Dispatches from the path

The Debt of Love

There was once a holy man who journeyed to Mecca in beggar’s clothing. There he saw a barber shaving a nobleman. When he asked the barber to shave him, the barber immediately left the wealthy man and shaved this stranger in his midst. He refused to take any money for his work, but rather, gave the holy man some as alms.

The pilgrim was so touched that he decided he would give to the barber whatever he received in alms that day. It so happened that a wealthy pilgrim came up to him and gave him a bag of gold coins. So the holy man went up to the barber’s shop that evening and offered the gold to the barber.

But in response the barber grabbed a razor and chased him away, yelling, “What kind of a holy man are you that you come to reward me for an act of love?”

The following tale is a supplementary parable offered by Peter Rollins in a set of seven meant to add to the original 33 published as The Orthodox Heretic.

Contented Fisherman

A rich industrialist from the North was horrified to find a fisherman from the South laying lazily beside his boat, smoking a pipe.

“Why aren’t you out fishing?” asked the industrialist.

“Because I have caught enough fish for the day,” said the fisherman.

“Why don’t you catch some more?”

“What would I do with them?”

“You could earn more money” was the reply. “With that you could have a motor fixed to your boat and go into deeper waters and catch more fish. Then you would make enough to buy nylon nets. These would bring you more fish and more money.  Soon you would have enough money to own two boats . . . maybe even a fleet of boats. Then you would be a rich man like me.”

“What would I do then?”

“Then you could really enjoy life.”

“What do you think I am doing right now?”

The following tale is a supplementary parable offered by Peter Rollins in a set of seven meant to add to the original 33 published as The Orthodox Heretic. The accompanying letter from the publisher explains their rationale:

Many Christians set aside forty days each year as a time of preparation leading up to the commemoration of Christ’s death and resurrection. This period is often a time of self-examination and includes activities such as mediation, penitence, almsgiving, study, and fasting. For many, both within and outside the Christian tradition, Lent provides an opportunity to reflect upon one’s values, direction in life, and hopes for the future.
To aid in this time of reflection we are offering these seven parables to supplement the thirty-three found in The Orthodox Heretic. The result is that you now have a parable reflection for every one of the forty days of Lent.
These supplementary parables have been carefully selected by Peter from a variety of different sources and traditions…

Beginning now, I will post one of these additional parables once each week.

The Disabled Fox

A man was walking through a deep forest when he happened upon an injured fox that could not walk. As he wondered how the fox was still alive he saw a tiger approach the lame animal with fresh game in its mouth. The tiger ate its fill and then left the rest of the meat for the fox.
The next day the man returned to the same spot to see if this miracle would be repeated. Sure enough the same Tiger eventually appeared and once more fed the fox.
The man was so impressed by what he witnessed that he gave thanks to God and said to himself, “I shall learn from this fox by trusting that the Lord will provide me with all that I need.”
And so he found a quiet spot in the forest and waited for many days. But his needs were not met. When he was almost at death’s door he shouted out to God in anger, saying “I have shown undying faith yet you are absent.” But then, in an instant, silence befell the forest and a voice from heaven could be heard, “O you who are in the path of error, open your eyes to the truth. I do not want you to imitate the disabled fox but rather to follow the example of the tiger.”

See more at peter Rollins’ blog

This past week, a couple that I know and like asked me a question about parenting a special-needs child. They are expecting their third child–so they are already great parents–but because of some disturbing medical news they got, they are wrestling a little with the possibility that their baby may arrive with special needs. I don’t want to go on about their situation because I don’t know where they are in the process (well, any of the processes, I guess) and even though they shared a bit of their situation with me, theirs is a private struggle.

They asked me about my daughter, Mia–specifically, how we handled the news when we discovered she would be special. I am pasting some of my rather long reply here because in the process of trying to figure out what I would do in their situation, armed with the knowledge of what it is like to have a special child, I stumbled onto something that I cannot fully articulate, but that I think it somehow fundamental…something about how God redeems “misfortune.” I am not solving the problem of evil, here, but I feel like there may be some truth near what I was thinking, and that’s always wild.

Mia’s story: we didn’t know that she was going to have CP before she was born. Her CP is actually the result of her brain bleeding because she was born three months early. The bleeds were aggressive, so she had hydrocephalus, and she had to have a shunt placed in her brain to relieve pressure. Any brain damage that occurs, before or during birth, is diagnosed as CP. We didn’t have to ask ourselves, seriously, what we would do if she was special. She arrived before we had even attended our second “how to give birth” class, and it was game-on from there.

However, we did have three months of her being in the hospital, having surgeries, progressing and then suffering setbacks, in which we got to experience some of what you are struggling with. We had all sorts of counsel from her doctors about the possibility that she would be severely damaged (as in “scary CP,” needing help breathing and swallowing, etc.) but basically they just tried to prepare us for the worst because no one could tell us how she would be. Even today, there is the chance that she will effectively stop learning at some point due to decreased gray matter in her brain. No one could or would say anything definitive for fear that we might sue when their predictions fell short of the mark–and their predictions will fall short, you know? Doctors can hypothesize, at best, because they just can’t know how a child will grow and compensate, or what their gifts and limitations will be.

When you have a child who has special needs (the truth is that EVERY child has special needs, seriously, but we are speaking of developmental delays, etc.) the best advice I would offer is to throw out all the timetables that parents are encouraged to compare their children to. The truth is that children are just not meant to be compared to numbers, especially when they are different than we call normal.

People will tell you guys that you have a decision to make, and that is true. They will tell you that what you decide will effect the whole family, and it will. Let me tell you this: I wouldn’t take Mia’s condition away (though there have been days I wished she was “normal”) even if I could. She is who she is with CP, and I love that little girl through and through! In fact, I am who I am because of how she is, and I am so immensely blessed with her. Example: because she is special, I get to see the best in her friends and in her teachers as they reach out to love her. She has brought out beauty in the people who love her, but who don’t have to, from the very beginning of her life.

I imagine that God maybe selects the families who need the children they get. Your younger child is yours both because he needs you, with your brain and heart, and because you need him. Your older child, too–maybe they teach us to not forget to be joyful. Your baby’s stats are scary, and Down Syndrome is a burden I can’t imagine. We all hope and pray for perfect babies, but she will be perfectly herself, and she will teach you how to love in a way that you can’t know, today. That’s true even if she arrives healthy and normal, but it is fiercely true if she does come to your world with additional needs.

I am sorry to write and write, maybe not even addressing your question, but I needed to tell you that you can’t lose, you know? When we lost our son, it was a terrible tragedy, but I felt (and feel) blessed to have known him. Mia’s condition inconveniences me sometimes, but it blesses me so much more and teaches me every day how to be a better person than I really am.

The rest was just personal–I wanted to give words of support. The thing that is staying with me is the realization that Mia’s condition, and by extension EVERYONE’S flaws and tendencies (our special needs!), is a blessing and part of what makes her my particular, perfect-for-me daughter! I mean, culturally, everyone would tell you that you want a “normal” child, but that’s just a lie, anyway. None of us is normal, and it really is our peccadilloes that make us beautiful, so long as we really look at one another with our hearts.

That still doesn’t make a tragedy like Haiti any easier to observe. Still, I can’t help but think that maybe God looks at or differences and flaws more like this than with disgust.

A friend of mine recently posed this question: “What do you do when Jesus tells you the Bible is wrong?” He is referring, specifically, to Deuteronomy 19, Leviticus 24 & Exodus 21 compared to Jesus in Matthew 5, when Jesus tells all who are listening that, though the Torah says “an eye for an eye,” He says “do not resist and evil person.” And again when Jesus says that we are not to love our neighbors and hate our enemies, as Torah states, but that we are to love our enemies.

Yep, the Bible is full of contradictions. Some of these can be written off as elaborations, or can be explained by the fact that the Bible is not a single work, composed at a single time by a single author, but is a collection of books written over quite a period of time by several authors. It is not the differences between Gospel accounts of Jesus’ life that bother me–whether he cleansed the temple at the beginning of his ministry or at the end does not rock my faith (though recognizing that there are at least two distinctive versions of His life told between Luke and Mark, for example, would certainly strike my ideas about the entire Bible being infallible, if I had such ideas).

No, what troubles me are some of the crazy stories from the Torah, stories that are supposed to reveal something to us about the nature of God, our father. Evidently, I am not alone in my discomfort:

I just now stumbled upon this map of banned books from 2009 online.  As a thinking human who is a parent, I am always stupefied that banning books (and burning them, as in Lindale, TX) still occurs in the 21st century.

View Book Bans and Challenges, 2007-2009 in a larger map