Dad – Page 2 – …All my darkest hours talking like this…

Road movie to Berlin

I took a family reunion trip last week. I drove for eight hours to get there. The cliche is that road trips “Give me time to think” but the truth is more like it makes my escapist daydreams become real.

What kind of escape was it? Certainly not an escape from ghosts.

I went straight to the oldest living relatives in my family and spoke with them about my past, present and future. Specifically, they wanted to talk about my Dad’s past relationship with me; part out of loving concern for me, part because they miss him. The case can certainly be made that they are now the only people who could do anything like speak on my father’s behalf.

Really? You are not done blaming your Dad yet? Really!
No, its not like that…. or, heck, maybe it is? My hermeneutic of suspicion is poor.

Point is: They didn’t try to answer for him, but they did help me understand the things he said to his own family about his own life, which included his son (me) who he loved but who broke his heart by siding with his mother. They described his anger, which consumed him and destroyed him. They were traumatized by it, and saddened by it.

Inevitably, they spoke about the War. After the war, soldiers are supposed to leave the front. Some go back to the barracks, some go home. But because my Dad was a child when war took his mother, where was there to go? His whole life, he was like the solider who could never stop fighting the war.

For me, it felt like a breakthrough, and an escape from the infinite loop narrative that I tell myself about my life and history.

So it was a real escape, and not just a daydream.

NOW, Lyrics :

We were once so close to heaven
That Peter came out and gave us medals
Declaring us the nicest of the men
Time won’t mourn our loss
It’ll just sweep up out skeleton bones
So take the wheel and I will
Take the pedals

Which describes how you’re feeling all the feeling all the time

Conversation with my 8 year old son:

Dad: if a tree falls in the forest but no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?

Son: of course

Dad: but how can that be? Doesn’t a sound require someone to hear it?

Son: No. If you have a box with a light inside of it and no light could escape, but the switch was on the outside and you turn it on, then the light is on. Somebody seeing it has nothing to do with anything. Same in the forest.

Dad: good boy.

This is the sort of rational and clear epistemological certainty that I admire and am jealous of.

Here are the lyrics:

Which describes how you’re feeling all the time
Which describes how you’re feeling all the
Feeling all the time
There’s this guy in the sky and he makes you want to
Want to make you sigh, like the time
When you felt like you’re feeling all the time
And you sighed at the cracks in the ceiling all the time
You said “I’m feeling fine” but it didn’t really rhyme
It didn’t rhyme, overseas

Which describes how you’re feeling all the time

It describes how you’re feeling

Which describes how you’re feeling all the time
When you lie that your life’s unappealing all the time
But your lie doesn’t rhyme with the word overseas
Overseas there’s this guy
Who describes how you’re feeling all the time
In his mind he can find how you’re feeling all the time
From behind distant lines
Even straighter than his spine
Which is fine
Which is fine
And describes how you’re feeling all the time

I Palindrome I (and the Book of Job)

So I got the job and start Monday. That’s good news. It makes whether I passed the bar less important and will more or less mark the end of an extended period of transition.

I was also made a deacon at my church here in New York. I’m not sure what that has to do with anything but as I was driving home last night thinking about what God has called me to do and to what extent I felt like I was not equal to the mission. I thought about two other things:

#1 As I was registering my kids for summer camp, I somehow managed to get out that it was important to “Let go and let God” fill your need. This is such a familiar and popular Christian aphorism that it risks becoming akin to “have a nice day.” But then she went in for the kill, “God is the one telling you that you can do it. It’s the other telling you all the ways you will fail and filling you with doubt.” Really? I thought it was me. “No, it sounds like you but that’s the trick. You should read Job.” It’s my favorite book. “Job was living a perfect life until the questioner decided to start causing problems.” This was a truly startling theological position: essentially that doubt is the anathema of faith [that part’s not radical] and is demonic in nature. Furthermore that Job is about the destructiveness of doubt. This isn’t exactly all that different from how I read Job, but its a very different focus.

So if you are just tuning in. Job is a book in the Old Testament which is not about an Isrealite, rather it is a folklore legend that had been circling around the region and was adopted into the scriptures because of its spiritual and moral importance. Under the legend, Once upon a time in the land of Uz. Job was the most righteous man ever. He never broke any of God’s laws and this pleased God and he was very successful. But then one day the question arose, “It’s easy to be righteous and prosperous. Would Job be so righteous if his life was terrible?”

Job losses all of his property. Job’s children all die. Job remains righteous as ever. Job develops a horrible case of impetigo and is covered in boils. Job remains righteous. What happens next is what I usually latch on to:

Three of Job’s friends (Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar) come out to condemn Job. Each of these friends represents a line of theological argument which Hebrew scholars were rebuking through this legend.

Eliphaz stands for the idea that good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people, ergo Job must have done something bad. Eliphaz meekly suggests that Job is just trying to keep his sin a secret. In fact, Job has not sinned and says so.

There is a whole line of scholarship that then goes on to compare Job and Jesus, but let’s not go there. Ok… maybe just for a moment, but lets keep it brief: Job’s lack of sin is just to keep the story straight and the nature of Job’s lack of sin was that Job had observed every law set down by God. No prohibited conduct, all required acts performed. In comparison, Jesus’ lack of sin is intrinsic to his divine nature. Back to the story…

The theological point made through Job’s response to Eliphaz is condemnation of the assumption that somehow a secret sin invited calamity to befall a person who was apparently good. Psychologically, the Hebrew theologians were also addressing our secret grudge against a person who seems too good to be true. In any event, bad stuff happens to good people… and its not a punishment for sin.

Bildad represents the theological argument that bad things happen because we aren’t orthodox enough. Specifically, Bildad says “Please inquire of past generations, And consider the things searched out by their fathers.” (Job 8:8) The Hebrew theologians are condemning the idea that the cause of calamity can always be traced back to having strayed from a traditional interpretation the law of God. Also being challenged is the idea that everything there is to know about God was discovered by our ancestors. Not true. The causes of calamity may be complex, and there are new terrors and catastrophes which await humanity with every sunrise. So… you’ve got that to look forward to.

Zophar represents the tragically errenous theology that no man can ever profess not to deserve God’s punishment all the time and to say otherwise was itself sin. Zophar’s argument is tough, at first, because confessing that one is broken, sinful, and prideful is merely the acknowledgment of being human. Moreover, no one can ever be righteous enough to truly “earn” grace. But here’s the thing: Zophar’s argument fully articulated reveals an underlying assumption that our very existence invites God’s wrath. That’s the tragic misunderstanding. But here’s some Good News: God doesn’t resent humanity! God loves his creation; all creation.

Where was I going with this? Let’s get back to the story, and maybe I will remember…

Job rejects all of the arguments posed by his friends. But being right didn’t ease his suffering. The enduring nature of his miserable condition fills him with doubt and despair… making him contemplate suicide. He is tempted to curse God and end it all. He doesn’t curse God, but he does finally cry out, “Why is this happening to me?”

…

The lady I met basically forgave Job for that. The devil overcame Job’s strength, and made Job wail. Doubt doesn’t come from within, it comes from without.

I was stunned. Frankly, I never it saw it that way. It’s somewhat more merciful of a position in that it stops you from beating yourself up for beating yourself up.

#2. I was thinking about my marriage and my parents. My father died within a few weeks of my wedding. My mother died a few weeks subsequent to my divorce. The symmetry leads me to lyrics:

See the spring of my grandfather clock unwinding. See the hands of my offspring making windmills. And I am a snake head eating the head on the opposite side.