I Deleted The Doctor

March 11, 2013 — 7 Comments

Oh no, not That Doctor.

And not my friendly family practitioner.

The doctor I deleted was a knockoff of Doctor Mario – a free game I downloaded on my iPhone maybe a month ago, one snowy cold Minnesota Sunday when I thought, hey, I wonder if there are any Doctor Mario games I can download for free on my newly acquired iPhone 3gs? (Doctor Mario was my favorite video game back in my college days – it’s something like Tetris.)

And sure enough, there was one.

Thus began my addiction.

I played it to “de-stress.” I played it on Sundays, while the rest of the family played Xbox. I played it in the evenings after the kids went to bed. I played it in the evenings while dinner was cooking. I played it in the evenings after dinner while the kids did their clean-up chores. I played it on Saturdays. I played it while the kids would ask me if I wanted to play with them. Usually I’d put it down then, but not always.

These are the confessions of an addict.

I knew I needed to quit. Heck, I knew I should never have started. When Nathan inherited and fixed a broken Xbox and asked me about my interest level, I said, don’t get me started. I hadn’t played a video game in years, and for good reason. I get addicted.

This past weekend I went on personal retreat. Of course I had my phone with me. No, I did not play – or even feel tempted to play – “my game” during the whole weekend (I would have drained the battery and there was no electricity in my hermitage!). I read some books that renewed my inspiration to live generously, slowly, meaningfully (The Windows of Brimnes by Bill Holm, Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl, and Everything Must Change by Brian McLaren).

I came home truly de-stressed, and eager to live more intentionally, more present to the people around me in each moment.

And I succeeded, for maybe ten minutes! I hugged my family, played a card game with a friend’s daughter who was visiting; and then when the kids went in the other room to play some Xbox together, I went for my fix with the Doctor.

It was my last fix, though. That evening as I reflected over the day, remembering my kids seeing me pull out my phone and saying, “oh, you’re playing your game again aren’t you?” – and not in a joyous, “good-for-you” tone – I decided to delete the Doctor.

Clicking that little “x” felt great.

Now I’ve decided that a “de-stressing” activity should be something that is ultimately good for me – like exercise, or good food, a conversation with a friend, playing music, taking a power nap or curling up with a good book, catching up on the blogs I follow, or even watching an episode of The Doctor – the one I would never delete!

I know, I can always download the other Doctor again. But I’ll have myself, my family, and the expansive life of my dreams to answer to.

Rejection Letter Submission

March 2, 2013 — 2 Comments

Dear Editor,

Please find enclosed my submission of a rejection letter to replace the one you always send to me.

Your letter uses the word “unfortunately.”

(“Unfortunately, your poem has not been chosen. . .”)

Or something along that line

As if the gods were not with me

Or I didn’t choose the winning lottery number.

 

I submit the following:

Dear [Name],

Thank you for sending us your firstborn child.

Everyone here at the office is touched and amazed by her beauty –

The soft rounded rosebud lips

The sky-blue eyes

The tiny grasping fists.

Surely not another like her will ever come along again.

So you can imagine how honored we are

At your astonishing generosity

In sharing her with us.

But it’s simply too much – we can’t accept such a lavish gift.

With something so exquisite in our midst,

We would never get any work done!

Please accept our deep gratitude,

Our sincere apologies,

And our best wishes for your future with this unspeakable wonder

And all the dazzling beauties you have yet to produce.

Sincerely, etc.

 

Thank you for considering this submission.

I look forward to reading it on your stationery soon.

Sincerely, and so on.

“Belief Without Compassion”

March 1, 2013 — Aside — Leave a comment

Jonathan Fields posted this wonderful piece – “Belief Without Compassion” – yesterday. In our hyper-polarized society, his words are deeply significant – especially related to religion and politics.

In my experience, the most intolerant, un-compassionate people generally fall into two groups: those who haven’t changed their minds about anything in years, and those who have just recently changed their thinking on some major issue, and expect that suddenly everyone else should have the same eureka moment they just experienced.

But the more we think about anything in conversation with the world beyond ourselves, the more we grow our capacity for compassion. Even while being better able to articulate our own beliefs and perspectives on any particular topic.

Nursing Home Moment

February 26, 2013 — 2 Comments

His mother sleeps deeply, dying in a nursing-home bed. Her sunken eyes are shut in her flower-fragile face, framed with soft gray curls, adorned by a pink satin pillowcase. The baby doll she’s lately fostered lies tucked in beside her, under a blanket trimmed with lace crochet.

His sister sits beside his mother, leading her own sparkly grandchildren in a Sunday School hymn-sing, and his nephew’s wife kneels on the floor changing her daughter’s diaper.

He stands in the doorway, arms folded over chest, casually roasting the President in small talk with his brother-in-law.

Behind him in the hallway, young Sudanese immigrants wheel the shriveled children of Scandinavian immigrants to and from their rooms, their meals, the bath, the toilet.

Outside the building, breezes blow, sun warms soil, trees shiver their leaves, and cars loaded with people he will never know speed by on the busy freeway.

On the other side of the earth, it is dark. People and animals are sleeping in houses, huts, nests, and holes under the moon and the stars. Mothers are nursing babies, and elder daughters are changing the soiled clothes of grandfathers.

Out past the atmosphere planets are turning like lonely wolves, dark matter hangs like a disremembered dream, suns are dying and others being born.

So he talks, and stands, for a hard long while.

We wear our grief like fingerprints, and our tears – however, whenever, if ever they fall, are shaped like snowflakes.

Cynics and Church People

February 25, 2013 — Leave a comment

I came across this post by Addie Zierman last week. There is a lot I can identify with in Zierman’s post, although its conclusion  – that if church people are loving and honest about their own darkness and doubts, maybe the departed cynics will “find our way home” – felt a little too neat and tidy to me. Maybe I’m just overly attached to that quote from J.R.R. Tolkien: “not all those who wander are lost.”

Still, there’s so much I loved in Zierman’s post, like this:

After all, there’s not much you can say to us that we haven’t already learned in some Sunday School classroom somewhere. We know the Bible stories. We heard them over and over, year after year until they became part of our blood, part of our bones.

We’ve heard a thousand sermons. We recited Scripture on Wednesday nights and earned shiny little jewels for plastic crowns. We know the “right answers.” We know the Ten Commandments and the Fruits of the Spirit and how to “lead someone to Christ” with five Bible verses and a three-minute testimony.

And this:

But this is not about a program. We will see right through that flyer you stick in our mailbox. We have been bait-and-switched before, and we’re suspicious. We were raised on a steady of [sic] diet of ads and commercials, after all – we know when you’re trying to sell us something.

But you should follow the link (here it is again) and read the whole thing, if this conversation interests you.