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I
grew up singing a silly little song about my
“Grandfather’s Clock” although, for the life of me, I
can’t remember whether he ever had one. What I do remember
is my grandfather’s desk, about which no song was ever
written, but which was second only to a bunk bed in terms of
pre-adolescent desirability.
Let
me describe it to you. It was a rolltop desk with a cover that
slid back and forth. There were six lower drawers, three to a
side, plus a long, flat one in the middle. But it wasn’t the
configuration below the writing surface that fascinated me, so
much as the configuration above. For, when you retracted the
cover, you laid your eyes upon a bevy of compartments for the
separating and stashing of stuff. There were cubbyholes
horizontal and cubbyholes vertical. There were long, flat
drawers and small, stubby drawers. And there were shelves
sized for papers along with shelves sized for pencils.
I
was 13 when my grandfather died and the desk became mine. It
became the center of the space I created in my parents’
basement….my space….where it remained until my father
died, my mother moved, and my sister commandeered it for
herself (and then sold it).
For
which I’ve forgiven her. In part, because she’s dead. In
part, because forgiveness goes along with my job description.
And in part, because I outgrew my need for it and my reason
for loving it….that reason having to do with a desire to
keep all of my things compartmentalized, which grew out of an
even bigger desire to keep all of my life compartmentalized.
When
I was very young, I had a dinner plate that, in its own way,
mimicked my grandfather’s desk. It had ridges in it, don’t
you see, making its surface divisible by three. A space for
meat. A space for potatoes. And a space for vegetables. Salad
required a separate plate (since I never wanted one food group
to touch another). I mean, who would want Russian dressing
touching mashed potatoes, or yellow corn rendered brown by
runaway gravy? My mother told me it was all going to wind up
in the same stomach anyway. But what did she know?
I
don’t use such plates anymore….don’t need such plates
anymore….but our cupboard is not void of such plates
anymore. We still have four. My wife says they are
collector’s items. People call them “grill plates.” You
can probably purchase one on e-Bay.
So,
what’s this all about? Clearly it’s not about separating
your papers or separating your food. What it’s about is the
temptation to compartmentalize your life so that the parts and
pieces do not touch each other….so that the person you are
in one place is not necessarily the person you are in another
place….so that the feelings and values that define you here
will not be expressed in the choices and behaviors you exhibit
there….and so that the slices of your life do not add up to
anything resembling a pie.
Oh,
I know that a little compartmentalization is necessary. Some,
because of packaging. Some, because of professionalization.
The Apostle Paul talked about “packaging” when he told his
Corinthian friends that he could adapt to almost any
circumstance….looking and sounding like a law-abiding Jew
when talking to Jews…. looking and sounding like a
libertarian Greek when talking to Greeks….the better that he
might win both Jews and Greeks to Christ. One faith. Multiple
faces. But had Paul taken his “packaging thing” too far,
people would have called him “two-faced” and would have
tuned him out. Which he didn’t. So they didn’t. Because
Christ was the common denominator, don’t you see. The
thread. The center. The core.
As
for compartmentalization required by professionalism, I can
speak to that. People sometimes say to me: “It must be hard
to preach as many funerals as you do.” They’re right. It
is. Especially when the death hits close to home. Because
I’m human. I feel. I bleed. I grieve. I’ve even been known
to cry. But when I step into this pulpit….or when I pull the
little chain that turns on the lectern light in some funeral
home….I have a job to do. I know what it is. I know how
important it is. So I had better find a way to do it. Which
may require bracketing my feelings temporarily. Not to the
point of hardness. Not to the point of coldness. But to the
point of awareness that I can’t put anybody back together
when I (myself) am coming apart.
I
said this once in a clergy coaching session, leading a
colleague to say: “Perhaps the only thing harder is trying
to preach a wedding homily after you’ve just had a fight
with your wife.” That’s when the desk comes in handy,
giving you a place to stuff your personal feelings until later
so that you can honor the public obligation that faces you
now.
But
the danger in all of this is that the “disconnects” will
never get connected, and that the separated parts will never
make up a whole. It can happen emotionally. It can happen
relationally. It can happen vocationally. Which should please
those of you who still appreciate three point sermons. So hear
me out.
Emotionally
speaking, you cannot wall off one set of feelings from the
rest of your feelings and remain healthy. It will work for a
while. But only for a while. Several years ago, I went to a
home along about 2:30 p.m. so that I could tell two grade
school children that their father was dead when they got off
the bus at 3:00. I did the best I could. They dealt with it as
best as they could. They listened. They asked a couple of
questions. They shed a couple of tears. Then they asked their
mother if they could change out of their school clothes and go
outside to play.
Didn’t
they love their father? Of course they loved their father.
Didn’t they understand what I’d said? Of course they
understood what I’d said. But they had to wall off those
feelings until they could handle those feelings. Which
happened. Over time. An hour at a time. A day at a time. But
woe be to the griever who never finds time, never takes time,
or (more to the point) never allows time. You can’t wall it
away or will it away. It will squeeze through, seep through,
bleed through, or maybe even crash through. Either that, or it
will cripple. Maybe kill. And what is true for grief is true
for every other feeling as well.
Two
weeks before I came here, my sister died. Not unexpectedly.
But prematurely. And far from peacefully. The latter years of
her life were anything but pleasant. I did what I could. But I
was too close. And, in a small way, I may have even been a
part of her problem. From time to time, she would ask me to
help her find professional help. Which I always did. And which
she always quit….right after the third session. When I would
ask her why, I would get the same stock answer. “The
counselors are all alike,” she would say. “Things start
out pretty good between us, but (eventually) all they ever
want to talk about is Daddy.” Which was the compartment of
her life she didn’t want to open, don’t you see. Not only
didn’t, but wouldn’t. Maybe that’s why she wanted the
desk. I’ll never know.
And
then there are people who compartmentalize their lives
relationally. I’m thinking about a relatively bad movie with
a relatively good moral. From time to time, you can still
catch it on late night television. Called Indecent Proposal,
it features a young, attractive couple….very much in
love….but very much down on their luck….and about to lose
all of their assets including their dream home. Then one night
in a Las Vegas casino, the young wife (Demi Moore) is spotted
and coveted by a very rich and very handsome tycoon (Robert
Redford). He gains the couple’s trust, hears the couple’s
story and then puts forth a proposal. One night with the young
wife….just one night….in return for a one million dollar
check (payable to the two of them).
Which
they ponder….then accept. And in the kind of cinematic
understatement that is exceedingly rare today, we see nothing
of “that night.” We don’t have the faintest idea what
happened that night….or if anything happened that night.
What we see is what “that night” does to the young couple.
It breaks ‘em apart, that’s what it does. And while they
eventually get back together, their return to comfort is both
tentative and restrained.
There
is a lot to dislike about the movie’s premise, starting with
the idea that any woman might ever become a purchasable
commodity by anybody at any price. But what continues to
interest me is the scene where the young couple wrestles with
Robert Redford’s offer, complete with the reasoning they
employ in accepting it. They do need the money. And it is just
one night. “It’ll come. It’ll go,” they say.
“We’ll bracket it….block it out….set it apart from the
rest of our lives….and never talk about it again. It’ll be
like it never happened.” To which the young woman adds:
“After all, it’s just my body.”
Well,
it didn’t work. It wasn’t just her body. And they
couldn’t block it out. Neither could they compartmentalize
it. Though people still try….all the time. I remember the
wife who discovered her husband’s infidelity and said
(somewhere in the middle of a long night of anguish): “What
I don’t understand is how you could do this to us.” In
response to which he snapped: “This had nothing to do with
us.” But it did. It always does. This being far removed from
the day of harems and concubines, is there anyone here who
remains so stupid as to believe that there can be home games
and away games, and that the standings can be kept separate?
But
let’s move on to a third kind of compartmentalization….
namely, vocational. This is often exhibited by those who say:
“How I earn my bread has nothing to do with where I eat my
bread.”
Were
you to ask me my favorite visualization of a family meal, I
would direct you, not to Normal Rockwell, but to Francis Ford
Coppola. I am talking about those wonderful scenes of family
solidarity in the first (and best) of the Godfather
movies. Weddings. Christenings. Multi-generational Italian
family feasts. Eating and drinking. Singing and storytelling.
Who can forget it?
Except,
I suspect that most of you have forgotten it. Because what you
remember about the movie is how “the family” earned its
bread. They were into numbers running, loan sharking,
protection selling, along with various and sundry other forms
of racketeering, which they enforced by strong-arming, brutal
murdering, and some highly creative acts of digital
dismembering. How did that family live in both of those
worlds? Obviously, part of every day they had to be living a
lie. But which part was the lie?
Funny
thing (you know), for as easy as lies are to tell, they are
awfully hard to live. For very long, I mean. If you’ve got
any ethics at all, you can’t check them at the door. Even
the church door. Or the boardroom door.
Having
just told you something funny, let me tell you something
unfunny. What’s not so funny is that ten months after the
greatest external threat that many of us have ever
experienced, it’s not the aftershocks from Ground Zero that
have us presently unsettled, so much as the troubling
rumblings from Rome and Wall Street. For though I wouldn’t,
for a minute, diminish the threat represented by those who
would perpetrate terror from without, I find myself equally
worried by those who would undermine trust from within.
Even
though I read widely in the arenas of ecclesiology and
economy, I can’t say that I fully grasp the things that are
happening in Catholic America or corporate America. So I will
resist the temptation to pose as an overnight expert on
either. But what I do know is this. In both sectors, some very
nice people have done some very stupid and self-serving
things….not because they are bad….not because they are
evil….not because they are rotten to the core or filled with
the devil….but because they somehow believed you really
could run a business, a bank, an archdiocese or an accounting
firm as if the rules of expediency and the standards of
excellence could be kept on separate shelves, shoved in
separate drawers, or curtained off in separate parts of the
brain, so that pragmatism would never get in the way of
conscience, or vice versa.
Friday
morning, I spent the better part of an hour on a conference
call with a group of nine convened by the outgoing chairperson
of the (Federal) Financial Accounting Standards Board. He is a
great guy. And he was calling for a great purpose. He wanted
us to design (for state and region) a large-scale business
ethics seminar. What was ironic about the meeting was that I
was the only one on the call with any hands-on experience.
Maybe
that’s because I front for a Savior who says that a house
divided against itself will fall (Matthew 12)….that nobody
can serve multiple masters (Matthew 6)….and while there is
certainly something to be said for being flexible (I
Corinthians 9), there must be an integrity to everything we do
which can only come when all of the pieces of our life pivot
off the same center.
He’s
the same Savior who also said that everything we try to hide
in the dark will ultimately be revealed in the light. Quite
unlike my grandfather’s desk, where (if necessary) I could
simply lower the lid and hide all the mess inside. Alas, that
only works in the world of furniture, my friends. That only
works in the world of furniture.
Note:
I employed an earlier version of the “rolltop desk” image
in a sermon preached in 1998. Ironically, that sermon ended up
discussing ethical dilemmas in the White House and a
forthcoming vote on casino gambling in Detroit.
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