God In The Details

This is a time of year when I think about my faith a lot. In fact, this time of year puts my faith to the test more than any other season. There will be times during this madhouse, commercial, soulless period when a part of me wonders where my faith has gone. But then I realize it is my faith that keeps me going through it all; it is my faith that transcends all this worldly bullshit.

Merriam-Webster defines “faith” as:

A firm belief in something for which there is no proof.

I have always firmly believed in God. It wasn’t as if I was even raised to be that way, which in a strange sense is a kind of proof for me. I didn’t have it crammed down my throat, I didn’t even have it dangled in front of me like a carrot or a brass ring. It was simply always at my core.

Now don’t get me wrong. I am not saying I have devoutly followed any religious creed in my life (though I try to adhere to Christian principles as best I am able). I have not always chosen the best path…but I can say this with utter certainty: all along I knew what I was doing, and whether or not it was right or it was wrong.

In other words, I was always aware of my own free will, and how that freedom changed nothing about the inherent goodness or badness in my actions.

I believe there is in each of us, without a doubt, a moral compass. It generates the feeling that it is better to give than to receive.

Granted, not everyone feels it is better to give than to receive—i.e. there are those of us with a more selfish nature—but I would be willing to bet that short of the schizophrenic and pathologically criminal, each of us innately understands the difference between right and wrong. In other words, each of us understands that it is generally better to give than to receive.

That we don’t necessarily practice the ideal is simply a matter of human selfishness, and maybe in some instances even remnants of the animal instinct to survive. But I believe we still all know what is right and what is wrong, at least at our core.

Think about it. If we steal from someone else, we know it’s wrong. We may still do it—out of need, out of habit, out of sheer greed—but we damn sure don’t feel good about it. And it’s not because society (or our parents) taught us it was wrong. There are a great many things my parents taught me that I threw out the window when I turned 18 and garnered my own life. There are also many rules that society has deemed appropriate that I don’t necessarily agree with (and when I violate those laws, rules, etc. I don’t feel any sense of remorse or that what I am doing is wrong).

A less egregious example to illustrate:

The Express Lane at the supermarket. Let’s say it’s 15 items. How terrible do I feel if I use the line when I have 20 items, particularly when no one else is in line? I wouldn’t even think twice about it, particularly if the place is a zoo and I am in a hurry.

But what if there are several people behind me with 1-2 items? What if one of them happens to be an elderly woman with a cane and a single can of soup in her free hand, possibly her only sustenance for that day?

Okay, I am being melodramatic, but I would submit that most of us would feel much worse about “abusing” the Express Lane if it meant usurping someone more needy, someone following the rules.

In other words, I don’t believe it’s possible for society, or our parents, or anyone else, to instill in us a sense of right and wrong. A rule can be established, but only our moral compass can determine the true meaning of transgression. Oh, the bar can be raised with punishment enough to scare me away from doing something, but they can’t make me feel wrong about doing it.

What is it that stops me from laughing in the face of a man in a wheelchair who makes funny noises, who is drooling on himself, and whose body is contorted in a way that would look hilarious if it was my healthy friend sleeping soundly on the couch? What is it in my core that realizes cerebral palsy is no laughing matter and that this man can’t defend himself—what is it in my core that would make me sick to my stomach at this kind of behavior? There’s no rule against it. And under different circumstances, the same things might be funny. But here, they are not, and something deep inside me understands this—not because someone told me to feel that way, because it’s right to feel that way.

And no, I am not advocating pity here, just a core sense that there is something different about this situation that demands my understanding and respect.

Like it or not, there is an innate code of right and wrong inside us that governs our basal human behavior. No law can make us feel wrong about doing something—yes, shame and punishment are powerful tools, but fear of punishment and/or feeling shamed are not the same thing as feeling wrong.

It’s this core clockwork that fascinates me and whispers to me that there is something greater, some kind of Higher Power; something that instills an innate goodness in us, whether we choose to ignore it or not. Something else overseeing the Grand Design.

God?

Yes, I think so, whatever that means to me, you, or the fencepost. I wouldn’t presume to tell you what God is, or how you should view this Higher Power. But my faith tells me He is there.

I once asked a pastor—one I admired more than any I had known—how it was that Christianity could possibly be the only answer; how could other devout, good, moral people be wrong? He thought about it and said it wasn’t his place to judge others, that the story of Christianity just made more sense to him, and that is why he chose it.

He chose it.

I liked that answer very much. In fact, I’ll take it a step further: I think it’s possible a religion or a belief system chooses us. In effect, that God speaks to us in ways that we have the best opportunity to listen. Yes, we can let the words fall on deaf ears. We can choose our own paths. We can shake our heads in denial and we can decide to live in the moment; we can bathe ourselves in the physical, material, earthly pleasures of this place in time.

But that doesn’t change the fact that we know better.

The backseat is quiet.

The More We Grow

With the holidays falling upon us like a pack of ravenous boars, tusks glinting in the sun—our emotional selves exposed and unprotected—I find myself thinking of moments long since passed: days of innocence, comfortable shelter against the merciless beasts of reality and of Christmas Present.

This picture is not the best in quality (this was, after all, 1978, era of the Kodak Instamatic in all it’s grainy glory). It is, however, one that warms my heart each time I drag it up from the dusty folders of digital scans mostly forgotten. This was my family, not too long before we moved to Big Wonderful Wyoming. For me, this frozen moment was deep in the belly of “growing up”, that time we recall with fondness: a time before the imperfect water of the decades—water with unseen organisms like failure, myocardial infarctions, autoimmune disease, divorce, age, and death—seeped between the cracks of family, froze solid, and burst apart what in younger years felt impenetrable and impervious to such common laws of physics.

I don’t dread the holidays. Even though I complain endlessly when the ladders and blow-up snowmen come out a week earlier each season (soon the official-unofficial start of the holiday season will be just after the Independence Day fireworks stop smoldering), I still secretly love it all. The lights, when not ghetto, are mostly beautiful. The perpetual bell-tinkling outside the grocery store, while at times like a tiny rock hammer to the brain, is still just a well-intentioned reminder to give more than ye receive. I do all my shopping online, so I could not care less about the crowds: the mean-spirited and selfish masses that swarm the shopping malls, willing to mortgage their humanity for a parking space. In all honesty, I do feel the spirit of Christmas, much as I might claim otherwise—it is and should be a time of reflection.

Okay, I am definitely a little jaded about the commercial and selfish aspects of the season, but my heart still warms at the sight of the Nativity scene and Barry Manilow singing Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas still makes me cry like a pussy (to use an Eddie Murphy dichotomous reference that shamelessly balms the previous admission and boosts my otherwise suffering male ego).

Still, the fact remains that I miss my old family—I miss those Wyoming Christmases with the semi-naked but all-the-more-charming-because-of-it tree from the Bridger Wilderness and the wood stove cranking so much heat that who the hell needed Sweatin’ to the Oldies to work off that holiday fudge and pumpkin pie? I miss that family that used to care about each other, even if we were bickering and making fun of the clothing under the tree or wrestling until someone got hurt and went crying to Mom or Dad. These were the days of All American Family, the calm before the intensity of future storms.

And no, it's not crying over proverbial spilt milk. The facts of present are no more controllable than the trade winds or the elliptical movement of the planets around the sun. I don’t expect that things are any different for any of us, when you get right down to it. And maybe that is all the holiday was ever meant to be: a celebration of birth; a rejoicing for the good times (even if those are actually at any given point the better times). Perhaps it's okay that it is really a mostly empty promise we make each year. You know the one—it’s where we decide to make everything a little better every day of the year instead of just one.

This last picture was taken in Wyoming at one of the last Christmases we spent as a family. Even then, if you listened carefully, you could hear the water running between the solid granite, trickling maybe, but still working its way into the core of what once seemed perfect and indestructible.

It is still a good memory, being together, enjoying the cameraderie that only really ever comes—if you are incredibly fortunate—a few times over the course of a lifetime. I felt it so strongly then, and it allowed me to love and to laugh from the very center of my being. All clichés aside, there honestly is no better medicine. In so many ways I never felt stronger or more alive than when I was swaddled in the love and company of family.

My life now is wonderful in its own ways, different from then maybe, but in some inextricable sense the same. What is gone is the family of my youth, and this will each year be the season in which I remember it fondly.

Merry Christmas.

The back seat is quiet.