line from a spaceship

[caption id="attachment_6286" align="alignleft" width="300"] Westley waiting for turkey leftovers[/caption]"Do you prefer to have everything to do at the last minute, or to get things done ahead?" I asked Tim, who was on the couch while I reclined near the woodstove a few mornings past Thanksgiving.

I thought I knew his answer already. I was correct. The two of us agree on at least this one thing. Planning ahead is our style.

Which explains the way our children, back in their formative years, felt about us. In their own ways, each of them came to grips with our style, with our home's slow heating by woodfire and with Tim's and my refusal, mostly ever, to romp out and pile in the car for an adventure on the spur of the moment. Complaints sometimes ensued. I sometimes felt guilty. But I couldn't help being, in my off-kilter way, a person who savors anticipation, who likes to plan.

I jostled the fire with the poker. Tim must have left for work by then, because I crouched alone in the hearth space. Alone except for the cat, Westley, who spied a string tie dangling from my hoodie and batted it with his paw. Recently someone said Westley reminds them of a babyfaced gangster, with his kitteny head atop his large orange self. Another evening, when friends came for dinner, Tim carried on a long conversation with Westley as we all sat near the woodstove, about how I was just sitting there, open, and so Westley ought to bother me, instead of himself, to pet him. Nothing swayed the kittenfaced one, however, and he continued revolving around Tim for his attention.

Now I stood, faced away from the fire, and leaned backward til my shoulders touched the mantle. Things to do should be started. But much nicer it was to think, in slowness, viewing our front maple waving its final gold leaves out the window. Westley curled on the carpet. I pondered a morning reading from 1 Timothy, remembered I better start laundry, and grasped for a line from Serenity, the movie I watched again recently -- two days before Thanksgiving, to be exact.

[caption id="attachment_6287" align="alignright" width="300"] Jayne wearing the hat his mom made[/caption]This viewing of the characters and story line I admire (with definite reservations in some areas regarding what it means to practice virtue) gave me a focus on Jayne, a male crewmember of the Firefly spaceship who stands out often as exceptionally crude. Yet Jayne develops as a person, very slowly, throughout the run of the TV series, Firefly, that came before the movie. Then especially, I noticed during Serenity, Jayne comes into his own as someone who cares. He says something I wished to recall and write in my notebook. Slowly, my thoughts found his words again, and I stood a moment longer, anticipating jotting them down.

"Preacher used to tell me, 'If you can't do something smart, do something right.'"
~ Jayne, chiming in with his Serenity crewmembers as they decide to risk everything to expose to their universe the dramatic truth they have discovered, as spur-of-the-momently as they can.

guilty thoughts

For there is a hospital for sinners... ~ St. John Chrysostom

Close to the woodstove, testing the ability to cross legs on the rug (for a short while) even at this grand old age, the mind gets notions (or delusions) that it can word the thing inside it.

One of the lines I relate to in the first Toy Story movie is exclaimed by the dinosaur toy, Rex, just after the loveable crew in the moving van discovers they have misjudged their friend Woody's actions. They've tossed him, literally, onto the street, but suddenly they realize Woody has actually been working with their other friend Buzz Lightyear to make it back to their boy, Andy. Rex laments, "Now I have guilt!"

What an interesting use of language. In life, on the other side of things, no one says, "Whew, now I have innocence." But guilt, that is a feeling I often have. Or think I do.

Yet I can't, as a Christian reading the Bible, find a verse saying, "You need to have guilt. Go get it this minute. It's God's will for you to wallow in the depths of its dungeon."

Those sorts of words don't come from God. I think those instructions have been my own message to myself. To be more precise, they're the script of my ego, when I find myself dealing with my own sin. The evidence is convincing to me, the longer I trundle along life's highway, that I have used what I call guilt to help me hide from the fact that I sin. It's really very handy. I focus on the emotion, the guilty feelings I manufacture inside. I try to whip them into something gravy-ish, thick with dourness and despair. I can't believe I did that, but, wow, I did. I must punish myself to the full extent of...of...

The author Christos Yannaras was at our humble church this past Sunday. He spoke about guilt as a Western phenomenon. I'm still in process regarding his talk, and I'm planning to read at least one of his books soon (Christmas list, here I come). While I don't remember all he said, I know it resonated well with the things I've entered into at the Orthodox Christian services. One can express some of what's going on as the difference between heritages in the East and West. It makes sense to me that we Americans have been delivered a lot of legal notions via our heritage. I'm not saying my heritage is nonsense. I just find statements from early in Christianity, that haven't been much emphasized "over here" for a thousand or so years, compelling.

John Chrysostom, who died in the fifth century, carried forward the thoughts of Church fathers from long before his lifetime when he wrote this:

Enter into the Church and wash away your sins. For there is a hospital for sinners and not a court of law. Do not be ashamed again to enter the Church; be ashamed when you sin but not when you repent.

If those sentiments were accompanied by an idea that I am somehow up to snuff for repenting, that I can "now have innocent" feelings, then I wouldn't give the Church's instruction on this matter a second thought. I know how attractively tempting is the idea that repenting in faith toward God can be a set it and forget it sort of thing. It's not.

Guilt in the true sense is a descriptive term. When I do wrong, I am guilty, no matter what I feel. The emotion of sorrow is then appropriate. There is a godly sorrow, as the apostle Paul expressed it, that leads to repentance. Once again, after repenting, I am treated for my malady of sin. I'm washed and I'm healthier.

Worldly sorrow is the thing I tend to call "having guilt." Rather than bringing me health, it directs me to the dungeon, guides me blindly toward death. I think, when I go there, it's me dealing with me.

When I repent I turn again toward God. My bones which have been humbled are strengthened; they rejoice in the glimpse once more of wholeness. I am presented another vista of Life.