Being Different

On the way to work the other morning, in a dense fog (I mean a real fog, not a mental one), I was singing along with the radio. In fact, I found myself singing about Rudolph, the red-nosed reindeer. It’s a cute song, and we all know it. If it contains a lesson, it is this: The individual who isn’t like everyone else still has value.

That morning, I began to think about all the things it says.

Have you really noticed how the song starts? The other reindeer make fun of poor Rudolph because he has such a funny nose. They laugh at him. They also discriminate against him, not inviting him to play with them. The poor little guy is left all alone, without friends, soaking in unhappiness.

But then one day…they need him. Ah! What a difference that makes! “Oh, Rudolph, won’t you help us tonight so we don’t run ourselves into any mountains or airliners?” “Pretty please?” Rudolph graciously consents to guide the sleigh, and he comes through. All of a sudden, he is popular. Even legendary, for he will go down in history.

Don’t you wonder how it would have turned out if Rudolph had said, “Well, if I’m not good enough to play with you, I’m not good enough to guide the sleigh.” You wouldn’t blame him if he made them beg him to help. The fact that he didn’t do that reflects his goodness. Or it may simply reflect the fact that it was Santa, not the other reindeer, who asked him. Even at the North Pole, you don’t say No to your boss.

And don’t you wonder what the other reindeer did after the excitement wore off? Did they start to like Rudolph? Did they remember that he had value? O or did they just go back to making fun of him and shutting him out of the games?

I hope that, after the story in the song is over, Rudolph became permanently accepted into the herd. If the reindeer continued to reflect human nature, however, that happy ending wasn’t guaranteed.

For this song reflects our own nature. We discriminate against those who are different from the majority. That means there is a whole bunch of discriminating that we do – on the basis of race, skin color, religious belief, sexual orientation and/or lifestyle. And if we need these folks, we use them and then we frequently throw them out with the trash when the need has passed. And the only thing “wrong” with them is that they aren’t like us. They are Different.

We live in a time, however, when some people have a different conception of the way the universe is set up, and they make an astonishing claim: We are not separate at all. We are actually all One, One with the universe and with each other. It erases our differences. You can’t be serious. We’re all One? You’re not kidding me? You mean I have no genuine reason to discriminate against anyone else?

Well, we all put our shoes on one foot at a time, as far as I know, and we all bleed red stuff. That ought to go toward confirming this concept.

Today is Christmas Eve. Today and tomorrow are the days when we celebrate that man who is hailed as the Prince of Peace. It isn’t about presents or feasts or even being with family. It’s about love. Peace. God’s toward us, and ours to share with one another. The way Jesus did – with everyone.

Even if they are different. Especially if they are different. The different ones have the greatest need.

Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer would say the same thing.

Merry Christmas!

Another View

After all that I said a few weeks ago about people having a fear-based relationship with God, even as I acknowledged that traditional Christians can have a love-based relationship with God individually even though the theology is still based in fear…I have found a person who clearly has a love-based relationship with what we call God.

Recently I spoke with this lady while we were on break at work. We are acquainted with each other. We have seen each other around the building for several months, briefly visited in the break room, gotten to know each other a little. When I ask her how she is, she tends to say that she is blessed. (What a lovely way to be! It’s positive, which is all people really want to hear, and it’s still personal.) She was collecting stuff for a mission project abroad last summer, and when I hinted for more information, she said, “I didn’t want to go there, but God said, “Yes, you do.’” I laughed and replied, “Well, if God says you should go, then you should,” and she agreed. (Do I think we are commanded? Not as such. But if you love God, and you believe He is telling you to do something, then you need to do it in order to be true to the love you hold for God. I don’t look on it as Obedience, but that doesn’t mean I do it for the relationship and for personal growth, not just to Obey.)

I saw her yesterday in the ladies room and asked her in the usual way how she was, and she replied, “I’m blessed, I know it, and I thank God for it!” I’ve heard her give several variations on that theme, so I wasn’t surprised by this response. But then the conversation expanded.

“We really are blessed,” I said, “and so many people take it for granted. Just being able to walk or breathe normally is such a blessing, and we take those things for granted.”

She replied, “I’m trying not to, and I hope God knows that because I keep trying to remember to tell Him so.”

“He knows your heart,” I said. At this point I want to add a clarification. I can talk to traditional Christians (and she is one, I know which church she attends) in their language because I am still comfortable in it as long as it doesn’t have to be conceptualized in certain ways. And God, whatever it actually is that we call God, certainly does know our hearts and minds and thoughts.

“He’s so great!” she exclaimed. “I love Him so much!”

“I know,” I said. “You just keep reaching and reaching for Him and you can’t get close enough.”

She understood that. “And it’s eternal!” she added, pumping her fist the way athletes do.

“And eternity starts now,” I added. “We don’t even have to wait until we die.”

“Yes!!” And we both pumped our fists.

I thought a lot about that exchange throughout the rest of the day. This friend belongs to a fairly conservative denomination and she still conceptualizes the Creator in traditional ways. I know that because of the other things I’ve heard her say from time to time. Even so, she has the energy and enthusiasm of love, and she clearly knows that this is a 24/7/365 commitment, not just a “one or two hours on Sunday and then life goes back to normal after church” type of thing. She clearly has a love-based relationship with the Higher Power that the 12-step programs talk about, the Creator that I talk about, God or Jesus that the traditional church talks about. She has met and responded to Eternal Unconditional Love.

It’s the Love and our relationship with its Source and all the creation that matters. Knowing you are loved, responding with your own love. That’s what “salvation” is all about. It doesn’t matter what we call it or how we conceptualize it. The theology is still based in fear. But guess what. Perfect love can cast out fear.

Yes! [Pump fist!]

Memories

It was only a casual phone conversation. My sister and were just visiting about the usual stuff when suddenly she dropped a bomb on me. “By the way, you knew that E died?”

The world stopped for a couple of beats, but finally I managed to say, “No, I didn’t.”

“It was last Monday. The funeral was Friday. I’m sorry, I thought of calling you but I thought you would have heard.”

Somehow I got through the conversation without losing my manners, but the news plunged me into a “downer” that went on for a full 24 hours. E and I went a long way back. When my family first moved into the town (from the farmhouse we had been renting) E and her family lived across the alley from us. There were two kids, C and her brother T. My sister “sat” for them in the summers while the kids were out of school and the parents were at work. C became one of my closest friends in high school. She and her brother and I, with a couple of other kids, formed an instrumental combo that played together a lot, mostly big band tunes. We weren’t wonderful, but we had a grand time. When C had health problems and had to miss school, I was the one who went around to the teachers and got assignments for her so she could keep up. We were together when I had my first (and last!) taste of beer.

Through all of that, there were her parents. E was the dominant family member. She was wonderful. She was short, dark-haired. Snapping black eyes. Sort of a pugnacious chin. She didn’t take any guff from anyone. Spoke her mind. Very much grounded in that rare quality that we call common sense. Used plain language.

E was the oldest child in her family, and when their mother died E took on the responsibility of caring for the family and raising her siblings. The natural result was that she grew up accustomed to taking care of others and she spent her whole life doing that. She was a pretty strict parent, but it was clearly done in love for her children. She was a caring person, warmhearted, ready to help. I think she considered me her half-daughter. I know I considered her my half-mother.

We all kept in touch over the years. When C and I were home, we visited. Otherwise, we exchanged letters. Eventually life went downhill for her, and she moved back to our home town with physical and mental health issues. She died while I was living in Texas, and I wasn’t able to get home for the funeral.

Some of the clearest memories I have of E that come from my adult life:

I was sitting on the front porch of my parents’ house just after my dad had died, watching as E pulled up to the curb and got out of the car with a large baking dish full of food.

There was the time she and her husband were in the Dallas area, and she called me up to say Hello.

The first time E saw me after C died, she asked me: “What did I do wrong, honey?” More than once she asked me that question. The main problem the two had was that they were both strong personalities and too much alike. They always chafed each other, even at the best of times. But nothing a parent does can affect degenerative physical conditions or the development of mental illness. Not as far as I know anyway. I could tell her honestly that I didn’t think she had done anything wrong.

There was the time my sister and I sat at E’s kitchen table, visiting. My sister had a few questions about how some people were connected, and was asking E about them. I think E knew just about everyone, who was whose child, who had married whom, how all the connections went. And she knew about every road and place as well.

When I moved back to my home town a few years ago, E and I talked on the phone and I took her for rides or on errands a few times.

And then I wound up living in the same apartment house as she was, for a while, before her health deteriorated and she had to move to the local nursing home.

The news that E had died and been buried before I even found out about it was hard to take. I had counted on being there for her funeral. I had missed her husband’s funeral. I had missed C’s funeral. I needed to make some kind of formal good-bye to this family that was such a part of me. How much of my reaction was grief? How much was simple disappointment and frustration that I hadn’t had the opportunity to go to the funeral? I can’t say. Like E herself, I rarely cry very much, but that evening I cried fairly copiously and was depressed the next day. It wasn’t until I tracked E’s son down over the internet and talked to him that it started to ease.

I no longer believe in “heaven” as I was taught about it. I no longer believe that when we die, we go to “heaven.” I do believe we enter some other level of existence, a plane, a dimension, whatever we might call it, which is a vast improvement over this existence, and in my view it is a state in which we can be as close to the Source of Life as we desire to be. I have had two experiences that allowed a tiny bit of communication to me from that existence. (I suppose they both can be interpreted in other ways, but their timing and nature made it impossible for me to make any other conclusions about them, and the more experienced [and unbiased] people I asked confirmed that.) And I am not shy about asking the Source of Life to pass on a greeting once in a while, when I feel a need to touch base with someone who is no longer here. I trust that somehow I can get word through to E, to tell her I love her and miss her and am sorry I missed the good-bye. I think she will understand.

Giggling Lelah.

I live in housing that is subsidized by the federal government. Most of us who live there, like me, don’t have very much money. Most of us are elderly, because the elderly tend to have limited financial resources. There are a fewer younger folks, but they are not in good health. Me, I am almost 66, and I’m one of the youngest and healthiest. While living here, I have had to confront my fears of old age, my prejudices against the aged, and other unlovely aspects of my attitudes. (I have learned them from our society, of course, but that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t confront them.) Slowly, although I am not there a lot of the time, I am coming to know and appreciate my neighbors.

Take Lelah, for instance. Lelah lives across the hall from my next-door neighbor. I don’t know a whole lot about Lelah. She is, I think, 87 years old. She has a kind face and a ready smile, and she is almost as deaf as a fence post. She has a cat, which she has named Oreo presumably because the cat is black and white. I have heard Oreo; I haven’t officially met her.

I have discovered that I can get Lelah to hear me if I raise the pitch of my voice, and with that I have begun to get to know her a little. Helped her with our new laundry machines. Greeted her in passing. Little things like that. One night recently, I was gifted with an entirely new view of this elderly lady. It was just before the Thanksgiving holiday, and I was on the way downstairs to mail an insurance payment when I noticed Lelah out in the hall. I stopped to chat for a moment. She had found an old cornucopia in her apartment; she had put some grapes in it and was setting it outside her apartment on the little table she keeps for seasonal decorations. (Many of the residents keep decorations in the hall.) I stopped to admire it, and to agree that it made her display look like Thanksgiving was coming.

Lelah began to reminisce about the days when she was younger. Her sister-in-law always cooked the Thanksgiving meal for the entire family, which was held on the Sunday after the holiday because some of the younger family members didn’t want to be there on the actual holiday. “I remember one year,” Lelah went on, “when my sister-in-law said, ‘I don’t know where Molly goes but she is never here on Thanksgiving Day.’” Then a glint appeared in the elderly lady’s eyes. “I didn’t say anything, but I knew where Molly went.” She chuckled. “You know, you can’t always say what you’re thinking. It just doesn’t do. It makes bad feelings.”

“Yes,” I agreed, “we can’t always tell everything we know even when it’s the truth.”

She began to giggle. She is 87 years old, and she stood in the hall that night giggling her head off. I don’t know what memories had been awakened by our conversation, but I know she was enjoying them in that moment. It was delightful. I enjoy hearing people laugh, I just like the sound of a good laugh, and I very much enjoyed hers. I was laughing too, mostly because she was. The more she laughed, the more I enjoyed hearing and watching her, and the more my own pleasure grew. For a while we just stood there laughing. When I pulled myself away to get in the elevator to mail my insurance payment, she was still giggling. I hadn’t known she could be so mischievous, but she certainly was at that moment. Yes, mischievous and even impish.

We often ignore the elderly, but they have lived many years and they have their stories to tell, and their experience and wisdom to share. They like to talk about the things they remember, and often we younger people are impatient with that. But if you can be open to it, you may find yourself learning or enjoying it just as much as the elderly person does. It is a good process, to listen to them tell about their experiences. It validates life.

Lelah has a kind face and a ready smile. And there is still a touch of mischief inside her. She is going to be fun to get to know.