Well-Being: Communal Right, Communal Responsibility

If we are social beings living in social matrices, which I think we are (which, as a follower of Jesus and hence a citizen of the kingdom of God, I believe I must think), few things are purely individualistic. While certain health care choices may be largely or even purely elective and thus matters of individual choice and ability to pay, basic well-being and the care to maintain that seem to me basic to being human. We may call this a "right to life." That is, once one is born (at least, and arguably, once one is conceived), which is not a matter of choice for the individual being born, it seems to me that one has a "right to life." That is, I didn't choose to be born, but once born, "life" within me impels my continued existence (unless stopped by lack, illness, defect, or another's wrongdoing), and eventually I mature and choose to live. That entails, where possible, the basic conditions to live, even to thrive (taken in a general sense of life which is more than pitiful struggle and suffering). If we do not have such a right and such means by virtue of being born and being human, is not that the stuff of oppression, tyranny, injustice, callousness? This is not and cannot be a purely individualistic matter. We are social beings, and we live in social matrices. The basic well-being of each of us is of communal concern: my well-being; yours; the stranger's down the street and in the next state. I for you; you for me; we for all. I note that few people, if any, in this conversation and in the Republican Party and in society at large would argue that basic public safety (whether from criminals or from political enemies in other countries) is fundamentally a matter of individual choice, responsibility, and ability to pay. I doubt that many in this conversation and at large would argue that the protection provided by the police and the military should be fundamentally a matter not of shared concern and cost (through social structures such as government and public taxes) but purely or largely a matter of personal choice depending on ability to pay, as well as ability to take care of oneself through training in martial skills and a regimen of physical exercise. (Woe to those too young, too ill, too handicapped, too old to defend themselves from criminals and enemies! But then, why be concerned about them too much, if it's a matter of individual choice, physical fitness, and economic sufficiency? If they can't take care of themselves at the threat of crime or war, why should I care as long as I can take care of myself?) If basic public physical safety is considered a "right," why is basic physical well-being not also a "right"? Better yet, as we are social beings, and some of us are Christian social beings, not so much a "right" as a shared responsibility based on a mutuality of care and cost, even, dare I say it, of love? I don't have children in the public school system anymore. I remain glad to pay taxes to support the public schools and children not my own. Certainly, I wish for greater efficiencies and economies in operations and costs in public services (libraries, schools, roads, police, etc.); certainly I wish all people to be as responsible as they can and should be in contributing to the maintenance of those services, and to be as responsible as they can and should be in the use of those services. By all means let's seek reform and improvement in health care. The Republican Party has not had and still does not have a plan to make this happen; it only has a plan to dismantle what has benefitted people and to return to health-care conditions that were ill-serving so many people. That won't make America great again, because with basic health care in America there is no "before" to be "again." Yet we can make America greater than it has been if we take the ACA and not blindly destroy it but collaboratively make it better: more affordable for all; more health services for all; more well-being for all for all who are human beings in this country.

Something Worth Writing

Like many others perhaps, I all too readily consent to various distractions when I ought to focus. Electronic gadgets and digital media particularly attract. Yet I find numerous non-electronic, non-digital distractions as well — writing instruments, for example. Inclined to fountain pens, I have several; and I spend overly much time nearly every day writing meaningless sentences to experiment with them to try to determine which one I like best based on color of ink, width of stroke, “grip” of nib, heft of barrel. The pleasures in connecting movement of hand and flow of words on paper are variously real according to which pen, but I waste time when I should be making progress and producing results of substance. I chide myself even as I continue to dither. Acutely, I realize that what would be nice would be to resolve a point in the experimentation. That is, while a desirable tool would be a nice “to have” — a most appealing pen — far better would it be to have purpose in having the instrument at all, namely, something worth writing.

Third Sunday after Pentecost

Rain over night, overcast at dawn
This morning in early June
Third Sunday after Pentecost
Laden with warm, humid air

Struggle from night's sheets
I try to wake, try to pray

Just beyond the window, a
Carolina wren descants life
Lifts notes full and strong
As if in natural psalm

Reading for Life

At the end of February, on a Sunday afternoon replete with light and air prefiguring spring, I sit down to read. Immediately I stumble on words and make little progress. It is not for want of comprehending the words. Yet I cannot follow them to habit in reading, to inhabit reading. It is a longstanding problem for me, odd for one who claims to relish this activity. When I have to read this or that, I balk in starting and progressing, regardless of the material, of my interest. I often put it aside and pick up something else, to avoid “have to” for “want to” in reading. How often this warp in inclination and action has resulted in being ill-prepared for obligations otherwise willingly undertaken, such as classes and papers in graduate school, yet certainly not limited to that and then. When reading is primarily or entirely “have to,” I remain outside, marking and resisting the constraint of time and space. The good burdens. When reading is primarily or entirely “want to,” I step inside, absorbed in opening of time and space. The good allures. I fully realize there is considerable “have to” in this life, this world, to survive and to do well, especially for others. I know I have to do better in acknowledging this, in recognizing my inclination and pattern, in seeking good not habitually my own. Amid all this I yet find hours and places, truly and graciously given, to being lost in reading’s wonder. And more, I long for that life, that world, to come, of Sunday all day, of winter to spring, suffused and fragranced with light and air, wherein to lose and find myself in reading a Logos unending.

Life as Gift

In creation we move from non-being to life. In redemption we move from death to life. Or rather, in creation and redemption we are brought from non-being and death to life. How true and manifest this is in creation. It is equally so in redemption. We cannot make ourselves from nothing. We cannot raise ourselves from death. From beginning to end and all between, we have life from God as good and gracious gift, tendered in love.

Moved as the Trees

Late in February, this day begins at 5:00 a.m. with a liturgy for morning prayer from the Northumbria Community. A single light at lowest setting defines the room sufficiently. Outside, well before twilight and dawn, darkness reduces details to forms and hints of things.

"In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit."

Today, rather than pushing ahead with the next words in the liturgy, I pause and close my eyes after reading this invocation. A gust of wind animates the bare limbs of the poplars and beeches near the house, that they toss and sound the unseen, the unheard. I become mindful of presence, wholly other yet intimate, and I am moved as the trees.

Achievement or Gift?

"I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, 'Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son: treat me like one of your hired hands.' " (Luke 15:18-19.)

Yet the father called him "son." The father treated him so, even before the son had reached home and confessed. For the father ran to the son, far off, to embrace and kiss him: overtures of love and signs of peace, father to son. The father knew well what the son had done to him in leaving, but he did not start with the question whether the son was worthy or not. The father started with the relationship: parent and child. The father started with the son as son, as child, beloved in intimate and incontrovertible familial relationship, before any performance or achievement of the child. On this basis the father, rising from his sorrow and loss, went to the son to assure him of home.

So it is with God, with us as God’s children. We have life from the beginning entirely as gift. Then when we depart from God, from this gift, for the trough of a far country, God, grieved and aggrieved, yet comes to embrace and kiss us, to clothe us with riches of love and peace, parent to child, renewed and restored; the sacrifice, worthwhile. And thus we have life in the end entirely as gift, as grace, as festival beyond measure.