Back to my Roots

It's been difficult to focus on my graphic novel this summer. Warm weather, yard work, family activities, and other sundry interests have conspired to reduce the frequency of blog postings. In addition, cranking out rough draft pages has slowed to a snail's pace. Revamping much of the premise of the work (alien narrators) hasn't helped, either. With the end of summer approaching it's time to gear up again for the delightful work of writing and drawing. For inspiration I'm rereading Ecclesiastes. Here are some random musings from chapters 1-7:

"Everything is meaningless" (1:2). I don't entirely agree with this statement; I find meaning in  friendships, family connections, learning, reading, helping people in my mediation/counseling practice, and more. But I am grateful Dr. Q was courageous enough to acknowledge that some things clearly are absurd. For starters, I'm the one with a misspent youth yet my virtuous wife is the one who contracts a debilitating disease. Absurd, absurd, absurd.

"Generations come and generations go" (1:4). The specter of death has haunted humanity since the beginning of time. For all the disagreement about the causes and consequences of death, we're all agreed: the grim reaper will devour all of us eventually. Even though life spans have lengthened considerably, we're all going to die. No wonder Ecclesiastes hasn't become a best seller.

"The eye never has enough of seeing" (1:8). Imagine if this were not so--the demand for new TV shows, movies, web sties, books, vacations, tours, and fashions would vanish. But the eye is never satisfied and therefore new visual content is produced every second.

"The more knowledge the more grief" (1:18). The modern explosion of knowledge has been matched by an explosion of anxiety, depression, fear, worry, despair, angst, and ennui. I often remind myself of the persons described in the New Testament, "always learning and never coming to the knowledge of truth" and "those who desire to get rich pierce themselves with many a pang." My appetite for learning is insatiable but the outcome is questionable. I simply learn how ignorant I am.

"Laughter is foolish" (2:2). This line doesn't stop me from laughing or making others laugh. But Dr. Q's point is well taken: at the end of the day is frivolity the best way to spend one's energy?

"What do I gain by being wise?" (2:15). For decades I've done my best to apply Hebraic and Christian wisdom to myself, family, and others. I'm happy to report that I, my family, and others have enjoyed many happy days. However, those happy days just as easily could be attributed to good luck, random events, the result of the law of large numbers, and the inevitable benefit of living in an affluent culture. The fact that wisdom has not been universally and predictably beneficial to one and all makes me question metaphysics. I like it that Dr. Q questions it as well.

"I must leave my things to the one who comes after me" (2:18). After my dad's death it was my unpleasant task to dispose of his belongings--tools, paintings, cameras, furniture, and more tools. The day of our auction was an Ecclesiastes day for me; people I never met drove off with glee at the tons of his belongs they got for a song; things my dad worked 80 years to collect, love, fix, clean, manage, move, store, and cherish. Makes me look at the cumber around my house--what stranger is gleefully going to drive off with my collection of volvelles, manuscripts, art work, and journals?

"Even at night his mind does not rest" (2:23). In a perfect universe we'd sleep through the night. Neither I nor Dr. Q live in a perfect universe.

"He has set eternity in the hearts of men" (3:11). Occam's Razor suggests positing a deity behind psychology is superfluous, cumbersome, and unnecessary. I know. I embrace Dr. Q's quote by faith, anyway. Logical positivists call such language poetry, unscientific, and invalid. I know. I embrace Dr. Q's affirmation by faith, anyway. New and old atheists call this belief superstitious. neanderthal, and hallucinatory. I know, I know. My passion for ethics, transcendence, and existential meaning could be a blip on my synaptic radar, a quirk of my DNA, and an unimaginative parroting of the culture I was born into. Okay, okay, I get it. But I choose to believe otherwise. I stand with Dr. Q (and several others) on this point.

"His friend can help him get up" (4:10). I'm astonished at how many cohabiting and married couples mess this up. Either one party is over accommodating or smothering, demanding or overly dependent, and they take turns being miserable. Key terms: pursuit, distancing, badgering, clamming up, aloof, preoccupied, lousy service, low tip, co created chaos. I am passionate about helping couples differentiate, get healthy, and merge lives in positive ways. Not, necessarily from a passion to "save marriage" or even to "reduce the divorce rates." I'm obsessed with this mission because we live in an enlightened, affluent, and educated world with MRIs, Mars probes, gene sequencing, SSRIs, smart phones, and Google, and yet 50% of couples still can't get happy together. What a puzzle!

"An old person is foolish if they no longer know how to take warning" (4:13). This cuts me to the quick because I'm warning averse. Not (I hope) because I'm stubborn, self righteous, or impervious to good advice. I'm simply inured to fear mongers, anxiety mongers, and cognitive distortion mongers who foster fear, worry, and panic. This is an age of anxiousness with warnings thick as flies. There's not a boy crying wolf; there's a whole media culture crying wolf. Lord, help me heed legitimate warnings, ignore stupid warnings, and know the difference.

"Stand in awe of God" (5:7). Fellow parishioners sing with passion, worship with enthusiasm, and  engage in church with fervency. I, however, merely stand during worship and sway several millimeters in each direction. I'm every worship leader's worst nightmare. I do not clap, belt out, chant, chirp, croon, harmonize, intone, lift up a voice, make melody, pipe, purr, resound, roar, serenade, shout, trill, troll, tune, vocalize, warble, whistle, or yodel. I do hum from time to time, however. 

"Who knows what is good for a person in life during their few and meaningless days?" (6:12). Answer? Fundamentalist preachers, paternalistic politicians, imperative control freaks, dogmatic pontificates, and advertisers. Other than that we're pretty much a live and let live society. 

"It is better to go to a house of mourning than a house of feasting" (7:2). In September we mark the one year anniversary of my dear wife's move into a nursing home. My daily visits are still emotional roller coaster rides for me. The infirm, ailing, and frail elderly are clear reminders of aging and death. I'm quickly disabused of imagining immortality on earth. Metaphors of mortality--smoke, grass, shadows--inspire wise and fruitful living. He who dies with the most love wins. 

"The end of a matter is better than its beginning" (7:8). Another reminder to keep chipping away at this project. It is, with several other endeavors, my life's work.

To be continued.

Depression, circa 1979

It appears from this cartoon dated 12/79 and published in a student newspaper that I was depressed when I was a student at the UW.

According to IMDb, Star Trek: The Motion Picture came out on Dec. 7, 1979. I probably drew this comic strip over Christmas break when I had no homework. In hind site I had no grounds for depression. I was happily married, happily employed as a youth pastor, and happily selling cartoons to Leadership Journal and the Saturday Evening Post. What was so depressing? The relentless clash between my fundamentalist mind and secular university. Other recollections of gloominess....

During a lecture by Ralph Nader I was this close (thumb and finger almost touching) to asking him, "What's the point of consumer protection and truth in advertising? We're all going up in flames eventually anyway."

In a rhetoric class wherein I presented a pro life position more students became pro choice after my talk than before. This was a blow to one immersed in a subculture (evangelicalism) where powers of persuasion were a badge of honor. A persuasive speaker I was not.

I held the door open for a female student once and she scolded me for being sexist, "I can open the damn door myself!" A puzzling comment to one who thought being polite was a virtue.

Despite my best attempts at my Francis Schaeffer, Josh McDowell, CS Lewis, Benard Ramm, and Norman Geisler inspired apologetic, profs and hapless fellow students unfortunate enough to fall within earshot remained impervious to my proselytizing. Since I didn't believe the message was at fault it could only have been my delivery, thus cause for shame and guilt.

In a public lecture earlier that year I asked Madelyn Murray O'Hare what hope atheism had to offer a guy like Woody Allen who was afraid to die. She told me, "He has to face it; he's going to die like all of us." Then for effect she ripped pages out of a Gideon Bible laughing maniacally and mocking God, "If you're real, please strike me dead for blasphemy." I never expected matters of faith to be popular, but an object of ridicule? My, my, my.

I have an armload of other drawings from that era [of talking heads by the way] but they're, well, too depressing to post.

Had I been acquainted with Dr. Q in those days I suspect I'd have enjoyed the camaraderie of a fellow ponderer, flummoxed theologian, and the acknowledgement of existential conundra and mystery. In Ecclesiastes University I'd like to do for today's depressed university students (if there are any left) what I wish somebody had done for me; validated the truth that fundamentalism isn't a coherent, air tight, black/white world view yet there is room for faith, theism, and hope.