Laura and I talk a lot about marriage, fidelity, and love.  Sometimes I am scared of what I don’t know I don’t know.  So we talk, put it all on the table.  Are we crazy?  What are we feeling, thinking?  Should we be flipping out because we’re in our forties?

I have said it before, but it is distressing to us that many within our various circles have decided to call it quits with their spouses.  It’s like magic – hit your forties and bam, people start to think.  I don’t know what they think, but I know what thoughts consume us.  And we talk about it.

We constantly ask ourselves if even the questions we are asking are right?  What should we be thinking about as our lives near a midpoint (statistically speaking)?  Are we worried that we didn’t get to do the things we wanted?  We don’t have all the things we wanted or needed?  Is our house sufficiently comfortable?  Do we have lots of friends, nice cars, well paying meaningful employment?  Should we have dated more?  Did we miss out not having sexual conquests, sowing our wild oats?  Girlfriends?  Boyfriends?  Enough travel?  Who did we become?  Did we become what we dreamed?  I My, we, our, mine?

We do ask those questions.  I can imagine so many couples ask themselves, is this all?  I want more, I dreamed of more, but right now it’s too much work.  I want to start over.  You’re not doing it for me.  Laura and I do conclude that most of the things we thought we wanted when we younger have not happened.  Life is not ideal, we are not particularly successful by objective standards, I guess.  We have four beautiful kids whom we adore, but our lives are not champagne wishes and caviar dreams.  Money is tight, old friends are scattered over the globe, new ones are hard to come by.  Professionally we struggle for relevance.

I work in technology.  If you want to know what that means, consider the downfall of Myspace?  That happens to people too, to anyone who stops swimming for even a second.  The current will wash you away and no one will care.  The river don’t care, man, not one bit.

Laura struggles with being a woman working in a Latin culture, one in which women are secretaries, little girls to fetch the coffee, not capable of making important decisions.  A smart competent woman is paired with a rising male star only so that she will assist him and he may shine.  It happens over and over and over.  Most of them haven’t the drive, smarts, and wisdom she holds in her little finger – but because she is a woman, she gets a pat on the head.  Oh, isn’t it cute, the little girl has an opinion.

We are no strangers to difficulties, marital and otherwise.

Couples counselors will say that you have to work for what you want, that you have to put in effort.  That a good marriage takes work, sweat, and you will reap the rewards.  You will get what you want, but you have to work for it.  Sure, so people go to counseling and work on the externals; communicating wants and needs better.  Go on dates, and try to rekindle the new relationship energy.  There are lots of things, but all too often the problems in our families and in our relationships reflect our values in society.  Life is to be experienced.  Life is about what I get out of it.

I’d like to turn that on its head.  Life isn’t about me, it’s about you.  It’s not about filling your cup, but emptying it, pouring it out to those in need.  When we think of life as things to experience, things to consume, things to smell, things to imbibe, things to sex, things to use, we are pouring them down a bottomless chute.  All things that I collect for myself are transient, fleeting, will corrode, have no lasting effect, and will be forgotten along with our worm ridden carcasses.

When we choose to take from this world and stuff it in our maw, we will never be satisfied and the world will be poorer for it.

If, however, you choose to pour yourself out, to empty your cup, to leave it all in the ring, when the end comes you will have enriched the world, touched those around you, left a legacy to your life here among the living.  The saying, you can’t take it with you is true for everything, even experiences.

The best and most lasting thing you can leave behind is love.

I have written and erased this post a bunch of times. Too preachy?  Too self indulgent.  Poorly written? – Maybe one or all of the above.  In any case, I feel like I need to get it down and just throw it out there, let the universe have it, if it cares.

My pastor said something a while back that stuck with me, “Show me the God you believe in and I will tell you who you are.”  That’s pretty radical, if you think about it.  The God in whom you believe really is more about you than him/her.  The traits with which you identify, amplify, and espouse, really tell us about you, not some mythological character.  If you believe in a condemning, vengeful, short tempered god, guess what?  That’s you.  If your God is merciful and loving, the same.

When I was young, the angry god who would send people to Hell just didn’t jive with me.  There was never any doubt, even before I had any sense of theology, we’re talking like second grade, that there was something flawed about this god.  The idea of original sin, an angry spiteful god who would punish us for misdeeds never made sense to me naturally.  Like a good Catholic, though, I kept my more radical thoughts to myself.

Recently, the Internet has given voice to a growing movement of Atheists, emboldened by the ability to connect anonymously, they have found new solidarity from the daily pressures to nod and remain silent while the shrill voices of Christian dogma swirl around them.  To say you are an Atheist is nearly a death sentence in many circles, so they have found respite online.  While rational and cathartic, I have noticed some things that trouble me in the same way as those shrill angry vengeful self-professed christians.

On the one hand you have: god cares and has a hand in our daily lives.  He punishes the wicked and rewards the just.   He’s out there waving his magic shillelagh always on notice to smite the wicked.

On the other hand you have: the universe doesn’t care.  It’s not that the universe is capricious, though.  The universe simply cannot be appealed to.  We may prostrate ourselves to it, but there is nothing.  There is nothing to care.  Even an indifferent universe would seem a conscious choice.  No, there just is simply nothing that may care about you and your needs and your life and your little petty issues.  Nothing.

The universe is cold and does not feel your pain.

So I say to you, my fellow, do not tell me the universe does not feel, because I feel.  I feel your pain.  I care about you.   The universe is not indifferent, because I am not indifferent.  I know that I make a conscious choice to love.  It is not always easy, and I fail frequently, but I try to point my bow into the wind toward what I believe is my God, a god of love.  We may fail.  We may despair.  We may feel alone.  We may want to judge.  We may wish to punish, but if we do not have love for our fellows, we are lost, and surely god is dead.  You see, he’s not out there apart from us.

It is not magic, it is faithfulness.  Faithfulness to what, you ask?  Be faithful to love, my brothers and sisters.  Be faithful to each other.

Aggressive ‘helicopter’ parents force egg hunt cancellation

Uncle said it best, “Jaaackieeee, EGGS DON’T MATTER!” ^[1]

It’s a perfect metaphor for what is wrong with our results-driven society where we claw and scrape and push and shove and lie and cheat to get what is ours.  Why do you want it?  Because others have it?  It is a gluttonous age when we have more than we have ever had, but are more worried than ever of going without.  When will we learn that these things don’t matter?

Whatever you believe, the message of this Easter season, the message of Jesus, is that these things don’t matter.  Practically nothing matters.  Even your life is transient, fleeting, superfluous.

What does matter is seeing others as yourself.  The achievement of one is an achievement of all.  The failure of one is a failure of all.  We are all in it together, pulling together, sharing, caring, and loving.  There is no “us vs. them,” because there is no “them.”  There is only we.

What I would have liked for this Easter season egg hunt with the grabbing and clawing and selfishness, would have been for those who had claimed an egg to have shared with those that had none, that everybody would have seen the pain of a child who had none and said, there but for the grace of God go I.

These eggs are meaningless, valueless, if they do not represent the gift of love that I give to you, my neighbor.