The Valley of the Shadow

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil -- Psalm 23

What’s all this animosity between people who live in the valleys and those who live in the mountains? What’s that all about?

I remember watching the movie Deliverance (Jon Voight and Burt Reynolds). Several friends went up into the mountains to enjoy a little canoeing and a little R&R. The Mountain Men in the hills were anything but hospitable; violence ensued.

Then there’s the old camp-song (One Tin Soldier) where it is valley people who are depicted as faithless, feckless wonders who cheat on spouses, steal from friends, storm the mountain to grab “the treasure buried there,” and turning over a stone discover: “’Peace on earth’ is all it said.”

There is a passage of scripture where the psalmist speaks of another valley, the “Valley of the Shadow of Death” through which all of us will someday walk. What’s his response?

“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow … I shall fear no evil.” (Why not?) “For thou art with me.”

I like the “thou”. Where “you” is modern Standard English, “thou” is intimate, thou is personal.

I also prefer to drop the phrase “of death” because I believe we face many shadows in life, not just the shadow of death. There is the shadow of our past that would keep most sane people from ever running for public office, even though we expect those who do run to be squeaky-clean. How’s that working for us, eh?

Many of us walk through the shadows of a past we’d like to shut the door on, or an economic uncertainty that terrifies us, or longevity of life where bodies fail and memories fade.

Life is certainly not for the timid. Walking through the valley of the shadow, it’s nice having a companion who promises to always be there “no matter what.”

I once saw a cartoon drawing of a great, hairy beast of a man, something like Mongo (Blazing Saddles) wearing a tattered, well-worn hat, a leather vest about two sizes too small for his mountainous torso, a massive spike-studded club, captioned: “I shall fear no evil, for I’m the meanest son of a gun in the valley.”

One of the things I’ve learned over the years, however, is that serenity does not require a tough hombre. Our comfort is not to be found in the iron we pack, nor the spikes in which we’ve wrapped our clubs. No, our comfort is found in walking the valley with someone else; we do not walk it alone, but with others.

We may not have all the tools we need at our disposal, but we have some, and our neighbors have some, and their neighbors have yet others. Walking the valley of the shadow together, we get to share our experience, strength, and hope with one another – and that gives us great comfort. Nothing’s forever new.

We find ourselves walking through a valley through which the prevailing winds are fear and greed. When we’re scared, we often look for people and situations to blame. When there is money to be made, we often forget all we learned in kindergarten and seek to “get ours” while the getting’s good.

God of the Bible, however, teaches us “a more excellent” way.

Walk with him, he says, and we shall not want. God knows where the grass is green and the waters are still. Just as we’re ready to take a break, God stops and says, “Here’s a good place to rest,” and then stands watch for lions and tigers and bears (oh my) so that we might lie down in peace and security.

No earthly power will give us that; no army that ever marched, no navy that ever sailed, no brokerage house that ever traded stocks and bonds will ever give us that. No house filled with guns and ammo will ever truly give us that.

There once was a Stone covered with the blood of all human violence and upon whom was written: Peace on Earth. He gives Peace, that we may know serenity. We’ll find his name written on the hearts of many here in this, our valley (and in the mountains, too). In the words of the Big Book, May you find him now.

Slippery Devils

No one minds that today the clouds are neither in the same position nor in the same shapes they were yesterday – John McWhorter

Words are slippery devils. That’s what I told my friend when he asked me why people often pray in Elizabethan English – you know, prayers filled with thees and thous and a vocabulary that would be more at home in a Shakespearian Inn than one of our local watering holes.

As far as I know, there is no reason for anyone to speak to God (or “of” God) using words from yesteryear. If we did, I think we’d need to go full tilt and pray in ancient Aramaic (the language of Jesus), or Hebrew (the language of Moses). But, like it or not, I think God is quite satisfied to sit a spell and hear us out as we offer our prayers of petition, adoration, confession, or thanksgiving in any way we find most helpful to the cause.

Getting back to words, though, they are always on the move. I notice that when we sing our hymns; lines often end with “word” and “lord” as if they’re supposed to sound the same. The fact is, when those hymns were written, that’s exactly what they did sound like. It was either word pronounced like ward, or Lord pronounced like Lerd (Linguists can tell us how those words have shifted).

I am sometimes called a grammar Nazi, and I suppose I am. Even when I text someone on my cellphone, I use proper spelling and punctuation, sentences complete with subjects and predicates, and with proper nouns capitalized just like they’re supposed to be. I don’t confuse there with their or they’re, nor we with wee. When a text message I send is wrong, it is because the auto-fill has decided it knows better than me what I intended (or is it “better than I what I intended”?). Ugh!

I like English, even when it confuses me. I appreciate rules, grammar and spelling. I enjoy word play, and although I may have fun with language and bristle when an editor removes my Oxford commas (because this is a newspaper and we’re not in Oxford), the fact remains I am not as annoyed as I might let others believe when they use abbreviations, textical shortcuts, or grammatical mistakes.

It is often those mistakes that lead us to recognize something is going on – that something doesn’t make sense; the mistake is often a person’s effort to fix a grammatical problem. For instance, baseball season is upon us. When a batter hits a fly ball to center, we don’t say the batter “flew” out to center, for he’s not a bird; we say he or she “flied” out to center. The normal past tense (flew) is replaced by the more reasonable (flied) because it also fits the pattern we have for cry. The past tense of cry is cried, not crew, so it doesn’t feel wrong for the past tense of fly to be flied, even if we know it is normally flew.

English is quite flexible that way. New words are routinely created for the purpose of conveying an idea in new ways. For instance, you won’t find the word “textical” in the dictionary, but I created it here and now to demonstrate how it is done. The “ical” suffix converts a noun (text) into an adjective (textical), just like it transforms rhetoric (a noun) into rhetorical (a word describing some kind of device in literature or speech).

That brings us back to prayer and matters of faith. Life changes. I gaze at clouds and see how quickly they come and go, their forms shifting under the influence of swirls and eddies of invisible currents.

Faith is like that; it, too, is a slippery devil. It comes and goes, bending with the times, shifting ‘round as needs and wants shift. It must change, or it will go stagnant and die, like ancient Latin or Olde English.

God’s Spirit (spirit means breath, by the way) blows into and over our lives, keeping us fresh, rosy-cheeked, and filled with vitality and love. God’s command to love never changes, but as with words, how it is shaped and defined constantly changes.

God’s love is a slippery devil; it’s always on the move in this, our valley.

Sizing Up the Bully

Today I will give myself permission to set the limits I want and need to set in my life – Melody Beattie

In a few recent columns I have been talking about bullying and some of the steps a person can take to minimize the impact a bully might have on them. It occurs to me, though, that I haven’t taken time to address the question of what exactly bullying is; that is part of the problem in putting a stop to it.

What exactly is bullying? It is like the judge who said, in trying to describe pornography, “I can’t exactly define it, but I know it when I see it!”

Bullying is a slippery term, and unless we agree to what it means, we will probably struggle to address it in any meaningful way.

I am a simple soul, and I find it easier to address actions that are wrong or inappropriate than to put labels on them. For instance, if someone hits someone else, that’s an assault. It doesn’t matter if the assailant is bigger or smaller than their adversary; if you lay a hand on someone without their permission you have assaulted them.

The problem I have with a generalized label – bully – is that it conflates the person with the deed. Are you dealing with the bully, or with their behavior? I think it is helpful to separate the person from the activity they’re engaged in, and here is why.

Not all bullies are bullies.

People can easily be mis-labeled. An assertive person who expresses an opinion may intimidate the person they’re talking to, but that doesn’t make them a bully. Sometimes they’re not even aware they’re doing it. New Yorkers famously scream and shout their opinions at one another. They may be loud, they may be obnoxious (not all of them, of course; I’m sure some are very nice, quiet, pleasant persons), but they mean no harm; they simply express themselves loudly, and shouldn’t be accused of bullying, just because someone unfamiliar with their communication style is intimidated.

Some people are less innocent. They know what they want and may intimidate others to do their bidding. The world is full of manipulators. I suspect none of us are completely innocent of that. Fear and shame are primary tools in their tool box. FDR once said the only thing we have to fear is fear itself, so it might be helpful to learn how to overcome fear.

Learning anything takes time. Fear is one of God’s greatest gifts to the human race, but unreasonable fear is a killer. So we need to face what we fear and learn to adapt, overcome, and improvise (as Marines are taught). This is not to say it is a victim’s fault if they are being bullied, but an invitation for all of us to learn to grow where we need to because …

… the world does have another class of bully – the sociopath or psychopath – who cannot and will not be reasoned with. They will not admit they are ever wrong; they will put the blame on the victim (she can’t take a joke; I didn’t hit him that hard; we were just rough-housing); they will gaslight the world to the ends of the earth and back (I never said that; I never did that; they misunderstood).

When facing this sort of bully, the best approach seems to be skipping the label and dealing with their actions as they occur.

The problem with labeling someone a bully is that it’s an ontological term – it goes to their identity or the essence of who they are – their being.

“You’re a bully; that’s what you are.”

“No I’m not; you’re a bully for saying that!”

But if we address behaviors that are demonstrably wrong (lying, cheating, hitting, taunting, name-calling, fat-shaming, and the like), then we don’t need to concern ourselves with ontological questions and labels, but with items that are in and of themselves actionable.

Most faiths have some version of the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. If someone is behaving inappropriately, simply ask them, “Would you like to be treated that way? If not, then stop it (and stop with the excuses)!”

Then smile, walk away, and enjoy some well-earned serenity in this, our valley.

Politics and Other Animals

Shame is a spell others put on us to control us … It is a spell many of us have learned to put on ourselves – Melody Beattie

I was born a Democrat. I don’t know how it happened, and it certainly wasn’t by choice. That’s just the way it was a way back when.

Growing up in the 50s and 60s our family didn’t talk much about politics. There was an unwritten rule that polite people didn’t talk about sex, religion, or politics, and boy were we polite. The only thing I knew is that my folks always “voted Democrat” whenever there was an election, but I didn’t really know what the difference was, because we never discussed it.

In terms of temperament, I think I would have been an Eisenhower Republican. I would not have voted for Kennedy in 1960 because rumor had it he would make us kids go to school six days a week “because he was Catholic.” That was the buzz on the school-ground, and that’s all I needed to know about him.

I suspect many of us gained our political identities as much from our families of origin as from our personal temperaments. Entering high school, I became more aware of the disparity between America as we talked about it (land of the free, home of the brave) and an America that could be quite ugly at times; police dogs attacking black men and women who were asking for what? A chance to be treated as equals – in practice and not just in theory.

The 60s were a scary time in which to grow up. There was a lot of violence on our own streets, and if that wasn’t enough, there was the escalating violence taking place overseas in some place called Viet Nam. I began to learn some of the differences between the political parties, although my knowledge was still pretty thin – about as deep as the average bumper sticker. I came to perceive that Democrats tended to represent the “working class” while Republicans tended to represent small businesses and more rural interests. I don’t recall there ever being talk of Liberals and Conservatives, as each party seemed to have a ready mix of both in their ranks.

After elections, folks in Congress put aside their party labels and worked on bills that addressed the many varied needs America was facing. They may have approached those issues differently, but neither seemed to regard the other as an enemy, and neither seemed quite so ideologically set in their ways.

I remember Kennedy’s challenge for America to be first to the moon; I remember Johnson’s desire to form a Great Society; I remember Martin Luther King, Jr. addressing a humungous crowd on the Capital Mall and sharing his I Have a Dream speech. I remember the assassinations that shook America to her core: JFK, Bobby Kennedy, Malcom X, MLK, Jr. I remember tear gas; men, women, and children being beaten and chased; church bombings and burning crosses; black men dragged down streets, chained to truck bumpers.

I was born a Democrat, leaned conservative, but came to embrace those who’ve worked and fought for progressive ideals: expanding voting rights, erasing red lines and ghettos, treating people with respect regardless of race and judging folks based upon “the content of their character” (as Martin Luther King put it).

By the time you read this, we will be in the middle of Black History Month. There are some who decry the fact we even have such a thing, after all, there is no White History Month (they say). But until we re-write our history books to reflect the contributions people of color (and women) have made throughout our nation’s history, and face the honest ugliness betrayed throughout much of our past, we’ll need to take some time to learn about our brothers and sisters as they continue to struggle in ways the rest of us cannot imagine, and would never tolerate if that shoe was on our feet.

I do not write this to convert you – God is neither Democrat nor Republican – but to share with you parts of my own journey. We’ve come a long way, you and I, yet I feel like we’ve got so much farther to go in this, our valley. May we travel in peace, striving for liberty and justice for all.

The Serendipity of the Serengeti

… We also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. Romans 5

What are we to do about bullies?

That’s what my great niece wants to know. That’s what reporters want to know. With voices emoting grave concern, the talking heads tell us bullying is a problem in and out of school, and schools everywhere have made it clear bullying is not to be tolerated; that bullies will be dealt with – severely, if need be.

But what can we do?

Bullying has moved from the school yard to the internet. “Social” media provide many more outlets for identifying, targeting, and tormenting victims. When a bullied child looks in the mirror, they don’t see themselves. They see the disfigurement of a thousand torments. They see each and every flaw that’s been pointed out. They see weakness, stupidity, and clumsiness – and what’s worse, they see the face and body of someone they hate – someone they can’t stand. They see the lie and the lies and they want to die.

What can we do about bullies?

Well, you can’t start with the bullies. Like some steamy pile of manure in the desert, they take the Name of God in vain: I Am Who I Am; I Will Be Who I Will Be. A bully has no sense of “other.” They live only for themselves and for their own needs and wants; their own sense of worth and power; their own ego and place in the universe.

The refrain we hear commonly sung is that bullies are really cowards, that we just have to stand up to them and they’ll run away. Experience often says otherwise. Punch a bully in the face and odds are pretty good they’ll come back at you with something more devastating. But does anyone really want to play Russian roulette with a sociopath?

So don’t start with the Bully. I suggest starting with the one who can benefit most by changing: the “victim.” I put victim in quotes because the first change I would suggest is eliminating that word from one’s vocabulary. You aren’t a victim; you’re a person; you’re a child of the divine. It’s true. You may not believe it at first, but write it down on a piece of paper and put it under the pillow or under your mattress. Keep it for future reference. Whether you believe it or not, it’s true, and the truth will set you free.

Next, take action. If the abuse takes place on Social Media, block the abuser. You don’t have to let someone into your house if you know they’re going to defecate on your living room rug, do you? So block them. If your friends tell you what is being said, tell them you’re not interested.

Not interested? That’s right. What others think or say about me is none of my business. When people want to spread gossip, I tell them I don’t want to hear it. It’s none of my business. If you want to report a crime, call the police. But if you want to tell me someone said something unkind about me, I don’t care (or want) to know.

Why? Because to care is to give air to the fire the bully is trying to start. The turmoil and the chaos and the tears are what give the bully his or her reason for being. So put a lid on it; snuff out the fire; trap it on the stove and don’t let it leave the kitchen.

If you’re confronted by the person IRL (in real life), learn to walk away. Again, you don’t need to stand there and take the abuse. You don’t need to be drawn into their drama or a fight on the ground they have chosen. They chose it because they feel safe. So, withdraw with a firm, “Thanks, but no thanks” – or silence.

Finally, find your tribe. Surround yourself with friends who value and appreciate the uniqueness that is you. In the Serengeti, lions, cheetahs, and jackals attack those on the fringes of the herd, while those in the heart of the herd thrive, finding their safety in numbers.

So, find your tribe and make your home. You’ll find strength and courage there to help you weather many a storm in this, our valley.

The Cost of Silence

I’ve begun to realize you can listen to silence and learn from it; it has a quality and a dimension all its own. Anonymous

Silence is hard to find. I came across this unascribed quote on the internet and paused a moment to reflect on whether or not I believed it. As I did so, I heard the kick-plate heater in the kitchen blowing warm air, a truck passing by the house, my wife scraping butter onto our morning toast, and water boiling on the stove.

I also realized that if those sounds were not there, there is a constant whooshing in my ears I’ve always had. The technical term is tinnitus, but I suspect it is just the sound the wind makes as it blows from one ear through to the other.

In any case, while some people think better when they’ve got things going on in the background, I don’t. I find too much noise quite distracting. That’s somewhat ironic as I find I am losing my hearing ever more as I age.

I looked outside a few minutes ago and saw the full moon setting just to the west of us over the hills and said, “Hey honey,” (my wife was sitting next to me), “look at that gorgeous moon!”

She said, “I just told you that.”

“Oh, maybe that’s what caused me to look,” I replied (chagrined by my complete lack of awareness that she had even been speaking to me).

That often happens when I am reading or writing, of course. My mind (such as it is) is occupied and the twenty or so remaining synapses struggle to multitask. I can read, I can write, or I can listen. “Pick one” says the gray matter. Of course, I don’t listen to it; I just go back to reading, writing, or … ha! You thought I was going to say “listening,” but I already told you – I like silence!

Anyway, life goes on and whether or not I can hear well, I haven’t found it to be all that detrimental to my life – at least not the “mental” part of detrimental.

Having said all that, I should add that not all silence is golden. Sometimes it is important to break one’s silence and speak. As the Bible says, “There is a time to keep silent, and a time to speak up” (Eccl. 3:7)

One of my great-nieces shared a concern on social media about bullying in her school, and the trauma it was causing a number of her friends. She wondered what she could do about it.

Bullying is a scourge, of course, and not a time for silence. One must be prepared to speak up and act. Speaking without acting is hollow.

One day, back when the earth was still cooling, I was in elementary school at recess and several classmates were picking on one of the poorer kids. Gary came to school wearing shabby clothes, unkempt hair, and often looked a mess. He was not a friend of mine, but I knew who he was. As these two goons went about punching him (the school monitor was nowhere to be seen), I felt I had to do something, so I ambled over and told them to knock it off.

They stopped, looked at me, and shifted the focus of their assault. I would love to say I creamed them, but we exchanged a few body blows; they got tired and bored, and finally left. I dropped my hands and looked around and Gary was nowhere to be seen. That irritated me; I’d come to his rescue and he’d abandoned the field!

Interestingly, nothing more happened and that was the first, last, and only fight I ever got into in school. I don’t know if it stopped the bullies, and Gary and I never did become friends, buddies, allies, or anything else. But I don’t believe he was ever hassled again that I saw, and that was reward enough for me.

I don’t know what the answer to bullying is, but I know that dealing with it as best one can is important. We each need to stand up, speak, and act for one another, for if nothing changes, then nothing will change and that’s too high a price to pay for silence here in this, our valley.

Rebooting Life

I stationed some of my own men at the gates so that no load could be brought in on the Sabbath day. Nehemiah 13:19

The other day I turned on the dishwasher at the church so that, after a meeting, we could quickly wash our dishes and leave. Unfortunately, the machine gave me an error code when I turned it on. I didn’t have the manual, so I couldn’t decipher the message on a for-sure basis, but knew I would have to call the repair service to either talk me through it, or schedule an appointment for them to come fix it.

There was a time in my life I would have gotten peeved or bent out of shape over that sort of thing, but these days they mostly roll off my back like water off the back of the proverbial duck. And why not? I’m mostly quackers anyway.

The point is that life has its challenges big and small, and there’s no use wasting energy on things over which we have no control. If I’m tempted to get upset, I just pull the Serenity Prayer out of my spiritual knapsack and offer my prayer to God: Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

That prayer is and has been a life-saver. I can’t keep a machine from breaking down, but I can call for repair. I can’t control the cost of the repair, but I can find and hit the device’s reset button (if it has one) before I make the call. I can’t tell the repair man or woman what to do to effect the repair (since I have no knowledge or expertise in the matter), but I can stand by and hand them tools if that helps, or my silence (if that speeds them up).

There are worse things in life than having a dishwasher that doesn’t work. Of course, I say that as a man who prefers to hand wash dishes. On the other hand, if the microwave were to break down, now THAT would be catastrophic!

Still, it’s important to keep things in perspective. The hardest part of the serenity prayer is that “wisdom to know the difference” part.

Wisdom seems to be in especially short supply these days. I think it’s because we don’t do enough reflecting as a culture. We’re really into the insanity of the instantaneous.

We want everything, and we want it now. I am not immune to that, of course. When I get up in the morning, the very first thing I do is grab a cup of yesterday’s coffee and nuke it so I’ve got something to drink while the fresh pot is brewing. There is an unwritten rule in our house; the best way to approach me before my first cup of coffee is summed up in one word: DON’T!

Reflection takes time. It requires stopping to think, ponder, and cogitate.

When our children were young, we would sometimes play Hide-and-go-seek. We’d tell them they had thirty seconds or a minute to go hide, and then we’d say, “Go!”

At the word “Go” they would start spinning like whirling dervishes trying to figure where to run off to. That was adrenaline doing the spinning. When the adrenaline hits the bloodstream, blood rushes to the large muscles (legs and arms) as part of the Fight-or-Flight reflex. When blood rushes to the muscles, it is taken from the frontal lobe of the brain. That’s why people who panic do such stupid things.

Now, when one is jumped by a grizzly bear or a T-Rex, that adrenaline rush is a good thing. But when it comes to solving problems, it can be a bad thing, because it can result in scrambled thinking or “spinning our wheels.” So, unless one is faced with a life or death crisis, it pays to slow down, stop, take a cleansing breath to give our blood a large draught of oxygen, and think.

I pray that 2017 will be a year we reflect more and respond less; pause more and whirl less; breathe more and bleed less. May this be a year God helps us to reboot our lives, regain our sanity, and reset the dishwasher of our minds for Wisdom’s sake in this, our valley.