First United Methodist Church, Birmingham, Michigan
Scripture: Jeremiah 20 (selected verses)
November 23, 1997
There was a story that first appeared in a newspaper in Galveston, Texas about a woman and her parakeet named “Chippie.” It seems that the woman was cleaning Chippie’s cage with a canister vacuum cleaner, the kind that has one of those long suction tubes onto which you put the various attachments. On this particular occasion, she was cleaning the bottom of the cage with no attachments on the tube, when the phone rang. You guessed it. At the precise moment she was saying “hello” into the mouthpiece, she was listening to the horrible sound of something being sucked into the vacuum. That something was Chippie.
She immediately put down the phone, ripped open the vacuum bag and found Chippie inside, stunned but still alive. Since the bird was covered with dust and soot, she grabbed it, ran into the bathroom, turned on the faucet, and held the bird under a full stream of water in order to clean it off. When she finished, she spotted her hair dryer on the bathroom sink. Turning it on, she held Chippie in front of the blast of hot air, the better to dry him off.
Somehow that story began to make the rounds until it finally caught an editor’s ear at the local newspaper office. It must have been a very slow news day in Galveston, because they sent a reporter to do a follow-up. After confirming all of the aforementioned details, the reporter concluded the interview by asking: “How’s Chippie doing now?” “Well,” she said, “Chippie doesn’t seem physically any the worse for wear. But he doesn’t sing much anymore. He just sort of sits there and stares.”
And who could blame him? I know the feeling. So do you. We’ve all experienced something like that. Life treats us kind of rough, ruffling our feathers a bit, to the point where we don’t feel much like singing either.
And when the song goes, so does our confidence. We never sit quite so easy in the saddle again. For if we have been thrown once, we can be thrown again. It leads us to view the future with what Cameron Murchison calls “a pervasive agnosticism.” Chippie knows the feeling, which is why he stares rather than sings.
And some never get past that. The “roughing up” they experience leads to anger and bitterness. Life is cruel. Life is unfair. I didn’t ask for this. I don’t deserve this. The Danish philosopher, Soren Kierkegaard, once described a man who lived his life as if he were a typographical error. “Look at me,” he cried to the world at large. “Look at God’s great mistake. I am living proof that God neither catches nor rectifies every error….every omission….every wrong.”
That anger can also lead to despair. Moments ago, I served you a slice of one of the great Hebrew prophets. His name was Jeremiah. And before his life was history, he both said and did some amazing things. But Jeremiah also had a tendency to get horribly down on himself….on everyone else….on life in general….and on God in particular. Listen, again, to a bit of chapter 20.
A curse on the day I was born,
On the day my mother bore me,
On the man who brought my father the news.
Why did that man not kill me in the womb,
So that the womb would have been my tomb?
Why did I ever come out to live in toil and sorrow,
And to end my days in shame?
That’s more than just “a pervasive agnosticism about the future.” That’s a pervasive regret about the past. The Jeremiah who spoke those words did not just sit and stare. He lamented.
To be sure, not everyone turns to anger and despair. Some turn to fatalism. Wendell Berry tells the story of the baptism of King Aengus by none other than St. Patrick (some time in the middle of the fifth century). During the baptism, St. Patrick leaned on his sharp-pointed staff and inadvertently stabbed the king’s foot. After the baptism was over, Patrick looked down at all the blood. Realizing what he had done, he begged the king’s forgiveness. “Why did you suffer in silence?” said Patrick to his king. The king replied: “I thought it was a part of the ritual.”
And many people still think that way. They think that pain is part of the ritual….that the inadvertent stabbings of life go with the territory….and that there is no use saying anything to the priests, because they are merely the dealers of a hand that God has already stacked against them.
Norman Cousins talks about being sent to a tuberculosis sanitarium at the age of ten. Terribly frail and underweight, he quickly discerned that his fellow patients divided themselves into two groups. One group consisted of those who were confident they would beat the disease, while those in the other group resigned themselves to a prolonged and even fatal illness. Cousins notes that the optimistic ones quickly became good friends and had little to do with the others who resigned themselves to the worst. Then he adds: "When newcomers arrived on the floor, we did our best to recruit them before the bleak brigade could go to work.”
And make no mistake about it, the “bleak brigade” is out there….for us, even as it was for him. But listen to what Cousins says next:
Even at the age of ten, I became aware that the boys in my group had a far higher percentage of “discharged as cured” outcomes than the kids in the other group. And the lessons I learned about “hope” in that sanitarium played an important role in my recovery then….and in my feelings since….about the preciousness of life.
Don’t miss the irony in that. For in the aftermath of being roughed up by illness….in a sanitarium where it is probably easier to stare than sing….and while fending off the boys of the “bleak brigade”….Cousins came to the realization that life was incredibly precious, and ought always be enjoyed for the gift that it is.
As many of you know, Bruce Hayden is a fan of Bernie Siegel and has taught a course on Siegel’s book Love, Medicine and Miracles. What you probably do not know is the degree to which Siegel has built on Norman Cousins’ work, especially as concerns his involvement with a group that he calls “Exceptional Cancer Patients.” They are deemed exceptional, not because of their medical prognosis, but because of the quality of self that they bring to the fight. Writes Siegel:
To find out whether you have the outlook of an exceptional patient, ask yourself a simple question. Do you want to live to be a hundred? In our Exceptional Patients Group, we have found the answer to be an immediate and visceral “Yes.”
He goes on to say that most of us will answer that question with a qualified “Yes,” but seldom with a visceral one. We will say: “Of course I’d like to be a hundred….
· if you can guarantee I’ll be healthy.”
· if you can guarantee I won’t be alone.”
· if you can guarantee I won’t outlive my savings.”
I can understand that. If someone were to ask me about the attractiveness of celebrating my one hundredth birthday, I’d attach all of those qualifications and probably add one or two more. But “exceptional patients” know that life comes with no guarantees. Yet they are willing to accept the risks as well as the challenges. They do not fear external events. They know that happiness is an inside job.
Obviously, there is nothing magical about reaching the century mark. Obviously, nobody wants to hang on, merely for the sake of hanging on. Obviously, most of us will reach a point where life’s “preciousness” has been so compromised by loss of mind or function, that letting go will seem like an act of faith rather than an act of surrender. But when “exceptional patients” let go, it is not out of fear, so much as fatigue. Exceptional people go out, not as frightened lambs, but as tired lions.
The people who want to reach one hundred are not blind to life’s circumstances. Neither are theyunrealistic about life’s pitfalls. They have simply chosen to take life as it comes without holding out for better terms. What does that mean? It means they know that life, itself, is the gift….not the better terms.
Many of you know Rick Lange. For a number of years, Rick served as the scoutmaster of our church-sponsored troop. And last week, Rick’s wife, Barb, was in charge of feeding us so magnificently. But I doubt that any of you know Rick’s great aunt, Helen Ewbanks. Helen is the matriarch of one of the proud old families of Albion. She still lives in her home near the campus, although she summers at Bayview. At 93, she is slowing down some, but is still an amazing lady. Which I can echo in spades.
When I was lecturing at Bayview, she listened to me every day. You can literally see the gears move in Helen’s mind, so keen and exciting is her intellect. She knows she has had a good ride. And she knows it won’t last forever. As the hymn suggests, “time like an ever rolling stream bears all its sons away”….and then doubles back for its daughters. On the day my lectures were complete, she said: “I hope they get you back here….soon.” Then, knowing that she exposed the issue of her own mortality, she added (with sparkling eyes): “I’ve lived long enough to see the comet at the beginning of the century and, again, at century’s end. The next time it returns, I won’t be around to see it. But look up. I’ll be the one riding its tail.”
People like Helen are walking acts of praise. Because they live it, they don’t necessarily have to sing it or say it. But most of them do anyway, because their enjoyment spontaneously overflows in thanks and praise.
Well, you say, that comes easy when life always smiles on you. Helen Ewbanks, for example, will be the first to admit that she needs a computer to count her many blessings. But I would couple her testimony with that of another Helen, who can count her blessings on a hand and a half. That’s because her hands are severely crippled (along with the rest of her body). But in surveying the acreage of her life from the sclerotic wreckage of her twisted frame, she was once heard to say: “I wouldn’t have missed ‘being’ for anything.”
If only these two old Helens could teach the young….especially those (among the young) who reach the point where they can no longer see life’s beauty through its burden.
Two weeks ago we gathered on a Monday afternoon….700 strong….shoehorning ourselves into every nook and cranny of this sanctuary. We came to say good-bye to, and prayers for, Maggie Roberts….done (at age 22) much too soon….and dead (of her own hand) much too tragically. As you know, the landscape of such a service is hard for me, but certainly not strange to me, having walked it (as the old song says) from both sides now.
In preparing my sermon, I talked with Matt and Jane and Doug, along with Maggie’s sisters, Darrah and Charlotte. During the course of those conversations, they told me many things. But one thing they told me was not to skirt the cause of Maggie’s death, or sugarcoat the pain of Maggie’s choice. They told me that there would be a lot of young people at Maggie’s service…. some of whom would be confused…. some of whom would be troubled….and a few of whom would be every bit as fragile as Maggie had been. Then they said: “Don’t let any of those kids walk away thinking that Maggie’s death was good, or that Maggie’s choice was (in any conceivable way) glamorous.”
So I looked at those kids and said something like this: “While we can derive some comfort from the fact that Maggie is now free (and she had a lot to be free from), as a freedom movement, hers was more tragic than heroic….certainly not the kind that gives rise to folk songs in the caberet or parades in the street. While her choice of death is certainly understandable, it is far from applaudable.”
My friends, whatever the circumstances of our living, we are not supposed to look a gift life in the mouth.
Annie Dillard writes: “I would like to imagine that the dying pray, at the last, not ‘please’ but ‘thank you’….simply for the privilege of having been invited to the party.”
In one sense, I understand that image. For Kris and I often leave Saturday night wedding receptions early so that I can appear bright-eyed and moderately-intelligent by 8:15 on Sunday mornings. And just before leaving, we cruise the hall (dodging the dancers), seeking out our host and hostess to thank them for the privilege of being there.
But while that image speaks to me, I find one small part of it uncomfortable. My problem, you see, is not with thanking the host. My problem is with leaving the party early. So if it’s all right with you, I’ll thank the Host now….later….today….tomorrow….daily….continually…. whatever. But if it’s all right with the Host, I’d prefer to stick around.
