Consequences

Much of my tender youth was spent in front of a television watching intellectually stimulating broadcasts such as Gilligan's Island and the usual Saturday morning animated fare.  One of the other gems of my childhood was Truth or Consequences, a game show hosted by a raven-haired Bob Barker.  I have no recollection of how the game was actually played, but know that if you did something wrong there were negative consequences (hence the name).  Mr. Barker's game show career continued after Truth or Consequences with The Price is Right differing from the earlier show in that Mr. Barker eventually succumbed to the ravages of time becoming white-haired and, due no doubt to his advanced years, required the assistance of beautiful young women.

I am trying to imagine the market demand today for a game show in which those not telling the truth receive negative consequences.  I expect it would be low.  Perhaps why Bob moved on from the relative moral clarity of Truth or Consequence to the consumerist free-for-all of The Price is Right.  Consequences are just not popular.  I don't really want there to be any negative consequences to my choices and actions.

I was having a conversation with someone a few months ago who had decided to back out of a commitment.  There were people who were disappointed in him for this decision which caused the man a significant amount of distress.  He didn't want to do what he had committed to, but he also didn't want anyone to be upset or angry with him.  But you can't have it both ways.  One of the consequences of backing out of a commitment, is that someone might be angry.  Which do you want to avoid the most, the original commitment or the displeasure of others?  Pick one.

I dislike consequences perhaps especially when the they might involve the displeasure of others.  And that is because I live with a odd confusion which is perhaps peculiarly modern.  When the solidity of a relationship is measured by the relative feelings of the people concerned rather than something deeper - some commitment, either declared or implicit - the consequences of someone's anger or displeasure are decimating.  We are very poor at understanding the realities of commitment and covenant that transcend the ups and downs of our emotional responses in relationships.  We think simply that is someone is angry with us or displeased, then there relationship is over, or at least very seriously damaged.  And while this is sometimes true, based on the gravity of the offense and subsequent displeasure, it is not always so.

Case in point - the people of Israel seeking to enter the promised land.  You can read this in Numbers 13 and 14.  Twelve spies were sent out to check out the land for 40 days.  They came back and reported that it was magnificent - flowing with milk and hone - but also that its peoples were magnificently large and brawny.  Ten of the 12 thought that God's whole idea was a poor one and that they ought to have stayed in Egypt.  This attitude was shared by much of the population.

And here is the deal.  God was displeased by their lack of faith.  And there were consequences.  He decreed that the generation who had seen the miracles of the Exodus but were intimidated by a number of muscle-bound Canaanite goons would not find rest in the promised land.  Forty years they were to wander.  They experienced the consequences of displeasing God. He threatens to destroy them and to fulfill his promise through Moses, but in one of the great examples of intercession in the Old Testament, Moses reminds God of His Name and honor among the nations and the Egyptians.

In the end the consequences remain.  Forty years of wandering in the desert.  But does the relationship with God end?  No.  Does He cease to care for and provide for the Israelites?  No.  The commitment and covenant that God has made with his people prevails.  It does not mean that there are no negative consequences to their actions.  But the commitment, the relationship remains.  It is not determined by ire or wrath but by covenant and commitment.

I think that another way of expressing this modern confusion is that we do not understand the difference between what we do and who we are.  My children will, from time to time, do things that displease me.  Those are the things they do.  Not who they are.  Even when I am displeased, I still love them.  The emotion they may feel from me is anger but that does not eradicate the relationship.  I am related to them as persons not to their actions.  Actions can mar relationship.  But where relationship is based on a bond deeper than transient emotion or approval, there is opportunity for repentance and forgiveness not only to heal, but to actually strengthen the bond.

Getting over it

Not long after my mother-in-law, Rickie by name, died, my family and I took a trip to Disney World, a trip on which she had planned to join us. That's important fact #1 for this story. Important fact #2 is that my wife, a ceramicist (fancy word for "potter"), was in the process of making an urn for the burial of her ashes. The implications of "in the process" is that Rickie's cremated remains were being stored in our house until the completion of the urn. At work one day I was telling a friend about the planned trip and how Rickie had planned to come. I said somewhat casually, "But, come to think of it, we could put her under the front seat and she still could come." My friend was horrified and responded, "Well, YOU seem to be over it."

Notwithstanding the black sense of humor I seem to have inherited from my family, this little anecdote makes me think about what it means to be "over" something, especially grief and loss. Having experienced a fair amount of the grief and loss thing I have learned a couple of lessons.

First, making light of loss is not necessarily a sign of having gotten over it. One of the ways in which we deal with the uncomforatble feelings of grief and loss is by alleviating the tension with humor. I remember when my grandfather died, one of my uncles who drove some of the grandchildren to the internment made a number of (very bad) death jokes on the way in the car. The levity is a way of dodging the uncomfortable feelings of grief. It has a part to play in the process but it cannot go on forever. Avoiding the real sadness over a long period has repercussions.

Second, loss is not just the death of someone we know and love. There is grief and sadness when we lose a job, or move to a new town. There is loss when something we hoped for and dreamed about turns out to be impossible.

Third, there is no statute of limitations on grief and loss. There is a pressure, sometimes subtle, sometimes not, to be done with it and move on with life. Our friends, at times, are anxious for us to be "over it" and back to normal. Sometimes that is a pressure we put on ourselves because we think that we should be done by now.

But the sadness creeps up on us unexpectedly. Things that remind us of any loss bring the breath-taking sharpness back as we are still in the process. Just this morning I put on a Veggie Tales video for a small mob of children who happen to be at my house. My kids are WAY past the Veggie Tales stage by now and the theme song, a familiar strain of a time that, for me, is now gone, brought tears to my eyes. Do I regret that my children have grown up and become adults? Absolutely not. But this small reminder of what is gone touched the well of sadness from larger losses. And those small tears were a gift to me.

I don't know when we should be "over it". Even when we are, we are not unchanged, and there is a new normal. The most recent "big" loss in our family happened last summer when my sister-in-law died. And now, nearly a year later, my wife and I are planning an extended leave from work this summer because we aren't over it yet. And until we take the time to come face to face with it, instead of making light or busying ourselves with frenetic activity, we will never get over it.

Buddy Greene, known (apparently) for his praise harmonica - a little known musical genre - sings a song whose chorus is pertinent here:
Where the pieces of our lives go unattended
Then scars from broken hearts go unmended
And the feelings we've forgotten overtake us like a flood
That's how it always is with flesh and blood
That how it has to be with flesh and blood