Wednesday May 27, 2009
The way we wish we were
Just over a year ago, I injured my knee. I still don\’t know how. I had spent the day before with friends, on a retreat, doing nothing particularly physical; I woke the next morning unable to walk without a cane.
Knees take a long time to heal.
I learned how to walk without an obvious limp on level ground. Going up and down hills, or stairs, was a different matter. And unfortunately, where I live, we have nothing but hills.
After I\’d favoured my right leg for about six months, my left heel decided to retaliate. Now I didn\’t know which leg to hobble on!
Both my right knee and my left heel are feeling a lot better, thank you. I rarely take a step that causes me to wince suddenly in pain.
But I realized the other day that I have not run for a year. And that bothers me.
Life changes
I used to run constantly. I\’d rather run than walk. I loved the freedom of running, the breeze in my hair, the sense of movement… Once when I missed a bus, I ran the three miles instead and beat the next bus to my destination.
Like Eric Liddell, hero of the film “Chariots of Fire,” I ran because that was the way that God had made me.
But then came a career, a marriage and a mortgage, children, community responsibilities… I ran only when I was late for appointments. Or for my morning cardio-vascular exercise.
Don\’t misunderstand me – I don\’t regret any of those life changes. Without them, I would not be who I am today. And I like who I am.
Yearnings
But I wonder sometimes what happened to that young man who ran like the wind for the sheer joy of running.
Is he still running, in some parallel universe? Did he die and disappear forever? Is he still hiding inside this aging assembly of skin and bones and aching joints?
When I chat with other men my age, they admit similar wonderings. They miss what they recall as their golden age, a halcyon time when they felt they lived life fully.
And I wonder if that\’s where some of our notions of heaven come from. I\’ve never heard any description of heaven with crippled or infirm people in it, or with people still blind or deaf. For that matter, I\’ve never heard of a heaven that still has slaves, or poverty – even the streets are supposed to be paved with gold!
I get the sense that in heaven – whatever that is – people expect to be restored to a time when their lives didn\’t let them down. Uniformly, we seem to imagine that we will be young, healthy, free, rich…
We certainly don\’t expect to spend eternity – whatever that is – inhabiting bodies crippled by accident or illness, or with minds debilitated by dementia.
Is it possible that heaven, like fashion magazines, is a form of denial of what we are, and of what we have become?
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Copyright © 2009 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups permitted; all other rights reserved.
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Your Turn
Last week, I wrote about the sense that we – individually and collectively – are constantly changing. We embody evolution.
Waveland King had these thoughts: “While reading your [Softedges] Evolutions piece it occurred to me that a body doesn\’t really stop changing at death – rather it changes the way it is changing, the component cells becoming increasingly isolated and self-focused. I wonder if this might not be a useful analogy for what seems to be happening in our increasingly narcissistic, all-about-me culture.”
Nasser Rohani wondered if he could use that column as a thought-starter for his Baha\’i service on the weekend [I said yes, of course].
“I just finished reading your article about people of various religious and cultural heritages locked into their belief systems. I am a follower of the Baha\’i Faith and what I have been taught from childhood is that all Faiths originate from the same source and they compliment each other. Baha\’is call this \’progressive revelation.\’ Baha\’is do not believe that they are the only ones holding the truth nor that their truth is eternal. Baha\’u\’llah assures His followers that only Divine Revelation is eternal and we have to expect more of new religious orders to come in the future. On day to day issues, we have been told to adhere to a \’Culture of Change.\’ Nothing is graved in stone. As humanity changes, so do the sets of human values. Truth is not absolute, but relative. The phrase \’Culture of Change\’ which is seemingly an oxymoron, is indeed a challange for the Baha\’is and we need to work at it. We are constantly reminded by the Baha\’i guidance that we should refrain from any practice that has the form of dogma and is not reasonable or scientific.
“I think your assertion is correct when we look at what the followers of religions practice, and not when we look at the spirit of the Faiths.”
Dave de Bourcier had this terse comment: “We know that the only real certainty in life is that we will die, and mostly that does not prevent us from enjoying our days. Why should it be different for the planet, indeed for the whole universe? It is just a bigger picture.”
Jayne Whyte was equally terse: “Like everything in a garden, humans are either growing or compost, and both those processes are life-changing.”
Jean Mosher expressed some frustration: “I\’ve always said, "if you don\’t grow (say change), you die. It irks me no end when people [insist] that what was good or effective 40 years ago must still be the norm. I am an active senior senior and I enjoy movement, change, evolving ideas and all that comes with it, as long as it is kind, generous and thoughtful.”
Until his retirement 18 years ago, Ray Shaver was an oil company executive: “During my career, I was known by many as a change agent, whatever that means. For me it always meant challenging the status quo and celebrating change when it contributed to the betterment of whatever group with which I was involved, or to society, in general. I still get excited about \’change\’ provided the issue is not change for change\’s sake. I guess that is one of the reasons why I particularly enjoy David Suzuki\’s \’the Nature of Things\’ on various geological journeys of discovery.”
Finally, this letter from Joan Mistretta: “After coming close to violence in disagreeing with you about only the upper classes being allowed to vote [a Sharp Edges column: JT], I am happy to be SO in agreement with you about this Soft Edges.
“It is evolution, people. It is working. Work with it. Imagine that what you are doing now is comparable to the fish who climbed out of the slime and began to breathe air. Read Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Google him. Everything that we do matters immensely, and what appears to be least important may be the most important.
“It all matters tremendously. It is all God.”
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About My Paraphrases
Occasionally, I get frustrated by the Bible. Not usually by the message, which is timeless, but by the language and metaphor. Contemporary translations update the language, but not the metaphor, so the text still expects us to respond to images of deserts and tents, camels and droughts, kings and concubines. What we\’ve learned since the Bible was written — about psychology and evolution, about quantum physics and astronomy, computers and fossil fuels – is simply left out.
At such times, I start paraphrasing. I don\’t pretend that these paraphrases rely on new translations of original texts. They are, rather, my way of writing what I think the original writers might have said IF they lived today. Sometimes I stick close to the traditional versification; sometimes I take liberties.
My paraphrase of Paul\’s letter to the Romans attempts to put Paul\’s sometimes convoluted words — and argument — into a contemporary setting. If Paul were writing today, to the Christian church, I\’m not sure he\’d worry as much about the failure of the Jews to follow Christ as about the failure of Christians to follow Christ, so I have rephrased in those terms. I suspect he would also make use of quotations from the Gospels — which of course didn\’t exist when he wrote his letters — rather than using quotations from the only scriptures he had available, which we call the Old Testament.
About 200 people have requested the paraphrase of Romans, as an electronic file.
I now have two new paraphrases available, for Ecclesiastes and Job. Ecclesiastes sticks pretty much to the biblical flow of verses – though with, I hope, some sense of humour. Job cuts 42 chapters down to about three pages. I found the speeches in Job interminable; the only way I could make sense of the various characters\’ verbal meanderings was to turn them into television sound-bites.
I\’m making these available the same way as Romans – on the honor system. You send me an e-mail and request the file you want. I\’ll send it. If you like it, and want to keep it, you send me a cheque for $5 by snail mail. If you don\’t like it, simply erase it from your hard disk and send nothing.
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TECHNICAL STUFF
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For other web links worth pursuing, try
- Charlene Fairchild\’s United Online site,
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