The Ruins of America 2-14-11

Anderson, South Carolina

For forty years it’s been my great joy to travel the world, collecting images out of time; ancient cathedrals, castle ruins, remnants of Roman temples, Mayan pyramids, the laminated tells of long-forgotten civilizations. There’s perverse pleasure to be had in cataloging the detritus of lost worlds. An admixture of curiosity, wonderment, bewilderment, even great sadness and lament washes over me. One cannot but experience melancholy when viewing the likes of Hiroshima at ground zero. What a waste, literally and figuratively.

Psychologists have long recognized the ability of humans to compartmentalize their minds, to safely store toxic experience and memories in hidden recesses of the psyche. Victor Frankl gained fame for his development of logo therapy, articulating methods for coping with life in Nazi death camps in his compelling Man’s Search for Meaning. Zbigniew Drecki’s graphic and stunning Freedom and Justice: Spring from the Ashes of Auschwitz provides a vivid portray of his coping skills in man-made hell. I’ve coped with intensely toxic environments in my own particular way, especially when it comes to cataloging evidence of natural disaster and man’s incivility to mankind.

When getting off a jet in Miami after a journey to Haiti’s Port Au Prince, it’s easy to safely upload intense sensory images into archival storage and move on with my happy life. I have the separation, the compartmentalization of five hours of airtime between my affluent American dream and Haitian reality. While grappling with horrific images of Hitler’s holocaust when walking along the Arnhem River, I know I can tuck tail and flee for twelve hours by jet to the cozy safety of my suburban American trance. There’s no shortage of cognitive dissonance for me when deplaning after long-distance travel to dangerous places on the State Department’s top-ten ‘avoid’ list. Yet, somehow the dissonance dampens and I get on with the happy illusions of my life. Time and distance heal my discomfiture.

Viewing battlefields is not so bad when one has the separation of five centuries from Cromwell’s mayhem or five thousand miles and six decades from Hitler’s havoc. A combination of time and distance provides an illusion of safety. What does one do when neither time nor distance is sufficient to maintain a mirage of safety, when the ruins of civilization are walking distance from one’s nice suburban house?

Recently I was given links to videos cataloging the destruction and loss of Highland Park, Michigan. It once had the highest per-capita income in America; was the fastest growing city in the world, and boasted the highest-rated public schools in North America. Highland Park and nearby Detroit are being held up to the world as haunting icons of the death of a way of life. Now described as the world’s largest ghetto, it’s inconceivable an alloy of greed, violence, drug addiction, and economic and political misconduct of the highest order could render such an astonishingly bleak landscape of cannibalized dreams, looking like Hiroshima’s ground zero in 1945. Only this time there’s no combination of time and distance to dampen my angst. It’s entirely too close to home.

For some days I’ve had a hard time letting go of images of our American heartland, a place where new public policy includes simply running a battalion of bulldozers across cities, burying them, and withdrawing public services, because public coffers have been bled dry. We learned too well from Haiti’s experience under Papa Doc and his son, Baby Doc, who just returned to the Haitian tragedy.

I suggested to the one sending me these links Detroit’s experience is anything but unique. Just ask refugees from New Orleans, South Florida, or Camden, New Jersey, if they know anything about the death of cities. The one challenging my assertion told me his city of nearly 500,000 does not have a single abandoned building. Refuting his claim, I suggested even my little town of 28,000 has a huge inventory of abandoned buildings and burn outs. For two days I went out with cameras to document this all-too-close reality.

Within walking distance of my suburban house I cataloged an astonishing array of ruins, everything from abandoned department stores, rail lines, malls, textile mills, hardware stores, mill houses, even nice suburban houses. In a three-mile span I cataloged approximately two and a half million square feet of residential, commercial, and industrial property under roof now abandoned, burned out, or offered for sale for decades. Two miles further out is another 1.5 million square feet under roof in two dozen buildings. At one time these hundreds of buildings on perhaps a thousand acres employed twenty thousand people. They now provide sporadic shelter for homeless addicts.

Astonishingly, many of the most haunting ruins, open to the weather for decades, are in immediate proximity to downtown. I wonder how it is we spend $100 for an upscale dinner only three hundred feet from ruins of a way of life unknown to the present generation. In aureate sunlight of late afternoon I photographed terra cotta ruins from another lifetime, wondering why I don’t experience the same enchantment that comes with photographing Sicilian castles, why instead a low-grade anxiety laps at the edges of consciousness. Perhaps there’s not enough time and distance to create a mirage of safety.

In the evening while photographing the delightful interior of an intimate restaurant, I could not but wonder about the kinds of table service available to addicts living in moldy cellars of the abandoned department store across the street, to single mothers and infants living in frigid cellars of the roofless hardware store a block away, to the guy living on the abandoned rail platform below me. The images of terra cotta ruins were too fresh. Three hundred feet and two hours just don’t give enough separation for my impressionable brain which prefers denial. I wonder how it is our town was named an All-America City. I wonder who gets to participate in egalitarian images of the good life.

Moody Metrics Analytics, a research group, routinely conducts audits of the fiscal health of states and municipalities. Recent surveys revealed twenty-two municipalities across the country at special risk for financial default. My city made this ignominious list. Our one remaining public swimming pool was scheduled to be closed last month, a victim of poor public policy and planning. Perhaps it can be used as a landfill for the terra cotta ruins of downtown if we can ever afford to take them down.

The Old Testament writings of Nehemiah have long been held up as an example of transformation and renewal possible from the vision and dedication of a single man. While Nehemiah was in Susa, he heard the people in Jerusalem were in great distress, the walls collapsed, and the gates burned with fire. He sat down, wept and mourned for his city, fasting and praying for days. In his prayers he confessed, “We have acted very corruptly against thee and have not kept the commandments, nor the statutes.” Nehemiah petitioned the Lord to remember His promise to the people, “If you return to me and keep My commandments and do them, though those of you who have been scattered were in the most remote part of the heavens, I will gather them from there and will bring them to the place where I have chosen to cause My name to dwell.”

Nehemiah had the extraordinary courage to ask his king for permission to return to Judah and rebuild Jerusalem; even asking for access to the King’s forest. Nehemiah’s account is given to describing the victory that comes from returning to God, seeking His guidance, and trusting him during challenges and conflict. Jerusalem was restored. For twenty-five centuries his account has served as an inspiring example of what is possible when even one individual seeks God to perform the impossible.

One wonders what might be very different for American cities facing abandonment, and fiscal and social crisis. What would be possible for Detroit, Camden, New Orleans, even Anderson, if a battalion of visionaries plowed forward in prayer rather than bulldozers?

If my people who are called by my name humble themselves and pray, and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.

Perhaps one day, as in Nehemiah’s day, it can be said people gathered and offered great sacrifices and rejoiced because God had given them great joy and restored their cities.

Humility - Right Sizing Our Egos 2-6-11

Anderson, South Carolina

The story’s often told of an arrogant ship’s captain on a foggy night demanding another ship give way, believing he had the right of way. Repeatedly, the captain insisted through his radio operator the vessel before him yield to him, pulling rank, ad infinitum; how dare this anonymous voice in the night tell him what to do? Throughout the course of this conversation the voice in the night insisted the captain heed his commands. Eventually, the obstinate voice simply declared, “proceed at your own risk, lighthouse out.”

The all-time aviation disaster remains an event in the Canary Islands thirty-four years ago claiming the lives of more than five hundred eighty crew and passengers, on the ground. Two fully-loaded 747s collided on the runway when an impatient KLM commanding pilot refused to give heed to the insistent warnings of his co-pilot. This ‘celebrated’ event has been a management case-study for decades of system weaknesses that occur when ego is not checked in some fashion. Procedural changes since then allow junior officers and cabin crew to ‘get in the face’ of higher ups when it comes to matters of safety.

The world is presently watching a war of egos, one with potential to engulf the lives of hundreds of millions in a political economic maelstrom. One considered a despot by many observers refuses to give up his place of absolute power, despite the majority demanding he do so. Cairo has become an epicenter for unrest that threatens to ignite the Arab world in a domino-like destabilization of central governments. One only wonders, almost in awe, why one individual would risk the future welfare of a hundred million of his own citizens. One needs look no further than a tiny three letter word - ego. The same observation can be made of every totalitarian state. Ego proves to be more powerful than entire militaries.

Ego, run amok, is easily the most dangerous phenomenon on earth, causing more deaths and misery than any other force, as aptly described in a Canary Island editorial twenty years ago. Students of warfare will quickly concur in the major role of ego in fanning the torrid flames of conflict.

For some years I was in a state of profound neediness secondary to medical challenges. Over time it became clear my brothers were not interested in letting me too close to their centers of gravity. Unspoken was a fear I might remind them of the tenuous nature of life, that I might be as a flea-bitten stray cat looking for food and shelter, perhaps long-term. It actually did occur to me at one time to do exactly that; in a dysfunctional way indenture myself to one or both of their lives, trading my assets for some sort of informal custodial care. I never spoke this out loud but they got the drift very quickly. We have had the barest of contact over the decades.

In the course of time, I found resolution to my iatrogenic challenges and have moved on to a larger brighter place in life. The idea of indenturing myself to one of their lives now seems so remote, so preposterous. I have since been given a large life rich with meaning and purpose, one taking me around the world.

Both my brothers were recently diagnosed with life-threatening cancers. They admit neoplastic death was not on their “Bucket List” and submitted to quickly organized surgery and treatment. I had the audacity to think I could come from a position of strength and actually be useful to one or both of them, even thinking one or both of them might ask me to come out to their home cities to offer moral support. They did not ask. I only found out their state of affairs from Facebook or e-mail. I was not even in their loops. I cancelled a journey to Portland, in part, because I thought one of my brothers would like some moral support from me and I wanted to keep my schedule open.

For one struggling with the same ego issues as the KLM pilot or the naval captain in the north Atlantic, it was quite the lesson in humility to realize my brothers have no need or use of anything I might have offered them. They get on with their lives just fine, without me. Pressing me further into the lesson is realizing they also want me to get on with my life without them.

In the recovery literature, it’s clearly stated self-centeredness is the underlying cause of our problems in life. Ego and self-centeredness are nearly synonymous with each other. Recovery offers a way to overcome the slippery slope of ego run amok. Ego can destroy any of us with the same certainty it did in the Canary Islands.

Selfishness - self-centeredness! That, we think, is the root of our troubles. Driven by a hundred forms of fear, self-delusion, self-seeking, and self-pity, we step on the toes of our fellows and they retaliate. Sometimes they hurt us, seemingly without provocation, but we invariably find that at some time in the past we have made decisions based on self which later placed us in a position to be hurt. So our troubles, we think, are basically of our own making. We are examples of self-will run riot. We must be rid of this selfishness. God makes that possible. And there often seems no way of entirely getting rid of self without His aid. Many of us had moral and philosophical convictions galore, but we could not live up to them even though we would have liked to. Neither could we reduce our self-centeredness much by wishing or trying on our own power. We had to have God's help.

When we take the position of giving our will and lives over to the care of God as we understand him, we are then liberated from the tyranny of ego. I no longer have to fret because others have no need or want of me. I no longer have to become agitated or impatient because others are not doing what I want them to. I can rest in the assurance things are exactly as they are supposed to be in God’s world.

This is the how and why of it. First of all, we had to quit playing God. It didn't work. Next, we decided that hereafter in this drama of life, God was going to be our Director. He is the Principal; we are His agents. He is the Father, and we are His children. Most good ideas are simple, and this concept was the keystone of the new and triumphant arch through which we passed to freedom.

We moved from playing God with a God-sized ego to a place where we simply “sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.” We are liberated from the tyranny of ego run amok and are able to relax into the serenity of genuine humility, no longer having to pretend we are ten feet tall and bullet proof. As a dear friend of mine who is six eight in height says, “I am just an average guy who is above average in height.”

When one realizes one’s place in God’s universe, ego sublimates into the wonder of true humility. Those of us using the gateway of twelve-step recovery will almost invariably find ourselves experiencing the promises to be found in the greatest statement ever made about ego.

"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the gentle, for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.”

Journeys in Gratitude 2-5-11

Anderson, South Carolina

It’s hard to imagine getting out of a warm bed in the dark on Saturday morning and then driving in freezing rain to the gym could be anything other than slow torture. Sometimes we are granted wondrous surprises. A gentle teacher occasionally shows up to teach us important lessons of life.

Last Saturday when making a visit to the gym I did so out of a strained form of hopefulness. After having spent the entire night in nearly intractable pain from a yet-to-be-diagnosed muscle disorder, it seemed best for me to go to a place where those present are about embracing life and health, doing the next right thing to strengthen their bodies and minds. For more than five years going to the Y has served as a bit of metaphor for a personal pilgrimage. We go to those places where we believe spiritual, emotional, and even physical renewal and restoration can take place. Millions have gone to Lourdes and Medjugore, seeking healing of diverse kinds. In many ways I have found such with a mere drive of two miles, sometimes in freezing rain in the dark. Significant relief was to be found last Saturday with very tempered and mindful exercise.

Doctors visits and modern pharmaceuticals have me hopeful I might be able to get ahead of intractable pain that sometimes hammers me with a wake-up call when I least want it. Today my night journey to the gym was almost pain free. While waiting for the Y to open, I sat in wonderment and gratitude about how much better I am feeling today than a week ago.

Fr. Martin is a Catholic priest sharing a powerful message of emotional healing for those in recovery from the ravages of alcoholism and drug addiction. Most compelling is his description of gratitude as the queen of emotions. Gratitude is a certain cure for resentment, bitterness, anger, and the other affective scourges making so many of us miserable. When I have those all-too-rare episodes in which gratitude floods over me, colors brighten, music resonates, contentment washes over me; life fills with wonderment.

I’d just suited up and was on a stationary bike beginning an imaginary ride to nirvana when a middle-aged man on a cane made an uncertain trek over to me and in garbled voice asked my name. The next twenty minutes provided a lesson in gratitude. James turns out to have been victim to neoplastic nightmares growing in his head, car wrecks, and calamitous accidents. While sitting in the dark waiting for the Y to open, I was a bit smug thinking myself virtuous just for showing up and being the first one at the door. It turns out James has hobbled into the Y every morning for years, clawing his way back to some sort of meaningful life. For fourteen weeks after a car wreck he was in a coma. For ten years he could not talk. He can now make himself understood. He could barely walk to the stair climber but somehow he manages to pull himself up on it and do a real workout. It seems he too has found some sort of healing here in a place where others are doing the next right thing to strengthen their bodies and minds.

My smugness for showing up in the dark was burnt off by James’ commitment and the gratitude starting to come over me for even being able to get here at all. Gratitude is not unlike a muscle relaxant for the emotions. I found myself being rather grateful for those days when nothing hurts and I am able to do real exercise. Within the last week I had times when I was physically unable to drive a car. Today I can drive and climb. James tells me he never has times when he doesn’t hurt – a lot, yet, here he is, climbing.

King Solomon was reputed to have been the richest man on earth in ancient times and more importantly was considered the wisest. His aphorisms have come down as the pinnacle of Jewish wisdom literature. When asked of the Lord what he wished, if anything was possible, he petitioned for wisdom and knowledge of God, rather than long life, riches, and fame. Because God was so pleased with his priorities he granted him wisdom … long life, riches, and fame. Solomon figured out wisdom empowers those seeking it in doing the next right thing to strengthen their bodies and minds. One can easily surmise wisdom is fertile ground for gratitude. Those with wisdom know a good thing when they see it and are thankful for even the smallest things coming their way. Those with wisdom know life does not always work out as we hope; they respond with acceptance. Many of us are learning in our journey, acceptance is the answer to all our problems today. We learn to be grateful for what is in life, we enjoy the affective relaxant gratitude provides to our souls.

Today I could drive, without pain. But what if I couldn’t? Like, James, like Solomon, sometimes we just need to suit up, show up, and start climbing, even if it hurts.

Every time someone in the gym asks me how I am doing, I go through a short life inventory out loud. I’m above ground today (6,850 people die every day in this country). I got to sleep inside last night (millions of people in the world sleep outside on the ground every day of their lives). I have more food than I can possibly eat (more than a billion of us are in caloric deficiency). I have access to clean hot and cold running water at all times (2.5 billion people never have access to either). I have many people who care about me with the fullness of their hearts (loneliness and social isolation are a public health menace in western cultures). For now I am pain free most of the time (James is in pain all the time and millions more can relate to the emotional stresses of chronic pain). My dad died at age forty-five. I am almost sixty. As far as I can tell, I’m on major bonus time. The inventory comes up positive every time, even if there are times when body parts don’t work right.

Long life is in her right hand; in her left hand are riches and honor. Her ways are pleasant ways. And all her paths are peace. She is a tree of life to those who take hold of her. And happy are all who hold her fast … and the years of your life will be many. I have directed you in the ways of wisdom; I have led you in the upright paths. When you walk, your steps will not be impeded; and if you run, you will not stumble. Take hold of instruction; do not let go. Guard her, for she is your life.

Go to the gym, you might just end up with a lot more than bulked up muscle mass. A guy fighting gravity might come up to you and teach you about wisdom and gratitude, the affective elixir for our souls.

Thinking on Mortality 2-4-11

Anderson, South Carolina

Last week two of my friends decided this world no longer held possibilities for them. At their own hand they walked from the wonders of life, leaving behind fine homes, loving children, and friends. We were left with the scintillating bewilderment that comes only with suicide, seasoned with survivor’s guilt; could we have done anything different to head them off from these violent decisions? How is it people living in physically attractive healthy bodies decide to destroy them?

On the other hand those living large fulfilling lives are often catapulted into downward trajectories of declining health. Weeks ago my older brother was struck by a virulent cancer, even saying if he did not do something at once he’d be dead in short order. He describes being “on a one way journey of no return and no escape.” How is it someone living life so large could be dead in short order, someone who wants to stay alive; yet an Episcopal priest with a fine church, home, wife, and daughters, with grand possibilities would choose to be dead in short order, at his own hand?

My twin brother has been down in South America working as a translator for a group of medical missionaries who set up mobile hospital camps several times of year in the high Andes. He doesn’t want to walk from the wonders of life, yet a few days ago he also found himself compelled, as he puts it, "to go home over the weekend and get on with what looks like the first step of that slippery slope that eventually gets us all ... Feel like I am going down a very long and deep hole.” How does someone full of life find himself consigned to the vicissitudes of a catastrophic cancer diagnosis, while another in a young beautiful cancer-free body decides to destroy it, leaving behind her teen-age daughter, splendid house, and a cloud of people who love her?

Even quantum physicists cannot describe these parallel universes, one in which contestants will give everything they have in order to stay in the game of life, and another in which individuals will cash in everything they have to opt out of life. I am not fully convinced psychologists or psychiatrists are much better at explaining this dreadful reality.

A long-time friend of mine was in Texas helping his brother put up Christmas decorations. He had just preached at his mother’s funeral. While putting out yard decorations my friend stumbled, fell, and subsequently died of a subdural hematoma despite emergency surgery. He died twelve hundred miles from home; his wife of forty-five years is now wandering in a fog.

This weekend I participated in three funerals, one on Saturday and a ‘double feature’ on Sunday. It was a bit surreal to spend the weekend this way; three times in churches on Sunday alone, the cemetery for interment, and three visitations. If my count is correct I ‘had’ seven deaths in January and the present close encounters with my brothers. As if this is not enough, I am presently going through evaluation to determine if I have a neuromuscular monster that is lurking at the edges of my life. There are days when some of my parts don’t work and some days when pain nerves are maxed out.

Does acceptance hold a key to ‘processing’ these catastrophic events, events seemingly stochastic in their nature, even capricious? Can we make any kind of sense of such events while pulled through nine Gs; whipped through life’s barrel rolls? In recovery we make our first step towards serenity and peace by admitting we are powerless over people, places, and things. Cancer, suicide of spouses and children, and veils shrouding our futures are things we have virtually no control of. When we can say out loud honestly that we simply don’t have control of everything in our lives, while yet embracing the wonder of a shimmering sunrise detonating in first light, we are well on our way. Easier said that done, for sure. In recovery we speak of spiritual progress, not perfection. Certainly, no one is going to say “Goodie! Goodie!” when cancer shows up or someone precious to us cashes out, not even those of us far along in our journeys.

In Eastern culture there’s widespread acceptance of death as part of the natural order of things. There tends to be far less fear of death in many nations than found here in America or European lands. In America one can argue fear has become politically correct, often showing up as a great motivator in health and wellness education materials. It certainly has shown up in the acerbic war of words over the ethical and moral merits of euthanasia. Little has polarized America more than this battle to choose.

Chip Ingram, a well regarded preacher, reports Westerners are far more interested in staying alive no matter the physical, emotional and financial costs, than dying well. It’s a battle to the very end. The medical economics literature is replete with evidence that 80% of Medicare dollars are spent in the last six months of life. One of the great challenges in American healthcare is the reality of vast resources being expended to extend quantity of life but yielding no improvement in quality of life. For those being subjected to arterial blood gasses every few hours in an ICU cubicle, while struggling with ICU psychosis, gasping for air, it’s arguable their quality of life is being degraded immensely. Families will often override patient’s written wishes regarding extraordinary or heroic measures to keep them alive – period.

It’s well known in academic circles that physicians have a higher fear of death than non-physicians. The culture of American medical education presents death as the ultimate enemy. Giving a patient over to death is seen as critical treatment failure. Only recently have we seen meaningful numbers of physicians begin to embrace palliative care, admitting to the inevitable and working towards a dignified death free of intractable pain and emotional distress.

Is it possible embracing Eastern thinking with regard to the natural order of things, including death, would result in far less fear of death, perhaps even a significant reduction in the emotional and affective angst that drives some to find a final solution in the very thing we have been taught to dread? A curious paradox. What is not paradox is the recovery message embracing the idea of things being exactly as they are supposed to be in God’s world. Acceptance brings us round the back way to a place Easterners have known for millennia.

Giving up the fight just might free us up to live life fully, even to the very end.