Every Minute Is Your Life

In Walk the Line, the recent biographical film concerning the stormy relationship between Johnny and June Carter Cash, the character of Johnny (Joaquin Phoenix) is busily trying to sell a music producer on his talent. It is still quite early in an as-yet undefined career.

Cash’s iconic, oily warble and strut have not yet shown up in his vocals, and his lyrics are those of an automaton – someone cautiously trying to find a way to score big on old gospel standards without risking anything artistically in the process. His backup men may as well be playing wet noodles.

So he auditions and, at first, miserably falters. Then the owner of the record company gives him some advice we all could benefit from hearing. He tells Cash to imagine that he has just been struck by a truck and now lies dying with only a few minutes remaining in which to sing one last song. What, then, would he sing?

Cash hesitates, and for a moment his eyes catch fire. Then he lets fly with an original tune: “I hear a train a-comin’ / it’s rolling ’round the bend / and I ain’t seen the sunshine / since I don’t know when / I’m stuck in Folsom Prison…”

You may argue, and rightly, about whether Cash’s life provides us with the gold moral standard of behavior. Yet there is something about this one scene that consistently gets to the heart of the matter of how he lived. It wasn’t only “Folsom Prison” knocking around in his head that he needed to get out in his fantasy about laying on the side of the road near death. Rather, he must surely have taken the record executive’s advice and decided to live out the rest of his days as though every minute were his last – as though the words of any song he happened to be singing would be the final thing to ever cross his lips.

Make a similar decision for yourself, and instantly your life has more meaning – or, possibly for the first time ever, has any meaning at all.

Many religions, faith systems, and philosophies are pushing us to make such a decision. Buddhism ingrains it through meditation and the practice of mindfulness. Judaism does it by promoting an intense realization of the world’s suffering. Hinduism imparts it in the notions of healthy detachment and lucidity. The Muslim tradition brings it to consciousness through consistent discipline.

In my own tradition of Christianity it remains a constant theme of Scripture and is well encapsulated in the words of Jesus preserved in the Gospel According to Luke: “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.” There is, for Christians, a beautiful paradox expressed by two common phrases: “Live every day as if it were your last,” (death) and “Today is the first day of the rest of your life” (resurrection). Neither one cancels the other out; rather, the one makes the other a stronger truth.

The secret to happiness in life is twofold. First – and let’s hope this doesn’t sound too morbid – admit the fact that death is not only a possibility but a fact; that we’re all in some state of a terminal condition. Second, let’s also live now, in this moment, which is the only place where reality ever happens.

Have a good week.

The Rev. Torey Lightcap is Priest-In-Charge of St. Barnabas Episcopal Church in Glenwood Springs.

...And What Do You Do?

Suppose there’s a CPA who’s darned good at what he does, but maybe what he really wants to be is a scratch golfer. Or you have a lawyer – a hard-driving litigator by day who harbors a secret passion for karaoke by night. Or a taxidermist studying natural health and healing methodologies in his spare time.

They’re all over the place: politicians who just want to cook, meter readers who just want to kayak, seamstresses who just want to learn Italian. Their day jobs and their real passions could be so seemingly disconnected that they might never confess their true hearts’ desires and avocations to their professional colleagues.

I absolutely love the work I do. Still, out of the wealth of all my passions I know could do more. I could be an Episcopal priest / B&B owner-operator / film script reviewer / Gen-X theology writer / pie taster / fez collector. (If only there were money to be made in fezzes.)

Is it naturally disconcerting, this business of a “day job,” the thing you do for money? Is every time we go to work another chance to sell out just a little bit more? Of course not!

Yet somewhere there’s a tiny voice crying out, a splinter in our minds – “I could do this all day if only it paid, and I’d never get tired of it.”

Truth is, it does pay. It pays many rich dividends as it brings you life and energy, and it’s nothing at all to be ashamed of.

Here’s a stretch for you. Imitate the old pyramid-scheme marketers by making a sign that says “Ask me about (blank),” where the blank is the shorthand name for your deepest passion. Adorn it with photos of you taking part in your favorite activity, or with inspirational quotes from that field. Then take that sign to your place of work and post it prominently.

As people come in and out of your work space, they will ask. Although it might be embarrassing at first, you will eventually find yourself swelling with insight and happiness as you lay out the whys and wherefores of woodcarving, candle-making, or 18th-Century English literature.

Now here’s the big lift: your reputation will change. Instead of being known as the Copier Guy, Close-Talker, or Mr. Bad Breath, you will become known as Karaoke Man, Surf Dude, Master of the Scrapbook, Señorita Stamp. There will still be a new stereotype for you to overcome, but you at least will have exposed the old stereotype as boring on your way to telling people more about who you really are.

This is wholly in keeping with the life of faith, where we are asked to bring our entire selves, unashamedly, into everything we do. What a liberating possibility.

Have a good week.

The Rev. Torey Lightcap is Priest-In-Charge of St. Barnabas Episcopal Church in Glenwood Springs.

Sangha

Haunting the coffee shops around these parts while wearing the familiar white collar and black shirt of a priest, I often find myself hearing confessions before I even know what’s happening.

Since these aren’t your typical knot-in-the-throat confessions that take place in the church proper, and since the participants are all pretty much saying the same thing, I feel safe in giving you the general gist of what I’m hearing these days.

“Everything is unified, is all one,” goes the usual opening gambit, and how could anyone argue. “I have known it from a very young age, that the divisions we make for ourselves are just illusions to make us feel better. Everything is deeply connected.”

Here there is a pause for a swig of latte. I nod. All is well.

“I do believe in God, and I used to go to church. But now I just feel like the church is full of hypocrites” (those last three words being interchangeable with “too hot in the summer,” “way outdated,” and “not paying attention to my needs”).

I nod again. These may or may not be prejudicial considerations, but heck, why can’t they be valid in the experience of the complainant?

“Nature is my church. When I go out walking/jogging/climbing/biking, I can sense divine presence just by being out of doors. Sundays are my day. That’s why I haven’t been at church for the past ten years.”

And so a friendly chat becomes an opportunity either to seek absolution for neglecting church or a platform for dismissing church altogether.

All of this has become weirdly rote. The first several times I heard it, I just let it be. Now, though, because of the persistence of this logic, I have a new tack.

First, I don’t much argue. The church does have its hypocrites, for example, and I’m one of them, so you can have that point. (Thank heaven we get to say a confession each week!) I believe, too, that all the constituent parts of the universe are deeply and radically interconnected, so why go looking for a fight there. Finally, nature is an incredible teacher and makes herself a fine place in which to worship. Why not affirm what is patently true?

What I do is simply create a little challenge for my conversation partner. I ask: “If your spiritual life is really being enriched by your experiences, why in the world wouldn’t you want to share that?”

Anyone on a spiritual path needs – indeed, I think, even privately craves – to be in a community of fellow pilgrims walking on a similar journey. Members of healthy faith communities know how to love, support, challenge, uphold, and care for one another. When we neglect this part of our seeking and growth, we allow sensitive and important parts of ourselves to atrophy. Without the check provided by others, our own pious and religious sensibilities can become grossly skewed until they merely support what we desire to be true, rather than what might actually be happening.

It is certainly true that to some degree, all faith communities have their share of neurosis, heartache, and gossip. You just have to decide whether it’s worth all that to have a family of faith in your life.

If you have a tribe of folks whom you think of when the word “church” comes to mind, give thanks for them, and stop to tell them how glad you are for their presence. If you don’t yet have a tribe, give it a good think, weigh your options, and give it a try.

Have a good week.

The Rev. Torey Lightcap is Priest-In-Charge of St. Barnabas Episcopal Church in Glenwood Springs.

Judge Not

“Deliver us from presumption.” That’s the prayer I once scribbled onto a sticky note and posted directly above my computer monitor. It was a late-night “arrow prayer” inspired by the texts I’d been reading in seminary.

In the ensuing years I’ve come to appreciate this unadulterated wisdom prayer for what it is – simple and straightforward. I appreciate it so much because I find it so hard to live by. I’m shooting this little prayer quite a bit these days.

As life brought me into my thirties, I became increasingly aware of my need to judge, to categorize, to create little silos into which I could put people and ideas. It was and is a kind of shorthand – an excuse for not really getting to know people, which when you think about it is no way to live.

Stop for a moment and just consider: how many judgments and critiques do you make in the course of a day, or even an hour? A few might be based on sound principles of business or the need for survival, but I’ll bet the majority of them are useless to your everyday existence. Yet it is so easy to do whether it occurs at the coffee shop, the grocery store, the library, or even (and sometimes especially) the church community.

Presumption about others is a warm and protective blanket that keeps us in the right at all costs. It fuels hatred, misunderstanding, lack of conversation, and calcification in the righteousness of our own beliefs. It keeps the status quo and protects the majority view. It promotes a false happiness based on the uninformed lies we tell ourselves.

How boring. And dangerous.

Isn’t there some other way of living our lives? What if we didn’t have to hide behind the walls of our egos? What if we could become rooted in a real happiness – the kind that sees the world more like it actually is, and doesn’t depend on presumption, judgment, and mischaracterization?

There is a way, of course. It is to look and listen: to see and hear with all of one’s senses, and always at the deepest possible level. Become a watcher, a listener. Cultivate the habit. Work hard at it. Watch the world change in front of your eyes.

People will become more interesting to you. They won’t be as greedy or as dumb as you might have originally thought. Their true motives for acting in the world will become clearer, as will your own. You will find yourself more equipped to help and be a friend, less inclined to walk away from a potential relationship.

History’s greatest spiritual teachers have sounded in on the need for avoiding presumption and striving to see conditions and people as they are. Make the stretch to be there, and you’ll be in good company.

If “Deliver us from presumption” is the little arrow prayer, then the response is to exercise compassion. To borrow a phrase, compassion starts when we stop, look, and listen.

Have a good week.

The Rev. Torey Lightcap is Priest-In-Charge of St. Barnabas Episcopal Church in Glenwood Springs.

Knowing You Don't Know, and Loving It Anyway

In my middle-school years, there used to be a kids’ show on Nickelodeon called “You Can’t Do That on Television.” This was a program whose goal was to break into the tedium and terror of being a pre-teen by confronting all the crazy issues of the day using an often broad and body-based humor.

The show made much of the travails of being a kid, in particular the fact that there are many excruciating questions that arise during the process of growing up – questions without clear-cut answers or even any answers at all. And indeed, at least one time per episode, some unlucky character would be forced to respond to someone else’s question by answering, “I don’t know.”

Without fail, at the utterance of these three words a fantastic amount of lumpy, green slime would be poured on top of the actor’s head by an unseen hand standing somewhere above the stage. The actor would just have to sit there and take it, and then go shower.

So far as I know this practice explains the origins of green slime on Nickelodeon, a prolific trait of that network over the past many years. Which is fine. Yet it also highlights a basic truth in a graphic fashion: that deep down, we feel we should be afraid of what we don’t know, and that unless we have the answers we might suffer some pretty terrible consequences.

This, at least, is how we tend to think things are, and at the most basic level there’s little reason to suggest things aren’t that way. For every moment we find ourselves in some situation without an immediate and clear response, there is often a penalty to be paid: not necessarily green slime falling from the sky, but a price nevertheless. For every utterance of “I don’t know,” we seem to put things at risk. This is in the hard-wired teaching of our culture, and you can witness it at work in schools, jobs, and relationships, where those who know the answers (or are good at making out like they do) often receive preference.

In only a few years of ministry thus far, I have come into contact with a good number of people who are perplexed by any number of questions be they dogmatic, philosophical, or relational. Across many hours of conversation I have often had to be the one to listen carefully to a concern and begin by responding, “I don’t know.”

Such words tend to have a threefold effect. First, I look up to see if there’s green slime coming! Second, my conversation partner, who may consider me some sort of expert after a fashion, is stopped cold by my response. Third, there is a realization on both our parts that it’s okay for us to admit the limitations of our knowledge.

Being willing to make this admission is a good first step; it clears the air and resets the problem. Then we can tackle it in some fresh new way.

In the four gospel accounts of the Christian tradition, Jesus is asked many, many questions by people with all manner of motivation. Some want to trick him or get power over him; some are looking to advance in their careers; others are simply burning up with the desire to have an answer. Yet you could count on one hand the number of times that Jesus gives a direct answer. The rest of the time he directs their attention to some course of action, or to some piece of scripture, or to some mind-bending parable. Even if he does know the answer, he’s willing to admit that life is complicated.

It’s okay not to know. There’s a lot less slime up there than you think.

Have a good week.

The Rev. Torey Lightcap is Priest-In-Charge of St. Barnabas Episcopal Church in Glenwood Springs.