37: Glass man

 I don’t think I’ve ever really given enough credit to glass. 

In my stereotypically masculine mind, I’ve tended to equate it with cracks and shatter and being unable to walk barefoot in the kitchen after a cup met an untimely elbow or wayward ladle. It’s always been equated to something to be wrapped up in old newspapers and great-grandmothers quilt when you’re loading up the U-Haul. It is put up on the top shelf outside of the wingspan of anyone younger than 9 and, if used in fluorescents, to be shielded behind a perpetually grimy plastic coffin latched to the ceiling of an office that no one wanted to come into today anyways.

 

I’ve spent my life praising the resilience of steel, stone and heavy oak timbers. Things to build upon and to hang one’s life on. “A house made of glass…” being juxtaposed inadvertently with the comparative infragility of a well-lofted rock. Mr. Glass, cracked spectacles, an opera soprano blasting the wine glass with her lungs; each of these images has reverberated the anti-virtue of glass into my head and subconscious heart. For 30 years, I have actively snubbed the thought of pursuing a life that had any resemblance to glass.

 

Recently, that has changed.

 

I saw a man that I had once perceived as iron turn out to be glass. And it was beautiful.

 

Because it showed me that there is more to glass than just breakage and shattering, it showed me that there is a strength in its sheer translucency that something like steel will never be able to even wrap its figurative mind around.

 

Light makes all the difference.

 

Instead of seeing my Aunt’s flower vase scattered over the parlor tiles, I began to see the thick panes enclosing a lighthouse. A shelter for what was historically fire as it radiated out bright warmth, hope and safety right back out through that which was being brutalized by wind and wafted waves and the dreaded nor’easter. A steel slat would undoubtably have kept the fire from the elements, but at the cost of countless lives.

 

Instead of seeing my cracked phone screen, I began to see the window into a home. The soft warmth of a newborn morning sun looking out over a million miles of creation and being able to meet my eyes through this dusty, flat slat of melted sand that will (if forecasts stay as they are) keep the coming hurricane from entering the safety of my home.

 

I see a lantern. And I see that sad-warmth of a lone candle inside it. And it lights the way for anyone who holds it so much more effectively than a barbecue grill would (for a lot of reasons, portability being an easy target).

 

It would be easy to pretend that I can live my life like stone, steel or oak. But the reality is that my fragility is inherent to my simply being alive. A wise man is teaching me that it may just be best to embrace being glass so that the light of Christ that is in me can shine through me.

Thanks, Dad. 

36: ..And forgive us our If-Thens...

Luke 12: 16-21. And he told them a parable, saying, "The land of a rich man produced plentifully, and he thought to himself, 'What shall I do, for I have no where to store my crops?' And he said, 'I will do this: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, "Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.'" But God said to him, 'Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?' So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God."

These last few years have been full of Ifs and empty of writing for me. I'd like to blame my lack of thoughtful excursion into the deeper meanings behind my recent life events on those Ifs, but ultimately that blame would be hollow. I didn't write because I didn't want to write. My dedication to knocking rust off of a skill that most of my adolescence was built around wasn't as fortified as my dedication towards knocking my boots off my toes and tuning my mind to a radio station with pleasant vapidity playing all day. Medical school was and continues to be hard work, and one of the first things to be shoved off the wagon for space's sake was introspection via the keyboard. I would often quibble with myself about certain circumstances that would allow me access to my old pasttime, but they were always If-Thens that were based in nebulous intentions and therefore had no ability to root in reality.

The thens piled on up behind their half-formed Ifs "If I am let off before 6, Then I will jot down some thoughts." I was let off at 5:50, but being so near the fulcrum of my decision point gave laziness all the momentum it needed to knock the scale its way. This became pattern and pattern became habit and habit became routine and that routine threatens to be one of my defining characteristics. I can call it procrastination or maybe it would be more prudent to name it bargaining, but what it really centers in is my version of the rich man in the parable above. The striving to be better, holier, more just, more compassionate, more eternity-aimed is whisped aside at the mere mention of a youtube video of kids getting hit in the face with aerobic balls.

Lets not be ridiculous, there is a definite time and place for such videos.

And I know that "Whisped" isn't a real word.

Truth hardens on me: I am the rich farmer. I have taken the riches and bounty of life as resultant from my hard work and due to that, mine to shelter under for the forseeable future. What ultimately drove me to this conclusion was a recent instance where my wife asked me to work out with her. She is driven, passionate, unrelenting in her pursuit of excellence and regularly asks me to join her in her conquest over apathy and self-annihilation via sloth. After belching my way through the contractual half (We had struck up a deal that factored in her superior athleticism and my superior love handles) of the workout, I sweated my way to the shower and turned it full cold as I heard the furious pounding of her nike trainers on the spare-room wood-planks. Realization hit me in the midst of cold drops on my brow: The past experience as a track athlete that had fueled my young adulthood was being used as metaphorical grain in my barn.


And there are a myriad of other ways that I act like I have full barns: My relationships with my family, my friends, my Wife; my pursuit of apex excellence in my chosen craft, my active love of real and true fun that comes through learning and growing in knowledge of God's creation that surrounds all of us; the very person that God created me to be had been consolidated to a pithy equation that relied on If-Then statements.

If they reach out, Then I will respond.
If she asks, Then I will make the effort.
If I find myself interested, Then I will delve more into that.
If I feel worthy, Then I will act like I have worth.

Subjective, banal and ultimately rootless have been my motivations to do or say anything. My flitting internal motor has left living life up to the confluence of random chance and whether I feel caffeinated enough. What a foolish way to live.

Tomorrow, the results of months of interviewing and testing that topped years of study and exams comes to bear. My wife and I will learn the location of the program that will train me for the formational years of my medical career. I could easily treat it as an "If I get the program I want, Then I will be a good doctor". Let me be clear in this: I choose to trust that God is sovereign wherever we go and whatever the milieu ends up being. Not only that, but I recant my loyalty to perceived chance and my fealty to the If-Then.


And Mom, I'm sure you're reading this. I apologize for any split infinitives and other grammatical errors. It's been so long that I have forgotten what they are.