Making God Laugh

You hear words or phrases repeated within a short period of time. Things you have never heard before, but are not new or unique. Does it mean something? Are there messages in these connections?

Pam recently gave me a recording of Billy Collins reading his poetry. It was recorded last spring in New York. During some of his banter between poems, he quotes a friend who had told him the following line: How do you make God laugh? Make a plan.

I asked a pastor friend if he had ever heard that joke. He smiled and said that he has it on a plaque in his office: Make God laugh. Make a plan.

I am reading Semaphore by G.W. Hawkes (a plug for Lycoming here: he heads the creative writing program at the College). Last night, I read this passage:

“…but time had taught him that Time decides. His father had said it once: Man plans; God laughs.”

Why would I run across this line twice within a week? A line, or joke, or phrase, that I have never heard before? It clearly is an old chestnut, probably spoken from pulpits worldwide for eons. There are plenty of pithy, interesting phrases that I have never heard or for which I am not familiar. But why this one, now?

Far too deterministic. But I no longer discount this type of connection….

The Role of Journalists

The media is full of their ‘end-of-the-year’ lists and summaries. Much of the material is about the natural disasters during 2005: the tsunami in the Indian Ocean, the Asian earthquake, New Orleans floods.

Some months ago, I wrote briefly about the disconnect frequently felt by people when hearing of major catastrophes. The impact of these events feels overwhelming, numbing, and we don’t know how to react as individuals. How can we possibly help so many people? We have different levels of empathy that is inversely proportional to the scale of the event.

A columnist from the Helsinki newspaper had an interesting perspective on the role of the media in this. The above title is a link to the full article, but here is an excerpt:

Physical or psychological closeness is an important criterion of news. Journalists do not make news items simply of what is large and important, but also about matters that touch them and touch their audience or readers. In the case of the tsunami, the dreadful fate of the Finns naturally left nobody unmoved.

And yet responsible journalism demands something more. The task of foreign correspondents and reporters is to help the readers to see the world in a broader context. To provide an opportunity to feel strongly about matters that are more distant and less familiar.

The writer, the journalist, the broadcaster are not just purveyors and repeaters of the news. The media should bring more to the story than just the facts: the truth can be told in other ways, in other images, using different words, even if the truth has different definitions for different people. There is a difference between fact and truth.

The Vacant Month, and Celebrating a Life

A friend sent me a note asking, “What, no thoughts in December?” She had checked my blog sight, which has no entries for this month. Not for a dearth of thoughts. Our world – both my immediate environment and the one brought through the windows of newspapers and television – are reeling with activity. All of it cries out for comment, analysis, action. I have failed to conjure up the emotional energy to pursue. Focus.

Pam and I did attend a life celebration today. A friend's wife passed away on Christmas Day after a long tussle with Alzheimer's. The family and a large community of friends gathered in First Church Albany for a memorial service this morning. Very moving, very uplifting, full of song, story, verse and life. So I will end the year with my last-day-of-the-month poem about today. In memory and celebration of Janice Luben.


So We Sing

We sang to celebrate a life today,
the voices of family and friends raising
praise for a girl, a woman, a wife, a person, a soul
whose footprints will travel in our own shadow
while we walk our own journey,
striving for faith and grace.

She was among us in the simplest of form:
a plain jar sitting in a small woven basket,
blanketed and nestled with pine boughs;
earthly things we can touch,
carrying the message that,
while the beauties of life are absorbed in our own senses,
the height of grace is brought by faith outside our flesh.

So we sing,
voices, trumpets, piano, organ,
in verse, story, prayer, poem, toccata --
And the music reached the rafters.