Practice smiling for the next life

Stop staring into the chasm of negativity

Every day a calamity or trauma can ruin your plans and send you into a ranting tailspin of epithets and back alley cussing. Isn’t it time to realize that’s just normal? Surprised and angry are two mistakes, not two worthy positions to hold. Why should anything shock us anymore? And anger, well, that’s a little more complicated but staying angry is unprofessional.

Sure, maybe you’re pissed off for a good reason, but what does that get you in the end? My experience is diarrhea, very short phone conversations, and an inability to focus.

Sometimes my “in the end” issues associate more with the chili I had for lunch, or too much coffee. All the other times, however, poor reactions to disasters can be traced to triggered, repeated, and undealt with consequences. Worry over loss of power, fear that people don’t agree with me, and a general hopelessness about the future. Those fomented, fermented behaviors are on me.

When the power/fear/hopeless moments happen, lit up too easily, two refrains/mantras reset my helplessness — The Surrender Novena and The Jesus Prayer. Hang in there. I’m going to make a solid point.

Oh Jesus, I surrender myself to you; take care of everything. (Ten times in a row.)

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, have mercy on me, a sinner. (Repeat until your jaws hurt.)

I know. The speed bump of Jesus Christ, and his worldview that fans out from being a Jesus follower, is a bridge too simplistic and silly for folks with their heads staring into the chasm of negativity.

“I’m not stepping onto a bridge that makes me look ridiculous. I’ve got better things to do, like this dark, awfulness in front of me. Sheesh!”

Besides, you might argue, who believes in Jesus anymore? Well, the statistics are still pretty good on Jesus. Check out Ryan Burge’s, “Are religious people more fearful?”

Those of us fools for Christ who jumped ship (not the correct analogy) from the nothingness or vagueness offered by the chasm (that dark awfulness) know that the bridge is a much better place to be. The awfulness is still there beneath us, a gaping gash in the world just a step away, but we walk right over it on our spiritual tightrope (a better analogy), sometimes running wildly like those folks who try to walk barefoot on hot coals (ow, ow, ooh, etc.), but mostly we gingerly take one step at a time, fall off, get caught and put back, and keep on doing that for most of our lives. Why? Hope.

Hope. That’s the thing, isn’t it? There are small hopes and an ultimate hope. The ultra big hope follows a temporary life lived here where we treasure this time as traveling into permanent joy forever. Where? Into that somewhere else that most of us believe must exist because a few credible travelers have reported back (“Yup, it’s there, and it’s awesome”).

The more time we spend on the bridge/tightrope above the chasm, the more the portal to that hopeful joy opens up. We hear things, see things, and even pick up holy smells that convince us that “Heaven” (it’s time to call it what it is) beckons.

Or not.

We can’t go there. We won’t surrender. We just stay pissed off.

There are some salves on this side of the chasm where we chase temporary short-term hopes that put off death’s doomsday. (Setting aside the proverbial bus that comes out of nowhere.) We relish good food until we’ve come back to that fabulous eatery one time too many. After we take our seat in the audience of melodious raptures taking place on stage, we mostly pay too much to sit where the same loud lady unwraps hard candy with plastic seals that can’t really be that hard to remove, and we escape to a bathroom break and feel sorry for the guy in the wheelchair hiding his colostomy bag with a scarf.

Are the chases and escapes really that satisfying?

A string of tasty pleasures can linger (at best) for 5 hours, billowing ADHD distractions streamed into the lobby behind our eyeballs. We can exercise and blog and drink coffee with our legs crossed in between ecstasies. Two and a half hours is all I can string at my age. The guilty pleasures eventually taste like dust and all plots are derivative, lacking even the doldrums of formulaic storyboards (the final reveal is that the unknown twin killed him).

We work at soul-sucking jobs to pay for these imagined delectibles that melt away even before we get our shoes on to go get them. It’s stupid, is what it is. And we know it.

Hope. It tugs at our sleeve in Christopher Walken lingo. “You know. If you would just give the big guy a nod. Well, his son, you know, he’d fill you with the Spirit, the Holy Spirit, and then, well, and then you’d have something to hope for.”

Maybe your conscience talks like Robin Williams or Lester Holt. Mine is Walken. However, use you’re own voice to mouth out the mantras.

The attraction of the Jesus mantras draw us back into our relationship with the Trinity God. Maybe you’re not coming back but going there for the first time. It’s pretty much the same real-time intimacy. “Hey there, I need you Jesus,” you tell the God-became-man fella, not sure he’s there but what the heck. It’s free self-help counseling.

Who knows? You can’t fill up the chasm with enough distractions to walk across to the other side. Try another crazy idea.

Falling into the bottomless canyon is an option, but that’s like taking $500,000 in coins to the end of the dock in an imaginable wheelbarrow and dumping it into a lake instead of buying a boat. It sounds cool and ironic, but you’re the butt of your own joke.

Maybe we know a guy or gal that has reliable evidence about the hope of God standing at both ends of the bridge and we can trust them. More likely we don’t want to talk to that person. Try instead the woven stories in the 3,000 years of cataloged verses. If you squint real hard and fall into the spaces between the letters, the story lines and worldview make sense after the sixth or seventh time you read the whole thing. However long it takes, keep reading until the madness clears into revelation meant just for you.

I know of only a few disciplined souls who did that. It works, but rarity and discipline only go together for determined folks. Disciplined souls are rare. Well intentioned plans, the go-to fix-it hyphenated solutions we come up with are just paper mache replicas. We begin as architects — think something’s a good idea and draw it up. Maybe even get the plans stamped by regional building. But architects are done at that point. Buildings take a team of people to erect. You likely won’t get all the way through the bible by yourself (that’s what we’re talking about, if you missed the hint about verses) and craft an understanding of God without proper help.

God doesn’t take you by the hand in a silo. He deliberately organizes us in families and communities with mentors we don’t expect and buddies we didn’t know before we called out to him. Intimacy with God is done through a body of people.

If that kind of intimacy is a non starter, then staring into the chasm is what you’ll end up with.

Going to a Church will speed things up, but if you’re a brain-washed skeptic you see hucksters everywhere, especially if everyone’s dressed up and their hair is slicked down. So, you might have to sit in the parking lot and fake-pray and faux-attend by staring at the steeple instead of wandering into it. It’s a good start, like watching a drive-in horror movie from the safety of your front seat, able to eat popcorn to catch your breath when the dumbass goes down into the basement holding their phone to light the way. “Don’t go down there!” The next time you can go to Church with friends you won’t be so startled at the scary parts.

Churches crest the chasms and send off their dead in an upward direction carried by angels. They are bridges turned into holy warm peaked frames with walls of stained glass. It’s a whole different scenario from the yawning demons gripping your ankles on the edge of a cliff’s dark daring drop, them trying to convince you that by grabbing their hands you are lifting them up.

The earlier you join hands with believers and find mission and attend potlucks and enjoy transforming experiences called miracles as a daily occurence, you’ll have more time in this life to draw others into the light. You could wait and come later, too. It’s all good, narcissistic and wasted time, but it still counts. Even though the heavenly hosts shout for joy over the end of your lazy late-in-life arrival, do you really want to be that person who gets offered the serving of maple-glazed donuts before the children and Martha’s egg salad sandwiches like a finally sober long-lost relative because you’re stupid-innocent, staring at the goodies, none brought by you?

Practice smiling, come up with a recipe you’ll be known for, and catalog your own miracles to share, so when the delight of death’s next step delivers you into the arms of God, where hope turns into reality, you don’t look totally unprepared and all the saints have to deal with your immature questions and remedial needs.

Sure, you can be the last knucklehead in the door and still be special to God. If you knew all along that’s what you were going for, well, tragedies are God’s typical method of awakening, so be ready for that.

The least you can do is have some inkling of the consequences of getting taken out by the proverbial bus by not bending over the edge of the chasm with your butt in the roadway.

Just don’t be shocked and angry over life’s paltry offerings and disasters, at a loss for hope. I mean, really? Can a couple of mantras be any worse?