My Birthday: I Won't Cry, I Don't Want To

For those of you who are also my friend on facebook, or for those of you who know me well, you will know that today is my birthday.  Some people have said to me that they hope that I took a rest day today to enjoy my birthday.  It's funny, because that's actually exactly what I wanted to write about today: how I purposely chose to make today the longest day of our trip so far, over 100 miles of riding from Mexico to Marshall, Missouri (near Slater).

First of  all, the major reason why I don't want to cry and certainly won't is that the Bruins won the Stanley Cup last night.  A long time coming, both for me and for the Bruins franchise.  Boston is now certainly the greatest sports city in the last decade or so.  Something I read this morning: the Patriots, who last won the Superbowl in 2005 (the 2004 season) are now in the longest championship drought of any Boston sports team.  Wow.

Another reason I'm not going to cry is that today was a beautiful day.  We crossed the Missouri River, saw a family of raccoons, had some nice cool weather, and biked along the Lewis and Clark Expedition Route. Unfortunately I had given Thomas the camera to take pictures of the city of Columbia and did not have it with me when I was on the trail.  But I saw some Native American carvings on the rock that Lewis and Clark wrote about many years ago and crossed through Diana Bend.  If you want to see something beautiful, look up Diana Bend and the trail and such and you'll wish along with me that I had the camera with me.  All of it made the 100+ miles today worth it, more than worth it.  My legs actually feel better at the end of the day today than they have in a long time.

100 miles on my birthday, though, is something most people would balk at.  Why push yourself on your birthday?  I always hear people say that they don't understand why they have to work on their birthday.  I also hear people say that they should be able to do or get whatever they want on their birthday.  Most often, of course, I hear people say (and see them follow through with it) that their birthday is a time to "go crazy" with partying, drinking, and losing all inhibitions.  Whether we admit it or not, most of us think that "celebrating" our birthdays in this way is appropriate because we deserve a day to do whatever.  We are special enough to do whatever we want.  We are something special.

I really believe that at the heart of things we love birthdays because, indeed, we think we are something special.  Partly for this reason I have stopped caring about my birthday.  Surely I appreciate when people wish me a happy birthday and I'm not about to get angry with them, I genuinely thank them (and I generally thank you, if you wished me a happy birthday).  But I am nothing special.  I also don't like to think that I'm getting older, so those two things combine to make me not want to celebrate or think about my birthday.  The important thing remains my antipathy to the general attitude of self-appreciation that abounds in American culture.

Thomas and I have been really getting into Game of Thrones on this trip, since we have HBO in most of our motels.  In that show, instead of referring to birthdays, they talk about namedays.  I like that because, in my opinion, it takes the focus off of us and onto the meaning of our name within our family's history.  A lot goes into a name that we often don't think about (and nowadays I'm not sure parents put much thought into it anymore).  When I was in South Africa, one of the best experiences I had was when a number of people told me the stories behind their names and what they mean.  They, too, don't think about celebrating themselves but think of their namedays as a blessed time to see the whole family, that loving group that gives each individual meaning.

No matter how solitary I may prefer to be, I have no meaning, none of us have meaning, without our families.  Without the people who surround us with love in our life we have no meaning.  Those people have created us, shaped us, and helped us along the path of life.  No point in celebrating you.  Instead of expecting other people to give us stuff and give us a good time, on our namedays we should celebrate the people around us and give them gifts of our appreciation and love.

Yet that is impossible for those held in slavery.  Many of them have been abandoned by their families because the parents didn't have the money to support them, many have been sold into slavery for the same reason, many grew up in "good" families but are tricked into slavery and isolated from their families.  Whatever the cause of their bondage the result is the same: those held in slavery have no one around them to love them, and no one around to love.

There are many people in our world today who are not trafficked in any way and also find themselves in similar situations.  Their nameday will be empty because they have no one to show gratitude for.  Can you imagine living without people who love you and without people to love?  I know that I can imagine it and it's not pretty.  I don't want anyone to have to live without love in their lives and without the opportunity to properly celebrate a nameday.

Bruins are Going to the Stanley Cup Finals!!!!

I'm not going to lie, the best thing about today is knowing that my beloved Boston Bruins are going to the Stanley Cup Finals.  In my lifetime Boston sports have been rather fantastic: the Red Sox ended their long World Series drought, twice; the Celtics have been fairly dominant for the second half of my life; the Patriots have been arguably the best team in the last decade; Boston University and Boston College have both notched NCAA hockey championships; and even the Boston lacrosse team (the Cannons) has been pretty darn good.  All the while the Boston Bruins have not been bad either, but they have been the one team that as of yet has failed to break through.  No matter how often I say, "It's ok, they're a young team, they'll be better next year," it has still been a frustratingly long five or six seasons.  Of course, the Bruins haven't won yet, but I am already elated because they are back in the spotlight where they belong.

Today was another short day by Thomas's standards.  A little over 40 miles from Akron to Lakewood (a suburb just to the west of Cleveland, on the lake wouldn't ya know).  Perhaps it was the fact that the Bruins won combined with knowing that I have a rest day tomorrow that pumped a little extra blood into my legs to help me ride quite a bit faster than I have been.  Whatever it was, I was riding at speeds that really made me feel good so my joy over the Bruins was only heightened.

The next question is, "How appropriate is it to spend three hours on a bike thinking about the Bruins when you're supposed to be thinking about the 27 million slaves?"  First of all, I'd like to comment that based on my mother's calculations, we are ten days in and have pedaled approximately 2 million revolutions, or something, I forget what she said.  More to the point, I'm read the book, Good News About Injustice: A Witness of Courage in a Hurting World, by Gary A. Hauden, while I ride.  I'm using the book sort of as a foundation for my reflection.  There are a lot of good things in it that I've read so far, but I'm only going to use the book for the blog when we have a totally uneventful day, when I have no other thoughts or reflections, or when it's perfectly relevant.

Now is one of those times that something I read in the book is perfectly relevant.  I will quote part of what Mr. Haugen wrote in chapter 2, "Preparing the Mind and Spirit Through Scripture,":

"[Young babies] have not yet developed the mental capacity for object permanence, that is, the understanding that objects exist even when they are out of sight.  It is truly a case of out of sight, out of mind.

I must confess that this is very much the way my mind often works when it comes to maintaining an interest in the reality of injustice in our world.  I read about innocent people being slaughtered in the Congo on page A1 of the Washington Post, and I am appalled.  But my mind moves on to other things with amazing speed and thoroughness when I read on page D15 that the movie my wife and I were hoping to see actually starts a half hour earlier than we thought.  When I read about the way abandoned orphan girls in China are tied to their bed rails and left to starve and die in state-run orphanages, I am very nearly moved to tears.  But a year later when a conversation with a friend reminds me of the article, I realize that I have not shed a tear, uttered a prayer or even given it thought since the day I put down that newspaper article.  I can move from torture on the evening news to touchdowns on Monday Night Football with almost the same mental and emotional ease as my channel changer....

Christians, of course, are meant to be particularly gifted in sustaining a commitment to what is true and important though unseen....

Admittedly, this calling strikes me as burdensome.  On any given day I am so busy trying to order the stress and vulnerability out of my own life that the notion of remembering a child prostitute in India, a torture victim in Indonesia or a child laborer in Honduras seems beyond the core of my Christian calling.  But what is the core of my Christian calling?  Every Christian who knows his or her Bible has a ready answer: to love God and to love our neighbor as ourselves... Accordingly, the call to remember the oppressed is couched in the logic of love... Surely it is God's job to remember all the victims of injustice in our world, but might there not be one child, one prisoner, one widow, one refugee that I can remember?"

My hunch is that I am not the only one who can relate to feeling guilty about celebrating a Bruins win and forgetting what our mission or purpose to our oppressed brothers and sisters is or not putting into action our outrage from reading or watching the news.  Haugen touches on something we all know very well and experience every day.  We think to ourselves how awful the various and widespread injustices in the world are and oftentimes think that we or someone should do something about it... and then nothing happens.

It's ok.  It really is.  We have lives that we need to live and it would be entirely unhealthy if all we did were think about all the problems needing solving.  I'm continually amazed at people who can work for more than three hours straight without taking a break.  Life is not very enjoyable if all we do is work.  We need breaks.  In fact, I'd even argue that the breaks of life are the reason why we live, all this working stuff just gets in the way.  So go ahead, celebrate the Bruins first trip to the Stanley Cup finals in thirty years (if you're a Bruins fan, of course... if you're not a Bruins fan, then, you should be).  Enjoy it, revel in it even.

But let's keep our priorities straight, yeah?  I can celebrate the Bruins, but it would be irresponsible and unloving of me if cheering for the Bruins gets in the way of loving others.  Love should always be our first priority.  Life doesn't need to be about loving others all the time, but it does need to be our first priority at all times.  Nothing should get in the way of our loving.  We need not feel guilty about not doing more as long as we live our lives in the attitude of love.  So let's be always in the attitude of love for the sake of the 27 million slaves that need our love, and for whom Thomas and I are speeding towards 27 million revolutions.

Hollow Again

Here are the lyrics to my favorite song of all-time (not just by Project 86 but literally of all-time), "Hollow Again."

"Somehow I lost my way
And now it's clear to me
All that I fought so hard to keep
Is all I had to leave

I know you can't hear me
And you won't believe me
But there is something I must say here
Before I fade away

(This is how the world ends again)

Forever we will be
Forever we will be hollow
Hollow again

So I'm left here waiting
So long I'm contemplating
And now I know how it is
But now it's far too late

How will we open the eyes of the dead
When we are hollow
Hollow

And all along here I was told
By fallen men in their charade
That we could find a hope inside
The safety of this empty place"

Anyone that knows of T.S. Eliot's famous poem, "Hollow Men," should see at least a bit of his influence on this song.  The song ends the album Truthless Heroes, an album written basically as a warning to people not to turn away from God or the path of good.  So here at the end of the album we find a person lost spiritually, and finally realizing that they are lost but have no way out.  Hollow and full of regret they find that the path of instant gratification is merely an "empty place."  And now they are desperate to tell others, those still with some hope, not to turn down the same path.

If you were to listen to this song you'd probably agree that it is extremely powerful.  The music itself seems to be full of regret and sadness and the vocals express anger and hopelessness.  I really encourage you to look this song up on youtube and listen to it. 

For me, the "Somehow" at the beginning of the song is really rather touching.  Have you ever had moments in your life when you realize all of a sudden that you are not where you meant to be and you ask the simple question, "At what point did it all go wrong?"  Because I believe in God and that all humans are created by God with a sense of love and compassion, I must also believe that the perpetrators of slavery somehow went wrong.  I believe that they, too, sometimes wake in the middle of the night and wonder how they lost their way and wishing someone would hear their hollow cries.  I believe that even the most evil of people do at least sometimes feel as if they have been led astray be fallen men in their charades.  I believe that they know they've become hollow and are full of sad regret.  So I ask that we have compassion on those who perpetrate and contribute to the cruelest of crimes.  They, too, are human beings in need of love and understanding and someone to listen to them.  If we don't also love them then they are likely to continue to try and find safety in empty places.

I also invite us to see in this song the story of those enslaved.  First they are tricked into thinking that the path of slavery is actually the path to a good life and soon they are wondering what went wrong.  As they see clearly their situation in life they also realize that it is not their fault for listening to the charades of fallen men, for losing their way, and for becoming hollow.  It is the fault of all of us.  We as a society have not listened to those who have gone before us.  We have not opened the eyes of the dead. 

I am often depressed with the lack of care many high school and college students graduate with toward history.  Once I was talking about the Civil War with a friend and she cut me off, saying, "I know it's bad but I don't know much about history," and then she laughed it off and changed the subject.  Though our Capitol building contains a number of quotations about the importance of history over its many doorways, we live in a country that simply does not care about where we have come from.  That is particularly scary given our horrible history with slavery.

Folks, the slaves in the world today are hopeless because they feel their hollowness.  The way they have been used and abused has left them with little to no feelings and little to no concern for their body.  They have become or are becoming machines at the hands of people who themselves have not been loved properly.  All I can say is that the hollowness of the 27 million slaves in the world today demand us to open the eyes of the dead.  We need to understand ourselves and the societies we live in.  We need to understand where we have gone wrong in the past and actually do something about it.  We have been given the power and the tools to create justice by those who have gone before us.  We need to claim that and start making a difference.