Philipians 1

"And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God." Philipians 1:9-11

So I am not like Paul. I don't travel from town to town helping start new churches. Sure I tithe and teach Sunday school twice a month but the general life structures (work, school and so forth) is pretty much the same as it could have been if I had never become a Christian. One might say that Christianity might have once been useful to get my life on track but now that my life is "on track" Christianity seems to be window dressing to an otherwise normal life. This kind of thinking is horrifying when compared to what the Bible seems to expect (imitating Paul who imitates Jesus).

But at the same time I can say with confidence that despite my many weaknesses and failing that my life is defined by following the call of Christ. There is growing knowledge and discernment. This is usually concerning my own weaknesses and failings but also about God's grace through Jesus Christ, which alone is sufficient to justify my life despite my weaknesses and failings. There is growing approval of what is excellent and fruit (actions) of righteousness.

Paul had the circumstances available to travel from town to town. His old life was traveling from town to town (though to destroy not create Christian churches). The circumstances of my life are very much different in structure.

In theory I could leave this life structure behind, become a missionary and imitate Paul in that respect... but to do so would be to abandon my family. Now certainly there are Biblical precedents to support this decision but in my heart of hearts I do not think this is what God calls me to (there are also Biblical precedents to support this decisions).

In truth if I were left to my own inclinations, like say in the after-life, I would be much more inclined to live a some what isolated life, reading and writing in the quiet of my room till about lunch, then spending the day listening to my friends and family play music and hike with a small group through shady forests or perhaps at a misty beach. Dinner with the larger community followed by a bonfire where we all sing "Holy, holy, holy." Then off to bed.

I believe that this sort of life is waiting for me and I will start some of it here and now... but for the most part I do not chase after this in the way normal people chase after the things they want. Though Jemuel and Nitzsche disagree I firmly believe that this life, this world is not our home and not all we have to work with. So before I get what I really want I chase after what God has put in front of me.

God put apostleship, church founding, letter writing and prison in front of Paul and he ran towards it though it was, as he said, like him being poured out of a vessel. But in front of me God has put three imperfect, needy women in my family who have been abandoned by every man in their life and live on the razor edge between destitution and despair... and so like Paul I am being poured out like a vessel on what God has put in front of me.

Now if Paul and I are incorrect about this another world and another life after this one then I would have been much wiser to chase after my own inclinations here and now. But though I struggle I am putting my chips on what the Bible says as opposed to Nitzsche or who ever.

How to Ruin Your Life (Jemuel) with Long Digressons

Jemuel is going to be moving in with our sister Coral and the boys next month. I think it is a great thing for her and the boys and Jemuel. I cannot even imagine how hard it is to be a single mother... well maybe I can imagine since I was raised by one but the point is that it is not the best way to be a parent. Kids (and my nephews in particular) are wonderful... but they also require a lot of you (my nephews in particular). So Jemuel's moving in is a real godsend.

On the whole Jemuel's life is a contrast to the general guy response in our family which is "You are on your own." The women in our family are all high needs with children to take care of and most of the guys are off doing their own thing. I don't want to be too harsh against my brothers because we are all pretty much abandoned children as far as our fathers are concerned and our fathers were also abandoned children as far as their fathers are concerned. And really our family is just an extreme case of the national trend, parents divorcing with the husband's standard of living increasing while the wife's standard of living decreasing. The father visits on weekends, the mother takes care of the children Monday through Friday.

So Jemuel is (in very Jemuel fashion) breaking apart from mainstream culture... but he said something that I thought was worth exploring from a Christian perspective. He said that he thinks that moving in with Coral will be a big help for her and hopefully wouldn't ruin his life. Now if you are familiar with the family history this makes a lot of sense and if you don't know the details of the family history you aren't going to hear it here (you eager eared gossips!). But I want to unpack what he has said.

How I interpret the statement is that he wants to help but he also wants a degree of independence to pursue his calling into music, enjoy some peace and quiet from time to time and not end up broke. This is perfectly reasonable and I think this need should be protected even for parents with their own children. A husband and wife raising children owe it to their children to model a life which is not child centered. Now of course kids are a huge responsibility and need a lot of attention and care (and money) but this responsibility should not be mistaken as having a life which is child centered.

Certainly their are a fair amount of parents whose life might accurately be described as child centered. Many of these parents would even defend this position, "my children are my life" is an extreme statement but not so extreme as to evoke a shock in our society. I maintain that child centered thinking has been damaging to children and society.

The term was popularized by Dr. Benjamin Spock's book "Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care" and has largely been the norm of parenting in America for the last fifty years.

The problem with a child centered home is how it is experienced by the child. The child does not experience a home or world which is centered around the benefit of growing minds but rather a home and home which is centered around themselves. Such children come to see the world as existing for their own benefit and comfort and pleasure (as can be seen in the baby boomer generation).

Now Jemuel is only an actively concerned uncle, giving more than is expected in our selfish society. But in a father or husband to want to protect his calling to music, his desire for peace and quiet and to not go broke would be to go against the notion of a child centered home. Such pursuits would be called selfish and destructive to the child's well being. I believe the opposite is true.

A child who sees a father, mother (or uncle) who has a purpose or calling in their life which is not centered on that child sees an example of maturity they can grown into. A child who sees a father, mother (or uncle) who's stated and acted purpose in life is to care for that child the child sees a slave who they will not want to grow up to become because being served feels better than serving. In the same way a child who sees parents who love each other more actively then they love their own children sees an example of a marriage worth growing up into. A child who sees a world which does care for them but has other higher priorities gains access to a live which is not automatically self centered.

Now going back to that... even if a caring uncle (or father or mother) has strong boundaries to protect their calling, their sanity and their financial responsibilities they are still going to ruin their life. It is impossible to escape, everyone (every single one) who loves other people is walking down a path which invariably and without exception will always absolutely ruin that person's life... or at least it will feel that way sometimes.

Now it will only feel like they are ruining their life, but here the sociology 101 adage applies "things which are perceived to be real are real in their consequences." So if any person makes a decision to make a sacrifice for another person (like Jem is doing) what is going to happen is that they will be faced with a time when they will want something and they will have to choose between the thing they want and their commitment to care for someone else. Now the actual sacrifice may actually be a small one (no watching football this Sunday, getting out of bed thirty minutes early once) but it will feel like your life is being ruined.

This is not an issue of selfish and unselfish people, good people and bad people (mostly because there are no unselfish, good people!) but everyone will feel their desire as the core of their being, that is how it will be experienced. In retrospect it might seem like a small small thing, but in the grip of the desire it seems to give up this one thing will be the last step off of a cliff with no bottom, to this person it will feel like they are choosing between life and death, freedom and slavery, happiness and unhappiness.

Now Jemuel is a stand up guy, in my judgment (that high and mighty standard) capable of more unselfishness that most anyone I know. In the list of virtuous people he is somewhere between me and Ghandi... and I think he will gain a lot from moving in with Coral and the boys BUT that benefit will only come after he has stepped off of the cliff of ruining his life several times.

True Story about the Nature of Superheroes

So Jacob (nephew age 5) is ALL about Spiderman. He wants to be Spiderman when he grows up. After seeing Spiderman 3 he decides for certain he wants to be red Spiderman (the good guy). That's encouraging. Spiderman 3 got a lot of flack from comic hipsters for its black and white moralistic themes, but it has been useful in talking to Jacob about the nature of forgiveness and strength.

But one day he proclaims "I am red Spiderman! Issac is black Spiderman! Let's fight!" Issac (nephew age 3) loves to fight too, but I say "No way Jose! Isaac is not a bad guy. He can't be black Spiderman."

"Well then who is he?" Jacob asks.

"Uh... Issac will be Batman." I say.

"Okay, I am red Spiderman. Issac is Batman. Let's fight!" And so it goes. :-)

But a while later Jacob asks me "Well who are you, Uncle Michael?"

I think for a minute, then stand up strait and strong saying, "I am Superman!"

"Okay," Jacob says, "Let's fight."

...
Next week I take the boys to Crossroads and afterwards am giving Nate a ride to work. Nate is wearing a Superman shirt; Jacob sees this and confronts me with dread seriousness.

"You aren't Superman!" he says with accusation. "He is!"

Well this will not stand. Monday I actually pay full price for a piece of non-work related clothing and buy a Superman shirt. I wear it next Sunday but on the way I find out that Isaac has fallen out a window! I rush to the hospital worried sick and when I see him in the hospital bed it is only worse. His face is a cut up and he is doped up and I am tearing up just thinking about it.

I gently take his hand filled with pain. He looks up at me with wonder in his eyes and says "Superman?"

We smile in spite ourselves and I says "Yes, it's Superman."

Then his eyes squint dangerously and he half says and half growls "I'm Batman!"

I knew he was okay.

Family Trouble

I had a bad time with my Mom yesterday.

I think it started with playing too much video games on my lap top. I've sapped my spiritual energy on staring at a computer screen for hours all week. My bad.

Mom called me Saturday night around ten thirty pm. She is living in a hotel paid for by Social Security but is used to the Oakland/Alameda bus systems which runs all night. She ended up stranded in Union City Walmart with her electric wheel chair running our of battery power. She had been caught up in shopping at low low prices and didn't realize how late it was. What she wanted was not a ride but for me to meet her in Newark and drive beside her as she trekked the last mile to the Hotel 6. Now I am happy to help because I realize that the video games aren't at all important but there is no way I am going to do that. It makes me mad because it is so like my Mom. She never wants help she wants to be pampered. It makes me mad because the only reason she needs help in this instance is because she spent the last x hours pampering herself. Granted I was at this point pampering myself but if she had pampered herself x-1 hours she wouldn't have needed any help from anyone.

I say it would be a lot easier if we just lock the chair up at BART and then I drive her to the hotel until the next day when she can take the bus. (The chair weighs about three hundred pounds) She doesn't feel comfortable doing that, afraid that someone is going to steal her chair... even if it locked up and has no power. This makes me mad because when I need to ask for help I do everything I can to make it as easy for the person helping me. But then it seems like what she wants is not so much a ride home (simple help with a problem) but to be pampered (to see herself as a princess being served by willing inferiors). After some painful planning (intermingled with her harassing BART employee with requests for favors he/she doesn't want to do) we arrange for her to take the only late bus which luckily stops near my house. I will meet her there, we walk to my place, then lock up her chair, I drive her to the hotel and then the next day I can take her back.

My mom is a pretty cheerful person and most of the walk she is chatting about the neat little hat and slippers she got at Walmart and about the possibly imaginary lice and worms that she has but several hospitals can not find or identify.

When we get to my place I pull the car around for her to get in so I can put her chair away. I open the door for her and she says in a tone that only her own children would understand "Did you turn the heater on for me." the tone says "if you didn't it is because you are not a gentleman" and this is really what makes me mad. Up to this point it is just me helping my mom who needed help. But this colors everything that has happened and will happen, I feel that my Mom is not needing help but wanting to be spoiled. It is not as if she couldn't turn it on for herself. But I guess she would have to be your mom to understand.

On the way back she mentions how she doesn't have nay food at her room and wants to stop at a fast food place for lunch and dinner. There is a long line at this point because the Jack in the Box is the only place open so late. I am getting so frustrated by how I feel that she doesn't appreciate my help but expects my service. It makes me feel bad about all the times I have ever helped her because it seems like I have just been feeding her mental illness. I try to talk about how the situation is making me very angry but it doesn't go over very well. She is instantly defensive and starts talking about how when she was a girl people always took care of each other and if my Dad were around and how my biological father and how I am bi-polar.

Now about the whole bi-polar thing. I know bi-polar people and I'm pretty sure that is not my problem, but I think what she was saying is that she didn't understand why I was mad and thought it must be because of some kind of brain malfunction. Up to this point I have been the dutiful servant/son. It seems very natural to her that since she is still Shirley Temple that men ought to dote and spoil her like they did when she was six. That I would be mad seemed out of nowhere.

I drop her off at her room as she yells at me for being sick and disturbed.

The next day I get into an argument with Coral about similar subject: about how she accepts and receives help and care from me but does not find ways to return help or care to me. Her defense is that she doesn't make money so she has nothing to give. But that is another whole post. At the time I was also mad at Amber for the same thing but later I realized that Amber and I had had these conflicts a year or two earlier and managed a better understanding and give and take relationship based up mutual friendship, loyalty and respect.

I make plans to pick up Mom then next day. She schmoozes me into promising to pick her up early for the excellent Motel 6 complimentary coffee. It occurs to me later that I was schmoozed but that doesn't bother me. If a good sales person charms me I respect their ability to make giving feel like receiving. BUT because I was up to 1 am driving mom around and wake up at 7 on Sundays and have long trying Sundays (this one even more trying)I accidentally oversleep Monday morning. Yeah, my bad, but very much out of character.

But let's not be too quick to excuse me. I can understand Mom's frustration and anger after expecting coffee in the morning to have sit around and wait and have my phone be off. I can understand how that would feel. But because of my lack of spiritual strength I am in no mood to make up for it. She asks if we can stop somewhere to get coffee and I say no.

At this point I am just being an asshole. And then we pick up Amber.

Mom is all hostility. She is so mad about the coffee I become the personification of every man who has failed to treat her the way she deserves to be treated. Amber overlooks my stubbornness and gets into yelling matches with Mom defending me.

By the time we get to my place she is so mad she starts calling me the worst names.

...
Why I didn't get the coffee.

Once years ago I had a similarly themed argument with Mom. This was when she wasn't in a wheel chair. after an hour of her insisting that good decent people always got coffee and donuts for her and me insisting she didn't appreciate or respect what I did give we stopped arguing. Then she comes up and asks me to give her five cents.

My mom is not helpless or stupid or crazy. I wouldn't deny anyone else the coffee, especially if I was two hours late! But I won't be my mom's donkey (to borrow one of her terms). In retrospect...
no retrospect yet.

Fatherlessness

This is not a blog about not having a father or having ambivalent feelings about a father... that is a normal enough in this day and age but is not what this is about. Rather it is about one of the parts of aging which is when you stop having people above you to go to for advice, comfort and/or aid.
I have struggles occasionally with this and that and sometimes I think to myself "I wish there is someone I could go to with this problem." There are plenty of people I can (and do) go to with my problems but it occurred to me recently that all of these people are peers and not superiors. Sure, I am pretty stuck up guy who is not very likely to ask anyone for help... and I see myself as naturally superior to everyone else (I say this to my shame not my credit) so it is not completely surprising that I should have few people I look up towards in this archetypal "father" way. But when I say "I wish there is someone I could go to with my problem" I am actually not thinking of going to a peer (Jem or Jax) to share my struggling and confess my failing. Rather what I am usually thinking is "I wish I knew someone strong enough to carry me in this situation."
The modern independent tendency is to look down on any sort of thought like that. But I reject that as unnatural and dishonest. Most "brave independent" men and women reek of weakness and insecurity to me. I respect the Stuart Smally's of the world who are strong enough to admit their weakness and move forward.
It is not as if the existential father figures in my life ever actually thought it wise to take all of my problems away and provide me a life of ease. It would not be an manly act of love to treat even a child this way. Like C.S. Lewis said, a father would be happy with any faltering steps and failures of a child but no father would be content with a child who refused to learn to walk. The best I ever got (possibly the best a person could get) is a strong hand gently holding my own.
As a child this is mostly just father and mother, but there might have been a teacher here and there. As time went on, in my life parents faltered and my problems became more complex. I was lucky to have some terrific teachers and some reasonably wise friends. Sure, teenage wisdom is a very temporary help but I was grateful for what I received. In college after entering into Christian fellowship I have been extraordinarily fortunate (blessed even) with mentors. It is possible that I leaned a little too hard and expected a little too much but God (the eternal existential Father) prevented too much damage.
But now as a man I find that my mentors have become peers and when I find myself struggling beyond my wish for strength I am compelled to move forward as best I can. I have heard that some have found this feeling liberating, others have described it as terrifying. I am struck by the fact that it is surprising. a year ago I would have thought myself too arrogant to have had any thoughts for a superior to carry me through the hardest paths.