Tree of Disappointment

Royal palms near our home in California

Psalm 22: 1-5

My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?

Far from my deliverance are the words of my groaning.

O my God, I cry by day, but You do not answer;
And by night, but I have no rest.

Yet You are holy,
O You who are enthroned upon the praises of Israel.

In You our fathers trusted;
They trusted and You delivered them. 

To You they cried out and were delivered; 

In You they trusted and were not disappointed.

 
I claim to be no expert in these things, but I think the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil produces the fruit of Disappointment. I invite you to meander through my rather hodgepodge garden of thinking on the matter.

Remember the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil in the Genesis story of Adam and Eve?  Whether or not you believe that the story is literally true or is a creation myth, it's highly symbolic of human nature, and worthy of contemplation.

As a reminder of the plot setup: Adam and Eve, the prototype of human beings, are created in a delightful garden where life is idyllic. They are given work to do, and they get to walk and talk with their Creator every evening. But they are forbidden one thing in the garden, per God's instructions to Adam (and mind you, these instructions are given before Eve is ever created): Don't eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, for in that day you will certainly die.

So what happens? We can see this plot event coming a mile away. A serpent hanging out in the forbidden tree convinces Eve to give the attractive fruit a try, and she does, and so does Adam. Then the eyes of both of them were opened to their nakedness, and their first action is to try to cover that up with loincloths made of fig leaves.

Although this story works well with children in its literal form, it carries with it a deeper symbolism that can take on reality for adults while the literal scaffold falls away.

God created us in His image, which means that however we came to be, we're creatures that are made to emit some reminiscence of Him. It reminds me of those clouds that look like a picture of something for a few moments, or a shadow cast on a wall as I walk by in bright sunlight. What we forget is that "in His image" does not mean that we are just like God. Thinking of it in that way leads us to believe that we actually might think our way into being as knowing and powerful and good as God, being able to stand on our own two feet and take His place.

Lots of people have done that, I think, because they have either perceived their Creator to be as small as they can become in their best moments, or because they have jettisoned the idea of God altogether. They believe that intrinsically and by their efforts they are good people, that they are Enough. And they come to believe that, compared to the horrible image of God they see in religious people around them, they are not just Enough, but they are Better. Here's how it is: we are all judgmental and demanding of one another, and we can all justify it to ourselves in seemingly airtight ways.

Truth is, now that we have eaten of the proverbial fruit--however that happened--we are all bound to taste disappointment. We have, in our arrogance of knowing, built up our perception of who God should be (if there is a God), of who His children should be and how they should behave, and most of all of who we are. We are masters of deceiving ourselves as to our own goodness. There it is, the symbolic loincloth of fig leaves.

The truth is, we're naked, and despite what today's culture might convey about "naked" being rather attractive, it is also at the same time pretty funny-looking. "Naked" is ugly, if you try on certain lenses or look at some parts of it. Seen in some situations, "naked" can even be extremely threatening; women tend to understand this better than men do. And I think everyone, seeing themselves naked, at some point looks and is disappointed.

Paradoxically, recognizing one's nakedness can be a saving grace. Once you see yourself as you really are, it's humbling. When you are humbled, oddly enough, you have a prime opportunity to become more teachable, more accepting, more loving.  Once you see your family as it really is, once you see your community as it is, once you see your church or country as it really is, you must at some point face utter disappointment and shame. We all, having eaten of the symbolic fruit, are cause for our own disillusionment. Deep, deep disappointment.

At this point, I would suggest, we are sorely tempted to look at someone else grabbing at the edges of their pitiful loincloth and trying to cover their nakedness, and point fingers at them. "You're a mess." "Your family is full of jerks and criminal behavior." "Your church/mosque/temple or religion perpetrates hideous evil on the world." "Your government isn't as good as mine, and you need to be like us."   And all the while our own fig leaf loincloths are gaping and a crackly leaf drops to the ground from time to time.

We want something better. We've lost the garden and can't find our way back to it.

This is what amazes me every time I see it or experience it: that in tasting the bitter fruit of disappointment (which at its core must be disappointment in ourselves), we can either choose to live in Disappointment, or we can take that leap of faith to believe that there is a better Tree, and that it is available to us even though we are still locked out of the Garden. Disappointment and shame are crucial steps on the way to understanding our need for and the availability of saving grace.

I observe this, but I really don't understand it all. I keep thinking about it, and maybe that's because I have experienced it, and it opens up a much bigger universe to ponder and explore.

Back to the Burbling Brooks

Me, sitting in a garden on the Mount of Olives, watching the sunset over Jerusalem, on June 30 of this year.

I am going to adjust the direction of this blog back to some of its original channels; namely, my musings on spiritual themes. I used to write along those lines, and then somehow I got away from that. It's not that I wandered off from faith, as faith is what has nourished and sustained me. I love God as I perceive Him to be real and present in my life, and I can't ever get away from His invitation and calling upon me. But I think that some of the burdens I was carrying got heavy enough that I didn't feel I could express that inner life for a while. It felt like it got stopped up because of life feeling rather threatening and overwhelming.

Underneath the surface of the water in which I've been paddling, the thoughts have continued to run along, bubble up, and wash back and forth. Putting those thoughts into words and sentences and paragraphs has always clarified and fine-tuned them for me. It's time to open the sluice-gate again and let them flow, maybe in just a dribble at times, but hopefully in some happy burbling brook at other times.

This is by way of saying that if you are put off by spiritual things, you might want to drop in occasionally to see if there's a pretty picture and then mosey along. I won't be your cup of tea for awhile.

But this is one cup of tea I'm looking forward to sipping. And maybe some of you might want to drop by and bring the scones and jam in your comments, and make it a pleasant and chummy social event.

Yes, I realize I'm hopping from one metaphor to another. It's my posting, and I get to do that.

Urban Legends and the Truth

I think I have all the makings of being a pest. Not as bad a pest as Husband can be, mind you, but a pest, nevertheless. And that's the truth.

While others may identify some other kind of pestiness, I am specifically specifically speaking here of my penchant for setting people right when they are believing in rubbish as being truth. I have realized as I've gotten older and more mature that the truth isn't quite so cut and dried as it might seem, particularly to those of us who find it easy to think concretely. But it still irritates me to the point of growling when people are taken advantage of by others, simply because these people are not discerning enough to be squinty-eyed about everything they see or read.

Let me offer a couple of examples.

A couple of days ago I called over to my parents' place to check on them, as I do nearly every day.  My dad answered the phone, and the following conversation ensued.

Daddy: "I turned on my computer today, and there was a warning that one of my files is corrupted.

Me: "Oh yeah?"

Daddy: "Yes, and I ran the scan and it told me which one was corrupted. So I wiped everything off my hard drive and reinstalled it.  And my Facebook program works!  But I still don't have Skypee, so I will have to put that one back on. I hope it works."

Me: "Daddy, you don't have to wipe your computer clean! It just makes a lot more work for both of us!  Just because a notice says you have a corrupted file, doesn't mean you do."

Daddy:  "Well, it said the file was corrupted, and it told me which one it was."

Me:  "Daddy, you can't believe every notice that pops up!  If you don't know where the notice comes from, never, never, NEVER click on the buttons to let it do anything, whether they are to scan your computer or to go to a website. They just want to steal your information or get access to your computer."

Daddy: "Well, it's all clean now, and I think I didn't mess anything up!  And later I'll try to get the Skypee program back on. I hope I can do that."

Me: (with exasperation) "Daddy, that's the problem. You may not get Skype set up, and then I have to come download it again and figure out what your login and password were, and it's just a mess. Quit wiping your computer clean!"

I know, I know. I should be more patient. But I get so tired of seeing my parents, who come from a more trustworthy era, believing everything that comes in the mail, trusting strangers who cold-call them and want to sell them medications more cheaply from a "Canadian pharmacy," and getting concerned about news stories from less-than-reputable sources.

Which brings me to another case in which I become a pest--viral urban legends.  I discovered snopes.com some years ago, and ever since then, when there's a story that sounds wild or scary, I'll run a search on Snopes for it. We MUST have the truth!

So people who send me sensational e-mails that are geared to strike fear into the heart, or people who post them on Facebook, are more than likely to get a response from me that links to a web page written by the good Barbara Mikkelson--who happens to be Canadian, by the way--setting us all straight. I'm not always nice about it, either. I don't quite say it this straightforwardly, but essentially the message is, "Don't be an idiot. Check out your stories before trying to perpetrate them on the rest of us."

Yeah, I know I have a hangup about truth-telling.

My latest foray into setting someone straight by citing Snopes received a response saying, "I figure passing along a 'keep your eyes open' type thing like this usually won't hurt." 

Um... well yes, it will hurt. As much as I love you, it hurts, and you'll figure that out if you think about it a bit.  First of all, passing on things that scare other people, hurts. There is too much in this world that is scary without making us fearful every time we turn around that we'll get carjacked, assaulted in the night, and so on. Second, simply passing on a story that is untruthful hurts the little bit of ability we have to trust one another. I desperately want to be able to trust people, so much so that I consider myself rather gullible. Having people pass on false information doesn't help me at all. I want to be a part of a wholesome, dependable world, not a cynical one. You are forcing me to become more and more cynical, not only about your stories, but about you. And that hurts.

Actually, I think I've gotten my dad to not believe the tabloids by the checkout stand anymore. I didn't realize I had accomplished my goal until my dad told me that a lady had glued her baby to the wall. (He likes to opine to me about the latest news.)

"No WAY!!" I exclaimed. "Daddy, you've got to quit reading those tabloids! You can't believe something just because you see it in print somewhere!"

"No, really," he said, and dished out the story with a few more details. He had read it on the internet, actually, which of course makes it true. I didn't believe him about the story ... not a bit.

And then I saw it in my newsfeed. A woman did indeed superglue her kid's hands to the wall. And of course she was sentenced to a lot of years in jail for that an other abuses, as she should be. It's a horrible story, and made me sick to my stomach. How is it that the news can find so many stories of people degenerating into behavior that's worse than that of animals?

Consider the true story of the abusive mother compared to a viral false story about how carjackers might trick you. Truth can be much, much worse than fiction.

Crystal Clear

Mama sporting her new glasses frames at the optometrist

It's about time for an update on my sweet mama. When I last blogged in October, she was planning to see Ophthalmologist #4. After waiting a few weeks, we walked into his exam room. He looked at her eyes and said, "Yes, you need more surgery, and I can do that. I think we should let your eyes settle a while longer after the cataract surgery, though--maybe six to eight weeks--and then we'll clear the crystals out of her eye and put a little hole in her iris to make sure she doesn't get glaucoma."

"What about reading?" I asked.  "Mama's favorite thing in the world is to read. Is there any way she can see between now and the surgery?"

"Sure," said Doctor #4.  "You could go see an optometrist and see what they can do for her."

Hurray, we thought. We made the pre-op appointment to see Dr. #4 on our way out. The first available time--and I kid you not--was TWO MONTHS down the road, November 28.

Off we went to see the optometrist a few days later, to see if we could get her some fix for reading glasses. Dr. Optometrist looked at Mama's eyes and could not get a measurement. Could not. Not a bit. The verdict: can't do anything for you. Too many crystals in your vitreous fluid. Can't see the back of your eye. Wait for your surgery.

Our little family was so despondent at the news. That night I called Dr. Art in Washington state with the update. He is, as you may recall (although it's been a long time since I started this story), our family friend who had done the cataract surgery. Talking to Art, I got choked up.  "I feel like we're wasting two or more months of my mom's time of being mentally sharp," I said. "I feel so bad for her. She hasn't been able to see clearly since before we moved here, and this is taking so long."  Because she couldn't see, she was sleeping a lot every day, and that was scary.

I could tell he was frustrated with the process, too. "Let me make a call and get back to you," he said. Having parents who are retired doctors, I know that when a doctor gets a bee in his bonnet, he makes things happen that otherwise wouldn't. I felt much relieved just to have Art understand, let alone intervene.

Fifteen minutes later the phone rang. "Can you go see my friend, Dr. B, tomorrow?" he asked. "I worked with Dr. B as my attending in my residency. He has years and years of experience, and he'll fit your mom in if you can take her tomorrow." 

Little birdwalk:  When I checked out Dr. B later on his website, I saw that he's done more than 13,000 of the surgeries my mom needed.  Thirteen THOUSAND.  "That's not as many as delivering seventeen THOUSAND babies," Husband wisecracked later, referring to my mom's formidable record as an obstetrician. We all dissolved in laughter, including Mama.

I was breathless at Art's suggestion that we could get help the next day. Tomorrow??? I had committees and appointments on my calendar for the next day. Nevertheless, you don't disrespect a doctor who intervenes for you. I cleared my calendar, hope reappeared for all of us, and we were off to see Dr. B the next day.

Dr. B. saw Mama and scheduled her for her first surgery the following day, which was less than a week after we'd been told to wait another 6-8 weeks. "Those faculty doctors work in a beaurocracy," Dr. B. said. "They are forced to be ultra conservative in their approach. I can't work like that." His office was friendly and efficient, and he was no-nonsense and came across as very sure of himself. I suppose that would make sense, when you've done 13,000 surgeries on eyes.

So Dr. B did the surgery to clear the crystals out of Mama's eyes and put a little hole in her iris to relieve the crowding of the structures at the front of her eye. He walked into the waiting room and told my dad and me all had gone well, handed Daddy eye drops to administer to Mama's eye once the patch came off, and left to do his next surgery.

As a precaution, my parents stayed at our house for a day, since Mama had been told to keep her eye patch on until the morning after the surgery. I woke up at 4:30 that morning to the sounds of jibber-jabber coming up from downstairs.  There were my mid-eighty-year-old parents, sitting on the couch in the living room, holding hands and chattering excitedly because Mama had pulled off her eye patch (thinking it was morning already) and she could READ! She could read even small print, even without glasses! This is my Mama who has worn thick glasses ever since she was six years old.

Dr. B. did Mama's second eye a week later, with similar results. And yesterday I took Mama to get measured and fitted for her glasses that will do the last little bit for getting her crystal clear vision.

Needless to say, both Art and Dr. B are heroes in our books. Consider this: the job is all done, it was done well, and we still haven't reached the November 28 date for Mama's pre-op visit with Dr. #4. We are so so thankful.

Oh yeah. I'd better remember to cancel that November 28 appointment. Hallelujah!