March 2019 – A Thread You Follow

Forever Neverness

It appears to be a fact, unavoidable, hard and sharp, that grief, the intimate and ever-present dull throb that is a song’s note or a spoken word’s or a who-knows-what-the-next-trigger-will-be-moment away from pouring out as tears, is deeper and more difficult in the second year. It has been nine months since Sydney’s death. I guess I am three month’s ahead of schedule.

The tears of sadness that have fallen since June 9, 2018 appear to have worn away, drip by drip by each slow roll down my face, a lining that wrapped – and maybe protected – my sense of self in the midst of All That Is, like the dripping of water over stone. The image presents itself as a dark comedy with the demonic chortling gleefully and saying, “Funny how you thought your sense of self, the I that looks out from behind yourself, your very consciousness, could be the most fundamental part of who you are, inviolate.” An absurd notion which took only tears to erode.

Love has been unable to protect me from Loss. The idea that deep sadness is the result of a great and abiding love is troubling, false in my mind, and ultimately, is an overly simplistic consolation. “You grieve deeply because you loved deeply, Eric.” Oh, that explains it! NOT…

Just wait until those tears wear through the Grief of Loss so that the Grief of Neverness lays bare and throbbing and so painfully dull.

In his profoundly deep and moving Lament For A Son Nicholas Wolterstorff writes, “It’s the neverness that is so painful. Never again to be here with us – never to sit with us at table, never to travel with us, never to laugh with us, never to cry with us, never to embrace us…never to see…(a) sister marry. All the rest of our lives we must live without him (her). Only our death can stop the pain of his (her) death. A month, a year, five years – with that I could live. But not this forever….One small misstep and now this endless neverness.”

I will never share a donut in the morning with Sydney again. Yes, I have the memory of Sydney’s early childhood donut-eating technique where she would face plant and eat the donut from icing on down. Should a Memory of the Past be enough to buttress me against the Neverness of the Future? Sydney, Corinne and I used to chant “Donuts! Donuts! Donuts!” on our frequent trips to Marsh Supermarket to start our daily adventures. Though the memory of those moments is strong, the joyful, expectant and hungry cry is faint now.

The neverness of ever eating donuts with Syd again even pulls up a chair at the kitchen table this morning while Bay and I enjoy the latest and greatest yeast donut to show up in the Noblesville area courtesy of Rebellion Donuts. Balyn. Me. Neverness. I did buy four donuts this morning, initially thinking, two for Bay and two for me. Now, though, four has a different meaning. One for me. One for Bay. One for Corinne. And one for the Neverness of Sydney.

Wolterstorff writes, “When we gather now there’s always someone missing, his (her) absence as present as our presence…When we’re all together, we’re not all together.”

Welcome to Forever Neverness-Land! Where tears are always welcome and donuts are always eaten…

Do You Know the Muffin Man?

Today is Ash Wednesday in the Christian calendar. The beginning of the Season of Lent. Forty days to Easter Sunday – not counting Sundays.

I am glad Ash Wednesday (and Lent) is making a comeback in the Protestant world after being neglected, disabused and condemned by our Protesting and Reforming Foreparents some 500 years ago. I have written many Ash Wednesday reflections, preached a few sermons and conducted numerous Lenten Season Studies. In this thread I am going to do something a bit different than offer up a scripture passage and encourage believers to repent – whatever that may look like.

Instead, three things…

What is the hardest part of preparing for the evening’s Ash Wednesday service as a pastor? Remembering where you stored the few palm fronds you saved from the previous year’s Palm Sunday. Why? The ashes that are placed on one’s forehead on Ash Wednesday are traditionally made from the palms of last year’s Palm Sunday. I remember one cold Ash Wednesday morning outside the office door of the church warming my hands over a little fire of dried palm leaves burning in a coffee can. Add a little olive oil to the crushed ashes created with a mortar and pestle and, ta da, ash soup for application on foreheads.

This Ash Wednesday morning I have no service to prepare for as I am not in the church business at this time. Rather, I will be a participant at a service tonight at St. Peter’s United Church of Christ in Carmel. I find myself remembering the act of the imposition of ashes on countless foreheads. It is a simple ritual. Dip the side of my thumb in a little bowl that contains the ashes. Draw a cross with my thumb on the forehead of the person before me. Speak the words. “Repent and be made whole” or “Remember that you are from dust and to dust you will return.” So many upturned faces. Faces serious. With tears. A bit of a smile. Some fear. Friends. Strangers. It is quite a privilege. To touch a person in a worship setting. Remind her or him that she or he is going to die.

To celebrate Ash Wednesday this year I made Chocolate Chip Muffins early in the morning! For my birthday last week one of my thoughtful and gracious co-workers gave me 750 best muffin recipes by Camilla V. Saulsbury. (He did so because every week for the last few years I have been making and bringing in to work my now famous Blueberry or Banana Nut Muffins.) I have never made Chocolate Chip Muffins because I never really cared for them – preferring instead that those ingredients be delivered to my mouth through a cookie. Now, though, I have an interesting recipe. What better muffin to make for the day that begins the Season of Lent? Give up chocolate!?!

When Wealth – in $’s – Is Not Enough…

Is it possible to hold together in the same place, i.e. in my mind, the abhorrence of wealth with the dreams of how I might spend the $350,000,000 that I am going to win tonight at 10:59 EST? Closely related to this conundrum is the question, How much is too much?

I scratch my head when economists, politicians and others proclaim that all persons should make a living wage of $15 an hour when they themselves make far more than that and can make very comfortable declarations from very comfortable surroundings about an issue where they would never make any sacrifice of ANY of their comfort to have such an economic boon to many come to pass. While I am glad my employer took the step to encourage the rest of the business world to move to a starting wage of $15 an hour, I know that this publicity stunt didn’t cost Amazon.com much at all. Human Resources got together with Accounting in order to rob Peter to pay Paul. And I am Peter, having lost my annual stock options and my monthly bonus opportunities. I personally lost about $1,800 a year or $150 a month. A drop in the bucket when you make $17 an hour. Just 5% of my annual income. No big deal.

But, hey, now I am making the big bucks ($20.25 an hour) after the compensation “adjustments” and I guess I can pat myself on the back as I step along Moral High Road as it was ME who actually DID sacrifice so another person can make $15 an hour.

The real issue, though, is not hourly wages. The real issue is how much stuff costs. My $20.25 that I earned from 3:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. yesterday buys less than what it could buy in 1973. And, seriously, how many of a particular subset of my larger set of friends and acquaintances has tried to make do on $31,200 a year ($15 times 2,080 hours)? Good luck. Some callous folks might say, “Get a better job.” My reply is, “It already is a good job.” Remember when hourly wage folks in good jobs could have a house, a car, two kids, one dog and one cat and still hope to pay for medical bills and college tuition? (Hmmm. What were the marginal tax rates at that time, a time when roads and bridges weren’t crumbling and a human being stepped out onto the moon?)

I am one of the lucky ones. I can “live” off what I make because some big expenses are covered. I pretty much own my home. I have no debt. My daughter, like her two older sisters, has a chunk of change already devoted to her college expenses. My healthcare costs are ridiculously low thanks to working for a company where the average age of employees is pre-teen and therefore the pre-teens basically subsidize my more expensive getting older health care costs with their, “What’s a primary care physician?”, healthcare costs. AND, my life is made far more richer through the generosity of my parents. (Had to get that plug in…)

I can look at my economic situation and think pretty good about where I am at, though, in the following sense: I am doing what any loving parent would do for her/his children by going down the road of making less than my parents, before my children walk/work down that road. In other words, my daughters are of the generation that will be the first generation in our great America to make less than their parents, i.e. the generation that includes me. (Well, not me, because I don’t have a good job and really shouldn’t be thrown into the same strata as my socio-economic peers.) Like any good parent would, I am trailblazing and getting a sense of what The Land of Less looks like so that I will be able to more effectively help them through it. Of course that help will be more of the moral support help and not include much economic help.

And since I am on the topic of parental economic support, I will share why I have the antipathy I do towards wealth. My first job out of an elite university at an elite financial institution on LaSalle Street in Chicago was doing the investment accounting for a new subset of elite clients, the super-wealthy. Individuals and families with less than $250,000,000 need not apply. One of our accounts was a large set of family trusts where the beneficiaries of those trusts received their economic welcome into the family when they reached a particular age. There was quite a stir in the office in the time leading up to The Birthday Party as the family had quite a reputation for silly extravagance. We all wondered what would be splattered on the front cover of People Magazine and The National Enquirer as Junior began spending his money to celebrate his birthday at The Plaza Hotel in New York. There was no inexpensive game like Pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey at Junior’s party. And, as I accounted for one 7-figure wire after another to fund Junior’s lifestyle, my dislike and horror and outright loathing of wealth grew greater. Since that time I have held to the position that a 100% tax on estates over a certain dollar amount is the only way to counter this kind of obscenity (and economic power and control) that results from the pure luck of birth.

I DO recognize as a parent, though, that if I only dwell in the Land of Less I may be short-changing my daughters some important part of the human experience that could contribute to their development as loving and gracious human beings. Therefore, of the $350,000,000 that I win tonight, I pledge to pass along $174,500,000 to each daughter. What a party!