20% atheist, 80% agnostic, 100% sad

Recently I read in an internet article that Brad Pitt gave an interview in which he was asked if he believed in God. He stated that he did not, and that he is “20% atheist, 80% agnostic.” This strikes me as 100% sad.

Now I recognize that he is probably NOT sad. He has it all….good looks, fame, wealth, talent, and a highly desirable partner. He has used his position and some of his resources for philanthropic purposes, so he also has reason to view himself as a “good” person.

But, sadness is still what I felt on reading his comment.

I am sad for him personally. Everyone has a god, whether he recognizes it or not. We all have something that fills the core of our being and gives meaning to our life. Since I believe that the only god which adequately fills this role is the one true God who is Creator and Sustainer, I believe that all other “gods” are inadequate and will eventually betray us.

I am sad for his children. Most people I have encountered who are a mix of atheist and agnostic will say that it is fine with them if their children make their own choice about what to believe. The problem is that there is no attempt to expose their children to the point of view that there just might be a God. The children are programmed from the outset to discount the notion of his existence.

I am sad for all those who view him as a role model. He, who “has it all,” is openly stating he doesn’t believe in God, and he hasn’t been struck down by a bolt from heaven. So…maybe it’s a safe position. Of course, the Bible clearly indicates that those who don’t believe in God may appear to prosper in this life. The wheat and chaff grow together until the harvest. The sun shines and the rain falls on both the just and the unjust. As an agnostic/atheist, he probably believes the Bible is just another ancient book of myths. I would challenge anyone with this belief to read it, in its entirety. Not just read someone else’s thoughts on it, but actually read it. It is the only intellectually honest thing to do.

So, I do feel sorry for Brad Pitt. I wouldn’t for a minute wish anything bad to come his way, but difficulties do come to most human beings. If and when life begins to crumble for him, I pray that he will look to God rather than within himself. The human spirit is powerful, but not omnipotent. In the end, we are not “saved” either in this world or the next by our personal attributes, what we possess, or the good we have done.

“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith…and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God…not by works, so that no one can boast.” Ephesians 2:8-9

Seamless Transition

Recently I was pondering the 23rd Psalm, and in particular, the phrase "the valley of the shadow of death." Experiencing that valley is something we can all expect.

As a nurse and family member, I have seen death. Usually there is a period of diminished consciousness, awareness, ability to interact with ones surroundings. I picture that withdrawal from this world as a descent into the valley.

As one who believes in eternal life, I picture coming out of that valley on the other side into another life more joyful and fulfilling than we can imagine while trapped in this present life.

But, at least two men in the Bible apparently did not descend into that valley. We are told that Enoch never actually died, but was taken by God. Elijah never actually died either. A chariot descended from the sky and picked him up.

Ah...seamless transition.

No life-death-life situation for them, but rather life unending.

The criterion for experiencing this seems to be that they had learned in this life how to walk with God so intimately, that they simply continued that walk straight into eternity. What would that be like? It is so different from what nearly all of us have or will experience that it is mind-blowing. Could one actually live with heart and mind that attuned to God?

I fully expect to have to go through the valley someday, but it certainly is challenging to think that one could walk in such close fellowship with God, that there would be no reason to detour through the valley.

A Trip to the DMV

My mother-in-law, age 90, asked me if I would give her a ride to run some errands this afternoon. She has mobility issues and gets around with a walker, albeit painfully. She wanted to go to the bank and take her city tax payment to the post office to mail.

When I arrived to pick her up, my father-in-law, age 92, asked if he could come along and get a ride to the Department of Motor Vehicles. His license expired last week and he had not received the renewed one. He had mailed it in weeks ago and didn't understand why he hadn't gotten it back until today. In today's mail, he received a letter stating that he had not answered all the questions on the form.

My personal opinion is that he should not be driving. However, I am the daughter-in-law. None of his offspring have worked up the courage to confront him.

The front bumper on his car is cracked, both sides of the car have streaks of color matching the garage door frame, and the back bumper has an imprint of someone's license plate in mirror image. You can even make out most of the numbers.

I had hoped he would not pass his eye exam. But, his eye doctor...bless her heart...told him he only needed one good eye to drive, and if he didn't pass the test at the DMV, she would sign the form for him. He, therefore, never bothered with the eye test at the DMV. He just took the form to her and then mailed it in...apparently minus the answers to some of the questions.

So...I agreed to drive him to the DMV hoping that maybe someone there would say, "Gee, mister, you really shouldn't be driving."

I told him that I would come back and pick him up after running errands with my mother-in-law. He replied, "I'll take a taxi."

I said, "Oh no, that's not necessary. I'll be back to pick you up."

"NO, I'll take a taxi. You don't know how long it will take, and you'll never find a parking space."

No sense in continuing the argument.

After he got out of the car, I asked my mother-in-law how he planned to call for a taxi. Did he have a cell phone with him? No...she had no idea how he would call for a taxi.

After completing the stops with her, I drove back down the busy street where the DMV is located. Sure enough...there were no parking places. Also, no taxis in sight....but, there was my 92 year-old father-in-law hoofing it down the sidewalk. We shouted out the window to him, but of course, he is verrrrrrrry deaf. Finally I honked the horn and pulled into a "No Parking" zone.

When he got into the car, he made no comment as to whether he had received his license, and I didn't ask. I'll leave that for later. He also didn't say where he thought he would find a taxi. He was headed in the direction of downtown, where there used to be a taxi stand...oh, maybe 50 years ago. Sigh.

I'm just glad the timing was such that we saw him. It's a hot day, and he just had cataract surgery yesterday. Good grief.

On Perfection

My husband has more trouble than I do dealing with the notion that perfection is difficult or impossible to achieve in this fallen world.

We just spent two days at our cottage working on the exterior. The wood on the addition was still bare and needed priming. The rest of the cottage is in bad need of exterior paint, which, of course, necessitates removing all the chipped and loose stuff. The weather didn't cooperate totally on the first day, but one can scrape and wire brush in the rain, so we got started. The second day we finished the scraping and started priming. It would only be a slight exaggeration to say that I did the sides and back of the cottage while my husband did a portion of the front.

My husband is stronger than I am and no less ambitious. He is a hard worker, but he is also a perfectionist. I can accept the fact that no matter how much scraping I do, somewhere there will still be a fragment that is loose. At some point added effort does not yield sufficient improvement to warrant expending that effort. My dear husband does not or cannot and, I think, will not ever grasp this concept.

As a child I sometimes drove myself to perfection. When I first started taking piano lessons, I remember forcing myself to go back to the beginning and start over if I made even one tiny little mistake. At some point I decided that I was never going to be a concert pianist...that I was much more interested in being a vocalist...and that I wanted to be able to play adequately to accompany myself to practice singing. I really didn't care if I was a good enough pianist to play publicly.

I also realized that minor mistakes or flaws are never noticed by most people. As a child, I made a beaded belt on a loom following a pattern to create an Americana motif of flags and eagles. I remember purposely putting one black bead where there should have been a dark blue one. I did this by conscious choice to defy my own perfectionistic nature, as though to prove to myself that sometimes a good job wasn't much different that a perfect one.

Now, I must add that as a nurse, there are excellent reasons to be perfectionistic. When I worked in the clinical area, I was totally rigid about administering medications. Having a son with life threatening food allergies, raised my ability to be perfectionistic to an art form...or maybe, to total neurosis.

I guess each of us must decide for ourselves what level of performance we are comfortable with. The world we live in is far from perfect. When God created it, He declared that it was good, but sin and death entered his extraordinary world, and we deal with the results every day. I think it is mentally healthier, and more productive in the long run, to accept that.

When we have a piece of furniture that needs to be assembled, my perfectionistic husband bogs down if everything doesn't line up right. I assume going into the project that either things won't line up right, or some screw or nut will be missing from the packet, or a step will be missing from the instructions, or something else will go wrong. It's just not as upsetting that way, and I have a more realistic estimate of how long the project will take.

So, I didn't try to work on the same side of the cottage as my husband. It was easier on my nerves and better for our relationship, if I didn't have to watch him expending mega-effort to achieve a tiny increment of improvement. That is his choice, not mine.

Suppertime Serenade

We finally had a lovely summer day here in northern New York. Nice enough that the back door into the kitchen was standing open while I fixed supper tonight. I was enjoying the sounds drifting in through the screen door, when I heard a bird's song I don't remember ever hearing before.

Whit, whit, whit, whit, teh-you. Whit, whit, teh-you, teh-you. Whit, whit, whit, whit, teh-you.

The whit was a somewhat gentle whistle, but the teh-you was strong and piercing.

I peered into the apple trees on the grassy median between our drive and the neighbor's drive. After a few seconds, I spied the vocalist....a brilliant red cardinal.

I have seen cardinals before but have never heard their distinctive song. I wonder if he was calling his mate, or announcing the presence of some tasty morsel, or just rejoicing in the pleasantness of the day and the shade of the apple tree.

Whatever his intent, he left me rejoicing in the pleasantness of the day and the spirit of his song.

On Mowing the Lawn

Frequently my husband mows our lawn, but today he was otherwise occupied, and I decided to seize the couple hours of rain-free weather for the chore.

The weather in northern New York has been very wet this summer. Finding a dry day to mow has been difficult. When I declared I would mow today, my husband informed me that while I had slept soundly, he had been up during the night closing windows, and that I might find the grass too wet. With that word of caution, I decided to start where the grass is the least dense.

We have a fairly large area to mow. In addition to a normal sort of front yard, and a large back yard, we own two lots out in the middle of the block. We do not have a riding mower. It is a power mower, but not self-propelled. In other words, the mowing is actual work.

I began out in the middle of the block carefully skirting the day lilies. The forget-me-nots are done blooming so that area went under the blade. By the time I got to our back yard, the sun had still not dried out the dense grass. The mower clogged up repeatedly, and I had to stop it to dig the clumps of wet grass out from around the blade with a stick. Then, of course, it had to be restarted. Yank, pull, yank. I tried to occupy myself with pleasant thoughts to keep my mind off the exertion and the sweat pouring off my forehead and stinging my eyes.

The maple trees that volunteered themselves in the now unused garden area are really getting tall. One is almost 10 feet. The lilac bushes have finally grown to the point that there are enough blossoms to cut for bouquets in late spring. The rose bushes are coming along nicely considering that my care-taking is best described as benign neglect. And the tomatoes..oh, yes...the tomato plants are about 5 feet high and loaded with green tomatoes and blossoms. BLT season is not far away.

After an hour and 45 minutes with only a brief break for a glass of water, I finally finished the task and more or less staggered into the house. I grabbed a soda, rationalizing that even if I didn't need the calories, I needed the electrolytes. I spread a beach towel out on the bed, stripped off my perspiration soaked clothing and collapsed on the beach towel. The idea of the beach towel was to keep the bedspread from being saturated with perspiration too. Eventually I recoved enough to shower.

Maybe 64 year old women aren't supposed to push a mower for almost 2 hours. But, I'm thinking that as long as I keep pushing myself, I will die in my tracks, and not do a slow shrivel.

In the Raspberry Patch

About 30 years ago, neighbors gave us a small clump of raspberry plants they had dug up from their yard. We planted them next to a narrow sidewalk which runs along the side of our carriage house. Each year as runners from the plants came up out in the lawn, we dug them up and planted them along the sidewalk. We now have a dense thicket of raspberry plants about 20 feet long and 3-4 feet wide.

We have been out of town the past ten days, and in our absence the berries have ripened. Tonight I picked 2 quarts of raspberries. Lots more will be ripening over the next couple of weeks.

As I picked, I thought about the first few years when I was lucky if I got as much as a handful to bring into the house. The plants were fewer in number and the children playing on the swingset next to them were greater in number. My daughters were the first berry-snatchers. But, I do need to admit that the fact that my son and his friends cleaned off the bushes was my fault.

My son's first summer, he was about 8 months old when the berries were ripe. I would put him in the stroller and take him with me to work in the garden. As we passed the bushes, I would find one perfect berry, break it into small fragments and put them in his mouth. He would smack his little lips and enjoy the berry. I suppose I programmed him to be unable to pass those bushes without sampling the fruit.

Eventually the patch expanded to the point where even though my son and his friends helped themselves, I got enough in the house to make a pie or two, and have some to put in muffins or on top of ice cream.

The swingset rusted out and is long gone. No berry-snatchers play near by. I guess I'll be baking pies tomorrow. No amount of sugar will make them anything other than bittersweet.