Signals

Who among us, save the most encrusted materialist, has not longed for a sign--from above, from beyond, really from anywhere but here.

I have a strong conviction that "signs" are all around us, and seeing them is simply a matter of keeping an open mind.

Strangely enough, this week I found three receipts from April 21, my birthday, on three consecutive years: 2010, 2011, and 2012.

The first receipt indicated that my birthday in 2010, found us taking a leisurely drive to Chelan, WA, in the Columbia River wine country, and having a wonderful dinner at Sorrento's, a splendid Italian restaurant. It's hard to believe how we took such things for granted.



Lake Chelan

The second receipt was from a garage in Issaquah--on my birthday in 2011, my car wouldn't start and I took it to this shop to have it repaired. They charged me the extravagant sum of $260 to poke around and replace the battery--which didn't address the real problem in the least. It was in fact a starter problem. But you're paying $75 per hour for expertise, don't you know. I also remember walking four miles to the shop to pick up my car, and having plenty of time to consider my career options, as I had lost my job the day before. That's what I can recall of my birthday, 2011.

The third receipt was from Ivar's, a chain of fish and chips restaurants in Seattle. I drove into town the weekend of my birthday to take care of several tasks, including a trip to IKEA. Every trip to IKEA is a rather surreal adventure. This time, I had a pleasant and extended phone conversation with N & H while walking through the Blue Valley, a quiet, shady courtyard between the two parking garages. It was one of those banal interludes that doesn't seem special at the time, and yet that you'll likely never forget.

Then I drove to Ivar's for fish and chips. I was so busy that I couldn't think of a better place to go--but that's a compliment because I know I always enjoy their food. I also had a nagging headache, and fish and chips is a sure cure.

IKEA's "Blue Valley"

What do I glean from this? Prior to 2011, I was having economic challenges, but my family and economic life was still largely intact. In 2011, the structure of my life had largely fallen apart, and my birthday became the nadir of that drawn-out catastrophe. From that time through 2012, I gradually put my life back together, and had learned to enjoy life's simple pleasures.

Signs are a presumption of the mind

And I'm more careful now not to draw solid conclusions about where my life is headed, based on a few signs. We often misunderstand how events unfold. We fail to understand the difference between "quick" and "sudden." God's action is sudden; everything lines up as necessary, a crisis point is reached, then change happens somewhat catastrophically. But the alignment might take weeks or months or decades, or happen at uneven rates. We expect the relationship of signs and events to be presented in a causal manner, when in actuality they're synchronistic. "Signs" are a subjective presumption of the mind. Instead, we need to open our minds to the subtly and suddenly unfolding.

The mistake we make is that signs are not explanations, but encrypted bread crumbs left along the way. Perhaps we look for signs when we are actually receiving signals.

Things Fall Apart

I commiserated with myself for quite a while about whether I should post this. To be blunt, it's very personal, and not at all within the scope of what I'd intended for this venue. But I am worth little if I don't understand myself, and this essay describes a time of critical change in my life. It might also come to pass that I never have a chance to explain these lessons to others, especially my daughter, Heidi, so I've determined to record this here and now.

Last year (2011), Easter fell on April 24. It was a very tough time, and I attended Good Friday, Saturday night Easter Vigil, and Easter Sunday services. I strove to keep a strong faith and sought solace and understanding. It helped me to gain understanding, but it didn't prevent episodes of intense grief and depression. Since the previous Fall, I had lost two grandmothers, Nadine left and took our daughter Heidi to Pittsburgh. I lost my job on my birthday (the day before Good Friday), and just after Easter I discovered that my dog Fritz was gravely ill with liver cancer.

In the long run, it was good that I moved on from that job, but it fell at a time when I was terribly vulnerable. I lost all confidence in my skills and felt that my career was over. Relationships no longer seemed to work out. It was a false perception, but I could only see the rejection and failure of recent history. I felt used up, just a crumpled-up piece of paper.

Because I was experiencing loss so acutely, I came face to face with its reality. I wasn't just facing it, I was drowning in it. I had always tried to maintain an awareness that losses would inevitably come--over time, I would lose grandparents, parents, friends and other loved ones, pets along the way, and then I would go.

Of course, I was aware that these things happen. But I expected it to unfold in a more drawn out way, not clustered, as this was. The question I asked was not why me, but why all this, all now?

On a particularly hard day, right before Easter Sunday, I realized that I'd have to let go of the things I treasured, and release attachment to the people I loved in my life. Eventually you are going to lose everything, one way or another. Even though I had acknowledged this from time to time, it was an academic acknowledgement--now it was dense and ponderous and imminent. It was less a conscious realization than a palpable sense.

During this time, I had no idea that Fritz was ill. Ironically these thoughts were a prelude to his passing.

I tried to find notes on this, but I guess I'm not surprised that I wrote hardly anything at the time. The fortnight between my birthday and Fritz's passing is a black hole. All I remember was arranging my life around making the most of my time with him and trying to do all the things that he enjoyed most.

The day after Fritz passed on, I moved to a new apartment and later that month, started a new job. My life took a sawtoothed yet gradually upward trend from there. It's taken a year to get proper distance and perspective to write about it. I can look back over the long rough road, yet I still resist optimism as purest folly.

This year (2012), during Lent, I kept an open mind, hoping for insight. I had my usual ups and downs, and I realized two things: One is that you have to uphold your faith when it's hard to do so, when things are dark--it's not just for sunny days dressed up for Sunday brunch. The other is that your emotions about events don't actually matter--the events occur anyway. It's not that God doesn't care, but He's hands off, quiet, always behind the scenes, the subtlest operator. It seems harsh, but it's the way the world works. And it's our responsibility to understand the world and its workings, so that we can live in it.

Then on Easter, I meditated on how far I had come since last year--I called it the Easter Crisis, as it seemed my life was falling apart around me. And it literally did. Over and over I obsessed on the infamous line from Yeats' "Second Coming:"

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold...

My former life is no more. I'm not the same person I was a year ago. I see things differently; I act and react with the world differently; I approach problems and challenges differently.

Now, when I'm confronted with a problem that seems overwhelming, I remind myself: it's not a money problem... it's not a career problem... it's not a house problem... or whatever the problem seems to be... it's a mind problem. Then I can deconstruct it and break it down into chunks that can be done one by one.

And this year I set commitments around goals like: Build a stable foundation. Be effective. Move on. Get help. Face your fear. It's working. I stand in a different relationship with the world and with people. I'm far less impressed or obsessed with material things. I wasn't terribly in love with money to begin with, but I certainly fell into the trap of thinking that buying "this one thing" will solve a problem. Yes, sometimes you need tools or materials to help you accomplish goals, but it's really all about skills. And I now see wealth more as a means of sustaining yourself and your family, and as a bulwark against hardship, legal attacks, and transgressions against your rights and property.

Most of all, I understand that I would never have changed had a catastrophic turn of circumstance not awakened me. I was so profoundly flawed in some ways that only having my life shattered and rebuilt brick by brick would restore me.

As I was, I would never have fulfilled the potentials that God intended for me. It sounds perverse, but the more I think about that, the more I see that God truly cares whether I realize my potentials.