Wise Elder

[from Wisdom for the Ages: A Season with Ecclesiastes available from Kindle Direct]

D

o you have a wise elder in your life?  There’s no better means to discover and cultivate your inner wisdom.

Ecclesiastes has long served as a surrogate wise elder for me.  But I had a flesh and blood wise elder who entered my life as I began a ministerial career in my early thirties.  He was a member of my little congregation in Youngstown, Ohio.  He appeared when my psyche, in its journey of individuation, was ready to progress toward its next stage, according to the Jungian scheme.

Dick Shook reminded me of the actor, Frank Morgan, who played the Wizard of Oz in the classic movie.  A seventyish man, with a gray mustache and receding hairline, silver hair combed straight back, Dick generally dressed in well-worn dress slacks, cardigan sweater, and tie.  He always seemed at ease with self and others.  His wife Pat, slim and graceful, was a good match.  Their home, a snug North Side cottage, had simple, good furnishings, a brick fireplace that burned aromatic hardwood, and unique knick-knacks.  The mantle had an array of Dick’s childhood iron toys and miniature steam engines.  When he fired them up, they putt-a-putted and emitted little bursts of steam.  Dick was happy, his dark eyes shiny like coal.

Dick had worked as a salesman and designer for General Fireproofing, a once famous Youngstown manufacturer of steel office desks and aluminum office chairs.  Half a century later these pieces are collectible, signifying a golden age of industrial America. By the time I came to Youngstown, however, General Fireproofing had gone out of business.

For a few years, my wife Ellie and I spent a couple of hours every week at the Shooks, while our daughter took piano lessons from their next-door neighbor.  Dick knew how to mix cocktails.  At the beginnings of our visits, he exited into the kitchen and in a few minutes returned with a tray of four glistening drinks.  His servings were generous, always a double shot for me.  After two glasses of bourbon on the rocks, everything settled into a warm golden glow.  Dick’s warm and friendly eyes took on an extra twinkle.  The Port Salut cheese that Pat served on a plate with a mound of stone ground Canadian crackers became extra tangy-rich.

On those mellow afternoons, little twilight eternities, we had easy and wonderful conversations about words and language, books, world events, and Youngstown lore.  Once, the subject of dirigibles popped up.  “Come with me,” Dick said.  “I’m going to show you something in the garage.”  Up in the rafters above his car was the frame of a pewter-hued metal chair.  He lifted it down and said, “Here,” presenting it to me. 

I nearly dropped it, because I’d expected it to have a certain heft.  However, it was as light as a feather.  “It’s from a dirigible.  It’s made of magnesium.”  Dick then explained how he’d acquired it, telling yet another of his signature stories of being at the right place at the right time.

As a child, he sat at the family dinner table while they entertained all three hundred pounds of William Howard Taft.  While attending respective Cleveland colleges during Prohibition, Dick and Pat, when they dated, had rubbed elbows with notorious mobsters in speakeasies.  At the 1933 Century of Progress World Fair in Chicago, Dick had watched Sally Rand’s beguiling fan dance.  I ceased to be amazed, but was always interested, when a topic of our conversation led to yet another of Dick’s fascinating first hand tales.

The domestic tranquility of their home, the comfortable affections of their marriage, their unpretentious good taste and septuagenarian handsomeness, their treasure of memories of people and places, their continuing pleasures in continuing pursuits struck me as how I would like my life to be when I was seventy.

Dick taught me about death, too.  Cancer claimed him toward the end of my Youngstown sojourn.  He dealt with dying with considerable dignity.  He breathed his final breath in the home he’d designed and loved.  I sat with Pat in the familiar living room, as Dick’s body in a blue, zippered bag was carried out of the house, into the ambulance.  I gave his eulogy and wrote a poem of remembrance for him.

Dick provided a worthy example for me on how to live an ordinary life to its fullest, in whatever time and place I might find myself.  He offered an example that I appreciated then and used as a guide thereafter.

Ecclesiastes’ wisdom, the wise elder example of the Narrator, isn’t as intimate and warm as a living mentor, such as Dick Shook was for me.  But on an intellectual level, it works.  At least, it has worked and continues to work for me.

In our youth and when we begin to grow our psyche, we need wise elders to stimulate what we already have within us.  In literary and intellectual ways, Ecclesiastes serves this universal purpose.

Introduction to a Eulogy

At times such as this, when we remember a loved one who has died, publicly celebrating her life, our memories are something like a photo album with snapshots frozen in time.

We stare at the images.

Emotions flow for times we never knew, as well as for times we shared.

Our younger selves often stare back at us and we are haunted.

We witness the progress of a lifetime, a goodly span of years.

We wonder at the role of circumstance and chance, as well as see, perhaps for the first time, the moral arc of a life lived deliberately, and how we are affected: her life infused in our life.
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Why I Am a Religious Liberal

Twenty years ago I was gifted with a 2 volume set—an encyclopedia of American Religions. It arranged an astounding number of faith traditions—old and new—into categories or what the editors called Families. My interest in religion and history, as well as a penchant for the quirky, made these 2 volumes one of my favorite bathtub reads. While taking a soak I’d roam the pages, for as little or as long as I wished, exploring more than 1200 varied churches.  (A recent edition lists twice that many.)

For example, after sauntering through the Loop and encountering a 12 story office building named the I AM TEMPLE, with a remarkable image (for me, creepy) of St. Germain in the window and an elderly woman at a small reception desk in the dimly lit lobby, I became curious about the I AM movement of the 1930s. Their teachings about the Ascended Masters, including Jesus, who bring special messages to Earth, now focuses on activities at Mt. Shasta in California. And like Sears, I AM has moved its national headquarters from the city to Schaumberg.

I enjoy arcane religious history of the American experience.

My big takeaway from this encyclopedia of American Religions concerned the Unitarians. The encyclopedia made a section transition from what it called the Conservative Family to the Liberal Family of Protestantism. The Liberal Family included the likes of the Ethical Society and the Religious Humanists. Unitarian Universalism sat on the transition line. The encyclopedia wondered whether UUism was  the most liberal faith organization of the conservative tradition, or was it the most conservative organization of the liberal religious tradition.

I vote for the former: the most liberal faith tradition of the conservative tradition. Our roots are in the New England Pilgrim/Puritan Congregational Church. We are independent congregations joined into an association.  We have ministers trained in traditional seminaries, including Harvard Divinity School, the first in America and once Unitarian. We meet on Sundays and listen to sermons and sing hymns. And so on.

Here’s my understanding of liberal religion as it applies to Unitarianism. 1) We were conceived in and emerged from the Age of Reason—the Enlightenment. Freedom of belief and freedom of conscience remains central. 2) We value the worth and dignity of each and every person. In this regard, our founder William Ellery Channing spoke emphatically that the human condition was made in the image of God. A generation later, Emerson urged us to “Trust thyself” in a celebrated essay “Self Reliance.” 3) We have no creed.  Nothing must impede the free mind and hamper free will. But we do need education and an adventurous life full of experiences to best use our freedom. 4) We believe in progress, the endless seeking of perfection of the individual (character) and of society (justice). 5) Democracy is the best form of government to achieve social progress, while continually nurturing the individual in the ways of freedom and responsibility.

Generally, and so it applies to religion, I see liberalism as the means of liberation of the human personality, in which liberalism implicitly trusts. In contrast, conservatism has a dimmer view of the human condition, what I see as Calvinistic. Humankind in this old Protestant view is essentially depraved  (original sin or at the very least fallen from grace plays here). In the conservative view, the individual and society needs all sorts of controls to maintain order and condition goodness. (I might be able to trust in me, but I’m not sure that I can trust you, is the conservative bottom line.  So, follow my rules, though they might not absolutely apply to me.)

My mantra is, “I’m a religious liberal for me and for you.”

Let our spirits soar!