Clothed with joy

1
Clothes are expensive.
New shirts, slacks, and socks
don’t fit our budget.
I know I should be content
with clean and warm,
even if old, but I’m bored
with my wardrobe
and frankly envious
of my well-to-do friends.

I wish the psalmist’s description
went beyond metaphor
and gave me some solid coins
I could take to the store.

2
On second thought,
what would it mean
to be clothed in joy?
What are the colors of contentment?
Could one wear a laugh,
sport a giggle,
or don hilarity as a cape?
Would the hues of happiness
change from day to day?
Would I be so bright with beauty
that fashion, brand, and what people think
wouldn’t matter anymore?

I think I could make do with that.

AI is older than it seems

 I confess to using AI (artificial intelligence) and finding it helpful. I’m at a basic level, using only the free ChatGPT and I have no ambitions of getting more complex. I’m nervous about the future and the rumors I hear of this technology “taking over the world,” although that sounds like exaggeration. But it’s been helpful in finding out more about my medical condition, possible healthy diets, and which publications are accepting poetry submissions. Stuff like that.

But I get angry when it reads my email and tells me how to answer, when it offers to rewrite my blog and make it funnier, when it intimates that it’s a better poet than I am.

Recently when I asked AI to solve a computer problem, it comforted me in my distress, promising that there was a solution and I just needed to have faith. It sounded like a pastor. A human pastor. I found myself feeling better and then had to remind myself that it was a machine. I’m resisting having a personal relationship with AI. 

I’m committed to not using AI in my writing. I won’t ask it to improve a blog reflection or edit a poem. Even if I find myself rewriting a messy first draft numerous times, it’s my creativity at stake. For me, it’s an issue of integrity and honesty.

Recently I was reminded that something artificial offering to do my work for me is not a new phenomenon. It didn’t begin with AI. The temptation to find a substitute for the hard labor of personal creativity is older than I am, whether it’s preaching someone else’s sermon, having someone ghost-write a book for me, cheating on a term paper, or, in general, taking credit for work someone else did.

The following example is 30-years-old, coming from the time I was studying in seminary. It involves writing letters. Most of us are old enough to remember this now largely forgotten art. Even though letter-writing is almost obsolete, this story serves as an example of the same thing that AI offers us today.

The envelope pricked my curiosity. “Cut your letter-writing task down to size,” it announced. “A new tool for busy pastors!” The glossy full-color brochure showed a firm masculine hand signing a letter, the whole scene bathed in a warm light. It looked promising.

I’m a sucker for books or courses dedicated to helping people write. I know that putting the right words on paper or in the computer is hard work, and anything that helps me understand the process and move with it, instead of against it, I appreciate. This brochure promised to link ministry with writing and make it all easier—a good idea.

But as I read through the brochure and accompanying propaganda, my curiosity gradually gave way to incredulity.

This Christian communications company was offering a set of “Over 300 letters!” in a “leather-like” binder, so that the busy pastor no longer need “waste valuable time and energy agonizing over words and phrases.” Each ready-to-use letter was guaranteed to be “sensitive, thoughtful and effective.” Occasional alternative phrases would allow the pastor to pick the one “that sounds most like you.”

The collection of canned letters covered “virtually every situation you can face in the church.” Rather than stumble under the burdens of ministry, the brochure promised that, “You’ll breeze through situations like these and hundreds more!” and proceeded to list a sampling. Some of the situations the pastor would be able to breeze through included

--kindly asking a neighbor not to park in the church parking lot
--supporting members going through a separation or divorce  
--declining a job applicant for a staff position
--informing a contributor that their check was returned by the bank for insufficient funds
--saying good-bye to a congregation.

A sample letter included with the brochure was on the topic, “Condolence on Death of a Newborn.” “Dear Name,” it began. “While I tried to be of comfort to you at the funeral, I now feel impelled to add a few more personal words….”

At that point I felt impelled to stop reading. I was both sad and angry.

In the following weeks, the brochure continued to trouble me.

It may be that behind that product were some well-meaning, creative people who really wanted to help ministers wade through the clutter, details, and accumulation of things that never get done. Communications to church members are probably among those things. And writing does not come easily or naturally to most people.

The idea appeals to some of our middle-class cultural values. The words “fast,” “effective,” “risk-free,” “fully satisfied,” “in a fraction of the time,” and “productive” illustrate the value of minimum effort for maximum output—so the pastor can spend her time in more important ways. Certainly a minister of God has better things to do than “agonize over words and phrases.”

The words “personal” and “sensitive” also crop up to demonstrate other values, values with which any Christian should agree. The problem is, of course, that there is nothing genuinely personal, thoughtful, or sensitive about these letters. There’s nothing genuine about them at all. Rather they are carefully crafted to give the appearance of being personal and caring, so that the congregation will “deeply appreciate and remember for years” this ministry.

I’m bothered by two things. The first is the focus on appearance and impression. We live in a culture that builds a large share of its economy on products that promise to make us seem tanner, smoother, slimmer, blonder, wiser, wittier, and more in control of our lives than we really are. As the church in the midst of this culture, we also struggle with the temptation to compromise integrity, to settle for a form of godliness that denies its power. Effective communication and efficiency in meeting goals can crowd out compassion or integrity. It’s as though it’s more important to convey a strong impression of love rather than make the effort to walk and talk and laugh and cry with people, to “rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep.”

I’m also bothered by the assumption that “agonizing over words and phrases” is a waste of time. Pain is not efficient. Struggling to identify with hurting people, to help bear their burdens can be messy. It takes time. Words don’t always flow when we’re crying.

But what other kind of words dare we offer a young couple who has lost a child?

And now AI is offering us the same “service.”

God help us be wise in choosing what is useful and rejecting what compromises integrity and compassion.

 

[ Parts of this reflection first appeared in “Quaker Life,” April 1998, and will be part of a soon-to-be-published collection of essays called “The Richest Kid on the Block.”]

Does God Have Bones?

“Does God have bones?”
David asked me that today, Lord,
and I couldn’t answer him.
Well—do you?
Have bones I mean.
His question was serious, you know.
He wants to know who and how you are.
And where, too.
And if you’re like us.
I don’t always know.

Bones?
You did have bones once, didn’t you?
Bones and muscles and fingernails
that collected dirt, feet that tired
from miles on dusty roads
and hands that bloodied
from driven nails.
You became like us, didn’t you?

Thank you for reminding me.
Now I know the answer.
Tomorrow I’ll tell David again
that old old story
that even a child can understand.
About a God who filled his lungs
with earth air, tasted bread,
listened to cricket song at night,
held other four-year-olds
on his lap and personally
answered their questions.
About a God who loves so much
he put on bones
and more, much more.

Tomorrow I’ll tell him.

[Note: This poem was first published in the collection “Of Deity and Bones,” 1983.] 

Doing the hard stuff

 People who give advice to older people (and there are dozens of these advice-givers!) all say that in order to keep our brains healthy and functioning, we need to take on challenging tasks. Here in the retirement community, the staff makes available crossword puzzles, sudoku, and other games that can be challenging, along with all sorts of educational programs.

And not just our minds, we also need to challenge our bodies to keep them flexible, strong, and out of trouble for as long as possible.

And we need to stretch and engage in new activities. That’s the formula: New+Hard. Or at least hard enough. For our minds and for our bodies.

I’m taking this seriously and adopting two hard tasks, activities that are causing me to stretch. Also causing me to doubt myself, to wonder if I’m crazy. I probably am, but I accepted that about me long ago.

I’ll start with the physical. With my vestibular migraine condition, any physical activity makes me dizzy. So for the last half-year I have stopped exercising, except for walking outdoors, which I do slowly and with frequent stops. But that’s not enough. While exercise makes me dizzy, it doesn’t harm me. And the rest of my body wants me to do more. I’m worried that I’m deteriorating, which only means growing old faster. So I’m making some changes, doing some new stuff.

I’ve joined a class called “Sit and Be Fit.” It sounds embarrassingly easy, so I’ve resisted. But I think it will be a good way to gently work my way back into regular exercise. I’ve discovered that it’s actually somewhat challenging. I’m moving my arms and legs, swiveling my neck, and even stretching my fingers. Plus, it’s with a fun group of people. That’s part of a good exercise program. It’s good, but not too challenging.

I’ve joined another exercise group that is challenging. I’m in a beginning Tai Chi class. I always admired people who do Tai Chi. Slow and graceful, it seems like underwater dancing and meditation rolled into one. But can I do it? I’m not sure I’m physically graceful enough.

Doubts aside, I’ve joined the beginner’s class and we’re learning the “mother forms”—how to raise and lower our arms, how to move around an imaginary beach ball, how to move to the side and back, how to coordinate arms and legs and breathing as we slowly walk forward. Coordination, balance, and movement. And breathing in at the right time, breathing out at the right time. I’m border-line dyslexic and mix up things like right/left and anything involved in bodily coordination, so I’m finding this challenging. I’m trying to squelch any embarrassment at how I look to others as I awkwardly try to follow the leader. I’m hoping that with enough repetitions, my body memory will kick in and I’ll start having fun.

This is my new bodily challenge and I plan to stick with it. (But check with me in a month.)

(Aside: I met my friend Marshall last week and told him I was trying Tai Chi. He smiled and told me he much preferred Chai Tea. Now I tend to mix up the terms, but it helps to laugh when you’re doing hard stuff.)

Now for the mind. I read that one good exercise for the mind is learning a new language. I love languages and have had the chance to learn several, including biblical Greek and Hebrew back in my seminary days. I was pretty good at it, but then jobs, and kids, and real life kicked in and I did not keep up my biblical language skills. The cliché, “If you don’t use it, you lose it,” is usually true.

I certainly lost my Hebrew skills, but I retained enough Greek to use the exegetical tools in Bible study. But at a very basic level. For a long time, I’ve wished I had kept it up to the level I could again read the New Testament in Greek. It seemed too ambitious a dream and I’ve let it go.

Until now. I met a resident here in the retirement community who was (and is) a classical Greek scholar. We had a very enthusiastic conversation over lunch and I felt motivated to re-learn biblical Greek. It’s amazing what one fortuitous encounter can do.

It’s certainly a little-by-little project. I got out my Greek Bible, the lexicons, and grammar books, and arranged them on the shelf above my desk. I discovered an online resource in archives.com that gives me access to the same beginning Greek textbook I used in seminary. The familiarity helps. I’m going through the text lesson by lesson, starting with the Greek alphabet. Along with the text, I’m focusing on particular passages in the New Testament, re-learning to read them.

I hadn’t remembered how complicated Greek was, or how many irregular verbs existed. I’m impressed at what a smart young woman I must have been to have learned all that. Now it’s not so quick or easy. I struggle to memorize verb tenses and vocabulary words. At least now no professor is going to test me or push me to learn faster. I have to encourage myself with going slowly and enjoying the journey.

And I do enjoy it. I’m having fun. And hopefully stretching my mind and making new brain cells.

I’d better bring this to a close. It’s almost time for my Chai Tea class.