—after a long, soul-searching period of reflection, The Professor returns to us today with thoughts on a subject of spiritual interest. It's about time, dead-beat.
There are a number of privileges that accrue when one enters
the ranks of “geezerhood.” One of the
primary privileges is that you can get away with being grumpy…in fact, people
almost come to expect it of you. I would
argue, though, that it’s not necessarily grumpiness per se that defines a geezer—after
all, a geezer has been known to wax rhapsodic about the excitement of spring
training (for many of you, I must clarify, I suppose, I am referring to
baseball here, not pruning grapevines). So reputation aside, it’s clear that there are plenty of things
that geezers are fond of—it's just that those things tend to be outmoded, out of date, or just
plain deservedly unpopular. Geezers feel
the need to champion many of these things, often grumpily; in a word, many geezers are contrarians. So today, let me unpack the merits of
something that most people tend to look at as a pronounced “downer.” I’m referring, of course, to my favorite
season: Lent.
Lent, in the Christian calendar, is a time of penitence and
spiritual cleansing that occupies the forty days (plus six Sundays to make 46 days
total) before Easter. It starts out with
a bang on Ash Wednesday, when we are told one of the few public utterances you know instinctively to be true. As ashes
are smudged on your forehead, you are encouraged in somber tones to “know that
you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”
Were truer words ever spoken? And
yet, if you survey your typical member of the population and ask what they
think about a season characterized by repentance and recognition of mortality,
they’d probably reply (after asking if there WAS such a season and what its
name was) “thanks, but no thanks.” And
we’re tempted to agree with them; it sounds pretty depressing.
But the contrarian geezer says: “what a wonderful idea!” If I recognize my own mortality, that gives
me extra incentive to be thankful for the limited time I do have here.” Good enough so far. But what about all that repentance? The very word would make my esteemed fellow
geezer The Mathematician grind his teeth, thinking about the gloomy Lutheranism
of his youth. But at its very core repentance
is one of the most affirming actions we can take. At the core of repentance is an
acknowledgement that we could have (or perhaps SHOULD have) done better.
Oh sure, every once in a while we have to repent for things we really did: the two full cans of cashews that were polished off watching one NCAA
tournament game; or for habitually driving 95 miles an hour through rush our in
the HOV lane WITH NO ONE ELSE IN THE CAR!
Or for the 320,000 dollars you embezzled from your kids’ little league
treasury (they shouldn’t have left that much money lying around…) But for the most part, for most of us, most
of the time, we repent not for those things that we did wrong, but rather those
things that we could have done better, those people whom we might have treated
with more respect or caring, or those actions we didn’t take that could have
helped the world a bit. We say to
ourselves “I could have done better” and in return, we receive the message
“that’s right, you could have…keep trying.”
So why do so many of us find this attitude gloomy? My theory is that as a culture we have gotten
so used to unconditional approval that an approval that is conditional on our repentence—on our vow to try to do
better—is viewed as suspect, disappointing or even hostile. It’s depressing to many of us. But why should we view an encouraging ”you can do
better” as depressing? On the surface,
those words would appear to be a very affirming vote of confidence.
As a kid, I did well in school, but whether the grade was a
C or an A, the feedback I always received was always: “was it your best?” Best is a pretty big word, and I suppose I
technically lied (to myself and my parents) a number of times when I responded “yes” to this question. Nonethess, it was clear: part of the “deal”
involved with being part of our family was that you strived to do your
best. You were praised, but usually with
the proviso that you would strive to be even better next time—and our parents
had confidence that we could do better.)
So are belief, confidence and encouragement “downers?” They don’t seem to me to be depressing,
unless you think you’re already as good as you can get (read: perfect)
already. In that case, don’t bother to
repent—you’ve got much larger problems to deal with than getting ready for
Easter. But for most of us—the visibly,
undeniably and sometimes flamboyantly imperfect—the encouragement of repentance
might be just the thing we need to get through this gloomy, over-extended
winter in which we find ourselves mired.
Happy Lent.
