Dignity in the Valley

“God wonderfully created, and yet more wonderfully restored the dignity of human nature …” rephrasing a portion of the Collect for Christmas 2 in the Book of Common Prayer

I am a fairly handy person. I like to think that when there are things that need to be done around church or home that I can usually handle them. Of course, I’m cautious and will generally downplay what skills I have so that the lower the expectation the lower the resulting disappointment will be.

Still, these successes, when they come, are sweet. More than sweet, they’re sometimes quite surprising.

One day I walked into the church mid-week (back in Michigan) and found the organist wandering around the organ like a lost puppy. “What’s the matter,” I asked, and he replied, “The organ doesn’t work. I turned on the switch and can see that it’s plugged in, but nothing’s happening.”

There wasn’t anything I could do, and he couldn’t practice, so he left. I had no idea who to call or what to do, and I knew our insurance wouldn’t cover an organ transplant, so I did what any “Tim-the-Tool-Time-Taylor” handyman would do; I grabbed a screwdriver and opened the back of the cabinet and took a look under the hood.

I found a fuse panel and noted one fuse had apparently blown. I pulled it out, took it down to the local hardware store, and got a replacement for less than a buck. I put it back in, fired up the noisemaker and, voila – musical tones! I called Marco, our organist, and with his skill-set, he confirmed that the device would actually play music, and we were off, running, and good to go for Sunday.

Life is like that. Sometimes things aren’t quite what we’d like them to be. We’re plugged in and everything seems to be fine, and yet it’s not.

The temptation is to look for the source of the problem externally – to blame the power company, for instance, for the lack of power. But as often as not, the solution to many problems is to be found internally. It simply requires the courage to pull off the cover and look under the hood.

A friend suffered a stroke some years back and was laid up for quite some time. He was frustrated and angry. How could this happen to him, he wondered. He spent some time angry with God and circumstances. He cried himself to sleep at night and snapped at his nurses and caregivers as they tried to take care of him. He was miserable.

But then one day he had a revelation. It was as if somebody had swapped out a good fuse for a bad fuse. He came to realize that with physical therapy his body was healing. He was gaining functionality. He was able to speak more clearly and realized that despite his uncharitable thoughts, words, and deeds, the work of his care-givers was having a positive effect.

They did what they needed to for him, but they also required him to do what he needed to do for himself. Their goal was not just the healing of his body, but the restoration and maintenance of his dignity. They no longer had to “push” him to do things; he began to push himself.

He had always heard that “pain is inevitable, but misery is optional.”

He didn’t know what that meant at first, but came to realize that misery is a state of mind. He was miserable by choice, not by circumstance. He could choose to wallow in self-pity (and be a miserable soul to be around) or he could choose to “not let it get him down.”

At the beginning of his crisis he’d had many cards, calls, and visitors, but as time went on, those began to fall by the wayside. At first he was upset that people were starting to “forget him.”

But then he realized he couldn’t force people to call or remember him, but he could reach out to them. He was quite capable of making phone calls and being a friend – and so he did, and so he was, and so he is – a friend.

People and circumstances can sometimes irritate us, but I’m happy to “re-fuse” the irritation and be happy instead. That brings music to my ears in this, our valley.