Thoughts for the Week—July 2008
Thought for the Week: 7/14/08—We Poseurs
“Isn’t he the most awful poseur,” my friend said to me about another fellow we both knew. I probably looked blank, which probably
passed for a “yes,” and the conversation went ahead. That was fortunate, because when it was over the next thing I had to do was go look
for a dictionary.
“Poseur” = poser, one who poses as something other than he really is; a pretender. From the French. Never was much on French. That’s
why I liked Master and Commander.
Problem with my colleague’s criticism is, we are all that. We pose as good, civilized, decent, respectable, nice people—which is fortunate
for civilization, since if everyone knew what we were really like deep down inside we would all be living in caves by ourselves. (You just
thought Hugh Magers was the only Calvinist you knew…) I rather like what the philosopher Immanuel Kant said, “Hypocrisy is the
courtesy that Vice pays to Virtue.” At one level, we have to thank God there are so many of us pretenders.
But sometimes you have to stop pretending, and that is when you get in trouble.
If we start acting like we are actually feeling and thinking, then eventually the lawman will have to put us away. If we start believing we
really are like we pretend to be, the psychiatrist will have to put us away (or, worse, they will elect us to public office). If we don’t start
acting like we really are, the mortician will have to put us away. “Who,” Paul said, “will save me from this body of death?”
So something has to give. We have to be who we really are, but who we are has to really change. From the inside out. The first step is
admitting it. The second and harder step is asking for help. The amazing thing is that help will come—in big ways and small. And the
experience of that help will change everything in us and outside.
Poses are for corpses. Live folks move and run and dance and live. Take whatever help you need: but start the dance we call Grace.
And live!
*** No column was produced for the week of 7/7/08 ***
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Thought for the Week: 7/21/08—Adventurers
An adventure is what you decide it is.
Some of us may have Vikings or pirates of the Caribbean for ancestors, but most of us seem to have been leading pretty secure and placid
lives. At least by comparison with a lot of the world: food in the fridge, some money in the bank, still some gas in the car, war a distant fret
and frustration rather than a bursting IED in the street outside. Not a bad deal, really. We are blessed, and often not nearly thankful
enough for it.
To the contrary, we often chafe because life seems too confined, predictable… and maybe we have even given in to the juvenile in all of us
and said it out loud: “Boring.”
The answer to that, methinks, is not to go off on a wild jaunt. That way lies the dark paths of middle-aged (or more) Crazy, red Jaguars
you can’t afford, and much more hazardous creatures best not mentioned.
The healing of the mid-life (or mid-day) monster of boredom and envy is in the discovery that true adventure is in the ordinary. Not the
ordinary endured, but the ordinary consecrated. Made holy by the discovery that when we step up to the vision our God has of who we
are and what we are called to be, worlds are born and new universes burst into reality.
Sure, we can glom along, appearing to do the same old thing. But if we know that our same old thing is the stuff of revolution in the lives of
those around us, the subversion of the Old Wicked World, and the high and secret service of the True King and his coming, blessed new
world—that is adventure.
Be radical. Do something kind to somebody who doesn’t deserve it. Be gentle to a postal worker who snips at you. Find a good way to
be outrageously generous. Scare the Devil. It will taste like Heaven. For there is the home of the only real Adventure.
Thought for the Week: 7/28/08—New Faces
Can you remember your first day at school?
I’m not sure I can, but I have some vague recollections. More a jumble of feelings and images than memories. It helps that the teacher
went to my church, and I stayed in touch with her for many years after, so I have that face to remember. It’s a pleasant memory.
But I am sure it was the new faces, all the new faces, that were the tingle of excitement and the tremor of fear that are the feelings I do
remember that first day at Dean Highland School. Those are what stick with you and imprint on you, even when you can’t bring back the
details of the faces to the mind’s eye, 50+ years on.
As we get older it is harder to meet new people, or new experiences, or new ideas. It’s like we fill up our brains, as though there were just
so much room in there for names and faces and hopes and dreams.
Here is something I know from the oldest people I know I would call successful at the task of living one of the few real secrets of
happiness is to never lose your ability to meet new people and add them to the circle you call “Friends.” If that ability ceases, the ability to
live withers quickly in its wake. Hearts can never overload on love.
Even more is that true for families, and groups, and especially for churches of the people who call Jesus Messiah and whom he calls his
friends. The key to a live church is the ability to constantly think about all we do in terms of what it means to those who are not yet part of
our company. Our inside exists to serve those outside. We lose face if we do not embrace the new face.
“The Church is the only society in the world which exists
for the sake of those who are not members of it.”
William Temple (Archbishop of Canterbury, 1942-44)