. . . Let the more loving one be me.” W. H. Auden
So there I was, sitting in the dentist’s chair just about forever this afternoon, getting my once-every-five-years extensive x-rays, and this line popped into my mind.Another line from this poem: “How should we like it were stars to burn/With a passion for us, we could not return?” In other words, do we want to be loved, or to love?
Nice little seasonal reference here to the book of Luke in the Christian New Testament, chapter 2, from the lovely old King James Version: “And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed.” Mary and Joseph set out for Bethlehem because of this decree.
But my main point in this post has to do with the passage of time itself, and how, as I’ve said before, life moves along without your having to make it do so, whether you want events to be over or you want time to stand still. (Someone asked an old preacher once what his favorite verse in the Bible was, and he said, “And it came to pass.” Huh? He explained, “It never says, ‘And it came to stay.’”)
. . . do it ahead of time.
Sometimes life imitates art to a great extent. So I had been dipping into a book titled Out of Sheer Rage: Wrestling wth D. H. Lawrence by Geoff Dyer, which not so much about D. H. Lawrence as it is about depression, despair and procrastination. And it’s absolutely screamingly funny in places. (In other places just kind of weird, or vulgar, or boring, so I’m not recommending it as a book of the week.) Doesn’t sound possible, does it? But comics are usually very unhappy people. Dyer’s description of the time he was flown all the way to Denmark to give a talk about Lawrence, and he came down with the flu, and he hadn’t prepared his speech at all, and his nose started bleeding in the middle of the lecture, had me snorting with laughter. But the passage that struck me most was this:
I have waited three years to get my knees repaired . . . and I am not doing the exercises, the simple, strength-building exercises which are necessary to prevent my knee causing me untold and probably intolerable pain in the future . . . In a fraction of the time spent sitting here thinking about my knee and how much it hurts I could get on with the exercises which would eliminate the pain in my knee, . . . but instead of doing the exercises I sit here thinking about how I should be doing them . . . My knee is not the problem, that’s for sure: it’s a symptom of this larger disease, this inability to carry on with anything, this rheumatism of the will, this chronic inability to see anything through.
(p. 196, 1997 hardback edition).
Now, depending on what type of person you are, you may read the above and say to yourself, ‘Hey, Buddy, get a grip!’ But I have to say that I completely understand what he’s saying. To sit and look at something that needs to be done and to feel totally paralyzed–that’s the way I can be, like, totally. But I would also say that with the greater self-knowledge that has come over the past several years as I’ve dove (dived?) into this whole subject of happiness, I now know that I can overcome that paralysis. It’s a surprisingly small step to just go ahead and get started. Just go ahead and lie on the floor, for instance, if that’s the position for the exercises. You’re not going to lie there and then just get back up again without doing anything, are you? Probably not.
In the knee-themed spirit of this post, I will mention that my husband Jim had knee surgery yesterday. It was interesting–he’d been told by one guy that he didn’t really need the surgery all that much, and maybe it wasn’t worth the recovery time. I thought myself that maybe he shouldn’t bother with it. But he forged ahead, got a second opinion, and, it turned out, made the right decision. The second-opinion surgeon (SOS) said that the ACL, which was what needed repair, was “incompetent.” (Kind of sounds like an insult, doesn’t it?) The knee was loose. It really needed to be fixed. So now Jim’s hobbling around on crutches, and the Christmas lights are only half up, and this wasn’t a great week for him to have this done, but hey! He went ahead and did it. He still has physical therapy ahead of him, and followup doctor’s visits, and pain meds. But he took the initiative and did the right thing. Maybe he and good ol’ Geoff Dyer could have coffee sometime.
More wisdom from the gridiron! And this from someone who has a great deal of trouble keeping straight the difference between a “safety” and a “touchback.” (Don’t tell me! I don’t want to know!)
So yesterday I was finishing up decorating the Christmas tree, and all there was on PBS was either a fundraiser or a scrapbooking marathon (a perfectly okay hobby, I’m sure–but hours and hours of it?) and so I turned on the Seahawks/Steelers game to keep me company. (We don’t have cable, you see, so I’m limited to network TV and Netflix.) And then of course I had to watch the Broncos play New England, even though I expected it to be a total blowout. Which it wasn’t. But we won’t get into that here. Suffice it to say that my poor son’s ears are still ringing.
Mine!
Yes, on this Black Friday, I am shamelessly promoting my own book. You can see the links on the sidebar for purchasing a paperback, Kindle or e-book edition, so if you’re reading this in the daily e-mail be sure to go to my Intentional Living website so that you can follow those links.
I tried to make this a supremely practical book, with lots of illustrations from my own and others’ lives. (You’ll find out a great deal about my husband and my mother.) Honestly, folks, when I follow my own advice I’m much happier.
. . . we were visiting relatives in North Carolina at the request of our son Gideon, experiencing wonderful hospitality from my husband Jim’s aunt, uncle, and cousins. See the post I wrote on Thanksgiving Day, showing Gideon still almost bald from chemo, still wearing his back braces. It’s always good to reflect back about the past year on big holidays, I think, because we usually have clear memories of that day. So-called ordinary days tend to blur together, but holidays stand out. What was going on in your life last Thanksgiving? I think we will take some time tomorrow to share memories of how our lives have changed and progressed this year. Emphasizing the year as a whole may keep us from falling into cliches. How far have we come? Where do we hope to be at this time next year?So, as I head off to the grocery store (since I’ve really procrastinated about shopping for tomorrow’s meal, and no, I’m not serving a great big turkey that won’t have time to defrost), I want to deliberately think about all the ways God has worked in our lives this year. And to appreciate what He’s doing right now. Tomorrow as we gather I want to be truly present, not stressed and harried about the meal or the cleanup afterwards. What about you? How will you deliberately cultivate thankfulness about the past year?
I have been hugely privileged to hear Mimi Wilson, a Christian writer and speaker, at various events, the most recent being a retreat I attended several weeks ago. She has traveled all over the world ministering with her physician husband Cal and is still doing so as much as she can in spite of her Parkinson’s disease. I can’t find a website featuring her on her own, but you can see some of her ideas about once-a-month cooking by following the link. She’s also written a wonderful book . . .
Here’s the list of (some of) my types:
1. Obliger.
2. Abstainer.
3. Type 1.5 Diabetic. (Probable.)
I’ve discussed #1 a number of times, most recently in A Flash of Insight. . .