First United Methodist Church, Birmingham, Michigan
Scripture: I Thessalionians 5:12-19
Thirteen years ago, America was turned on to the subject of “spiritual formation” by psychologist M. Scott Peck and a best seller entitled “The Road Less Traveled.” Many of you read the book. The FLAME Class studied the book. I joined forces with Don Hadley, a local psychologist, to lead a nine-week exploration into the contents of the book, meeting around the Youth Room fireplace on Wednesday evenings. Don and I were reminiscing about that group yesterday while sitting in the rain with 106,000 other people at Michigan Stadium, watching a “Magic” show.
You will, perhaps, remember that the very first sentence of Peck’s book is but three words long: “Life is difficult.” Peck would claim that those three words are more important than all the rest of the chapters put together. For unless (and until) we master them, there is little possibility that we can become mentally healthy human beings. “Life is difficult.” That is the first great truth, Peck says. But many do not believe it. Instead, they moan about the enormity of their problems, their burdens, their difficulties, as if life were generally easy, and that (somehow) their life was an exception to the easy-life rule. Peck even concluded that paragraph with a personal confession, saying: “I know about such moaning because I have done more than my share.”
I continue to marvel at how obvious and trenchant Peck’s truth is. Life is difficult. It’s a rule. There is no such thing as an easy-life rule. No one lucks out. No one skims through. No one escapes unscathed. So when your life becomes more difficult than it has been on other occasions, it ought to bring you some measure of comfort to know that there is nothing unusual about this changed state of affairs. You have not been singled out. You have not been dumped on. Neither have you been pinpointed for dethronement from the state known as “easy existence.” There is no such state. Appearances suggesting otherwise are more illusory than normative.
With that truth established, it was only a matter of time before someone attempted to improve upon it. And it now appears that someone has. That someone is Robert Fulghum, who is fast becoming America’s favorite pop philosopher. Fulghum emerges from the pages of his newest book to suggest that life is not only difficult, but lumpy. And as with every idea that Fulghum advances, there is a story behind it that literally cries out to be heard.
Apparently, in the summer of 1959, Robert Fulghum took a job fresh out of college as the night desk clerk of a lodge in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of northern California. Like every 22-year-old fresh out of college, Bob Fulghum figured that he knew more about running a mountain resort than did the owner, an Italian-Swiss innkeeper, who managed the place with what Fulghum considered to be a certain Fascist flair for authority and discipline.
Clearly, owner and student failed to get along from day one. Fortunately, the owner was seldom around at night, and the student stayed out of his way by day. All remained tolerably stalemated until the “week of the weiners” came along. That was the week when lodge employees were served the exact same meal seven days running, a meal consisting of two weiners, one mound of sauerkraut and a stale roll. On Friday night of that awful week, Fulghum went into the kitchen to get a midnight snack, only to see a memo to the chef on the refrigerator door announcing yet two more days of the same employee menu.
Angry at such colossal insensitivity, our boy went back to the desk fuming and proceeded to unload his wrath on the only audience available, a solitary night-shift bookkeeper named Sigmund Wollman. But let Fulghum tell it.
I declared that I was quitting....that I had had it up to here....that I was going to get a plate of weiners and sauerkraut and go wake up the owner by throwing it on him.... that I was sick and tired of putting up with such crap, and who did he think he was anilyway_...that nobody could make., me eat weiners and sauerkraut’ nine days running when I didn’t even like weiners and sauerkraut and eating it was probably un-American in the first place and ought to be looked into ....and that it really made no difference anyway, given that the hotel stinks, the guests are idiots, the horses nags and the boss is a fool. So why wouldn’t it make more sense to pack my bags and head for Montana where they never heard of weiners and sauerkraut and wouldn’t feed it to pigs if they had.
On and on he raged, a good twenty minutes worth, punctuated by desk pounding, chair kicking and much profanity. All the while, Sigmund Wollman sait quietly on his stool, smoking a cigarette, looking (for all the world) like a sorrowful bloodhound in a coat and tie. As it turned out, Sigmund Wollman had good reason to look like a sorrowful bloodhound. Survivor of Auschwitz. Three years. German Jew. Thin. Consumptive. Coughed a lot. Probably screwed up on the insides for life. He liked working nights, where there was peace....quiet....freedom from hassle....an unending supply of weiners and sauerkraut (which he actually liked) and, most important, nobody around to tell him what to do. It was a death camp survivor’s dream, except that he had to put up with a 22-year-old who knew it all and didn’t care who he told. At the conclusion of the tirade, Sigmund Wollman said:
Fulchum, are you finished?
No, why?
Lisssen, Fulchum. Lisssen me. Lisssen good. You know what’s wrong mit you? It’s not weiners and kraut. It’s not the boss or the chef. And it’s not this job.
So what’s wrong with me?
Fulchum! You think you know everything. But you don’t know the difference between an inconvenience and a problem. If you break your neck. If you have nothing to eat. If your house is on fire. Then you’ve got a problem. Everything else is inconvenience. Life is inconvenient. Life is lumpy. Learn to separate inconveniences from problems. You will live longer. And you will not annoy people like me so much. Good night.
I find myself hoping that the conversation went exactly that way. Because, if it did, that has to be one of the great conversations of all time. That’s truth hitting you with the subtlety of a two-by-four.
For there are problems that are deep and vexing. And then there are inconveniences ....irritations.... annoyances.... lumps. Life is lumpy. Which mecans that it isn’t 4r.i’t smooth. But there Flit th,Pr,=, are lumps and there are lumps. There are lumps, as in the oatmeal. And there are lumps, as in the breast. One ought to be able to tell the difference, and respond accordingly.
Every one of us could illustrate this principle in spades. I will illustrate it by telling three stories. The stories will be followed by three points. Then we will all go home and thaw turkey. All three stories are less than a week old, really the only thing they have in common.
Story number one. It is late last Sunday afternoon. Kris sends me to buy eggs as Kroger. The parking lot is full. Hundreds of people must be out of eggs. I circle the lot until I spot an opening space. Notice that I did not say an open space, but an “opening” space. There’s a difference. I pull into it. Someone honks at me. That same someone rolls down a window, screams at me, and then salutes me (sort of). That someone is a she. Wondering what I have done to invoke her wrath, I suddenly realize that she (coming from the facing direction) was eyeing the very space I had just pulled into. So I backed out and gave it to her. I thought it would make her happy. It didn’t. She still glowered at me as if I were pond scum.
We had succeeded at irritating each other... I, by beating her to the space.... she, by failing to appreciate my gracious gesture of concession. I carefully avoid her by taking a short cut to the eggs. Two dozen grade A larges in hand, I approach the check out line.... the express check out line....which is backed halfway up the frozen food aisle. There must be thirty people in it. The lady in front of me must have 30 items in her basket. And a checkbook in her hand. In my boorish, younger days, I had been known to gently point such things out to such people. Now that I am older, I realize that no one died and appointed me God. So I stew silently.
Meditating on lumps in the fast lane, a neighbor pulls up behind me in line. I have seen him around. That is, I have seen him in the neighborhood.... not in church. He goes to a different church. He goes to a church pastored by a friend of mine. Which was where my neighbor was earlier that Sunday morning, when it was announced that his pastor (and my friend) had surrendered his ministerial credentials, that very weekend, in response to a deep and vexing ethical crisis. I swallowed hard as I felt my previous irritation melt slowly into insignificance.
Story number two concerns a girl who blames her mother for the fact that she is doing poorly in school. It is the mother’s fault because the mother will not buy her a car. If she had a car she could stay after school and get help from her teachers. Without a car she has to take the bus or catch a ride with her friends. Staying late and walking home is out of the question. It’s less than a mile from school to house. But only geeks walk. Her mother could pick her up forty five minutes late, but the girl doesn’t want to wait that long. Her mother could also take her in early. That way she could see her teachers before school. But she can’t wake up that fast. And even if she could, she’d hate to have her friends see her being driven by her mother.
Fortunately.... or perhaps unfortunately.... she is not related to the boy who went totally out of control the other day when his father showed up at school. Which may have been because there is good reason to believe that the boy is being sexually abused by that very same father. But, for all I know, the boy may have a car.
Story number three concerns Lomas Brown. Lomas is the gigantic left tackle of our stalwart Detroit Lions. Lomas did not play last week against the Rams. But he says that he will play this week against the Vikings. He will play, even though his shoulder (which has been paining him) has not improved all that much from one Sunday to the next. He will play, he says, because Mike Utley can’tcan’t ....ever .... again. Mike Utley is Lomas Brown’s running mate at offensive guard. Last week, Mike Utley broke his neck against the Rams. He will be a paraplegic for the rest of his natural life. Looking at Mike Utley, Lomas Brown figures that what Mike’s got is a problem. What he’s got is an inconvenience.
Life is lumpy. Not all lumps are the same lump. I like to think that I have a high tolerance for inconvenience.... that I don’t get irritated easily.... that I put up with a lot. But then something that is really quite minor will get to me. It will be one lump too many, causing me to choke on it. And after humoring me for awhile, Kris will play Sigmund Wollman to my Robert Fulghum, saying something like: “Ritter, it’s no big deal.” Sometimes this is all it takes to heal me. But 4 sometimes she just adds more fuel to my fire, especially if I have not reached the point where I am not willing to surrender to her the right to decide between the big deals and small deals of my life.
Which leads me to point number one. The best way to get a healthy perspective on life is to look at the big picture. And you can’t see the big picture if you’re standing in the middle of it. Young Robert Fulghum allowed his irritations to become his world. Then, when they became his world, he couldn’t see anybody else in it....including Sigmund Wollman.
I think therapy is a marvelous thing. I wish I had the skill and the time to be a crackerjack therapist. Yet one danger of the therapeutic process is that in encouraging you to give voice to everything that happens in your life (what you did....what you said....what was done and said to you....and how you felt about it all), you become the center of a very closely examined universe. And when the therapist suggests that there is nothing too small or too insignificant to mention, there is danger in thinking that every piece of life’s data is of equal magnitude. It’s not, of course. And good therapy will help sort out the major deals from the not-so-major deals. But I sometimes think that if people spent one hour working in a soup kitchen for every hour spent in a therapist’s office, such lessons might be hastened, and a better self might be found in the process.
Point number two focuses specifically upon gratitude and the spirit of the season. If you believe that the only life worth being thankful for is a smooth one, then you probably aren’t going to find many occasions for giving thanks. The fact that oatmeal has lumps in it does not preclude its ability to nourish. Which is equally true of weiners, sauerkraut, and most other things. The Apostle Paul, in scripture’s most famous line about gratitude, tells the Thessalonians that they should “give thanks in all circumstances.” That line is sometimes translated: “In everything, give thanks.” It doesn’t mean that you are supposed to feel equally good about everything, especially the bad stuff. Life does not lack for bad stuff. But in the midst of that which is unneeded, unwanted and unhelpful, you need to find those things that are sufficiently sweet, so that even the terrible taste left by the rest cannot diminish the sweetness. In the midst of life’s general lumpiness, you need to ask yourself what (or who) is so lovely and precious, so as to bring a lump to your throat when you speak of them (or to them) about what they mean to your life.
Point number three follows. In this world, where none of us are going to get out alive, how many hours are you going to allow inconveniences to commandeer from what may be the precious few you have left? Some of the lumps in you r can kill you. But not every lump should be given that opportunity. When Sigmund Wollman said to his young friend, “Learn to separate the inconveniences from the real problems, and you will live longer,” he was speaking more truth than he knew.
There is a line, only vaguely remembered, from a Neil Diamond song, that reads: “Pity the poor ones, the shy and unsure ones, who wanted it perfect, but waited too long.” I think I remembered that line all 5 these years, because I know that life will never be perfect. Troubles will come. Lovers will disappoint. Friends will fail. Illness will cut you down to size. And always, there will be lumps in the gravy of life that cannot be strained out or filtered away. Life is difficult. Smoothness is elusive. Yet don’t wait too long for what may never be and, in the process, miss what is. Learn to give thanks.... in all circumstances.
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