wisdom

I'm grateful for wonderful people in my life. This letter reminds me of those wonderful people as it brings back memories of a year ago and very eloquently confronts a controversy that I truly, even after my own involvement in Vagina Monologues productions, underestimate. Please read the letter and as we are in the midst of V-day season, support a local production. Support the women and men around you taking part in this amazing truth telling.

80

Somewhere in the midst of endless video of poor folks stranded and spinning their wheels on a heavy sheet of ice in the DFW area this morning as I stayed snuggled warm in my bed, I heard a report of the "sudden death" of an 80 year old man (an author I believe). Can one die suddenly at 80? Have we so taken life and the length of it for granted that death 'by natural causes' (only my assumption of how this man died as there didn't seem to be any reporting otherwise) at 80 is sudden? I'm about 1/3 of the way to 80, which I do hope to make it to. I would consider slipping away in the night today a sudden death. I consider the precious man who died falling from an icy bridge near my office this morning after stopping to help another driver a sudden death. I don't know that I would feel the same at 80. Is it that he wasn't sick? Or at least diagnosed. Because no one had said you have 4 days, months, years that this death is considered sudden? Is it that it wasn't a tragic accident? What makes death sudden and what makes death...umm..not sudden?

questions

i often feel that I am full of questions or at a complete lack. Like in the interview when they finally say, do you have any questions. I know that I should always have a humdinger up my sleeve, but rarely do I really have a ringer. I need time to process. Time to unconsciously thing and reflect then to come back and form questions.
A gaggle of methodist alumni from psr returned one day during me time there. one of them told a story that I continue to hold on to. the pastor said that when he graduated from psr and entered the ministry full time he realized that colleagues coming out of other institutions had a very formed and constructed theology. who is God, what happened on the cross, why do bad things happen to good people, etc. All this pastor came out of psr was with more questions and a complete deconstructed theology. For a time he resented that. Then he realized psr had taught him how to know what questions to ask. is theology really about having all the answers? having a constructed theology? i don't have to pass board of ordination, so for me the only solid answer is no. theology for me is knowing the questions to ask. i need to practice this again.
I was given that opportunity last week with the electric company. i know they're doing their job following some scripted protocol, but really people. Common sense shows that when a bill has varied no more then $5-10 month to month and instantly more then doubles all of the sudden, the lock is broken on the meter, someone moved in downstairs and I was out of town w/nothing but the fridge running for half of the billing cycle that this doesn't add up. yes, I realize this billing cycle was 8 days longer then the last one, but that does not account for DOUBLE+! But, in my fourth call to my electric company it was apparent that I was going to have to figure out all the right questions to ask. infuriating. (i shall stop there as my recent gripes of the service industry are abundant in the blog archive)
my hope is that i keep learning what questions to ask and that I not infuriate anyone seeking depth in sacred matters by following some constructed christian script and painstakingly forcing them to figure out the questions on their own. I am grateful for my deconstructed pieces, recut, reshaped, flipped, flopped, painted, torn, taped, tossed in the air and slowly floating down, blowing in the wind and reconstructing in this post-graduate world.