"Dignity does not deny life's issues. It faces them squarely, but it also faces God. It says that we can go on because we are not alone."
"O Lord, thou art my God; I will exalt Thee, I will praise thy name; for Thou hast done wonderful things, plans formed of old, faithful and sure. (And) Thou hast made the city a heap (This) fortified city a ruin!"
When I read this opening passage last week from the Old Testament reading, I thought, "My, how like life that is!" We go along thinking everything is just wonderful--our best laid plans of old are faithful and sure, and then...then the city of our lives seems to come apart. Our fortifications crumble. The divorce comes, a parent or spouse dies, illness or depression or finances force us to radically change our lives. Those wonderful parts of our lives, dreams made of old, are broken. We wonder--Is that all there is?--and we enter the world of disappointment.
Is That All There Is? is the title of a book written by David Brandt, a Marin County psychologist. In his mid-thirties, with his career as a psychologist going well, a home with a Pacific Ocean view, a solid and successful marriage, Brandt continued to feel chronic dissatisfaction and disappointment. He sensed a loss, a self-pity, a disappointment with life. Nothing seemed to quite satisfy him. It was for him more than a mid-life passage, more than a lost opportunity to be a 20th-century Freud or a great football quarterback.
In his book, Brandt expresses articulately the message of Isaiah for the 1980's. Along with the need for a bigger house, a better job and more satisfying relationships, we want life to be easier, life to be fair, more exciting. We want to be special, taken care of; we need life to be conflict free; we want to be loved by all, and mostly we want things to be as we want them to be.
Somewhere along the way we must face the unfairness of the world and recognize, usually painfully, our own limits and imperfections. In doing so, Brandt, along with many modern psychologists, analyzes this problem quite well and offers what I believe are creative psychological ways to deal with life's disappointments.
He says that by accepting the reality of this world, by reducing our expectations and illusions of greatness, by living more in the present and not clinging to the past or overwhelming our future, we can control and manage our lives and our sense of disappointment.
Brandt's key is to call on us to reduce our expectations in life so that we do not depend on any person, or event, completely. "Don't empower persons or things with the twin illusions of necessity or indispensability," he says.
If this is true, and I believe it is, who or what are we to ultimately depend on? What is strong and true and lasting in the midst of a world in which our dreams are dashed, our cities made ruin?
The Biblical key is not so much to deny the helpful ways of psychology to manage our lives as best we can, but to point us to another way. Along with doing all we can with our physical, emotional and mental selves, we are called by the Bible to develop our spiritual selves and focus on this other dimension of the world. Our Lesson today points a way to help us do this.
Paul says, as he sits in prison writing his letter to the Philippians, a city of people not unlike us--"Rejoice; have no anxiety but in everything by prayer and thanksgiving let your request be made known to God." And then he goes on to what I think are the key words for all of us who struggle with life's disappointments:
"Finally brethren, whatever is true, whatever
is honorable, whatever is lovely, whatever is
gracious, think about these things."
A good part of the secret of living with loneliness, loss, disappointment is to think about these things. It is to live with a special kind of dignity, a word which incorporates truth, honor and purity. This dignity does not deny life's issues. It faces them squarely, but it also faces God. It says that we can go on because we are not alone. It says that as important as persons and ev