My wife and I were at the Laity Lodge New Year’s retreat at the end of 2011. Jerry Root, a C.S. Lewis scholar from Wheaton College, was the speaker. He did a couple of sessions on the classic problem of evil, using Lewis’ thoughts primarily from his famous book, “The Problem of Pain.” In the morning session on Saturday he said something that I’ve been thinking about ever since.
Jerry said that when we speak of evil and suffering, the conversation is challenging because our perspective is always changing. A thing that seemed terribly bad when you were twenty might not seem nearly as bad when you are forty and looking back on it. Something that seemed positively evil to you when it occurred might be revealed in time to have been only painful and not especially evil at all. Maybe it even turned out to be an essential part of your growth as a human being.
Which perspective is the right one? The immediate perspective or the one years later? The latter is wiser but the former is more in touch with the painful reality of the moment...
Submitted by Gordon Atkinson on Wed, 01/04/2012 - 12:14
Foy Davis driving up highway 1 north of Los Angeles in a red Mustang convertible. His left hand is on the steering wheel and his right hand is holding a half-eaten In-N-Out Burger. On the passenger side floor is a cooler filled with Diet Cokes. On the seat beside him is a computer and a bag of Pepperidge Farm Goldfish. He’s listening to the Doobie Brothers Greatest Hits CD and has it turned up loud. A range of steep hills are on the right; the Pacific Ocean is on the left.
He sees a hitchhiker on the right side of the road. As he passes the man, they make eye contact. Foy turns his head, watching the hitchhiker until he is looking at him over the back seat. He looks forward to check the road and then into the rear view mirror. The man is still watching Foy’s car.
In some ways, my journey back to the body began in my early 40s, when doctrinal Christianity started to lose its meaning for me. There’s only so much energy you can put into polishing your theology. While other people still seemed interested in arguing over the finer points of doctrine, I got bored with that. With that boredom came the realization that my Christianity was mostly a cerebral thing. Desperate to find meaning in the faith that had been so important to me, I turned to more monastic practices of ritual prayer, silence, and meditation. I started making rosaries and chanting. I started sitting in the woods behind our church and listening. Anything I could do to get my body involved in the practice of my faith. I found that cerebral faith exercises, like obsessive theology polishing, tend to lead me toward doubt and despair. But body practices tend to calm me down and bring me joy.
Then I met an episcopal priest who used to play college baseball. I had the crazy idea that we should get together and play catch once a week while talking about the lectionary texts for the upcoming Sunday. I loved it. Unfortunately he moved away and I never found a suitable replacement. I was desperate enough that I bought a box of baseballs and went to the middle school diamond where I threw them from second base into the backstop behind home plate. Then I’d run around the bases and do it all over again.
I think I was looking for something. Some unconscious impulse was getting me ready for what was to come. And then I started seeing this infomercial on television:
I’m embarrassed as hell to admit it, but this informercial hooked me. I didn't want to become obsessed with my body. But I liked the idea of a 90 day “boot camp” kind of experience that I could use to spring into a new way of living. I thought I could commit to just about anything for 90 days.
Still, it was an infomercial so I didn’t do anything about it. I just kept watching it and feeling bad about how out of shape I was. Then I ran into Reggie Freakin Regan. I hadn’t seen him in a couple of months. He had lost 20 pounds and looked great. I asked what he was doing and said “It’s a program called P90X.”
That was it. I decided it was a sign. If you used to read my old blog you know that Reggie Freakin Regan is my hero. He can do anything. It’s not just that he CAN do anything. He actually does stuff. Builds things and invents things and fixes broken things and saves lives and shit.
I talked to Jeanene about it, and she said she was in, which was cool because we’d be doing it together. We bought the program and spent about a month reading the instructions and making plans. If you try this, I HIGHLY recommend not rushing into it. You’re looking at a major exercise and diet commitment. We examined the diet and made plans for how we would eat. I bought a chin-up bar and some dumbbells. We had a couple of yoga mats from sometime in the past where we thought we were going to start doing yoga but, of course, never did.
The whole thing was scary as HELL. The diet was more frightening than the exercise. I mean, it’s food. How and what we eat is so deeply tied to our comfort. But my biggest fear was failure. I kept thinking that if I couldn't do this now, I never would. I was 49. It wasn't going to get any easier.
We set a date on the calendar to begin. Then I got scared and found some reason to delay it. But finally that first Monday morning came.
Gordon
My experience of P90X. I won't wait as long as I did to post part 2. I promise!
Submitted by Gordon Atkinson on Thu, 09/22/2011 - 22:47
Not many people know this about me, but when I was young I was very athletic and active. I was a hyperactive boy; I ran more than I walked, fidgeted more than I sat still, and talked pretty much non-stop. If I had grown up in this generation I probably would have been heavily medicated. Instead I played sports. A LOT of sports. I began playing Little League baseball and Pee Wee football in second grade and continued both with great passion until I graduated from high school. My senior year I was the varsity quarterback and played shortstop and right field for the baseball team. I ran the 400 and 800 meters on the track squad just for fun.
I was a jock. That’s what we were called. I made good grades. School wasn’t hard for me, but I didn’t care about anything intellectual. I kept my grades up because it made my parents happy and let me be eligible for football and baseball. I didn’t learn much in high school because I didn’t care about ideas or truth. I had a girlfriend and I had sports. Nothing else mattered that much to me. I read voraciously but innocently. I read because I thought books were more fun than movies. I didn’t know that reading could lead to intellectual discoveries, and I wouldn’t have cared if I had known. At eighteen I was a springy, energetic, happy-go-lucky ball of energy.
Submitted by Gordon Atkinson on Mon, 09/12/2011 - 20:49
I will not get to the mountains. I’ve been told as much, but you can’t swallow this kind of knowledge until you have some perspective.
I am in the center of a great salt flat. I don’t know how I got here, but I’ve been walking for 50 years. Behind me I see my tracks. I see my campsites fading into the distance. If I squint, I can even recognize a certain rock I passed when I was five years old. The trail I’ve left behind seems so small, now that I look at it. I started in the center of this unfathomable expanse, and I’m pretty much still in the center, as far as I can tell.
Submitted by Gordon Atkinson on Mon, 08/29/2011 - 22:49
Amazing grace how sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost but now am found
Was blind but now I see.
When I was a boy resting in the bosom of my people, we spoke of the lost and of the found. Lost people were those who didn't have faith in Jesus Christ. We talked about them in anxious and concerned tones. Some had rejected Jesus outright. This was an astonishing thing, impossible to comprehend. You could only shake your head in sorrow to think of them. Lost souls.
Others simply didn’t know about Jesus. Maybe they had heard his name or even uttered it themselves in anger:
“Jesus Christ!”
Or with the curious addition of the middle initial:
Submitted by Gordon Atkinson on Sun, 08/14/2011 - 21:51
Her body was ancient when this age began. And before her embodiment she was whispered from one savage ear to the next. She has suckled countless human generations, her stories the first they heard and her words their last benediction.
She is older than human memory. No one knows her story.
Submitted by Gordon Atkinson on Thu, 08/04/2011 - 12:34
Not everything I write for the High Calling is appropriate for the Squid. But I think maybe this piece is.
In a documentary I recently saw, an Inuit child was happily romping around inside her family’s igloo. The interior temperature was just a tad above 32 degrees. She was naked.
Human beings can adapt to just about any climate or circumstance. So I guess it should be no surprise that I have adapted myself to modern noises and the flood of sensory input that assaults me every waking hour of the day.
I must have adapted to the noise because the silence of the Rocky Mountains always startles me. Which is kind of backwards, don’t you think? Shouldn’t silence be the norm and grinding machine noises the exception?
Submitted by Gordon Atkinson on Thu, 07/07/2011 - 22:38
If you are not familiar with my Foy Davis stories, you can read about him and find links to the other stories here.
Foy parked his car in a clergy spot in the hospital parking lot. When he got out he patted the breast pocket of his blazer to see if his New Testament was there. He patted his pants and felt his wallet. Then he looked at the keys in his hand and said out loud, “Keys.”
He walked quickly through the parking lot and into the hospital. He turned several corners without looking at the signs on the walls and ended up a a volunteer’s desk.
“Hello Sabrina.”
“How are you, reverend Davis?”
He handed her his parking ticket and said, “You can call me Foy.”
She stamped his ticket and handed it back to him. “You always say that.”
“And you always call me reverend Davis. Why is that?”
In a documentary I recently saw, an Inuit child was happily romping around inside her family’s igloo. The interior temperature was just a tad above 32 degrees. She was naked.
