’s playing.  I’ll listen to people talking on the radio but typically get turned off by whoever is speaking before too long and then lapse in my version of a conversation.

Is this unhealthy?  My imaginary friends and family don’t seem to mind.  At least they don’t argue with me when they are hypothetically conversing with me.  Maybe I should try to make the conversations real and use some of the cell phone minutes that go wasted in any given month.  The problem with this is my contributions to any given dialogue are typically so uninteresting, I am fairly certain that before long, no one with caller ID would answer my calls.

Anyway, all you people out there that I am giving an imaginary speech to, let me know if you think I am going off the deep-end.  Or I guess maybe arrange some sort of intervention with a qualified mental health care provider.  If you don’t think it’s a problem – well I’ll just talk to you later – at least in my mind I will anyway.

You can take the boy out of the East Side…

I grew up in Austin, Minnesota.  With a few exceptions, I wouldn’t have traded much in this environment.  There were plenty of kids in my neighborhood and we did many things in groups including a lot of sports.  No leagues – just got together and played basketball, baseball, football, and hockey.  However, Austin, as nearly every city, was somewhat economic segregated.  The families who were well to do tended to live in the same areas.

I lived on the East side.  The East side was, for the most part, the older section of town, with smaller houses and more hourly workers.  Our home was relatively big and newer than many of the homes but collectively, the east side of town had a reputation for being ‘the wrong side of town.’  In fact, a kid I went to school with, Martin Zellar (Marty Zellar, back then), wrote a song about the, “East Side Boys.”  To give you a better idea of the area town, read through the lyrics:

They grew up on the side of town
Where the Christmas lights hung all year ’round
And the sidewalks went unshoveled
And the dogs barked all night long

They were skinny and they were mean
Had parents that were never seen
Their hair was always longer
Their shirts were always tight

And we knew we’d never get to know ‘em
And we knew we’d never try
Those East Side Boys seemed further from us
Than any star that hung up in the sky

Those East Side Boys never seemed to eat
They just smoked cigarettes across the street
Stared down at the sidewalks
Came to classes late
http://www.free-lyrics.org

On conference days it was always the same
Those east side parents never came
Never read their stories
Saw their artwork on the walls

Once we’d hit the high school
Around grade nine or ten
One by one they’d disappear
And we’d never see those East Side boys again

They grew up on the side of town
Where the Christmas lights hung all year ’round
And the sidewalks went unshoveled
And the dogs barked all night long

No one seemed to know their names
They didn’t go to prom or football games
Just wandered through the hallways like inmates doin’ time

And we knew we’d never get to know ‘em
And we knew we’d never try
Those East Side Boys seemed further from us
Than any star that hung up in the sky

East Side Boys… (5X)

Now that I am living in the best place to live in the nation (Plymouth, MN), I sometimes feel like I don’t necessarily belong.  I feel like I left the East side maybe it never left me.  For what it’s worth, I don’t have a dog and am reasonably good about getting my Christmas lights down around the first of the year, but still, there’s a lingering feeling like Plymouth and I are mismatched.  There’s a little bit of metaphorical mud on that’s always on my shoes representing an incongruity in the environment where I grew up and my current environment. 

There, glad I got that out in the open.  For those of you who actually witness my behavior, I am sure all this explains a lot.  For those who don’t, just imagine a rube thinnly disguised as Johnny-on-the-spot, bean-counter, and you’ll get the idea.

 

Monkey on my back

I enjoy to activities when the weather allows it – fishing and golf.  This spring has been particularly harsh in that it hasn’t been conducive to ice melting or courses opening.  Maybe this weekend it will be warm enough to finally get started with golf anyway.

I have not let the longer winter deter me from getting started with golf.  I have been hitting golf balls from my driveway across the street into a soccer field.  I do love hitting golf balls and so when the weather would allow, I hit hundreds and hundreds.  As nice as this arrangement is it definitely has had some problems.

One big problem is the damn tree across the street.  It’s somewhat between my driveway and my intended target and so the perfect shot is either really high or it must curve somewhat around the branches.  Unfortunately, I have hit the branches hundreds of times and even without leaves, the tree has sent my shots in all directions.  The worst was last week when my neighbor was unloading something from his truck in his driveway.  The ball hit the tree, ricocheted straight-down to the street and landed a few feet from his truck.  I briefly explained it was very weird shot and he was friendly and all but he seemed to step up the pace of unloading and quickly put his truck in the garage and closed the garage door.

One lesser problem is that my driveway is curved and I am hitting off a mat.  And so I practice the same or a similar shot over and over and over again.  I am concerned that even if I start hitting perfect shots I will not be able to translate my new found skills because you don’t get too slightly uphill shots with perfect lies that often on the course.  When I take a regular shot from longer grass will I completely miss hit it because I have grooved the uphill swing?  Time will tell.

The most profound problem is that seem to suffer from brief successes followed by severe and lengthy failures.  I can hit stretches of 10-15 shots that are acceptable (they would probably be on or near the green if I were playing golf).  Then the proverbial monkey gets on my back and I start scattering shots.  It’s so bad it’s like I am either blind or someone has spun me around a half dozen times and then asked me to hit. 

The most troubling aspect of my wayward stretches is that I have a huge problem righting myself.  Back in the day when I could count on playing a round of golf under 85 strokes, I would still hit a really bad shot now and then but could quickly diagnose the problem and get back on track.  Now, even with concerted mental and physical reviewing of the fundamentals of golf, it can take many shots before my golf ship gets righted and on course.

So now my biggest concern is that I have a brain/body disconnect that is incurable.  There are some pro golfers that have gone down this path – they are the best in the world one year and then the monkey gets on their back and they can’t force themselves to play well no matter how much they practice.  No matter what they try, it just doesn’t work. The problem is in the great chasm between the ears.

I started wondering if there aren’t parallels to other aspects of my and others behavior.  Do we get in situations where we know the right thing to do and want to do it but there is some mysterious disconnect between our will and our behavior.  I really want to be a pleasant person and know it’s the right thing to do but then the next person in my office gets the brush off.  I want to drive safely, eat right, pray earnestly, (fill in the blank) but there is a persistent obstacle between my will and my life.  How can we overcome the obstacles to become the person we know we can and want to be?

I guess that is a question that has been troubling humankind for all of existence.  I don’t have the answer.  I do know that if I don’t get more consistent with my golf though that I will be soon advertising some golf equipment at fire sale prices – keep checking back.

Screw it

I need a decent car.  I am tired of my car and everything it represents.  I need a nice car.  I work hard and life is short.  You can’t go driving around a piece of crap in this city and expect any amount of respect from even the lowly.  I have to have a decent ride.  I am an educated person.  I’ve worked without a break to generate varying amounts of income since I was in sixth grade – I deserve a larger slice of pie.

I don’t participate in the so-called American dream on so many levels the least I can do is lease of respectable car.  Lease rates are seem low – come up with a little front end scratch and drive a nice, respectable car for three years.  I’d have way more dignity.  People would respect me more. There would be a far brighter light shining down the highway of life.

Then again, maybe I am shooting too low.  My whole life I have lived a budget existence and now it’s time to worry about numbero uno.  I am going to test drive a BMW, a Cadillac Escalade, and a Lexus. And I am going to sign up for a three year lease on the car that best gives me a distinct sense of self-worth and importance.  I am leaving right now and I am going to start my test drive at the Lexus dealership on Highway 12 and I am going to work my way down 394 until I get to the Jaguar dealership on Washington Ave.  Give me a pen and the keys, I’ll sign, I swear I will.

Screw this. Screw eating real and metaphorical meals of peanut butter sandwiches and ramin noodles. 

I need to foist the economy and do my part.  If I do my part to repair the economy, I got to believe that my income will eventually increase to the point where I can swing the $700/month lease payment.  Someone has got to be courageous and willing to take a chance.

Screw it all and screw Eddie Vedder whose song will not leave my head…

It’s a mystery to me
we have a greed
with which we have agreed

You think you have to want
more than you need
until you have it all you won’t be free

society, you’re a crazy breed
I hope you’re not lonely without me

When you want more than you have
you think you need
and when you think more than you want
your thoughts begin to bleed

I think I need to find a bigger place
’cause when you have more than you think
you need more space

society, you’re a crazy breed
I hope you’re not lonely without me
society, crazy and deep
I hope you’re not lonely without me

there’s those thinking more or less less is more
but if less is more how you’re keeping score?
Means for every point you make
your level drops
kinda like its starting from the top
you can’t do that…

society, you’re a crazy breed
I hope you’re not lonely without me
society, crazy and deep
I hope you’re not lonely without me

society, have mercy on me
I hope you’re not angry if I disagree
society, crazy and deep
I hope you’re not lonely without me