FOR GOOD MEASURE: Volume 11, July, 1990 by Paul F. Bosch Ten Radio Meditations (101-110) originally composed by ELCIC pastor Paul F. Bosch for CFCA-FM, Kitchener, Ontario. These meditation appear in speech-line form. With a little bit of editing, they may be rendered in paragraph form for use in newsletters and guides to worship. Be sure to credit the author for his work. 101) Jackie Vernon: "Couldn't stand the sight of sap..." 102) O. Wilde: "...your heart's desire..." 17:1 103) "You shall know the truth..." 17:17 104) R. Fulghum: "The examined life is no picnic..." 17:17 105) F. O'Connor: "The good is...under construction." 17:5 106) P. Steinke: "Nagging = pursuit..." 16:66 107) P. Steinke: "No mismatches..." 16:47 108) J. Nelson: "Grace yearns for its...embodiment..." 109) Sit in rear seats at church? 110) H.L. Mencken: "an answer: short, simple, and wrong..." 101) Jackie Vernon is a stand-up comedian who's made a career out of posing as a born loser. Nothing goes right for him; everything he attempts turns into a disaster. He says for instance that he studied to be a tree surgeon, but he had to quit, because he couldn't stand the sight of sap. I love that sense of the ridiculous there, that send-up of our human frailties, turning our neuroses inside out and making fun of what is most human in us. We'd all be poorer, isn't it true, without the gift of a healthy self-ridicule -- if we couldn't stand back now and then, and laugh at how neurotic we can sometimes be. 102) Oscar Wilde says somewhere that there are two tragedies in human life: The first tragedy is not getting your heart's desire. And the second is getting it. That often sums up the human story, doesn't it? It's a painful thing not to have your fantasies fulfilled, not to achieve your heart's desire. But it's also often a painful thing to achieve them, to get what you've always dreamed for, and to find out they're not what you dreamed after all. Your dreams, your fantasies, your fondest wishes -- when you finally achieve them, they sometimes seem to be quite hollow, not at all as satisfying, as fulfilling as you'd hoped. Perhaps that's part of the meaning in Jesus' words, when he says, "Seek first the rule of God in your life..." 103) I saw a poster the other day with this message: "You shall know the truth and the truth will make you free... But first it will make you miserable..." The first part is a quotation from Jesus, of course, "The truth shall make you free..." But the second part is a witty contemporary comment on what it means to be human. Part of the human story is this: education is demoralizing. When you learn the truth -- about your parents, for example, or about your country's history, as another example -- when you learn the real story, you're demoralized. It makes you miserable, as the poster says, when you learn all the terrible things about your parents, or about your country. But you wouldn't want it any other way, would you? It's better to know the truth, isn't it, even when it hurts. 104) Plato says, "The unexamined life is not worth living." I think I know what he means by that: I want to live life with a sense of clear-eyed reality. I don't want to kid myself, or deceive myself, or live out a mindless fantasy. So I'm willing to take the risk of learning the truth... even if it hurts. "The unexamined life is not worth living". "But", Robert Fulghum adds: "the examined life is no picnic." When you examine life, -- when you try to know the truth, the reality, and not a deception or a fantasy -- then you're up against at least the possibility of disappointment and disillusionment. "The examined life is no picnic." But I wouldn't want it any other way. 105) Flannery O'Conner says that among human beings, the good is always something under construction. I like that as a reminder that we're all of us always on the way. You can't ever claim that the work is finished, when the work you're speaking of is a human life. "The good is always something under construction." That could depress you, on your bad days. But it's also a word of hope when someone dies. It's not as if a human life is ever really finished. And even when a life is cut cruelly short -- as in the death recently of a young man I loved -- it's comforting to me to remember that the graceful good in his life, was not all that different from whatever graceful good you could perceive in my own, or in the life of my 91 year old mother. For him, for me, for the 91 year old, it's all "under construction." And, thanks, in faith, to the grace of God, "under construction" still. 106) I heard a therapist say recently that human growth and development is a kind of constant give and take, a constant pull and tug, between, for example, my need to be close to you and my need to be separate from you. And it was even more provocative to me when the therapist suggested that even nagging represents an attempt to get close. When one spouse nags another, that is, it's not simply out of cussedness. It's perhaps an attempt to draw closer, a kind of pursuit mechanism that, to be sure, may not be welcomed in those terms, but nevertheless means to draw one partner closer to the other. When I heard that, I had to admit I'll probably never again think of nagging in quite the same way. 107) I heard a therapist speak about marriage recently, and he surprised me when he said that in his view, there are no mis-matches in marriage. He said, "I don't believe in mis-matches." He was willing to declare that -- apart from some really obvious mental illnesses, that is -- no two people who marry are ever mis-matched to each other. He was claiming -- and I think he's right -- that, for example, I've married precisely the woman I have because, precisely, she meets some specific needs I have. And vice versa, of course: I meet some of my spouse's needs. She married me out of the same seeking. That seems to me like a helpful insight, in an age when we're encouraged to cast off partners like a pair of socks, and choose a new one. New partner or old, in both cases, you'll be searching for your needs to be met in the other person. And, one way or another, finding them. 108) "The grace of God," says a teacher of mine, is always yearning for its fullest possible human embodiment." That's a rich and suggestive understanding for faith. Faith is meant to be an embodied thing; it's incarnational. God wants to meet you in the flesh, wants to get inside your very molecules. That's why the Holy Communion -- eating the bread, drinking the cup -- is so important to Christians. God knows we're real people, with real bodies, and real hungers, and real hurts. And the life we're promised in Jesus is a resurrection life, a new life in spirit and in body. "Dear Flesh, Do come to the party. Signed, your pal, the Soul." 110) H.L.Mencken once said that for every complicated problem, there is an answer that is short, simple, and wrong. I love that as a description of the way we religionists are often perceived. Those of us who are committed to an outlook on life that includes religious faith are often accused of wanting -- and giving! -- answers that are short and simple, at the expense of being wrong. As for me, in my religion, I'd be willing to tolerate a little ambiguity, a little complexity, a little doubt and uncertainty, a little metaphor and mystery. That's part of the price you pay sometimes for trying to be true.