Love in the Twilight Zone

Part II

J#1, the Matchmaker

The end of the semester was approaching and still no sightings of J#2. I had an in-class final to study for the last week of regular classes, and not very adept at pulling all-nighters, I got up at 4 am to study. I went down to one of the dorm basement study areas and found it already occupied by a rather crabby J#1. He, unlike me, was too familiar with all-nighters. He had been up all night studying and took the arrival of my friendly presence as a signal to start complaining. He was starving, had no money, and his car was buried in snow so that even if he did have money, he didn't want to take the time to clean off his car and drive out to Nick's Diner to get some breakfast so he'd have the energy to finish studying for one of his chemistry exams. I told him I had money and had dug my car out the day before. I offered to drive him to Nick's and buy him breakfast. His eyes lit up, and we were at Nick's Diner on the edge of town before the sun came up.

At the diner, I told J#1 to order whatever he wanted, I was rich that week. He ordered one of the big breakfast platters and when it arrived looked at it, and me, appreciatively. As he was about to take his first bite, I said to J#1, “So, if one wanted to run into J#2, let's say casually, and hang out with him, where would one find him?” J#1 looked at his plate, then looked at me. He asked if the breakfast was a bribe. I nodded. He smiled and between bites of his pancakes, went on to tell me how perfect he thought J#2 and I were for each other. He had known us both since freshman year and he thought highly of us both and J#2 was such a great guy and... J#1 started sounding like M, extolling the virtues of J#2. The problem with J#2, though, was this: He was a really serious student, the smartest of their class of chemistry majors. He spent long hours studying, staying in the library until it closed each night (which explained why I didn't run into him). But J#1 said he knew for a fact that each night, after he came back to the dorm, J#2 went down to the rec room to watch reruns of The Twilight Zone to unwind. J#1 told me that if I went down to the rec room at 11 pm, J#2 would probably be down there in front of the television set.

The next night I went down to the rec room at 11 pm, and there was J#2, watching The Twilight Zone. He smiled at me, and I went over and sat next to him. We watched the episode, then talked. We did the same the next night, and the next, and the next. Some nights we'd go for a walk, some nights drink tea together. During one of these early mini-dates, I heard that still, small voice in my head that I usually identify as too wise to be my own thoughts say, “This is the man you are going to marry.” I filed the voice away in my mind, noting that I hadn't heard that on a date with anyone else before. That week J#2 asked me out to a chemistry professor's Christmas party. Finals came, and then Christmas break. When we returned to campus in January, J#2 and I met in the rec room each night, continuing our pattern of watching The Twilight Zone reruns for much of the semester.

Sometime during the summer after our senior year, after months of dating, J#2 and I were reminiscing about the dorm mixer where we met, laughing about M's desire to match me up with someone so I would stay away from her beloved J#1. J#2 told me that shortly after the mixer, before finals, J#1 approached him and asked him if he liked the girl M had tried to pair him up with at the mixer. J#2 said, yes, he had liked her, liked her a lot. J#1 went on to say that if J#2 was interested in, say, casually running into that girl, he knew for a fact that she went down to the rec room every night at 11 pm and watched reruns of The Twilight Zone...

***

The voice in my head proved to be prophetic. I married J#2 two years later. We've been married 38 years this month. (M did marry the devious J#1, and they have been married almost as long. And Nick's Diner still exists, remarkably unchanged...)

It's been almost 40 years to the day that it was revealed the creative deception of a mutual friend was apparently responsible for bringing me and J#2 together. Yet, I can never bring myself to say our relationship began in a lie. I prefer to think it was forged in the mysterious realm where many long loving relationships begin, a place that often defies simple explanation, a place known as the twilight zone...

It may be said with a degree of assurance that not everything that meets

the eye is as it appears. -Rod Serling

 

Love in the Twilight Zone

Part I

M, the Matchmaker

This is a story of bribery, deception, and jealousy. It contains assorted chemistry majors, varying degrees of alcohol consumption, a crack-of-dawn breakfast at a greasy spoon diner, and reruns of an iconic 1960s TV show. It is also the story of the beginning of a life-long love. And it is all absolutely true. Only the names have been disguised to protect the identity of the devious, the jealous, and the imbibers. The greasy spoon diner, however, will be identified by its real name – Nick's...

Near the end of my first semester senior year in college, I wandered into the basement rec room of the dorm I was living in to meet some friends at a mixer. It was the early 1970s. The legal drinking age was still eighteen, so dorm mixers usually consisted of a keg of beer, maybe some spiked punch, a sound system playing what would now be considered truly classic rock, and lots of people - some talking, some dancing, all drinking. I had arrived late, and my friends had gotten a head-start on the drinking part. M was there with her boyfriend, J#1. I had known J#1, a chemistry major, since my first day of college. He had attended high school with my first roommate, and we remained good friends even after my roommate transferred to another school. I had known M since my sophomore year, long before she started dating J#1. M was friendly and outgoing but was also one of those rare people who lacked the censor most of us have between our thoughts and our tongues. Cold sober, she would tell you exactly what was on her mind, ask the most straight-forward questions. That night, the plastic cup in her hand had visited the keg more than once before I had arrived and likely contributed to M's confession to me that she would never feel her relationship with J#1 would be secure until I was married off. J#1 and I laughed, as did the other friends who knew of M's insecurities and my long friendship with J#1. M then proceeded to take me around the room and introduce me to anyone she perceived as an eligible guy, listing their attributes in front of them - “He's pre-med. He'll make a fortune someday. He's a great catch. And so cute...” All the guys we approached knew M, so this bizarre search for my future husband was more amusing than embarrassing. Still, it quickly got tiresome, and as she was extolling the virtues of J#2, a chemistry major who lived on the same corridor as J#1, I told her I'd take him. J#2 was friendly in a quiet way, very smart (according to M), funny, and a good conversationalist. We talked until the arrival of that mixer tipping point when more people are on the dance floor than are not. J#2 asked me to dance. (I would later find out that this was an aberration. J#2 was not a dancer. The keg again?) We danced and talked the rest of the night, and J#2 walked me back to my room and said goodnight.

Though we lived on opposite ends of the same co-ed dorm, I didn't see J#2 again that week. I was disappointed. I kind of liked him. Though I didn't previously know him, I recognized J#2 as someone I had seen during the past four years going in and out of the physical science building where I did most of my studying. (I wasn't a science major. I just don't study well in libraries – “Oh, look! Books! Magazines!” – and the physical science building was the most austere, distraction-free place to study on campus.) First semester finals were coming up soon, then Christmas break. I thought it would be nice to run into J#2 before finals week, but it just wasn't happening... 

To be continued...

Tomorrow:

Part II

J#1, the Matchmaker

Imagination... its limits are only those of the mind itself. - Rod Serling

 

Spiritual Reminders from Han Solo

At our church's Easter service this year, the pastor, using the movie franchise Star Wars as an example of an iconic story imbedded in our culture, asked three questions regarding the congregation's awareness and attitudes toward the well-known saga. The first question was how many people present had seen at least part of any of the six Star Wars movies. Everyone raised their hands. The second question - how many people felt they learned something by watching the movies – had about a third of those present with hands in the air. The last question – did anyone believe that the Star Wars saga did, in fact, actually happen – was acknowledged by no one, though I suspected my husband, who considers the original Star Wars film to be the greatest movie ever made, might be a little fuzzy in that area. He was sitting next to me, so I pinned both his hands down...just in case.

My husband and I saw Star Wars when it was first released in an old movie theater in upstate New York. We had been married one month. We sat in the balcony, and a hidden projector made clouds continually move across the domed ceiling of the theater, giving a surreal feeling to the movie experience. My husband loved the movie. I thought it was O.K., but in the years since, in the many rewatchings of the original movie and, of course, all those sequels and prequels that followed, I, too, have come to have my favorite lines and favorite characters in the Star Wars world.

On Easter morning, I was one of those people who raised my hand when asked if I felt I had learned anything from watching Star Wars. Perhaps “learned” is not quite the right word. “Reminded of something important” would be a better way to describe it. My favorite character, Han Solo, undergoes a conversion experience (of sorts) in the first movie. When Luke Skywalker comments to him that he doesn't appear to believe in the Force, Han responds:

Kid, I've flown from one side of this galaxy to the other, and I've seen a lot of strange stuff, but I've never seen anything to make me believe that there's one all-powerful Force controlling everything. 'Cause no mystical energy field controls my destiny. It's all a lot of simple tricks and nonsense.

Of course, skeptic Han, traveling with the Star Wars cast of characters through their adventures, by the end of the movie comes to believe in something bigger than himself. Han, now a true believer, imperfectly walks his new “faith” out through the rest of the Star Wars trilogy.

Now, I don't pretend Han Solo is a spiritual giant or even a good Christian metaphor, but there are three Han moments in the Star Wars movies that always catch my attention and encourage me in a healthier faith journey of my own:

1. Han knows when the blame is not his to shoulder. He knows he's not God.

As a first born and innately responsible person, I have a tendency to take on responsibility for many things that really have nothing to do with me. And, forgetting I'm not God, I often blame myself and wonder what I could have done differently to achieve a better outcome. When the Millennium Falcon fails to make the jump to hyperspace (in The Empire Strikes Back), Han amazingly, yet confidently states “It's not my fault!” knowing that he's done everything needed to repair and maintain his ship. The present problem is out of his control. Of course, he takes the responsibility of fixing things again – it is his ship – but he knows everything that doesn't go right is not necessarily his fault. There are forces and people outside of his present moment that influence his world. Han's confident “It's not my fault!” reminds me it's O.K. to not beat myself up over the events in my life I'm unable to control, that I can go forward, trusting God is big enough to shoulder the responsibility of things beyond my purview.

2. Han has the faith to look beyond the statistics. He is not bound by the probable.

When C-3PO points out that the possibility of successfully navigating the asteroid field they have just entered is approximately 3,720 to 1, Han is unfazed. His reply? “Never tell me the odds!” We find ourselves living in a statistically-driven world, a world that tells us, and often limits, what can happen to us, what we can accomplish. “The five-year survival rate of stage two cancer of this type is 60%”, “Only 27% percent of college graduates are able to find work in their field of study”, “Less than 23% of born again Christians embrace Christ after their twenty-first birthday”... When I am faced with numbers not in my favor, my default is to cave in and say, “What's the use? Success here is highly improbable, if not impossible...” But then I hear in my head Han's dismissive voice - “Never tell me the odds!” I remember I worship a God Who operates beyond all odds, whose purposes and plans for me can never be thwarted by the unlikely or the improbable. I can lay aside the numbers and go forward with hope.

3. Han knows how to dream big. He has high expectations.

Luke Skywalker, trying to get Han to commit to carrying out Princess Leia's mission, appeals to Han's need for money. Luke tells him Leia is rich and powerful and his reward would be more wealth than he, Han, could imagine. Han's response? “I don't know...I can imagine quite a bit.” Luke's words are a faint echo of Paul's in Ephesians - “Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us” (3:20) In Han's response, I hear a healthy desire to imagine large, not unlike the healthy spiritual desire C. S. Lewis challenges us to:

It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased. (From The Weight of Glory, and Other Addresses)

In Han's response to Luke, I suspect Han is not one “far too easily pleased”. I find his response an encouragement to imagine large what God has in store for me, to be spiritually greedy, in a good way. I, like Han, am free to “imagine quite a bit”, knowing the most I can imagine still pales in comparison to the incomparable riches of His grace, expressed in His kindness to me in Christ Jesus...

One good solid hope is worth a cart-load of certainties. - Doctor Who (Tom Baker) Warrior's Gate

No Longer Kneady

Child One was a carnivore. We considered her an exceptionally picky eater, refusing all cereals and vegetables. She would willingly consume large quantities of any red meat, preferably steak and prime rib. Child Two was a carbivore. He would eat a wide variety of foods as long as they fell into the carbohydrate food group, preferably some form of bread. White bread, whole wheat, French toast, pancakes, biscuits, muffins and anything that fell into the cake category was willingly consumed. A single fast food hamburger, appropriately divided, would happily feed both Child One and Child Two, she getting the meat, he eating the bun.

Perhaps out of guilt for not raising my own grass-fed beef for Child One, I taught myself how to bake bread for Child Two. It seemed more doable. For several years, I baked all our bread, hoping to make it as nutritious as possible. I used wheat flours, added wheat germ, honey, bran, even found a recipe for tofu bread. Eventually, Child One learned to eat cheese, chicken, fruit and an occasional piece of Mom's bread, slathered in honey. Child Two spent some tough childhood years crying over his plate whenever I served chicken, but as a teenager he developed a taste for red meat to supplement his ever-growing carb intake. (Child Three, fortunately for us, would eat anything.)

I enjoyed my intensive bread baking years. I read books, copied recipes, tried all sorts of techniques to make bread baking more efficient. One of the peripheral joys of bread preparation was the somewhat time-consuming but emotionally satisfying task of kneading the dough. Bread-making machines were new to the market at the time, but I resisted getting one. I couldn't imagine making bread without the tactile component of kneading. Leading the typical hectic life of a young mom with three small kids, I found that kneading dough allowed me to work out a lot of my frustrations on the counter top. Squeezing and stretching the dough, slamming it down repeatedly in the name of gluten development was definitely stress-reducing. The longer I kneaded the dough, the better I felt, and the better the texture of the bread.

I still bake bread occasionally (a lot more than occasionally, if I count homemade pizza dough as bread). I make rolls for holiday dinners, baguettes or breadsticks for winter soups, an occasional pan of sticky buns for a weekend breakfast, and a braided sweet bread for a random treat. Child One gave me a bread cookbook a few years back. (Ironic...) It's a great book – Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day by Jeff Hertzberg and Zoë François.  It  taught me to make a dough I keep in the refrigerator, baking it as needed. The basic recipe is simple, the technique even simpler. The water, yeast and salt are put in a bowl and the flour is added, using a wooden spoon to mix the ingredients into a soft, sticky dough. No kneading is necessary. A two hour rise at room temperature, and then the bowl of sticky, risen dough goes in the refrigerator for two hours or up to two weeks. Each full recipe of dough will make about four round loaves, four baguettes of bread or multiple small pizzas, to be baked individually whenever I have a hankering for fresh bread.

I've recently discovered some things about this bread baking process – and myself. I noticed the similarity of ingredients in some of the recipes in the artisan bread book with some of the classic recipes I've used over the years. I started using the ingredients of my old bread recipes, incorporating the easy, time saving techniques of the five minutes a day technique. I found that the finished products in each case are as good in texture as the original, kneaded recipes. I've made my favorite braided sweet bread recipe with nothing more than a good stirring with a heavy wooden spoon and a two hour rise in a large covered bowl. A night in the refrigerator, and the dough was ready to be shaped, given a secondary rising and then baked. It came out perfectly, as good as the original recipe. And I discovered I didn't miss the kneading, which surprised me. I think I've mellowed over the years, growing into a relaxed empty-nester, no longer worried about the condition of the arteries of Child One and the glycemic index of Child Two. I don't need the kneading process for my psyche much anymore, though, adding the last bit of flour to the liquid in the bowl, I do find myself getting rather energetic with the big wooden spoon...

“Good bread is the most fundamentally satisfying of all foods; and good bread with fresh butter, the greatest of feasts.”

― James Beard

Just Follow the Script...

 

I recently watched a fun sci-fi movie from 1999.* Like all above average movies (7.3 on the IMDB rating scale), Galaxy Quest was entertaining, funny, and had some moderately interesting special effects. It also contained some unstated but profound lessons about how to live one's life: Find a good script. Follow it with all your heart, even if you are sometimes not certain you want to. Prepare to be amazed at what happens next...

Tim Allen, Alan Rickman, and Sigorney Weaver lead a cast of six main characters who are the washed up actors from a moderately popular fictional space adventure TV show called Galaxy Quest. (Think Star Trek.) The series has been off the air for a number of years, and the cast spend their time signing autographs for costumed fans, being forced to repeat iconic lines from the TV show at Comic-Con-type gatherings. They are bored, miserable, in conflict with one another, but take the gigs for the money they provide.

At one convention, they are approached by what appears to be a contingent of fans dressed as aliens. The group begs Tim Allen's character, Jason Neismith a.k.a. Commander Taggert, to help them in their fight against their nemesis. Jason, thinking it's just another role-playing sci-fi gig, goes along with them only to find himself on an exact replica of the TV show's space ship. However, this ship is real, and the costumed “fans” are a real race of aliens, the Thermians, who have based their space ship, as well as their entire present civilization, on what they refer to as the “historical documents” - mistaking the collection of all the transmissions of the old Galaxy Quest shows for documentaries.

Jason/Commander Taggert convinces the rest of the cast/crew to join him on the alien ship, and together they help the race of aliens defeat their enemy by being themselves – their written, scripted sci-fi character selves – which are far nobler and braver than the disappointed, washed up has-beens they had become.

The transition of the TV show crew from has-beens to heroes is a delightful lesson for all of us in how we have the potential to be our best selves if we can only find a script - a plan, a purpose - we can believe in and follow whole-heartedly. The Thermians seem to understand this better than the Galaxy Quest crew. When one of the crew expressed surprise that the Thermians know who the TV characters were, the Thermian responded:

I don't believe there is a man, woman or child on my planet who does not. In the years since we first received transmission of your historical documents we have studied every facet of your missions and strategies...In the past hundred years our society had fallen into disarray because our values had become scattered. But since the transmission we have modeled every aspect of our society from your example and it has saved us. Your courage and teamwork and friendship through adversity, in fact, all you see around has been taken from the lessons garnered from the historical documents.

There is someone for everyone to identify with in this movie:

- The superficial leading man, somewhat of a blowhard, finds his best self taking the risks and making the bold decisions only a space ship commander would be called on to make

- The attractive actress, cast for her cleavage, bemoaning the fact her only apparent duty is to repeat what the ship's computer is saying, discovers her faithful commitment to her simple task is vital

- The jaded Shakespearean actor cast as a Mr. Spock-like character becomes the wise, noble “alien” the Thermians assume him to be

- The child actor who grew up pretending to navigate the TV spaceship, now, as an adult, gets the scary thrill of really piloting a space ship

- The somewhat spacy actor playing the ship's engineer discovers all the lines he memorized actually have functional meaning in the running of the Thermian ship

- And – my favorite – an unknown actor, cast for a one-time bit part as an unnamed crew member, living in constant fear of the fate of most such characters – sudden death by some alien creature – manages to do heroic feats despite his fears and becomes an important member of the “crew”...

At this point in the blog, you might expect me to urge you to find the movie at the library or on Netflix and watch it. And you may do that if you'd like. I would prefer, however, to urge you to go out and find a good script, one you can follow with all your heart, even if you are not always certain you want to, one that will amaze you.  I highly recommend the one I follow, found in a contemporary edition of an ages-old Book. For centuries, many have followed this Script, finding their true written selves to be amazingly better than anything they could script for themselves. The Script has something for every person - the superficial blowhard, those who feel they are unimportant or valued for the wrong things, those who feel jaded with their present role in life, the young and learning, the spacey and clueless – and, yes, - even those of us who walk in constant fear we won't survive long enough to see the end of any story, much less a good one. And the best part about following this Script? The Script Writer is available for read-throughs 24/7...

What is the point of this story

What information pertains

The thought that life could be better

Is woven indelibly

Into our hearts

And our brains

- Paul Simon, Train in the Distance

*My daughter writes a blog for Netflix fans, Nothing to Watch. I found out about Galaxy Quest in her post “Movies for Thanksgiving Digestion”. https://medium.com/@clairemcfall

Grace on the Fly

It's been a long winter. After the coldest February on record for this corner of the Midwest, the backyard pond was still completely covered with ice in the middle of March as were most of the area lakes. I hadn't bothered to get this year's fishing license until yesterday, and then it snowed five inches today. The corner of the family room where my rods and reels usually spend their spring, summer and fall is still stacked with firewood. I suspect the combination of these factors is probably why my cabin-fevered mind started spiritualizing fishing line.

I usually start bringing my favorite rods up from the basement around this time of year. I have two spinning rods and two fly rods ready to go at all times during fishing season. I got to thinking about my fly rods, and how my fly casting has greatly improved in the twenty years since my brother, a fly fishing fanatic, strongly recommended I take up fly fishing myself. I still marvel at how a tiny almost weightless hook and speck of feathers and thread can be thrown far enough away from me to fool a fish into thinking it is getting a insect dropped out of nowhere. My ability to do this well has only a little to do with my skill, and everything to do with the nature of fly line. Fly fishing is all about conversion, faith and grace...

I've fished as long as I can remember, but everything I knew about casting with spinning reels and bait casting reels didn't help me learn to cast a fly. My previous experience with fishing and getting the bait to the fish depended upon how much weight I put near the bait-end of the fishing line. With a heavy spoon, a hefty plug or a sizable crank bait at the end of the line, I could cast a good distance. If I had a light bait – a worm, a piece of dough, some luncheon meat on a hook – I'd add an appropriately sized split shot or sinker to give the hook and bait enough weight to send it soaring out to where the fish were. Sometimes, for fun, I would put a heavy sinker on the end of my line, fasten a baited hook on a leader above it, and see how far I could cast. Yep, I was in control. If I added enough weight, I could make the baited hook go impressive distances, the fishing line just trailing along behind for the ride. Fishing with a spinning or bait casting outfit is all about good effort and work with the weight. Fly casting, I found, had a radically different dynamic...

When I bought my first fly rod and reel, an inexpensive combo, (I wasn't sure how I would take to my brother's obsession...) the first thing that struck me was how really simple and boring the fly reel was. If I had read the fly fishing books and studied the demonstrations correctly, a basic fly reel didn't do much but hold the fly line in neat coils. I was supposed to pull the line off the reel by hand, and though I could use the small handle on the reel to retrieve the line when a fish was on it, I saw that many fly fisherman used their hands to retrieve the line instead when playing a fish. The fly rod itself, unlike the relatively stiff, shorter spinning rods that I was used to, was long and thin and wobbly and it, too, seemed to exist only to bow (literally) to the whims of the fly line. And the line – thick, pale in color, like a very long strand of spaghetti that tapered to angel hair pasta on the end – was nothing like the fine, clear monofilament lines on my spinning reel. How were these three strange bedfellows supposed to work together to catch fish?

Well, as Norman Maclean so aptly put it in his classic fly fishing novella A River Runs Through it:

...if you have never picked up a fly rod before, you will soon find it factually and theologically true that man by nature is a damn mess. The four-and-a-half-ounce thing in silk wrappings that trembles with the underskin motions of the flesh becomes a stick without brains, refusing anything simple that is wanted of it.

I could relate. Despite my previous great casting skills, when it came to fly casting, I was a damn mess. It took me a while, but I finally figured out that fly fishing wasn't about the rod or the weight I thought should be at the end of the line, a weight I could control myself. It was all about yielding to the wisdom and nature of the fly line and letting it do the work. I had spent years focusing on the weight at the end of the line, changing it as necessary to make it go where I wanted it to go. Now, the fly at the end of the line was totally dependent on the “weight” of the fly line. I wasn't casting a weight any more – I was casting the line itself and trusting it to do the work of getting the fly with its thin leader to the fish for me. When this small yet radically different concept clicked in my mind, I finally was able to cast a fly. It was surprisingly easy. The hard part had been my willingness to let go of my previous store of casting knowledge, especially everything I knew about (literally) throwing my weight around. I found I loved fly fishing for its easy grace, and though I do still use my spinning rods, fly fishing has become my preferred way to spend a day by the water. And, thanks to my faith in a good fly line, I think I've become pretty good at fly casting...

Perhaps it's more than the extended winter that has had me revisiting my early days of fly casting. It's been almost 44 years to the day since I had a major spiritual shift and epiphany in my relationship with God. Like the brain adjustment from spin casting to fly casting, the heart adjustment from good-Catholic-girl to girl-who-was-Good-with-God-and-still-Catholic was both a small adjustment and a huge tectonic shift. Previously, as a good Catholic girl, I'd make good things happen, oblivious to whether God wanted those things to happen or not, taking personal responsibility myself for the outcomes. I was very skilled at adding my own weight and effort to what I would do for God, fretting over whether I was heading in the right direction, whether I was reaching those far places I was aiming for. Secretly, I suspected, not unlike the first time fly caster, I was a damn mess. I finally acknowledged that, yes, I was a mess, and I let go of my tried-and-true old way of thinking about how to fix the mess I suspected I was powerless to change anyway. In the space that followed the letting go, I found faith in God's mercy and grace alone, and that was all the Good (with a capital G) this Catholic girl needed. In the years since that conversion of heart, I've cherished the relationship with a God who can be trusted to do the work that I now know is His and not mine, though He does let me participate in it. Instead of adding my own weight to it, though, I now trust in His ability to accomplish even the most delicate of tasks with grace and mercy.  Sometimes it looks like I'm the one doing a good job, but I know the truth - it's God, like an ultimate perfect fly line, enabling me to cover the distance with grace...

...My father was very sure about certain matters pertaining to the universe. To him, all good things—trout as well as eternal salvation—come by grace and grace comes by art and art does not come easy. - from A River Runs Through It by Norman Maclean

 

Living in the Pink...

Unless you have been on a total media fast the past two days, you probably have been faced with the pop question of the week:

What color is the dress?*

Because of this dress dilemma, we have all been rapidly educated on the part lighting and contrast and angle of perception play in how we see color, in this case, the color of a white/gold - or is it a blue/black? - dress.

Color perception is an issue not new to our household. My husband is red-green color blind. Over the years of our marriage, I've learned that this does not make him blind to color, but rather, he perceives color differently from the non-color blind person. He keeps quiet about it. He can be quite good at avoiding color issues in clothing, limiting his wardrobe choices to “safe” colors – black, navy, khaki and blue – colors he can perceive like the rest of us. There are other clothing options, though, he just has to take on faith, like that pale gray sweater that goes with everything (to my eye), but he always suspects is really a bit on the loud side.

Greens and golds are a source of confusion for him. Well, not really confusion, just a labeling problem. We had a metallic lime green car when we were first married. That particular model car also came in a shade of bright gold. One day we found our car in the parking lot parked next to the gold model. My husband commented how we were parked next to an identical car. “Except for the color,” I said. He didn't know what I was talking about. He knew we called our car green, so both cars must be green. They looked the same to him.

Many silvery grays he sees differently from the average person. When the pale gray pickled finish for kitchen cabinets was popular, he was puzzled as to why so many people would choose to have such a loud, bright color in their kitchen. He would also sometimes point out a classic silver gray luxury car on the road and ask what color it was. I'd tell him gray or silver, he'd shake his head and say “Looks bright pink to me...” His perception of color in the world around him doesn't leave him at a loss, however, but just allows him to see things differently than I do. He marvels at the silvery clouded sunsets, seeing spectacular colors that I don't. He keeps quiet about it, but sometimes I think he lives in a more colorful world than I do. I was telling a friend about my husband's perception of color, how he sees sunsets, sees pinks where I only see gray. My friend looked at my very gray hair and asked what color did my husband see my hair as being. I didn't know. I asked him. He admitted to me that as I got older, my hair had turned pinker, now in some light, a decidedly hot pink. Who knew?

For the record, my husband and I both saw “the dress” as the white/gold combo, though it really was a blue/black dress. On this occasion we both saw the same colors. Or, at least we think we did. I think the dress issue in general is a neat reminder that we are more unique in how we perceive the world around us than we often realize. We each get to see the things of this world from a perspective that is ours alone. Sometimes these perspectives share borders, line up for a time, but I ultimately see what I see, not what others see. And that's O.K. We can enjoy our lives from our own unique perspectives and let others enjoy theirs. For one man I know, this means going into post-midlife married to a woman with hot pink hair...

Cold hearted orb that rules the night,

Removes the colours from our sight,

Red is gray and yellow white,

But we decide which is right.

And which is an illusion...

From the Moody Blues' The Day Begins

*If you've been living in a cave this week, here's what I'm talking about: http://www.wired.com/2015/02/science-one-agrees-color-dress/

Honestly...?

News junkies, media watchers,

couch potatoes, lend me your ears.

I come to bury Brian Williams, not to praise him.

The evil that men do lives after them;

The good is oft interrèd with their bones.

So let it be with Brian. The noble NBC

Hath told you Brian was ambitious.

If it were so, it was a grievous fault,

And grievously hath Brian answered it.

-The Angle's mashup of the Brian Williams saga

with Act 3 of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar

No, Brian Williams isn't dead. He isn't even dead to me. In fact, I'm somewhat sympathetic to the NBC newsman's many creative fictitious and exaggerated memories, one of which was being shot at while riding in a military helicopter in Iraq. After all, Hillary Clinton has told a similar tale of her plane landing under sniper fire in Bosnia, a story also untrue. Both have corrected and apologized for their mis-rememberings. Brian Williams is on a six-month suspension from his news anchor job at NBC with the possibility of his never coming back. Hillary Clinton is most likely gearing up to run for president in 2016.

Huh?

In light of the Brian Williams incident, I've been thinking about truth, story-telling, memory and lies and how they all interplay in what we ultimately remember about any given incident. Gregory House, fictional television medical diagnostician, says that everybody lies. I prefer to think everybody doesn't always remember things clearly or in the same way. Some of us, like Williams and Clinton, are caught up in a sense of story and the emotion of the moment, embellish, and then eventually, in the retelling, sometimes step over the line that lies between exaggeration and a downright untruth. And if you are a “respected” news person like Williams, that step over the line will, and should have, consequences. And, if like Williams, you find yourself stepping over the line frequently, well, it's time to closely examine where that line is and why your feet feel the need to stray past its bounds.

It probably does not come as a surprise that I would have a somewhat forgiving attitude toward the embellished memories of others. I fish, and as a fisher(wo)man, I understand the dynamic of remembering the fish I caught as being longer and heavier than a tape measure or scale would have accurately indicated. So, it also won't come as a surprise that my favorite essay on how we remember things would come from someone who fishes. John Gierach, one of my favorite writers who just happens to be an avid fly fisherman, wrote a kind and insightful essay* on how people in general, and fisherman specifically, don't always remember the same things about an event. He quotes novelist John Irving as saying that a memoir is what the author remembers, not necessarily what happened. Gierach then goes on to describe the differing memories of fellow fisherman on the same fishing trip and concludes:

...I think my standard recollection of fishing is made up of the emotion of the moment, the mood of the day, the scenery, the company, the weather, who I am, who I think I am, who I'd like to be, my own sense of poetry and a few tattered shreds of what actually happened...

And so it is with all of us, whether we fish or not. To maintain our integrity and credibility, we have a responsibility to find as many of those tattered shreds of what actually happened and recreate a story that is as close to the truth as possible. To do this, we may have to take the emotion of the moment and our sense of poetry and ruthlessly restrain their tendency to drag us toward exaggeration and ultimately over that line to untruth. Whether we are in a helicopter in Iraq, on the tarmac in Bosnia, or in a canoe on the backyard pond, we are called to be as truthful as we can, acknowledging we may, knowingly or unknowingly, miss the mark at times, and suffer the consequences.

Is Brian Williams's suspension too harsh? Perhaps... Is it wrong Hillary Clinton has gotten off scot-free? Maybe... But I'm in no position to judge. Right now I'm trying to remember if that largemouth bass I caught last summer really was over twenty inches...

Even eminent chartered accountants are known, in their capacity as fishermen, blissfully to ignore differences between seven and ten inches, half a pound and two pounds, three fish and a dozen fish. - William Sherwood Fox, Silken Lines and Silver Hooks, 1954

*John Gierach, At the Grave of the Unknown Fisherman, Chapter 5. Go to the library, find the book and read this chapter. It's worth it...

...Nice...

“Nice”...pleasing...agreeable...delightful...amiably pleasant...kind... We're familiar with the word, know its synonyms even if we've taken part in some nice-bashing in the past, when the word has gotten a bad rap for being, well, “too nice”...

“Play nice.” “Be nice.” “That's not nice.” “Nice!” (...excited, in a positive tone...) “Nice...” (...disgusted, in a sarcastic tone...) We've probably heard and said the word in all these tones and contexts.

“Nice” does not exclude truth or differing opinions but, rather, provides a sweet flavoring for them, making truth and differing opinions hearable, swallowable.

Billy Bob Thornton's acceptance speech for his recent Golden Globe award was three short sentences: “These days you get into a lot of trouble no matter what you say. I mean you can say anything in the world and get in trouble. I know this for a fact, so I'm just going to say 'Thank you'.”

...nice...

I don't know what Mr. Thornton's intent was in saying what he did, if he had opinions or comments he wanted to say and did not, and whether he felt truly restrained from saying them. I was glad he had thought about the implications of what could potentially come out of his mouth and decided to simply – and nicely – say thank you.

There has been a serious shortfall of nice lately, even more than usual in a world with an already large nice-deficit. Somewhere we've gotten the idea that our opinions and perspectives can't be said nicely if they are to be expressed with any impact. Free speech may speak to an important truth, but without nice, free speech often becomes a crude, crass and brutal bludgeon. The recent movie, The Interview, may voice a political opinion (solution?) regarding the leader of North Korea that lies unspoken in the minds of some, but it is not nice. The satirical publication Charlie Hebdo speaks out - crudely, crassly, brutally - against what it sees as the dangers and excesses of its favorite targets - the Catholic Church and Islam. Very, very not nice...

Of course, the SONY hacking and the slaughter of the Charlie Hebdo staff is über-not nice and is no way justified no matter how very not nice The Interview or Charlie Hebdo cartoons were first. In an interview with NBC, Gerard Biard, Charlie Hebdo chief editor, defended the publication's religious satire this way:

“Every time we draw a cartoon of Mohammed, every time we draw a cartoon of prophets, every time we draw a cartoon of God, we defend the freedom of religion...We declare that God must not be a political or public figure. He must be a private figure. We defend the freedom of religion. Yes, it's also the freedom of speech, but it's the freedom of religion. Religion should not be a political argument.”

Biard doesn't mention the total absence of nice in his justification of Charlie Hebdo's style of free speech. But Pope Francis didn't shy away from it. Though condemning any killing in God's name, he pointed out there are limits to freedom of speech, and other people's religion should not be insulted or mocked:

“...in freedom of expression there are limits”...freedom of faith is a fundamental human right, and that "one cannot provoke, one cannot insult other people's faith, one cannot make fun of faith."

The subtext of the Pope's comments? “It's just not nice...”

Some years back, in a serious mid-life pursuit of art, I took a number of college drawing and design classes. Wanting to avoid the “cute” and “sentimental” in my projects and hoping my artistic exploration would be a bit more edgy, I adopted the following verse from the book of Philippians as my art verse:

Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. (4:8)

The word “true” allowed me a lot of freedom of expression, and the “honorable”, “just”, “pure”, “lovely”, “commendable”, and “excellence” tempered whatever I freely expressed. I avoided the “cute” and “sentimental”, and sought the excellent true. What I think I often achieved was “Nice!...” And I was O.K. with that.

I've been thinking about this verse again this week in light of the Charlie Hebdo aftermath. The show of support for the satirical magazine in recent days and the printing of its latest issue has only angered and riled the Islamic people who believe their prophet and religion is again being ridiculed in the public media. Not nice begets not nice, and in some cases, über-not nice. The author of my art verse, epistle writer Paul, started out himself as someone über-not nice. The book of Acts says he ravaged the early church, dragging off and committing men and women to prison, breathing threats and murder against the followers of Jesus as well as approving of the execution of Stephen, all in the name of religious purity. But his letters to the early church are often full of nice, only explainable by his encounter with the living Christ on the road to Damascus. And, yet, Paul remained just as zealous in his desire for Christ-like life to be genuine in the lives of the early Christians as he had been zealous in his earlier religious attempts to keep the Jewish religion of his youth untainted by the teachings of that same living Christ. In his second recorded letter to the Corinthians, he talks about his previous letter written to the same church, one that he refers to as “severe”, addressing the problem of teachings contrary to the gospel. He reiterates his warnings against false doctrine and licentious behavior in his follow-up letter, expressing his desire not to have to be severe. Some of the last verses of this letter are firm, yet gracious :

For this reason I write these things while I am away from you, that when I come I may not have to be severe in my use of the authority that the Lord has given me for building up and not for tearing down...Finally, brothers, rejoice. Aim for restoration, comfort one another, agree with one another, live in peace; and the God of love and peace will be with you. Greet one another with a holy kiss. (13:10-12)

Amazing how an encounter with the living God will change a person...

...very nice...

 

Years ago my mother used to say to me, she'd say, "In this world, Elwood, you must be" - she always called me Elwood - "In this world, Elwood, you must be oh so smart or oh so pleasant." Well, for years I was smart. I recommend pleasant. You may quote me.

                                            - Jimmy Stewart as Elwood P. Dowd in the movie Harvey