What a difference five years make

So, I graduated from college five years ago today.¹

Right here would be the standard place for a link to that day’s commencement speech.²

Thankfully, in the midst of all that day’s revelry³ I was able to set aside some time to reflect upon that particular apex in my life, whichª I revisited just now.

What a difference five years make.

For whatever silly reason, as I’ve been pondering this particular milestone the first place my mind leaps is, “Man, another five will make ten! Oh, the places I’ll have gone by then!” Some sort of internal governor, however, catches me before I neglect to reflect too much upon today’s milestone, and for that I am thankful.¹¹

I’m reading a book about Robert Oppenheimer right now, and he was a pretty screwed up dude in his late teens and throughout his early twenties.¹² Psychological issues, medical issues, math issues, you name it. At the outset of his twenties things certainly didn’t look very bright for him.

The Dixon/Oppenheimer bit at precisely this moment hits ‘Empty’, but I invoke it for the¹³ simple reason that things for him got betterªª, before he even really noticed.

As have things for me gotten better.

Did you notice, though, that I didn’t say “perfect”²¹?

I hope you took the time to check out the picture below.²² That day I consummated things at Hendrix as an altogether shattered guy, and the smiles that day weren’t feigned by just professors whose mind my name had slipped. I was torn up inside, for all kinds of reasons,²³ and a solid two years or so passed before I felt like there was ground covered between that guyªªª and this one.

But I’ve made it, because things got better.

“Hope,” it has been said, “is a dangerous thing.” Maybe Hope was in Pandora’s Box not for any innocence on its part, or even the benevolence of the gods, but in fact because it is something that can make the world skip its programmed track. Maybe indeed it drives people insane.

Just like that atom that Oppenheimer et al smashed, when we dare entertain the world that the intersection that authentic hope, love and faith make, we are presuming to mess with something entirely out of our realm of experience.

We’re messing with power that can guarantee us a lot more than five more measly years, I promise you that.

1 In case you didn’t know, you know now that I’m sort of a freak for random dates, very few of which that actually matter.

2 Luckily it isn’t available on the Hendrix site. However, here is the one given the year before, to which I have returned on more than one occasion since that humid Saturday morning. It is one of the richest commencement speeches I’ve ever heard. And for something entirely unrelated, take a look at this.

3

a Most of which I won’t be sharing with you here.

11 I choose to interpret that governor as the inner working of the Spirit, if I dare be so bold.

12 This was before The Bomb, by the way.

13 Reading has also been pretty much all I’ve done when I’ve had free time the past two days, besides get pwned in Mario Kart.

aa I do know the end of the story, and how his life played out is one of the saddest you’ll find in American history.

21 And did you observe that I didn’t put that particular parenthetical thought in one of these ridiculous footnotes?

22 See 3, above.

23 See a, above.

aaa See 22, above.

The longer of hope and Main

I got it, and I’m going to be well now. Starting today. (Or, tomorrow morning I guess, due to like, time zone and gestation issues.)

I saw my psychiatrist today and I’m starting my crazy meds again.

I don’t treat this with near the fecundity I’m sure you’re getting here.

Tears are still tangled in my eyelashes as I type in fact.

I had a thought in his office about an hour ago that I thought I’d share with you though; the tears showed up somewhere between you, his secretary and the good doctor.

I’m seeing this guy because I’m messed up.

Nature, nurture; sin, perfection; laziness, overambition; decaf or leaded; however you choose to work through my messedupness, I’m calling that your thing.

I’m messed up though, and he’s my hope to get me back on track.

So sitting in his office this morning, as I was studying all the accolades on his wall and reflecting on how thankful I’ve become for his methodical, caring nature, I had one of those 3rd person observation/narration-type moments were I sort of thought to myself about how Dixon had gotten here, what was next, and how much I needed this guy.

Right about then he asked me if I had any questions or concerns for him, snapping me out of my poetic fog.

I didn’t voice any of this to him, but my thinking at just about that intersection reduced to “I’m trusting you to get me well, you and all your diplomas, journals read and hours studied”.

“I trust you to get me well.”

Now you probably didn’t know this, but pastors in the early Christian church thought themselves as “physicians of the soul”.

Their parishoners, or sheep, or patients, trusted them the same way I’m trusting this guy, the guy with more framed, formal accolades on his wall than paint. The guy who understands the frayed wires and wrong fires making my brain work with such ill-tempered rhythm. The guy whose job wasn’t done if I can’t tell him my life is a little better the next time we meet. The guy who has more resources to throw at my “issues” than I’ve got hairs on my head.

I genuinely don’t mean this as any sort of cynical or backhanded statement at all here, but I sure wish we felt that way about our pastors today.

I don’t know, maybe I have before, and I feel like it was well-placed. But I feel like that particular pastor was pretty unique, as far as pastors go. Two of my dearest friends here in Dallas are finishing up their training to go out as two of those very “physicians of the soul,” and I’m hoping they both make that particular pastor a little less unique in the world.

But I can’t tell them how to do it and I don’t have anything new to offer to this lost way of thinking about the office of shepherd.

Here’s what I know ties together the job of the pastor and the physician alike though.

I was headed down to the seminary from his office and decided to take the scenic route through the heart of downtown Dallas. At the intersection of Pearl and Main I reached over and put in my CD of more thoughtful, introspective instrumental stuff (called, appropriately enough, “Somber”). Just as sort of an afterthought I skipped over to Keith Jarret’s “Over the Rainbow” and was struck anew at its appropriateness. Right there in the busyness and grime of downtown Dallas, with buildings drawn too high for even the sunlight to best, deep tears began to stream down these unshaven cheeks.

All I could think of was “hope,” and that life is gonna be okay.

Not because I had that medicine in the seat beside me, or even because of the beautiful weather today.

No, that song, which I’ve listened to a dozen times before in similarly bent situations, just ministered to me sort of a quiet calm, a reminder that many times what’s going on inside sure ain’t like what’s happening outside. Those familiar and gentle piano strokes for just a whisper’s moment seemed to negate entirely the noise around me and the noise within.

Hope is the Christian credential that isn’t marked by some diploma or stamp-hope is the proof that nothing man makes blocks the light of God’s sun.

Hope is found anywhere you’re not ashamed to admit that it might be all you’ve got.

Hope, you see, is the cradle that’s gonna get me better, and hope is the cradle that’s gonna get us all home.

Hope’s anatomy

I’m not a doctor, and I don’t play one on TV. I’m not on TV, and I’m not a doctor either. I have had a few thoughts, however, about the anatomy of hope the past day or so.

1. Hope takes work

So during the football game this past weekend an entire city entire league entire sports-loving nation held its collective breath as the Dallas Cowboys, decent only recent, found themselves situated across the trenches from the utterly dominant and unstoppable New England Patriots. Well, the Good Guys kept it close for a while, a much bigger “while” than most dreamt. The parts of me, the parts of all of us watching who risked the ludicrous thought that the Cowboys might pull it out, we all had quite a workout last Sunday. In very simplest terms, the payoff for following a team sport is the rollercoaster we ride when we risk believing that the odds might end up wrong. The parts of me that dare trust the wings of surprise certainly got a workout last Sunday. Hope gets a great workout during football season, and the training it gets during silly things like sporting events keeps it strong during things that actually matter like well, real life.

2. Hope’s the last thing to go

In an Education class I took last spring the teacher said that in the unfortunate event that an academic institution has to shut its doors, the very last thing to go is the Registrar’s office. It shouldn’t be any big surprise then that this is the place that is most guarded, with elaborate plans for offsite backups, double-locked doors and actual federal laws that specifically govern how that specific office is run. Fitting, since this is the place where all the school’s most important, and sensitive, data are stored, i.e., academic records and the proof of students’ accomplishments. Once the institution closes up and many of the graduates begin disseminating or even dying out, there is no official record of what that place did if it isn’t in the Registrar’s records. Its history, you’d say, reduces to what’s in those cabinets. In a different class last spring, a different professor said that “you can tell what is important to an educational institution by what no one ever wants to talk about.” Wanna know how well you know someone? Let’s see if you can tell me about their very deepest, core-level, guttural hopes. Can you tell me what they are holding out for, what their “one day, when…” looks like, the “one day, when…” that they actually believe will happen? Whatever that is, it is the fuel of their soul. Healthy people don’t easily volunteer those things, and you getting there is supposed to take some digging. Know this: Once you have had that conversation, I know your friend well enough to know that he/she/it didn’t yield that treasury lightly, and he/she/it won’t forget that you’ve seen it. A person’s hopes are the last thing to die and for a great many one of the most unsettling to share.

3. Hope is best done in groups

I’ll be honest and say I enjoy football/basketball/most athletic events far more when I’m with fellow fans of the sport. Fans of the opposite team, fans of neither of the ones playing, that’s all fine, as long as that person is into the game we’re watching. The tension in the room this weekend was sort of intoxicating, knowing how hard most of us there were pulling for the Cowboys. I was glad I wasn’t the only one who dared, who risked, getting excited enough to let others know that I actually believed things might turn out in our favor. As is so common for me of late,I was glad I wasn’t the only one. (Notice the plural verbage in this verse , this one, and this one.) Hope works best, most efficiently, at its highest, when shared. For best results, use in groups.

Be on the lookout for a gathering of people with a strong hope, who are pursuing life together and cherishing whatever dreams they dare to believe might actually come true. They walk differently, talk differently, and are probably sports fans of some degree.

And don’t give up, ‘cuz they’re out there, I promise. (Count me in their number.)

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