The New Year already has flown, leaving its newborn status lying flat in the nest.
And I’m left with all these extra calendars---two from local businesses, two from churches which somehow think I will be interested in adding their agenda to my schedule, and another complimentary calendar from a company wanting me to buy calendars to give people next year, assuming, I suppose, that I somehow believe others will be interested in my agenda next year.
But I like the pictures on these calendars, anyway.
Most appealing to me are calendars with pictures of nature coinciding with each season, which is nice, especially if you live in a place where you don’t have distinct seasons. In Oklahoma, where I grew up, we could have a brutal winter followed by a miserably hot summer---both of which seemed to endure forever. But fall was a weekend fling, and spring was a whiff in the air. So I loved gazing into those calendar pictures of a New England fall foliage or a radiant springtime in Kentucky. Ahh---how relaxing they seemed, especially to a high strung high school kid.
Why do so many calendars have pictures of animals---dogs, cats, horses? I suppose if petting a dog or having a cat curl up in your lap can steady your emotions on a roller coaster day, maybe the next best thing would be a picture of a likeable creature. And that’s nice, especially when so many of the human species aren’t.
Calendars with mountain or ocean scenes can bring relief from the harsh realities of life, too. Just imagine you are there, and that can smooth wrinkled emotions.
But, of all the calendars I enjoy, one calendar stands above all the rest.
That’s happens to be the custom calendar my wife created online. Each month is filled with pictorial memories of my family. I turn to January and there is Mary and me, having a cup of Community Coffee in the kitchen; in April Lori is baking a birthday pie for Madi; I look to July and there’s Dave and Madi splashing in the pool with our two Schnauzers; a glance at August and Mary and Madi are cooking an Italian dish for grandparents; and finally, I’m in December smiling at Harrison opening presents.
Relax, release, rejuvenate.
Calendar pictures of family soothe me amidst the stress and strain of life, reminding me, as I close my eyes with those pictures in my mind’s eye, of life’s priorities. Unlike the old flip books, which created an illusion of motion as you thumbed through them, glancing through the calendar’s family photos does quite the opposite: It halts the movement into a single photo shot, a sort of mental composite, leaving us with an image of what’s really important: family.
I’ve never known anyone in their dying moment wish for more time at the office. But I have seen, time and again, person after person, finding comfort as they lay dying in the presence of their family.
Death brings the living together---at least for a dying moment.
On this calendar day, I’m standing with a young couple at the graveside service for their stillborn child. Grieving the memories of memories that never happened---their baby’s first cry, the giggles, the words “Dada,” and “Mama,” the baby’s first steps---the parents seem mesmerized by the tiny box containing the body of their baby.
Having closed the service, the harsh January wind whips across our faces as I ask: “Would you like a little time here just to yourselves, apart from the rest of your family?”
“No,” the father whispers, “we can only make it as a unit.”
A unit--- a family unit.
I doubt that cemetery scene will be on a calendar picture next year or ever, but I hope the words will echo for that family through the months of each year: “We can only make it as a unit.”
Death is a part of living, and though it’s usually an uninvited and unwelcomed guest, it still intrudes onto our calendars without our invitation or embrace, reminding us that it has an appointment with each of us on a number somewhere between one and thirty-one. But the family pictures, those memories of life---or even the desire for it---breathe significance into what is past and cast hope for the future: We can make it as a unit, a family unit.
And that’s the truth---no matter what pictures are on your calendar.
Contact David B. Whitlock, Ph.D. at drdavid@davidbwhitlock.com, or visit his web site, davidbwhitlock.com
Showing posts with label New Year. Show all posts
Showing posts with label New Year. Show all posts
Friday, January 13, 2012
Friday, December 30, 2011
Another earth, another you, another year
Scientists have finally discovered another earth. Well, sort of.
Earlier this month NASA’s Kepler space telescope team announced the discovery of “Kepler-22b,” located in what is called a “habitable zone,” meaning an environment that’s not too hot or too cold for the possibility of life. And just last week, the team unveiled two other earth-sized planets, Kepler-20e and Kepler-20f, although they are not in the habitable zone.
“This discovery shows that we Homo sapiens are straining our reach into the universe to find planets that remind us of home. We are almost there,” said Geoff Marcy of the University of California, Berkeley, one of the world’s leaders in the search for planets.
But apparently a lot of space exists between those two words, “almost,” and “there.” Being reminded of home and finding another earth is more than a world or an earth apart. Kepler-22b for instance, is 600 light years away. Traveling by space shuttle, it would take 22 million years to get there. And Kepler 22b’s size, 2.4 times the size of earth, makes it too big for an atmosphere like earth’s, according to planetary scientist Lena Noack.
Yet scientists are invigorated by the possibility of finding another earth: “You can bet that the hunt is on to find…a true earth twin,” avers astronomer David Charbonneau of Harvard University.
Although I’ve never been a science fiction fan, the dreamer in me is fascinated with the concept of another earth and what it would be like.
The 2011 film, Another Earth, explored the idea of another earth as an opportunity for a second chance in life, a place where a parallel you exists with another, possibly better life. The producers used astrophysicist, Dr. Richard Berendzen, (author of Pulp Physics) for the background voice asking the probing questions about a parallel earth and our place in it: “Could we even recognize ourselves, and if we did, would we know ourselves? What would we say to ourselves? What would we learn from ourselves? What would we really like to see if we could stand outside ourselves and look at us?”
The truth is, we don’t have to travel 22 million years in space to find a place where we can ask those or similar questions. Standing on the precipice of a New Year is occasion enough to step outside ourselves and take inventory of who we are, really.
Do we know what to say to ourselves? Do we know the self to whom we speak? Are we strangers to ourselves?
C.G. Jung, the Swiss psychoanalyst, wrote about an inner dimension he referred to as the True Self. For Jung, this Self, as author Sue Monk Kidd points out, doesn’t refer to the ego, as in myself, but to the Center of our being, the image of God within us. As we find and cultivate that place we discover our True Self.
It’s the place Jesus of Nazareth described as being, “The Kingdom of God within you” (Luke 17:21), and when we reject it, we also deny our True Self. As Thomas Merton, the Trappist monk of Gethsemani Abby said, “My false and private self is the one who wants to exist outside the reach of God’s will and God’s love...And such a self cannot help but be an illusion.” For Merton, the secret of our identity, our True Self, is “hidden in the love and mercy of God.”
Sometime between now and the New Year, I think I’ll step outside and peering into the universe, ponder the possibility of another earth, and then, I’ll look within, and even though I’m not there---still without all the answers---I’ll find comfort in the words of the young theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who before being martyred by the Nazis, concluded his poem, “Who Am I?” with the line, “Whoever I am, Thou knowest, O God, I am Thine!”
Knowing the same One who has me also has the universe and all that’s in it, I’ll then say “Yes,” to my True Self, and taking God’s hand, step boldly into another New Year.
Contact David B. Whitlock, Ph.D., at drdavid@davidbwhitlock.com or visit his website, www.davidbwhitlock.com
Earlier this month NASA’s Kepler space telescope team announced the discovery of “Kepler-22b,” located in what is called a “habitable zone,” meaning an environment that’s not too hot or too cold for the possibility of life. And just last week, the team unveiled two other earth-sized planets, Kepler-20e and Kepler-20f, although they are not in the habitable zone.
“This discovery shows that we Homo sapiens are straining our reach into the universe to find planets that remind us of home. We are almost there,” said Geoff Marcy of the University of California, Berkeley, one of the world’s leaders in the search for planets.
But apparently a lot of space exists between those two words, “almost,” and “there.” Being reminded of home and finding another earth is more than a world or an earth apart. Kepler-22b for instance, is 600 light years away. Traveling by space shuttle, it would take 22 million years to get there. And Kepler 22b’s size, 2.4 times the size of earth, makes it too big for an atmosphere like earth’s, according to planetary scientist Lena Noack.
Yet scientists are invigorated by the possibility of finding another earth: “You can bet that the hunt is on to find…a true earth twin,” avers astronomer David Charbonneau of Harvard University.
Although I’ve never been a science fiction fan, the dreamer in me is fascinated with the concept of another earth and what it would be like.
The 2011 film, Another Earth, explored the idea of another earth as an opportunity for a second chance in life, a place where a parallel you exists with another, possibly better life. The producers used astrophysicist, Dr. Richard Berendzen, (author of Pulp Physics) for the background voice asking the probing questions about a parallel earth and our place in it: “Could we even recognize ourselves, and if we did, would we know ourselves? What would we say to ourselves? What would we learn from ourselves? What would we really like to see if we could stand outside ourselves and look at us?”
The truth is, we don’t have to travel 22 million years in space to find a place where we can ask those or similar questions. Standing on the precipice of a New Year is occasion enough to step outside ourselves and take inventory of who we are, really.
Do we know what to say to ourselves? Do we know the self to whom we speak? Are we strangers to ourselves?
C.G. Jung, the Swiss psychoanalyst, wrote about an inner dimension he referred to as the True Self. For Jung, this Self, as author Sue Monk Kidd points out, doesn’t refer to the ego, as in myself, but to the Center of our being, the image of God within us. As we find and cultivate that place we discover our True Self.
It’s the place Jesus of Nazareth described as being, “The Kingdom of God within you” (Luke 17:21), and when we reject it, we also deny our True Self. As Thomas Merton, the Trappist monk of Gethsemani Abby said, “My false and private self is the one who wants to exist outside the reach of God’s will and God’s love...And such a self cannot help but be an illusion.” For Merton, the secret of our identity, our True Self, is “hidden in the love and mercy of God.”
Sometime between now and the New Year, I think I’ll step outside and peering into the universe, ponder the possibility of another earth, and then, I’ll look within, and even though I’m not there---still without all the answers---I’ll find comfort in the words of the young theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who before being martyred by the Nazis, concluded his poem, “Who Am I?” with the line, “Whoever I am, Thou knowest, O God, I am Thine!”
Knowing the same One who has me also has the universe and all that’s in it, I’ll then say “Yes,” to my True Self, and taking God’s hand, step boldly into another New Year.
Contact David B. Whitlock, Ph.D., at drdavid@davidbwhitlock.com or visit his website, www.davidbwhitlock.com
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
Resolution Revolution
I resolve to stage a revolt against making New Year’s resolutions. I’ve had it with them; they don’t work for me. The New Year is still in infancy, and I’ve already broken 75% of my resolutions.
It’s not that I didn’t try; I just forgot: the pressure of the moment distracted my attention from keeping the resolution.
Take my first resolution, for example. I read that being impatient can lead to hypertension. I tend to be impatient, and I don’t want hypertension. ”Patience,” I said to myself as I stood in line at the grocery store a couple of days before New Year’s, tapping my foot as I wondered if the next line was moving faster, “patience is something I could work on.” Thus, resolution number one: be more patient; don’t sweat the small stuff. Since Lori and I had already planned to be away during New Year’s, I would have a nice, relaxed atmosphere to begin my first resolution. On the morning of January I, I took my time as Lori and I casually walked to the breakfast buffet. I was silently complimenting myself on how well I was doing on resolution number one when Lori informed me she had forgotten the breakfast coupons---part of the weekend package with our hotel. “You forgot the coupons?” I grimaced. That initial, suppressed grimace was followed by a bigger, more obvious one when the hostess told me there was a 45 minute waiting list and that I would have to check at the front desk about the possibility of reclaiming the breakfast vouchers. Glancing at the long line at the hotel registration desk, I grumbled to Lori, “I’ll wait in line while you see if you can remember where you put the breakfast coupons.” When Lori couldn’t find them, I decided to conduct a thorough and proper search myself, and voila, I found them…in the cabinet on my side of the bed. “Oops.” I kinda forgot I put them there.
So much for resolution number one.
Getting the proper amount of sleep, I have been told, is essential to our health. My 5-6 hours of sleep a night isn’t adequate, I concluded. Thus, resolution number two: get more sleep. I proudly announced to Lori on New Year’s Day---after apologizing for breaking resolution number one, of course--- “I’m going to bed early tonight.” That was a bold statement for me, and one I had to promptly retract when I remembered that my OU Sooners played in the Fiesta Bowl that very night and that the broadcast didn’t begin until 8:30 p.m. (EST) So, there I was whooping and hollering my team to victory at 12:30 a.m. And preachers can’t sleep in on Sunday mornings, you know.
So much for resolution number two.
Resolution number three: maintain a more healthy diet, went down with the New Year’s breakfast buffet, as did resolution number four, cut back on my caffeine consumption. (Free refills came with the buffet, what was I to do?) I’m managing to chase resolution number five: read through the Bible again this year, although I’m already 8 chapters behind. Resolution number six: cash instead of credit---good, except for the gas card. Resolution number seven, journal each day---already days behind, although I have at least located my journal; resolution number eight: have a book proposal ready by March 1---I’m working on it. And number nine, read at least one hour a day---I’m on it. Resolution number ten---stop the nervous habit of picking my fingernails---was lost in the excitement of the OU game.
There you have it: as far as I can figure, I’m only hitting 250-300% on my resolutions.
But wait a minute: Isn’t the highest career professional baseball batting average Ty Cobb’s? And isn’t his record a “mere” .366? That means that almost 60% of the time, when he stepped up to the plate, he didn’t get a hit. And that’s the best career average EVER.
So maybe I don’t need to start a resolution revolution after all. Maybe the revolution I need is a continuation of the good in what I have resolved, not a cessation of the goal itself. As John Norcross, psychology professor at the University of Scranton in Pennsylvania said recently in The Wall Street Journal, “Keeping a resolution isn’t a 100-yard dash. It’s a marathon.”
That’s it: a marathon. In a marathon, I can get bumped to the side and even trip and fall and still get back up and finish the race in respectable fashion. And somehow in the running of the race, I can feel like a revolutionary, a revolutionary because I resolved to persevere, and even though I may finish with a limp, I nonetheless can cross the finish line, aiming for a goal far beyond 2011.
Life Matters is written by David B. Whitlock, Ph.D. David’s email is drdavid@davidbwhitlock.com and his website is davidbwhitlock.com
It’s not that I didn’t try; I just forgot: the pressure of the moment distracted my attention from keeping the resolution.
Take my first resolution, for example. I read that being impatient can lead to hypertension. I tend to be impatient, and I don’t want hypertension. ”Patience,” I said to myself as I stood in line at the grocery store a couple of days before New Year’s, tapping my foot as I wondered if the next line was moving faster, “patience is something I could work on.” Thus, resolution number one: be more patient; don’t sweat the small stuff. Since Lori and I had already planned to be away during New Year’s, I would have a nice, relaxed atmosphere to begin my first resolution. On the morning of January I, I took my time as Lori and I casually walked to the breakfast buffet. I was silently complimenting myself on how well I was doing on resolution number one when Lori informed me she had forgotten the breakfast coupons---part of the weekend package with our hotel. “You forgot the coupons?” I grimaced. That initial, suppressed grimace was followed by a bigger, more obvious one when the hostess told me there was a 45 minute waiting list and that I would have to check at the front desk about the possibility of reclaiming the breakfast vouchers. Glancing at the long line at the hotel registration desk, I grumbled to Lori, “I’ll wait in line while you see if you can remember where you put the breakfast coupons.” When Lori couldn’t find them, I decided to conduct a thorough and proper search myself, and voila, I found them…in the cabinet on my side of the bed. “Oops.” I kinda forgot I put them there.
So much for resolution number one.
Getting the proper amount of sleep, I have been told, is essential to our health. My 5-6 hours of sleep a night isn’t adequate, I concluded. Thus, resolution number two: get more sleep. I proudly announced to Lori on New Year’s Day---after apologizing for breaking resolution number one, of course--- “I’m going to bed early tonight.” That was a bold statement for me, and one I had to promptly retract when I remembered that my OU Sooners played in the Fiesta Bowl that very night and that the broadcast didn’t begin until 8:30 p.m. (EST) So, there I was whooping and hollering my team to victory at 12:30 a.m. And preachers can’t sleep in on Sunday mornings, you know.
So much for resolution number two.
Resolution number three: maintain a more healthy diet, went down with the New Year’s breakfast buffet, as did resolution number four, cut back on my caffeine consumption. (Free refills came with the buffet, what was I to do?) I’m managing to chase resolution number five: read through the Bible again this year, although I’m already 8 chapters behind. Resolution number six: cash instead of credit---good, except for the gas card. Resolution number seven, journal each day---already days behind, although I have at least located my journal; resolution number eight: have a book proposal ready by March 1---I’m working on it. And number nine, read at least one hour a day---I’m on it. Resolution number ten---stop the nervous habit of picking my fingernails---was lost in the excitement of the OU game.
There you have it: as far as I can figure, I’m only hitting 250-300% on my resolutions.
But wait a minute: Isn’t the highest career professional baseball batting average Ty Cobb’s? And isn’t his record a “mere” .366? That means that almost 60% of the time, when he stepped up to the plate, he didn’t get a hit. And that’s the best career average EVER.
So maybe I don’t need to start a resolution revolution after all. Maybe the revolution I need is a continuation of the good in what I have resolved, not a cessation of the goal itself. As John Norcross, psychology professor at the University of Scranton in Pennsylvania said recently in The Wall Street Journal, “Keeping a resolution isn’t a 100-yard dash. It’s a marathon.”
That’s it: a marathon. In a marathon, I can get bumped to the side and even trip and fall and still get back up and finish the race in respectable fashion. And somehow in the running of the race, I can feel like a revolutionary, a revolutionary because I resolved to persevere, and even though I may finish with a limp, I nonetheless can cross the finish line, aiming for a goal far beyond 2011.
Life Matters is written by David B. Whitlock, Ph.D. David’s email is drdavid@davidbwhitlock.com and his website is davidbwhitlock.com
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