We All Matter

I recently gave the keynote address to a Mayor's Prayer Breakfast for the small Alberta city of Leduc. Below are my speaking notes. Some of the thoughts appeared in previous blogs and many readers received my notes under separate email attachment. At an rate, I offer this to the readership of my blogs who perhaps have not seen it.

We All Matter

In the August 2009 edition of the Reader's Digest, the Leduc County was featured. In an article that appeared under the title "Rich, yes, but happy?" freelance writer Chris Wood wrote:

"In 2005, Leduc, on the basis of the familiar gross domestic product (GDP) economic yardstick, was name one of the richest regions on earth. Yet, even as its success is the envy of other communities, some of its residents wondered whether GDP was telling the whole story." [1]

Of course, GDP does not tell the whole story either about human welfare or communities. It is only one yardstick -- it's not even the best yardstick to measure the state of the human condition. If labour and production -- be it goods or services -- does not serve humanity or make life better, then they have no real purpose.

Gross Domestic Product only measures economic output, not happiness. There is no precise way of measuring happiness. People don't have tails. (My six year old granddaughter said she thinks people should have tails like dogs so you'd know when they're happy.) Don't you love the world of children?

GDP does not measure joy or contentment. There's no measurement for those possessions. Joy is spiritual.

I think Joy is more akin to contentment than happiness. I think Joy and contentment are closer to God than happiness. Joy is not dependent so much on what happens around us as it is merely a state of being. Joy simply is. Happiness is a response to something we have attained or gained. Happiness does not usually exist by itself in a worldly void. Joy can and does, so can contentment. In fact, Joy and contentment can exist in the midst of sorrow or trial -- happiness cannot. It is for this reason that I think Joy and contentment are closer to God than happiness.

The terms happiness and joy are often confused or used interchangeably because they have many of the same superficial attributes, but you will discover that they are not the same if you examine and compare them closely.

I believe babies and small children are close to the mind of God. A newborn baby has already been in God's presence. Although they do not know it, they have known it. The Jewish prophet Jeremiah wrote the words of God when he said, "The word of the Lord came to me saying 'Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you.'" [2] You see, what God told Jeremiah was that he was known in the mind of God before he was conceived.

The Psalmist tells us of God's presence with the child forming in its mother's womb. We read in the 139th Psalm: "You [God] created my inner most being; you knit me together in my mother's womb. ... your eyes saw my unformed body." [3] You and I were known by God before we were born. If the Bible is to be believed (and I believe it is the irrefutable, unalterable, inspired word of God) the we have always been known by God.

Have you noticed that Joy tends to be in richest supply in babies and small children, the becomes rarer as innocence is stripped away and individuals enter adulthood? Often we do nor notice the gradual slipping away of Joy; we try to replace it with happiness. Babies can and should be happy (after all, a happy baby can give us Joy). That is a mystery about Joy and happiness: Joy is the possession of babies and small children that they can give to us. Happiness is something we can give to children.

I have often been stunned at the spiritual perceptiveness in children.

Many years ago I was searching for a reason for my own pain with degenerative multiple sclerosis. I read the book The Problem of Pain by C.S. Lewis. I came across the following comment he made:

"From our own childhoods we remember that before our elders thought us capable of 'understand' anything, we already had spiritual experiences as pure and momentous as anything we have undergone since, though not, of course, as rich is a factual context [like GDP]. From Christianity itself we learn that there is a level -- in the long run the only level of importance -- on which the learned and adult have no advantage at all over the simple and the child." [4]

There is something universal about Joy. Cynics have described it as religious mysticism. In the 18th Century, Wordsworth described it. But it was that muscular mind of C.S. Lewis I just quoted who wrote about an early childhood encounter he had encounter with divine Joy:

"...[I]t is difficult to find words strong enough for the sensation which came over me; Milton's "enormous bliss" of Eden ... comes somewhere near it. It was a sensation, of course, of desire; but desire for what?" [5]

Now I suspect that for some of you I may have tread into delicate turf. Perhaps some in this room even feel awkward that I have even dared mention that intimate longing you have had all your life long for the transtemporal. We are all aware (whether we are prepared to admit it or not) of a conscious desire that cannot be satisfied by any natural happiness. At an intimate interior level we feel like exiles on earth. I am increasingly convinced that this longing is rooted in the divine image we all bear.

For some people the ache of indefinable longing can be evoked by the smell of freshly cut grass or briny ocean air, or a prairie Spring breeze. Perhaps the sound of autumn wind blowing through the tops of mountain evergreen trees can open an internal spiritual window of primordial, inconsolable long that is within you and breaks your heart with such sweetness.

I know this is a universal longing that has crossed the ages of humanity. We see evidence of it in the Psalms, in literature, poetry and music as the great treasury of Gregorian chants, J.S. Bach's Suites for Violoncello, Beethoven's 9th Symphony, Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings, and in recent times, I would even assert that Gabriel's Oboe by Ennio Morricone touches that intimate human longing. It is, as Lewis said, like the scent of a flower you have yet to find, the haunting echo of a melody you have not heard. [6]

What I am trying to illustrate to you is that your whole life has been set against a backdrop of that distant (sometimes immediate) eternal love. That love is from God.

The Apostle John tells us that the Word of God (Christ) has always existed as God and that the essence of God is love. [7] We are told in the very first Chapter of the first book of the Bible that humanity bears the image of God. [8]

We are all part of the human community -- the human family -- by virtue of being human and bearing the indelible image of God. Communities include all their members -- or at least they should. Communities should encourage family life. Families should be places that encourage joy. By extension, the human family includes all its members, not just those who have a contribution to make but because they exist. Rene Descartes said, "I think, therefore I am." I respond by saying "I am, therefore I matter."

I've come to the conclusion that the propose of our time on earth is for spiritual growth not mere acquisition of things or even survival. It is not the the size of your house that matters -- it is the size of your heart that matters.

A heart that is open to God's love is also open to the divine love of Christ.

Jesus said:

"If you keep My commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in His love. These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may remain in you, and that my joy may be full. This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you." [9]

People may choose to love the world rather than the Creator of it. When our Lord said, "for where your treasure is, there also will your heart be", He was challenging human priorities. [10] Christ was laying out a stark choice for humanity: Either love God and the permanent things of heaven (yet unseen) or the temporary things of earth.

Our first love and priority can be to seek "treasures on earth" (to use Christ's words) or "treasures in heaven." It seems they are two mutually exclusive masters of the heart. He said "No one can serve two masters. He will either hate one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon." [11]

Mammon is an Aramaic word meaning wealth or property but it could also symbolize anything temporal and fleeting such as youth, beauty, health or social status. To choose anything over God is to rebuff His love.

Many years ago I came across a saying that I taped in the front of my Bible. This is what it says: "There will be times when you will sorry for something you said; sorry that you stayed too late, or went to early; sorry you won something, or lost, but all your life you'll never be sorry you were kind."

We have only a short time to learn reciprocal love -- both human and divine. God's model for love encourages lovingkindness; it encourages interdependence not independence. We were designed for communities not fortresses. Every life should be welcome in the Human Family, under the Lordship of God. The brotherhood of man will fail without the Fatherhood of God.

I ask that we commit ourselves to interdependent community where expressions of kindness and loving concern for those we love, and those who do not think they are loved by anybody, are the rule not the exception. In doing so, we will find that we live in true richness not measured by GDP but by the higher standard of Joy only the human heart can measure.

Thank you and God bless.

Mark Pickup


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FOOTNOTES

1. Chris Wood, "Rich, yes, but happy?", Reader's Digest, (Canadian edition), August 2009, p.68.
2. Jeremiah 1.4-5.
3. Psalm 139.13b & 16a.
4. C.S. Lewis, THE PROBLEM OF PAIN (New York: HarperCollins, 1996) p. 74..
5. Lewis, Surprised By Joy (London: Fontana Books, 1955) p.19.
6. All this imagery comes from an essay by C.S. Lewis called "The Weight of Glory."
7. See John 1.1 & 1John 4.7. The Apostle John is known as Apostle of love. The venerable 18th Century theologian John Lowth said that God seemed to give John pecular insight into divine love and said that John wrote about love with "such lofty eloquence as is above the rules of human art, and can only be ascribed to the Holy Spirit whic gave him utterance."
8. Genesis 1.26-27.
9. John 15.10-12.
10. Matthew 6.21.
11. Matthew 6.24.

Baby Isaiah James May (October 24, 2009-March 11th 2010)

Yesterday baby Isaiah died in the arms of his parents, Isaac and Rebecka May, at 12:11pm at Edmonton's Stollery Children's Hospital. He was also surrounded by uncles, and and grandparents.

You may remember that baby Isaiah was born October 24th 2009 in a small central Alberta town after a difficult 40 hour labour. His brain was oxygen deprived because his umbillical cord was wrapped around his throat. Baby Isaiah was air-lifted to the Stollery Children's Hospital in Edmonton. He was ventilator dependent throughout his short life and never emerged from a coma. You can read details about the case in previous blog entries.

The hospital said Isaiah was brain-dead and notified his 23 year old parents by official letter, on hospital letterhead, that the baby's respirator would be turned off on 20 January 2010 (nothing like delivering such terrible news in a impersonal way!). They may have thought Isaac and Rebecka May were just a young couple who would meekingly accept the decision of the hospital but they were in for a shock. The Mays asked for 90 more days to give baby Isaiah an opportunity to improve. The hospital would not budge: Baby Isaiah was occupying a bed, ventilator and organs that could be used elsewhere. The Mays had the gall (God bless them) to take the matter to court to stop the hospital and get the 90 days they thought their baby needed.

It was the classic David and Goliath story and gained international attention. Isaac and Rebecka needed time to accept the fate that befell their baby and they weren't going to be pushed around by an arbitrary deadline decided by the head honcho of the hospital's neonatal intensive care unit.

The Mays sought a second, third and fourth independent medical opinion about Isaiah's prognosis. If their baby was going to die it wouldn't be without overturning every stone of possibility to give their baby a chance. Of course the refusal to meekly accept the decision of his presiding neonatology offended his god-complex and poisoned further communications regarding baby Isaiah's care.

It was only when baby Isaiah's dire situation became evident by independent medical input was kindly presented to the Mays on their terms and in their time, did they finally agree to let their baby's respirator be turned off and let baby Isaiah go.

What this case did for me was show the illustrate the lie of brain death. The term brain death is an invention to allow the removal of beating hearts from the chests of living but allegedly comatose patients.

More about this in future blogs.

Mark Pickup

Honest lives lead to contentment

The human ability to compartmentalize life is tearing at the lives of individuals, families, communities and even tattering at the social fabric society. The saying, "What happens in Las Vegas stays in Las Vegas." But what happens in Las Vegas -- or anywhere else for that matter -- must not stay in Las Vegas! If behaviour is immoral in my comunity or personal life at home the it's immoral in Las Vegas, or in New Orleans during Marti Gras. Moral accountability resides everywhere: It must never be checked at any door.

Betrayal of solemn wedding vows and the marriage bed always destroys that which is sacred and ordained by God. Is there ever a place, time or circumstance when God turns a blind eye to the breakdown of an institution He created? Men may be unfaithful but God is faithful.

Killing a child in the womb may be accepted by people and even societies but it is an affront to God! Is the child whose birth is betrayed ever forgotten by the Almighty? Surely not! God himself said, "Can a woman forget her nursing child, and not have compassion on the son of her womb? Surely they may forget, but I will not forget you." (Isaiah 49.15.) A mother may forget or betray her motherhood but God will not forget his Fatherhood.

In the years leading to the recent economic melt down, many corporate executives projected a respectable and upstanding exterior while betraying investors' trust and lined their own pockets with unreasonable gain or excessive compensation even to the point of threatening the entire economy. To them, the notion of being modest people living modest but honourable lives was/is anathema: they act like uncrowned royalty entitled to lives of entitlement. The world needs people who walk with their heads in air not their noses in the air.

Ill-gotten gain remains ill-gotten. The definition of ill-gotten is still "gained by evil or unlawful means." The correct response to it is shame not pride.

A person can live like there's no Judgment Day but it doesn't change the fact that there will be a Judgment Day. A man may not believe in God but God still exists. An age of relative truths and situational ethics can not dispel the absolute truth that there is absolute Truth.

The Ten Commandments can be removed from the foyer of a courthouse and locked away, ... but the Ten Commandments still exist and will continue to exist long after the ACLU has closed its doors. The ACLU does not define justice and fairness -- God does.

History teaches that people who lead modest, honest and wholesome lives -- keeping short accounts with God -- are apt to find contentment and sleep well.

MP