In one of my favorite "Peanuts" cartoons Charlie Brown is in bed engaged in earnest conversation with Snoopy, who lies on top of him, listening. Charlie Brown says, "Sometimes I lie awake at night and I ask, 'Is life a multiple choice test or is it a true or false test?' Then a voice comes to me out of the dark and says, 'we hate to tell you this, but life is a thousand word essay.'"[1]
That's what I was afraid of, too. In his Book of Guys, humorist Garrison Keillor wrote that ". . . the seventies was a time when people could do dumb things and nobody gave them a hard time about it. . . . and then a few years later there were strict new rules; everything had to Add Up, as if life were a term paper. People kept turning around and explaining themselves, even people for whom there was no explanation - everyone was seeking plausibility."[2]
I like the image of life as a term paper - an assignment to be taken seriously. Now, I admit that in this regard I am something of a Puritan - one who is constantly worried that someone, somewhere, somehow, is having a good time. One of my recurrent dreams - archetypal I'm sure - is facing a final paper, suddenly remembering that I forgot to write it - and it's due - tomorrow at 8 a.m. This perennial panic can wake me from a deep and peaceful slumber. I'm sure life has a final essay exam - somewhere - I'm just not sure where or when it will be or who administers it, or what the criteria are, or what the consequences of passing or failing might be. I'm just sure there is one.
Life is like a term paper. It is not simply choosing from a menu presented to us or responding to a true-false quiz. It is far more complicated. It is messy. Life and its meaning cannot be dealt with efficiently. It requires the kind of care one takes when developing a dissertation over a very long time, full of trial and error.
That image of life as some kind of test is a favorite image of the 19th century Danish theologian Soren Kierkegaard: "Many people reach their conclusions about life like lazy schoolboys; they copy the answers from the back of the book without troubling to work the sum out for themselves."[3]
A similar image was picked up by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who wrote about "turn(ing) the telescope on the soul." More recently I happened on a similar image in a short story in which the protagonist "look(s) at his life as if he were a spy peering through a telescope."[4] That is the task of religion - to turn the telescope of faith and reason on the human soul.
These ruminations hint at why I am so enamored with the Jewish High Holy Days - Rosh Hashanah - the legendary birth of the universe proclaimed by the blowing of the Shofar - and Yom Kippur - the Day of Atonement. These Days of Awe are a time of spiritual stock-taking.
You probably know the legend. On Rosh Hashanah Yahweh, the Great Cosmic Judge contemplates three books, a very slim book in which are inscribed the names of all the completely evil people of the world, who are condemned to a year of trouble and unhappiness. Another book, even slimmer, contains the names of all the people who are completely good. They are granted a year of peace and happiness. But the third is by far the thickest book, in which are inscribed all the rest of us - still struggling with good and evil, meaning and despair. Our destiny is yet in doubt.
While these images are not to be taken literally, they are to be taken seriously. Our current history is replete with those courageous souls who risk their lives for the sake of others in Bosnia, in Kosovo, in East Timor. And we are all too familiar with those people who wreak their violent havoc on innocent people not only in those places, but in the schools and places of worship here at home. The blood-stained face of our world reminds us that good and evil are very real no matter how much we try to reduce them to psychological pathology.
Religion has been called "our bargain with the universe."[5] It is the task of religion to help the rest of us figure out what it is we are doing with our lives and why. Mary Oliver's poetic question hits the mark: "Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?"[6]
That is a moral, religious and philosophical, not a psychological, question. Our inability to answer it I believe is at the very heart of what it means to be human. Just last week I had what I might call an "E-inspiration" - everything important these days begins with "E" - E-commerce, E-trading, E-bay, E-loan and so on. Well, I have my own E - religion - it's an internet service called "onReligion.com."
I was intrigued by one item downloaded from The Philadelphia Inquirer, "A dose of philosophy." Philosophy has not been much in vogue recently until one philosopher, Lou Marinoff, 47-year-old philosophy professor at City College of New York, launched a crusade for philosophical counseling - philosophers practicing as therapists. Marinoff's book Plato, Not Prozac! Applying Philosophy to Everyday Problems, presents a five step plan for identifying, expressing, analyzing, contextualizing and solving problems by focusing on the future, not the past. He accepts having problems as normal. Marinoff says that "The idea that every personal problem is a mental illness is itself a mental illness! Some people may not benefit from Plato, just as others may not benefit from Prozac. Some may need Prozac first, then Plato later, or Prozac and Plato together."[7]
Assemblyman Ruben Diaz Jr., a South Bronx Democrat who believes his lower-income constituents should have as much access to philosophical counseling as wealthier clients, has introduced a bill that will enable philosophical counselors to be paid by third-party insurers such as HMO's. The New York Health Plan Association, the industry's trade group, has mocked the proposal as the "I think, therefore I bill" plan. Other jokes and headlines were quick to appear.
While I'm not sure that philosophical - or even religious - counseling should be reimbursed by HMO's, I am intrigued with that idea. I think much of our ennui is treating the normal problems of living as illnesses. While I am a strong believer in mental health services, psychotherapy and psychiatry, and while I know that pharmaceuticals like Prozac have helped many, I remain convinced that it is lack of a religious vision that explains so much of the psychic and spiritual pain in our midst.
Lest you think I am simply tooting the religious horn, I quote John Schumacher, an Australian clinical psychologist who says that while "the rate of depression has increased tenfold in the past 50 years.... Between 30% and 45% of people seeking psychotherapy today are suffering from vague existential problems that do not appear in our official diagnostic manuals."[9] That is in the tradition of psychotherapist Carl Jung who found that lack of life meaning was a central motif in his mid-life patients.
Schumacher quotes Erich Fromm, who described Americans as "a society of notoriously unhappy people - lonely, anxious, depressed, destructive and dependent people who are glad when we have killed the time we are trying to save."[10]
The problem here is not simply a matter of mental health, it is a matter of spiritual vitality. Poet Edna St. Vincent Millay echoes Mary Oliver when she writes seven conversation-stopping words: "Life goes on . . . I forget just why."[11]
And while it is important that we know where we have come from - it is perhaps more important that we know where we are going - like the disheveled man who appeared at an Information counter and asked, "Who am I and where am I going and what time will I get there?"[12]
The answers to these questions will take more than guessing on a true-false test or trying to figure out which are the preferred answers on the multiple choice test. This enterprise will require an essay. While most of us seem to think that life owes us an explanation for what happens to us, perhaps it is that life asks for an explanation - a justification for why we are here. "What will you do with your one wild and precious life?"
And how many of us are able to write such a term paper? If I gave you the next hour with a pencil and piece of paper - or provided a lap-top computer for each chair - what would you write? Might you be like the cynic who wrote, "Years ago I discovered the meaning of life, but forgot to write it down."[13]
What would I write? I thought you'd never ask. I'd title my essay, "Why Live?"
Why live? Because of the sheer joy of being. I remember our denomination's June General Assembly in Salt Lake City. Salt Lake City - how many months was it after we Unitarian Universalists left town that Salt Lake City had an unprecedented tornado in the very place where we gathered? At the closing ceremony we were led in worship by Nick Page - a mountain of a man who can tease music out of a stone. Usually this last event is the installation of newly elected officers and, quite frankly, is usually boring. One attends out of duty.
But this was different. Nick at the piano led this stolid-looking bunch of liberal religionists in songs from around the world - hymns and folk tunes alike - and we sang - we sang like you can't believe Unitarian Universalists can sing. We sounded like Methodists high on something. But most exciting of all was noticing two of my fellow musically challenged parishioners - guys whom I observe every Sunday not exactly lifting their voices to the sky. But on this occasion, I saw them singing lustily - and I couldn't believe it! The joy in their faces and voices reminded me of the unending charm of persons which makes each day new.
Why live? Because of the beauty of the earth. Who can doubt that God got the idea of beauty from the Finger Lakes - sunset and starry night, balmy breeze and gentle wave were invented there. I chose this summer to grow a lawn and to plant flowers in stumps of hollowed out trees. It was not easy because Mother Nature had a dry spell. Not to worry. Virtually every night I was out watering my lawn and flowers from the waters of Seneca Lake. It was a kind of religious ritual - I was at prayer before the earth. I learned how to work the soil, to feel its moist richness, how to be gentle with the flowers, how to pluck and prune and, most of all, to enjoy their blossoming. I felt like Antoine St. Exupery's Little Prince caring for the little rose on his tiny planet.
Why live? Because I can be of use. In Marge Piercy's poem "To be of use, she wrote:
"Greek amphoras for wine or oil, Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums but you know they were made to be used. The pitcher cries for water to carry and a person for work that is real."[14] I am blessed to be doing work that is real - privileged to welcome people into life, to witness their union, to celebrate lives well lived, to help guide people along the way - this is work worth doing.
Why live? Because there is something to be learned every day and from every experience - even in what Theodore Roethke calls "the immense immeasurable emptiness of things." Pain, suffering, death - these are my stock and trade - I see them daily - not a day goes by that I do not think of them in the lives of those I am charged to serve. Not a day goes by I do not think of death - in particular my own - not in some morbid way, but as a reminder that life is short - too short to be frittered away on the non-essential.
Just two weeks ago I had a conversation with a former parishioner who had returned to Rochester for major surgery - for colon cancer. It was successful, but he must live the rest of his life - and he is in his forties - with a colostomy. I can tell you this because he is going to write the story of his experiences in the newspaper for which he works. We were in my office.
He said he had asked himself, "Why me? What have I done to deserve this?" I was ready to launch into my philosophy of suffering - that often we do not get our just desserts, that the rain falls on the good and the evil - that there is a benign indifference at work in the universe. Before I could collect myself to proclaim this wisdom, he continued, wondering how he deserved all the tender, loving care he had received from his loved ones, from the medical personnel in the hospital, from friends in this congregation who had been so supportive of him. What had he done to deserve all these blessings? I was speechless.
Why live? Because of the unending charm of persons who people this world with me - who surprise me with their wisdom and their courage, who inspire me by their dedication to love and justice, by the bounties of this earth which are mine to enjoy whether I deserve them or not.
Why live? Because of raindrops on roses,
the purring of a 17-year-old cat called Max,
the flight of the geese over my head in spring and fall,
the sliver of moon on the lake,
the familiar voice telling me dinner is ready,
the melody of wind chimes,
the flickering flame of a chalice,
the grace of an elderly woman who gave me birth,
the silhouette of one son under sail across the waves
and the other hitting a tennis ball,
the rivulet of voices on a Sunday morning,
the arc of a football in the autumn air,
the descant of a choir over a singing congregation,
this is a litany of things I love and for which I live. It is enough.
Living is not easy. Life is hard. Death is our ultimate end.
Living is joyful. Life is good. Death merely defines its limits.
This is the irony of being human.
We are beacons of brief fire between the portals of life and death. Like shooting stars we flash across the dark sky, giving light for a time, and then are no more. What are we to make of this wonder while it is ours?
Well, you have your assignment - should you choose to accept it. Go now to write your term papers. I don't know how or where or when or by whom they will be read and graded. Only know that they will be. They will be. "Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?"
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