Hanging Clothes Between Storms: Accepting Adversity

June 2013

I pulled the shirt from the bundle of clothes in my left hand and placed it on the white line. I pulled the fabric apart and it expanded in the breeze.

Five minutes before, wind would've whipped the shirt to the ground. The rain hammered onto our roof well into the clothes' spin cycle. Thunder rumbled. It threatened to hail. Then the storm gave way to calm.

I looked up from the clothes line and watched the storm push over East Helena to the Spokane Hills. Rain drops poured down in sheets. Lightning rippled and danced between the ground and the clouds. A small rainbow struggled in the middle of the storm. Churning in the maelstrom. It could not build up any more colors beyond a red glow.

I placed another sheet on the line. Not sure whether it would have time to dry or share the same fate as the rain-soaked rainbow. The late spring storms came in legions over Montana's Rocky Mountains. Storm then calm, then storm, then calm.

Still the laundry had to be hung. Like the rainbow, we don't always get to decide between the storm and the calm. Both will come and there is limited purpose in questioning why.

Life is a constant learning process. While I'm at the midway point of life, I haven't proceeded anywhere near that far on the path of learning. I have gotten far enough to be able to identify some of my earlier beliefs that were completely wrong.

Those wrong ideas more than outnumber the spring storms. The most glaring example may be the belief that I held as a youth and as a young man that men and women could work hard for years and decades to reach a point where life wouldn't be a struggle.

Now I realize that life's struggles are guaranteed whether they be personal, physical, financial, spiritual, or a combination. Clearing one hurdle will lead to another. The struggle can be embraced, but it cannot be removed or overcome. For participating in struggle of is essential to our time on Earth, proving our faith and love for the Divine.

It's a lesson taught in the lives of Job and Abraham, but the clearest statement in the New Testament may be when the mother of James and John asked Jesus to have her sons sit beside Jesus in his kingdom. Jesus asked them point blank, "Can you drink the cup that I am going to drink?" Matthew 20:22.

This was not a question about experiencing peace, joy and happy times. Can you share in the struggle, suffering, and humiliation of the Cross?


It's the highest calling, but it can't be gained without the storm of adversity.


Note: Thanks to my sister-in-law Anastasia Gurinovich for taking this picture of the storm.

Cars Seat Spiritual Guides And Saint Paul: Conversing Between Beliefs and Faiths

Zen pilgrims traveled from monastery to monastery across ancient China to learn from spiritual masters who used puzzling, of paradoxical statements and stories, to prompt spiritual awakening. I undergo a similar process while driving my daughters around town.

The spiritual masters sit in their flower-print, front-facing cars eats and pepper me with theological questions, revelations, and absurdities.

"God is the sky!"

I hear the statement, think about it and then respond. The masters question me until I give them an appropriately tangible and well-reasoned response. Or, until a yellow car drives by. If a yellow car drives by, the spiritual masters chant "Banana!"

During a recent trip, my oldest daughter Fiona said that her best friend "doesn't know God."

My wife and I paused for a second and then asked to elaborate. It became clear that the issue wasn't due to any lack of sermoning from Fiona.

Fiona wanted to know what to do.

In other words, how can she balance the love and respect she has for people with different beliefs than she has while still fulfilling her duty to share her own spiritual vision with the world?

The relevance of that question is only going to grow. Fiona's immediate family is full of Catholic, Russian Orthodox, evangelical Christian, and "spiritual but not religious" people that she loves and depends upon. Her extended family is even more diverse. We've got dear friends that follow Islam, Hindu and Native American traditions.

My wife and I did our best to answer Fiona. It was a hard response and hardly guided by a grown up world filled with warring factions fighting over faith. The following night, I found guidance from Saint Paul in his second letter to Timothy.

"[P]ursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace, along with those who call on the Lord with purity of heart. Avoid foolish and ignorant debates, for you know that they breed quarrels. A slave of the Lord should not quarrel, but should be gentle with everyone, able to teach, tolerant, correcting opponents with kindness." 2 Timothy 2: 22-25.

It's a heavy challenge, but an essential one. To ensure that we honor the Lord not only in what we tell others about the Divine, but in how we tell them.


p.s. Let me know if you have a biblical quote or other spiritual guidance that you'd like included in the "Running with the Current" videos. Even better, post your own "Running with the Current" video on youtube and I'll add it to the playlist. Thanks again for reading.

Quantum Physics and Hootie: Navigating Concepts Beyond Understanding

My father-in-law is a quantum physicist from Russia. My mother is a mental health counselor from Butte, Montana. The conversations between those diverse backgrounds are always interesting, often deep and sometimes unintentionally hilarious.

This Sunday was my son's baptism. Each new memory brings back a dozen old ones and my mom asked my  inlaws about raising their children.  She asked my father-in-law whether it seemed like only a short time ago that he was a student at Moscow University with a young baby of his own.

My father-in-law looked at her a little quizzically and then stated, "I don't understand time."

From anyone else, this would have been a throwaway statement. If I'd said it, the most obvious response would be "Uhh, you messed up the words to that old Hootie and the Blowfish song - again."

[Gratuitous Hootie and the Blowfish Video]

However, it's a little different when a quantum physicist makes a statement about human beings' inability to understand the basic nature of time. Since Einstein, physicists have realized that time changes, speeding up or slowing down depending on how fast one thing is moving relative to something else. Scientists also know that time curves, the fabric of time-space to be more specific. But the most honest physicists, like my father-in-law, won't hesitate to state that human beings have only begun to understand the nature of time.Scratching the surface might even be overestimating how far we've come in unraveling those mysteries.

The Bible supports with the physicists' complex view of time. In Psalm 90, Moses wrote that "A thousand years... are merely a yesterday" in the eyes of the Lord. Saint Peter further described that "with the Lord one day is like a thousand years and a thousand years like one day." 2 Peter 3:8

Yet, the complex changing nature of time is not a valid excuse for me to pick my kids up from daycare after 5:30 p.m. Closing time is closing time and each minute after that costs a dollar. The obscurity of time does not prevent millions of people around the globe from tuning in at exactly the right moment to watch the opening kick off on Super Bowl Sunday.

Human beings have figured out how to navigate through the unknowable characteristics of time enough to rely on it to guide the tasks that we need. My alarm clock may not be reliable within a certain range of a massively dense cosmic black hole, but it does just fine on my night stand.

We are faced with a similar challenge in facing the complex, obscurity of the Divine. It is impossible for human beings to fully understand spiritual mysteries. It is an intellectual realm beyond our grasp - by design. We can see the outlines of the deeper truths, but the mind of God eludes our comprehension.

In our faith life, we come across Bible passages that grind against each other. Religious leaders more human than divine. Dogma that offends reason and reason that disappears in the face of the largest questions like dew under a rising sun.

• How can we prevent the complexities, obscurities and contradictions of our faith from becoming a barrier to our spiritual development?
• How can we take the complexities, obscurities and contradictions of our faith and use them as the foundation for our spiritual life?

 There are no easy answers to these spiritual questions. The beauty of faith depends upon that obscurity; but humility, prayer and love are powerful sign posts and no one becomes lost while following them.

Running With the Current: Trials of Serving the Lord

Here is another installment of "Running the with Currrent." It's a powerful piece in Sirach on the trials of serving the Lord. I recorded the video on my way to Bozeman from Helena. I hope you like it.

matt


Text: Sirach 2:1-6

Background: Headwaters of the Missouri River near Three Forks, Montana.

Running with the Current - Hans Küng's insights on God's Role in History

I've read a lot of theological and spiritual works over the years and especially since I started writing this blog.  I've tried to share some of their insights through my own writing, but wanted to try a little bit different medium.

The result is the experiment that I'm calling "Running with the Current." In a nutshell, I'll read a short excerpt from a spiritual writing accompanied by videos of some of my favorite rivers, creeks, or other bodies of water. It's a chance to blend some of my favorite things.

The first shot is of Hans Küng's insights on creation from Küng's book "Why I am Still a Christian." Printed in 1986 by Abingdon Press. The video is of Prickly Pear Creek outside of Helena, Montana.

I hope you like it.

Thanks,
matt

p.s. Please share your own favorite reading and waters on youtube. Make sure to add "Running with the Current" to the title so they're easy to find.

Finding the Present Outside of the Sears Catalog

In my childhood, the first of September marked the beginning of the mailbox vigil. I'd scamper across our lawn and swing the mailbox cover downward. Just a couple of letters.  I'd grab them, close box, and trudge back towards the front door. My little brain grumbling, trying to come to terms with the fact that I'd have to wait at least another day for the Sears Catalog.

Each morning, the frost set in a little harder. Summer's green grass yellowed into protective dormancy. Flowers died. Leaves lost their grip on the limbs of the mountain ash tree in our front yard. Then one afternoon, I'd find the mailbox packed full. The Sears Catalog folder over on top of itself. I lugged it across the yard and into the house. I pulled off the wrapped and set it down onto the couch. It didn't take me long to find the toy section.

I'd pour over the pages for hours, until it was time for dinner, and then again until bedtime. The potential fun from each toy would capture my imagination. I'd zip through the galaxy with Star Wars action figures. Launch wave after wave of G.I. Joe's into battle against their cobra-headed enemies. Mix up dangerous glowing concoctions in science kits and line up on the grid-iron with a shiny new "Dan Marino" Miami Dolphins football uniform.

Each Christmas I'd realize that Santa wasn't as big of a fan of the Sears Catalog as I was. When our tastes did line up, the real toys were never quite as fun as I'd imagined they would be. (Note to children: spaceship toys will not take you to space - no matter what the catalog pictures suggest)

How often do we fall into the similar trap of focusing the future possibilities in our spiritual lives. Projecting our selves out to a period in our lives when you'll have more time to help others. Have enough financial security to donate to the church, the poor or other worthy causes. Have more time to pray and read about your faith. Be ready to stand up for those who cannot stand up for themselves. Be ready to love our enemies and beg for forgiveness from those we've injured. 

The eternal - it will be perfect when...

The search for the perfect time and method to interact and serve the Divine is futile.  Zen Master Po-Chang equated this search and the overall search for Enlightenment with "riding an ox in search of an ox."

The time to give is now. The time to serve is now. Waiting until a certain event happens to move forward in your spiritual journey will leave you disappointed as an eight year old boy staring down at a Star Wars' fighter and wondering why it doesn't fly.

As Psalm 118 says, "This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice in it and be glad."  

Not tomorrow. Not two weeks from tomorrow or two years from tomorrow. Today.


Note: Please bookmark www.ugandaruralfund.org/how-you-can-help/amazon/ and open it when you want to shop on Amazon. Up to 10% of the purchase price of your order will be donated to help educate and care for orphans in Uganda. It's an easy way to make a huge difference in these kids' lives.

Ranger School Recycle's Lesson in Non-Attachment

Spring 2000

I stood in formation in front of the Fourth Ranger Training Battalion Headquarters with around thirty other recycled Ranger candidates from my Ranger School class. Hours before, we'd watched the rest of our classmates board the buses that would carry them towards the Mountain Phase. 

The Ranger Instructors had went home for the night. The sergeant on duty took roll. Everyone was accounted for.

"You're here for three hours. I want you to police the grounds around the headquarters. The sidewalk is your perimeter. Are there any questions?"

Thirty plus sets of eyes scanned across across the headquarters. The perimeter was clear, but the task was not. What in the world were thirty of us going to clean up around the building for three hours? There was a bed of lava rocks around the building and a stretch of grass extending to the sidewalk. At the most, it would have taken one or two people an hour of cleaning maximum.

"Are there any questions?" the young sergeant asked in a harsher tone of voice.

"No, sergeant!" we replied, covering down on the grass looking for misplaced leaves.

In Ranger School, we'd taken each task seriously or paid the price for it. This task was treated with similar focus, but with the addition of some well-needed calories gained over the couple of hours of leave we'd been given earlier in the day. We swarmed like locusts over the landscape: picking up sticks, cigarette butts and errant leaves.

We scoured a loop around the building in half an hour; then did a second loop for good measure. A few of us did a final loop. We got in formation and our unofficial leader headed into the battalion headquarters to ask the sergeant to inspect our work. Everyone in the group was optimistic that we'd be released early or at least given another task.

The sergeant on duty came out of the battalion headquarters. "So you think you're done?"

"Yes, sergeant," we responded.

"What's that?" he snapped, looking from the steps onto the lava rocks.

I bit the inside of my cheeks and strained to see what he'd found.

The sergeant bent over the rock and picked something up. He raised it over his head. I couldn't see anything "A grass seed, right there in the middle of the rocks that you were supposed to clean up. And another, and another. There's grass seeds all over this lawn - not just in the grass where they're supposed to be."

Is he kidding?

"I said that you'll clean this yard for three hours, but let me make myself clear - it could be longer. If I come back here and find grass seeds or dust in these rocks, then it will be longer. Do you understand?"

"Yes, sergeant!"

The duty sergeant went back into the headquarters and our dejected group went back to work. We stood arms' length from each other and cleaned the section of lava rocks in front of us. I knelt down on my hands and knees looking for each loose grass seed or leaf that looked like it was in danger of falling. I tore the leaves up into little bits and placed them with the seeds between stalks of grass on the lawn. Weedy looking seeds and other debris went in my pocket first and then into the garbage.

I pick some of the shiftier rocks up and then reset them so they lay firmer on the comrades. Any visible piece of black plastic was covered by at least two layers of well-placed rocks. The spring crept across the Georgian sky. My always spinning brain ran out of thoughts - good and bad. Depression, anxiety, and creativity punched their cards and called it a day. Bored into submission by the mindless task.

Eventually, the clock spun around three times. We study in formation. The duty sergeant strolled across the grounds. Not looking for anything in particular. He took a look at his watch and said, "You're dismissed for the night."

I wandered back to our quarters realizing that this might have been the first time in my life when I've been given a major task to do and the outcome truly didn't matter. No congratulations or reward for finishing. No, atta-boy. No nothing. It was just over.

It was a textbook-worthy lesson in how to destroy an individual's motivation. Expectancy Theory holds that motivation is a product of the individual's expectation that a certain effort will lead to the intended performance, the instrumentality of this performance to achieving a certain result, and the desirability of this result for the individual. According to that theory, removing the expectation that a certain effort will lead to a certain result is a guaranteed method of destroying someone's motivation. 

The lesson had worked, but it was only the beginning of the de-motivation process. Our group of recycled losers spent the next several weeks digging holes just to dig holes and putting coats of fresh paint over coats of fresh paint. The removal of traditional motivation really wore on a lot of my buddies, but it had the opposite effect on me. I found freedom in focusing on doing a task well without worrying about the outcome.
The efforts of my entire life had been geared towards achieving outcomes. For the span of those weeks between Ranger School cycles, it was clear that life was about participating in tasks - not achieving rewards. My career as an infantry officer was in jeopardy. My loved ones were time zones away. It was rare for a half hour to go by when I wasn't reminded that I was a failure; yet it was one of the happiest times of my life.

The Dalai Lama said that "Attachment is the... cause of suffering." Zen practitioners and Christian mystics would not be surprised that I found happiness in a situation designed to be miserable. The situation severed my attachment to wordly outcomes, a key task in opening oneself up the the Divine. There was no where to go and nothing to achieve. All I could do was work on the task at hand to the best of my ability. When it was time, I'd be given another task. My role was to follow the tasks set out before me - the Way. In the midst of that experience, I realized that was always my role. I'd just never seen it before.

I've struggled to maintain that outlook throughout the years: do the work that needs to be done without worrying about the final outcome. Care for those that need care, love those that need love, stand up for those who could not stand up for themselves. Not letting the drive for success or fear of losing someone prevent me from truly experiencing the task at hand. 

Unfortunately, it's a painful lesson and it seems to always require relearning. As Father Robert E. Kennedy said, "This noble truth so easily falls from the lips, yet it is a lifelong struggle to see things clearly and to free ourselves from deluded and possessive love."

A Little Charring is Not a Bad Thing

August 29, 2011

I drove to Kalispell last Tuesday to attend a Wednesday morning hearing of one of the Montana Legislature's interim committees.  The August sun beat down on the asphalt.  A hot breeze blew hard even at the top of McDonald Pass.  The beetle-killed pine trees lined the road in both directions and marched en masse to the horizon.

I took a right on Highway 83 from Highway 200, not far from where the Clearwater River dumps into the Blackfoot.  Both rivers were running low, lucky to pull any water away from the parched earth.  There was an orange sign on the side of the road that read fire crews ahead.

I couldn't help but think that it was amazing how I'd driven all this way through tinder-dry wilderness and this was the first sign I saw of wildfire.  It had been a wet June and July.  To my left, snow still capped some of the peaks of the Mission Mountains.

Montana was well on its way to escaping fire season relatively unscathed.  This would be the third year in a row - a minor miracle considering the fact that the pine beetle-ravaged trees caught fire easier than cheap charcoal.  Four years ago, the state had already been burning for two months by now.

Now we were preparing to have football season start before fire season had much more than kicked off.  I counted our blessings and continued driving north to Kalispell.

The next day, I traced my way back down Highway 83 through a smoky haze.  I figured that the Swan Lake fire had stirred up a bit over the night, but when I hit Highway 200 it was clear that the smoke was coming from more than one fire.  The Blackfoot River was cloaked from its headwaters on the Continental Divide until it dumped into the Clarkfork River 75 miles away.

I'm often wrong about things, but seldom does the level of wrongness become that clear, that fast.  Usually my wrongness tends to meander back and forth, just below the surface; until it finally pops up and sweeps me away.   I cleared my mind  and continued onto Butte where I had one more meeting, before heading home to Helena. 

I drove down Interstate 15 and into the Helena Valley that evening.  The sun was low in the West.  A huge cloud of smoke rose up in the sky from the North, beyond the Scratchgravel Hills.  It was obvious that we were on the front end of a miserable couple of weeks, if not months.

I couldn't help but think how often I misjudge life's adversity.  No matter how many times I'm proven wrong, I still think that if I do certain things or follow the right steps then things will be okay.  The chaos of life will settle down and drift along as gently as the Missouri River beneath Holter Dam.

Life doesn't have a Holter Dam.  Churning adversity will appear before us, no matter how hard we fight to avoid it.  When we clear that set of adversity another round will pop up from a direction that we do not expect.

In the midst of this turmoil, most of us will ask God to clear the way for us.  Sometimes those prayers will be answered, but for the most part they won't.  I will not hazard a guess about why some are answered and others are not, but I know that we are not called to paddle gently down the meandering river of life.  We are called to immerse ourselves in the struggle.

Often, it will feel that we're about to lose the fight.  The things that we fight to hold onto are ripped from our grasp; but, those losses are not as tangible or permanent as they appear.  The Divine scores our wins and losses differently.  As described by Jesus, "For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it.  What profit is there for one to gain the whole world and forfeit his life?" Mark 8:34-35.

It's a strange system and one that we are not meant to completely understand.  We build our life knowing that the fire will claim some of it and we will have to build again.  Success and failure falls on upon us all.  We love and we lose.  The task at hand, our general directions, and the final goal are the only givens.  Thankfully, that is enough.

"How long will you make a drunken show of yourself?'

The Bible is generally not seen as a funny book.  Most of it isn't, but then there's 1 Samuel 1:9-18.  It may just be my twisted sense of humor, but this passage cracks me up everytime I read it.

That passage focuses on Hannah, one of Elkanah's two wives.  Elkanah loved Hannah more than his other wife, Peninnah.  Peninnah responded to this troubling state of affairs by making constantly fun of Hannah for not having any children.

The two wives' bickering was at its worse each year when the family would take a pilgrimmage to the Lord's Temple at Shiloh.  Once there, Elkanah would make a big scene of honoring Hannah in his sacrifices.  Peninnah responded to this affront to her honor, by especially humiliate Hannah.  Then Hannah would weep and refuse to eat.
 
One night after the taunts had become too much, Hannah left the family meal and went to the Temple.  Hannah prayed furiously asking the Lord to give her a son and promising that she would give the son over to God.  Hannah wept through the prayers.  Her lips moved, but no words came out.

The reader of 1 Samuel is following Hannah's moving prayers and her passionate vow the Lord.  We are fully expecting a burst of sunlight shooting through the clouds to mark God's ascent or maybe an earthquake.  Something dramatic to make it clear that this woman's prayers have been heard and her suffering is coming to an end.

Instead of that glorious revelation, the head Temple priest thinks that Hannah is drunk and comes up to rebuke her.  He says, "How long will you make a drunken show of yourself?  Sober up from your wine!" 1 Samuel 14.

Hannah explains herself and the head priest eventually tells her,"Go in peace, and may the God of Israel grant you what you asked of him."

Hannah's prayer was answered and she did dedicate her son, Samuel, to God.  Samuel would become a great prophet.  1 Samuel 20.  He was even tasked by the Lord to annoint was the one that the Lord tasked with annointing Saul and David as Kings of Israel.

There are a bounty of stories and lessons from Samuel's life, but I still can't get over the image of his plaintive, praying mother being accused by the head priest of being drunk.  She'd fled the belittling remarks of Peninnah only to be further belittled in the Temple.

I enjoy irony too much not to laugh at that story every time that I hear it, especially since Samuel's first task from God was to tell that head priest he was finished.  There's a lesson in there not expecting prayers to be answered in the way that we think they should, but I think the more powerful lesson is in how Hannah responded to the head priest.

Hannah was already at the end of her rope.  Peninnah's hurtful taunts had driven her away from the family.  She's come to the Lord for sanctuary only to have one of His servants rebuke her.  Hannah could have stormed out of the Temple and said that was the last time she was going there to pray.  How many people have done something similar after a priest, pastor, or rabbi have said something challenging or hurtful?

Hannah didn't.  She corrected the head priest.  Hannah told him what she was doing there and what she was asking of God.  She left with the head priest's blessing, not because he was a great head priest; but because she made him a better priest.

Hannah's lesson is that we cannot allow the failings of some of the practitioners of organized religion to become a barrier that prevents us from accessing the Divine.  As long as our churches and temples are manned by people, they will do things either on accident or even intentionally that will make us want to quit going. 

It's up to us not to let that happen.

"With Duty in Mind"

This post is dedicated to Mary McCue.  Mary was an incredible friend, colleague, and mentor.  She lived a life full of compassion and grace with a deep sense of duty to her family and the rest of humanity.  Rest in peace Mary.


April 28, 2011

"With Duty in Mind" is the motto for West Point's Class of 1999.  It is inscribed on our class crest.  If the motto ever slips my mind, it will come to me again on days like today when our alumni association sends out an email advertising Class of 1999 merchandise.

If you're interested, they've got "With Duty in Mind" scrawled across everything from ball caps, to golf shirts, money clips, to tie tacks.  If you're considering buying any product that legal and non-perishable, I'm sure there's a way to get a version with our class motto on it.

While I can poke fun at the marketers all day.  The reality is that duty really was always on your mind during those four at the Academy.  Duty seemed to emanate out of the gray granite walls and rise like steam off the the asphalt in Central Area.  Duty coated us like the humidity rolling off the Hudson River and dropped down from above like snow from the gray January sky.

We had the duty to have our hair cut in a certain way.  The duty to have our shoes shined and rooms inspected.  It was our duty to keep our grades up and our two-mile run times down.  If you ever had any doubt about the scope and specifics of your duties as a cadet, you could always find the answers in the the United States Military Academy Regulations.  The regulations were as thick as my hometown phonebook and they were detailed enough to specify which direction a cadet's toothbrush should point in their medicine cabinet.

After over a decade out of West Point, it's hard to even imagine trying to live life again according to the duties outlined in that massive book of regulations.  That concept is still fodder for the occasional "back at West Point" nightmare.  That's close enough to going back for me.

But on the other hand, I believe that there is something powerful to the statement "With Duty in Mind."  There are few things more powerful than a life lived with sense of duty or few things sadder than a life lived without.

Everyone develops a purpose or justification for existence.  Personally, I believe that our purpose is intrinsically tied to duty.  More specifically, the purpose of our lives is to humbly fulfill our personal duty to the Divine, ourselves, our families, our fellow humans, and the world that was created for us.

Naming the purpose of life is a tall task, especially for someone who was lucky to get out of their college Philosophy class with a B-.  Thankfully, there was higher power that spoke to the issue and I just took the cliff notes.  The foundation for this statement is taken from what Jesus called the two greatest commandments and a line from Genesis describing people's duty in Eden.

• "You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind." Matthew 22:37
• "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." Matthew 22:39.
• Man's duty to "cultivate and care" for creation. Genesis 2:15.

Each individuals specific duties vary with their talents and abilities.  As described by Jesus, "Much will be required of the person entrusted with much, and still more will be demanded of the person entrusted with more." Luke 12:48.

The nature of each individual's duty will also vary.  We're not all called to be Mother Theresa and care for the poor on the streets of Calcutta, but we are all called to fulfill our duties.  The nature of those personal duties is a matter of discernment.  Personally, I think that this is the hardest part.  The world pulls us in so many directions.  We really need help in figuring out how to set those key priorities and tasks.

I don't think that this statement of purpose is that profound and I don't think it's exclusively Christian, but I think it's important out another specific example from Scripture because the nature of our duties has been convoluted, oversimplified or misstated so many times by members of the Christian community.

In speaking about Judgment Day, Jesus said that He will tell the righteous, "Come, you who are blessed by my Father.  Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.  For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, naked and you clothed me, ill and you cared for me, in prison and you visited me." Matthew 25:34-36

The righteous will ask when they did those things for Jesus.  He will respond, whatever you did for someone in need you did for me. Matthew 25:40.

Jesus puts it point blank in that passage.  The only ones of us that will deserve a final, lasting reward are the ones who fulfilled their duties to their fellow man.

It's a tall order and none of us will fulfill those duties every day, but we've got to try.

"My Heart is Full of Nails"

April 18, 2011

In my job, I have a lot of conversations with people who live with serious mental illnesses.  The conversations range from those about the weather with one of my colleagues who is in long-term recovery from bipolar disorder to phonecalls from callers who are in deep psychosis and in need of immediate hospitalization.

Usually, the individuals on the other side of the conversation fall somewhere in between those lines.  The stories that they bring me vary from tragic to uplifting.  I've talked to mothers desperate to get their children into treatment before something horrible happens.  I've listened to a wife struggling to grasp why her husband committed suicide.  I've listened to people locked in their own delusions and paranoia.

All of the people who call or dorp in want answers or directions to someone that can help.  Sometimes, I can point them in the right direction, other times I have to try and decide whether to tell them that there is no one that will help them until after something tragic happens.  They or their loved one have somehow fallen into an abyss of legal redtape and scarce public funding.

The conversations can be horrible and depressing.  They can also be powerful and uplifting.  The conversations can carry messages more powerful than the greatest sermons.  Today I had one of those conversations.

The woman sitting on the chair in front of me was about sixty.  She'd come into the office while I was trying to organize some receipts.  It was forty five minutes later and she wasn't showing a sign of slowing down.  I tried to focus and not think about the waiting receipts.

The woman is a well respected professional in our community.  In our last few phone conversations, I could tell she was struggling.  She was very agitated and listed off more than a dozen local conspiracies that she had reported to authorities ranging from the Drug Enforcement Agency to the Governor.  I couldn't tell which one or parts of those stories were accurate and which reflected a major drift from the perception of reality.

The woman's eyes were wide. Her head haloed in curls.  She was leading me deeper and deeper into conspiracies, explaining how they tied together.  So far I couldn't see anything we could do to help her.  She just wanted to be listened to by someone that cared.  I tried to focus.

Then she looked up at me and said something completely out of contex from the rest of the conversation.

 "I need to forgive them."  She repeated, "I need to forgive them."

I looked up at her trying to figure out if she was talking about the same group of alleged serial wrongdoers or if I'd missed something.

The woman put her hand over her breast.  "My heart is full of nails.  I need to forgive them.  It's just bringing me down."


The conversation continued for another twenty minutes.  The woman made her way out of the office, but I couldn't get her words out of my head.  My heart is full of nails. I knew that feeling too well.  It was the feeling of a heart full of anger, resentment, jealousy, and the sting of betrayal. 

I couldn't help thinking, "How many nails do I have in my heart?" It wasn't hard to think of five or ten off the top of my head: failed relationships, bad business deals, petty disputes that escalated into something bigger, etc. 

Human beings hurt each other in both minor and major ways everyday.  While we can take steps to protect ourselves, bad things will still happen to us and often someone else's actions will be the direct cause of those bad things.

The question is how do we handle it?  Do we let our wounds fester by filling them with angry thoughts of revenge or do we heal them through forgiveness? 

It's a painful process to forgive those who have wronged us, but it's essential daily step on the path to the divine.  In the words of Jesus, your ability to access the Kingdom of Heaven depends on your willingness to forgive those who sinned against you. Matthew 5:44-45 ("love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you."); Matthew 18: 22-35; Matthew 5:22 ("whoever is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment..")

If we cannot muster up that ability to forgive, then we have no one but ourselves to blame for our "heart full of nails."

I learned a lot more from my expected visitor than I ever would have gotten from those receipts.  Hopefully I was able to pass on something in return.

Jesus and the Death Penalty

Note: The passages quoted below are from the New American Bible.  Similar passages can be found in the New International Bible in Matthew 15: 1-20 and John: 8:1-11

I spent this morning in Montana’s Senate Judiciary Committee’s hearing on a bill to abolish the death penalty.  I was testifying if favor of the bill on behalf of NAMI Montana’s members who live with serious mental illnesses and their family.

The Catholic Churches, the Assembly of God, and the Montana Association of Churches also spoke up in favor of the bill.  It’s always nice to be on the same side as your congregation and fortunately with this job I usually am.

When the opponents got up to testify, two preachers stated point blank that anyone who was against the death penalty was not a Christian.  One of the preachers pulled out his Bible to demonstrate evidence for his point.

The preacher cited Jesus’s statement in Matthew 15:4, “‘Whoever curses father or mother shall die’” as proof that Jesus was for the death penalty.  In that passage, Jesus is restating the Mosaic Law described in Leviticus 20:9, “And he that curseth his father, or his mother, shall surely be put to death.”

The preacher waved his Bible and made it very clear that professed Christians who did not follow Jesus’s will on the death penalty were hypocrites.  It was a powerful allegation, if true; but if it was true then why would the preacher use that passage of the Bible to illustrate his point? 

In that passage, Jesus described this absurd law from Levitucus and that fact that no one followed it in order to defend from the Pharisees’ ridicule of Jesus’s followers for not washing their hands when they eat a meal. Matthew 15:2.  If the passage was actually a defense of putting people to death, why would Jesus conclude it with the simple statement that “to eat with unwashed hands does not defile”? Matthew 15:20. 

If someone reading the Bible wanted to interpret Jesus’s attitude toward the death penalty, couldn’t they just go directly to John: 8:3-11 where Jesus was asked to sentence a woman for death for adultery?  In this instance, there was no doubt that the woman was guilty or that Mosaic Law required her to be put to death by stoning.

If Jesus was a firm believer in the death penalty, He would have been the first one to throw a stone.  This action would have been recorded in the Bible and made it very clear to His followers throughout history that there was no doubt that Jesus stood on the side of capital punishment.

Jesus reached down to the ground, but he did not grab a stone.  Instead, Jesus took his finger and began drawing in the dirt.

The scribes and the Pharisees who originally dragged the woman before Jesus continued to call for his judgment against her.

Jesus “straightened up and said to them, ‘Let the one among you who is without sin be the first one to throw a stone at her.’” After saying this, He bent down and began writing on the ground again.

Eventually all of the woman’s accusers left leaving just her and Jesus.  “Then Jesus straightened up and said to her, ‘Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?”

“She replied, ‘No one, sir.’”

“Then Jesus said, ‘Neither do I condemn you. Go [and] from now on do not sin any more.”

There are some strong arguments in favor of the death penalty.  No one with a heart who listened to victims’ testimonies could deny that.  But the argument that “our government should put criminals to death because Jesus wants us to” is thoroughly debunked by John: 8:3-11.

Learning of Darcee's Death

Summer 1997

I walk out of the door of the Regimental Command Center at Camp Buckner. I told staff that I wasn’t feeling well. It wasn’t an excuse that carried much weight around West Point, but I was training to take over for the second detail which wouldn’t start for more than a week. I was redundant this week and today I wasn’t in the mood to be redundant.

I’d woken up the night before in a rage, grabbing my knife before I realized where I was. The adrenalin cranked through my blood as I tried to talk myself down. That wasn’t like me and it wasn’t like me to wake up despondent, drained of all energy with a pit in my stomach deep enough that a someone digging at the bottom would strike his shovel’s blade against the roof of hell.

It didn’t make sense. I was dating a beauty queen that I was wild for and I was about to take over my first major organizational role at West Point. Yesterday I had a bounce in my step and a nervous energy about tackling a job that I wasn’t sure I could handle, today I couldn’t feel my legs as they carried my burdened body away from work and into the woods.

I had a book of Hemingway’s short stories in the cargo pocket of my BDU’s. I would get away and read it in hopes that that Papa’s words would pull me away from the invisible ledge. I trod the trail around Lake Popolopen to a rocky outcropping where I’d fished from during some of the down hours during my summer training the year before. I lay down upon the flat gray rock and began to read.

Three pages beyond my bookmark, Hemingway’s character described a girl that he’d been friends with as a child. A wave of grief ran over me. I set the book upon the granite. I couldn’t move. Despair seized my limbs. I lay motionless for ten or fifteen minutes before fighting my way back into the reality of the warm New York summer’s day.

I walked back to Camp Buckner. The grief hit me two more times along the way, dropping me to a knee. I didn’t know what was happening.

I avoided the Command Center and continued on towards the guard station. I knew that I couldn’t work, but thought that I might be able to catch a ride with the duty driver back to the campus to retrieve some of the gear that I would need the summer. A simple productive task¸ something basic to get me moving.

The cadet on duty looked down at my name tag. He bit his lip, then said, “Matt Kuntz, you’re father has been calling for you. I’m sorry, but a close friend of yours has died.”

I felt the blood run out of my face. My dad hadn’t said who it was. I can’t remember what I said before leaving the guard shack and making my way towards the pay phones.

My stepmother answered the phone and told me it was Darcee. The tears rolled down my face. I hung up the phone as sobs shook my chest.

Darcee and I had been friends since grade school. We swam together on the Lion’s Swim Team as children and through high school. I’d done my best to help her with the anorexia that attacked her midway through her freshman year. I’d written letters to her every day that she was at the treatment center in Arizona and did my best to help her make the transition towards wellness when she returned home.

Darcee lived another handful of summers after her stay at the treatment center. She fell in love with the man of her dreams. Two weeks earlier I’d cooked her breakfast as she talked about moving to Missoula to be with him, hoping to eventually get married and start a family. I’d never seen her happier.

I didn’t know that the anorexia had transitioned into bulimia which was poised to overwhelm her gentle heart. My grief continued through her funeral in Montana and in the years that followed. Darcee was an unbelievable friend. I will always miss her and struggle with questions of why the Lord called her home so soon.

Beyond the loss, I realized for the first time in my life that I’d been shown proof that the universe was more complex that the reality I could perceive with my natural senses. I’d woken up in a rage at the exact time of her death over two thousand miles away from where she’d passed. The grief crippled me before I’d heard that she was gone.

It was my first sign and it was horrible. My only solace in feeling something both bigger than all of us and completely all of us was that I knew she wasn’t really gone. Darcee was gone for today, gone for tomorrow, but whatever I’d experienced had convinced me that the ones who loved her would see her again.

Side Note: On the plane back to Montana for Darcee’s funeral, I swore not to ever fight against mental illness again. It was too complex and horrible. Looking back at my naivety, I can’t help but think of the phrase, “If you want to hear God laugh, tell Him your plans.”

I'm Not Qualified to Write This

Anyone who has known me for more than five minutes can list a handful of things that I've done wrong. If they've known me longer than that, then they'd better get more hands. I thought about providing a list of some of those things, but I've got a feeling that most of you will believe that I've got more than my fair share of flaws and that many of them run deep. Anyone who doesn't believe that yet will eventually.

That flawed existence has scared me from telling a broader audience about some of the spiritual things that I've experienced and seen. I was afraid that my ability to transmit the message would be obscured by my own sins and I know that many of you will not be able to look past my faults. I cannot argue against that judgment. Your heart should always be your guide and if it tells you that I'm full of it, then you're probably right.

This week I had another amazing experience that I cannot attribute to anything other than the act of a higher power. It was powerful and life-changing. After a lot of thought, I've decided that it's my duty to tell the stories about how I've been blessed and what I think I've learned. Although, I'd be lying if I claimed to have even one millionth of the answers. I'm just searching for Truth with dirty glasses.

I know myself and this world well enough to be certain that I'm going to fail and sin throughout the writing of this blog. I ask that you please try and overlook my continued failings to focus on the meaning of what I've seen and experienced. It is more beautiful than the teller is not.

Thank you,

Matt