A Better Life
I can recall when Puderd first came to live in our house about four years ago that I had a modest sense that she was going to be a bit of a bother, perhaps just a bit too much 'maintenance' for my taste. I wondered if getting a cat was really such a good idea. Today it occurs to me that during the past four years I have been far more maintenance that Puderd could have ever been. As it turns out, Puderd has proven to be the lowest maintenance pet possible, with the improbable exception of a pet rock.
It has been truly heartening to watch Puderd overcome the severe traumas of her childhood home. Like so many of us, Puderd's childhood included a good bit of abuse and taunting, ultimately followed by abandonment and rejection for no apparent cause. For four years now Puderd has been growing into her own; gaining confidence in a crowd and a sense of trust, setting aside the skittish fears and skepticism induced by those who really didn't want her anymore. Occasional houseguests even remark on Puderd's progressively greater embrace of a more abundant life. Puderd even freely stretches every fibre of her fuzzy being in feline ecstacy while being held upside down.
I think of the abuse that Jesus had here in His short earthly life. For certain, He could tell Puderd more than a thing or two about abuse, rejection, and abandonment. Like Puderd, Jesus offered only love and affection. In His brief tenure on the third planet Jesus got the backhand of humanity just as Puderd got it in her childhood and feline adolescence. And plenty of us can relate to humanity's incivility from our own experience.
Clearly my life has become far richer, fuzzier, and more civilized since I have been kept by a cat. Overcoming my sense of the extra effort required to have a cat yielded furry dividends of the highest order. Good pets are so very unconditional in their offers of affection and they ask so little in return.
It occurs to me that Jesus has done the exact same thing for us. He trusted His father and stretched every fiber of His being on a splintery Roman cross in order to reach across the troubled gulf between Heaven and Earth. Jesus turned history upside down when He came to earth knowing the ominous horror-filled Friday that lay before him. Unlike Puderd, Jesus knew what lay ahead of him and it sure wasn't fuzzy and pleasant. For certain, in this case ignorance would have been bliss.
We don't know much about what goes on in the minds of cats but we can be fairly sure a conscious fear of death isn't one of the things going on. Puderd does get to bask in ignorance. The price of our sentience includes a perception of linear time and an understanding of an end point for our earthly tenure. It wasn't meant to be so in the beginning. The Father meant for us to live forever. It was our choice early on to go a different way that led to death. It was Jesus' choice to choose a way that led beyond death; His and ours.
Ignorance of eternal choices is anything but bliss. Cats might be able to claim ignorance of the law. I'm not sure I want to stand before the Throne of God one day and claim I didn't know what was going on. After all Puderd has already shown me the simple eternal laws. Love others, expect nothing in return, accept the gift of new life. The result is definitely worth purring about.
"God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish, but have Eternal life."Garage
Without fail, whenever I get home, Puderd is waiting for me. She invariably knows whether I will arrive at the front door or come in through the garage. If I elect to show up at the front entrance, which homeowner’s almost never use, my loyal feline will often dart right past me into the outer darkness, the nano-second I open the door. Once in a while she will acknowledgment me for releasing her, but not often. When I come into the garage, Puderd always knows this as well. She will wait just inside the door that leads into the lower level of the house. Again, if given opportunity, she will dash past me into the cold blackness of the garage as soon as I open the door. It has always seemed uncanny to me that she could know the time and place of my return so well. Does my car sound so different than the hundreds of others that pass by my door every day? I don’t usually take the Lambourghini to work, instead usually driving the eleven year old Toyota.
It fascinates me how this impulsive cat will always rush out of the warm safety of the house without ever slowing down long enough to assess the outside situation. There are sometimes large feral threats, extreme cold, or even severe storms waiting beyond. When she is lucky, a fine May morning presents itself, but May only comes once a year. More than once, her haste has led Puderd to make some rather poor life choices.
Last evening I arrived home very late on a cold winter night and put the car in the unheated garage. Quite unknown to me, Puderd slipped past me into the cold void of the garage. She is that fast. Her absence was conspicuous during the next thirty minutes or so, given her normal tendency to stick close to me. When ready for bed, I actually went to the garage and called for her. After some years, even cats have to yield a bit of their unpredictability to their keepers. Alas, no answer. I was sleepy. Impatient. That’s it. I was going to have that big warm four poster bed all to myself for the entire night. I did. Something for her to think about.
There is much to be learned from the world of nature, even if our contact with it consists of little more than watching the silly antics of our domesticated house pets. One of the most important things for any creature in nature to learn is discernment; when it’s OK to come out, when it’s safe to eat, when it’s safe to play, when it’s best to stay put. Such acumen is the difference between life and death millions of times a day for a wide variety of creatures on land and in the sea.
The story is told of how one day Jesus was walking on one of those dry dusty roads in Palestine when He encountered ten outcast lepers. He healed all ten of them. Want to guess how many of them slowed down long enough to even thank him? One. Ten percent. Ten percent will never get you voted MVP in the NBA or even in Little League baseball. NINE of them didn't even give thanks for His ultimate gift. Having leprosy two thousand years ago was worth that death, worse than anything. It meant total rejection, abandonment, disfigurement, vast loneliness, complete total hopelessness. How is it possible that radical, impossible, unexpected healing from this vast life shattering scourge did not even merit a small thank you?
The reality is cats and humans are alike in some respects. They often have their own ideas about where they want to go in life and don’t even slow down enough to see if their destinations are such a good idea. And for sure, they are not listening to any along the way Who might have life saving advice or even miracles to offer. In their big hurries, humans often leave gratitude and grand possibilities by the way side.
My cat made a choice to spend a long cold dark night in the garage alone instead of buried in the warm safety of a mountain of blankets on the bed. At the time, options seemed to favor the garage. It was normally inaccessible, unfamiliar, and full of dark mystery. The warm bed was familiar, taken for granted. People are even worse than cats about this sort of thing. The truth is those pre-heated blankets sure looked good at 8 AM on this cold winter morning, but only because they were lost to Puderd for a while . As I write, Puderd is wrapped up in them, making up for the sleepless night she chose for herself.
I don’t remember many sermons from the thousands I have heard but I do remember part of one from more than twenty years ago in which the minister preached from the Gospel of John. He gave the image of his being on a darkened stage under a single roving spotlight that just barely illuminated the space he was standing on. He knew ahead of time that the lamp operator would never move that bright circle of safety to any place of danger. He knew as long as he stayed in the security of the Light, he would not fall into the orchestra pit or through any of the elaborate open trap doors built into the surface of the stage. He could dance freely without fear, but only as long as he stayed in the Light.
The consumer culture sells us myriad false messages about those destinations and things that will satisfy and fulfill. Cruise ship brochures promise us carefree living with nothing but tropical paradise to enjoy. The reality is that we all eventually have to get off the boat. New cars and vast brick houses usually have oppressive, marriage threatening debt attached to them. Yet, as lemmings, most of us chase after these cultural myths of fulfillment at the speed of light and miss many of the truly important things in life. So often the things we miss in our hurry and cravings are of far greater value than those we end up with.
Almost daily I encounter people who fall through the trap doors of consumer society. The media is replete with the stories of people who have had spectacular falls in the material darkness. More American citizens will bankrupt this year that will graduate from college. Home foreclosures are up eight hundred percent in California in six years with one hundred thousand families projected to lose their houses this year alone. Church attendance continues to fall in many regions of the country. It is lower in California than anywhere else.
When I fall, the garage floor is just as cold , hard, and unforgiving independent of whether I park a new Lambourghini or old Toyota on it.
Misconceptions
Before getting started, you should know that I like cats, a whole lot. I have lived quite happily with a gray tabby for several years. Childhood was made warm and fuzzy by a fine succession of grand black cats with exotic Middle Eastern names. The one named "Xerxes" got called "Xerox." Another one named "Sisyphus" got transmuted to "Syphilis." Childhood has its mysteries.
Many of us have received greeting cards with colorful emotive artwork showing frolicking cats chasing balls of yarn in front of a fine old brick fireplace or cavorting in some other similarly appealing Rockwellian circumstance. We like to think of cats as a standard of civility, a litmus test of the environment. If cats hang out in the 'hood, then it must be a pretty safe and benign place. Think again!
Environmentalists like to present the natural world as this benevolent gentle space that would live happily ever after if humanity would simply stop reproducing, clear cutting, and emitting toxic waste. In fund raising appeals sent to us on recycled paper, we see heart-rending photos of baby harp seals beaten to death on the ice for their snow-white pelts. Old growth forests are set aside as habitat for the Spotted Owl. Wet lands are given protection to allow shore birds to reproduce.
The natural world in reality is a brutal place where life and death struggles are the order of the day for most species most days of their lives. The natural order is little more than a giant food chain with desperate bids being made continually to avoid ending up on the next lower rung of the culinary pecking order. In the natural world, 'pretty and furry' does not factor into the food equation. Pretty fur is just something that gets caught in the teeth and causes hairballs in predators.
A few days ago a naturalist was pointing out to me that cats are probably the single most efficient family of killers in the whole of the natural order of things. Lions, tigers, panthers, jaguars, lynxes, pumas are all cats which will send out frontal waves of fear into virtually all other creatures who have the misfortune of being anywhere near them at meal time. And most of these cats have no natural enemies and they do get hungry often. The small kitties we keep in our houses? You will see the same thing if you let them out of the house and pay close attention.
When I was five years old we had a huge orange tabby named Raymond that sent forth his own waves of trepidation into the animal kingdom. He had the unsavory habit of going forth to sample the diverse offerings of the mountains that lay just beyond the houses across the street, and then bringing these sacrificial treasures back into our house. Raymond brought us a daily predator's buffet including very large rabbits, exotic birds, rattlesnakes, all manner of rodentia, grass snakes, chipmunks, and other things too lacerated to identify. The fur did fly and it sure wasn't anything that Rockwell would have wanted to paint.
At one time I kept company with a woman who in turn kept company with a large orange tabby named 'Chester.' This sweet mild-mannered house kittie that lounged about in feline contentment was transformed the instant Pat opened the front door. That cat raced out to the nearest phone booth, stripped down, and emerged as Super Predator. The proof was recklessly and heartlessly plundered from the nearby woods and deposited as an offering every day on the mat outside the door. One best paid attention when going out the door, especially if wearing new shoes that were easily stained by a crimson sacrifice. Many cat owners can recount similar conquests of the animal kingdom by their innocent little Puderds.
So many things in life are just like cats; misconceptions. They are not as they seem. We view cats as cuddly, fuzzy, harmless pets that would do no harm. The fact is they are natural-born killers that kill just for sport. Many of the cultures of the West, and now the East, have bought into another vast misconception; that 'more' means more happiness. That more cars, more square footage of house, more closets of clothing and shoes, more power, more money, more RAM, more of everything will translate into more fulfillment, more contentment, more happiness. The natural reality is we get only more angst of soul.
Many of the Pacific Rim nations of Asia and much of Eastern Europe are looking at the American culture as a Holy Grail to be sought out and drunk deeply from. If they can only drink as deeply as we do, so they think, then the desperateness thirstiness of life will be slaked. The rise of consumerism overseas is bringing about an unprecedented transformation of hundreds of diverse cultures and for certain, many of the results are not what would end up on Rockwell's easel.
I have two dear friends living in Wales who have lamented their difficulties with making financial headway in their present circumstances. Like so many others living abroad, they view us Americans as living the good life, the life of Riley, having it all. I tell them, yeah, we do have it all, all right. Divorce, big houses, crime, health clubs, depression, opulent cars, drug addiction, myriad golf courses, loneliness, VCRs, disintegrating families, wide-screen TV, unprecedented bankruptcies, cell phones, insolvent old age, country clubs, and sixty million medically uninsured people living the good life.
From a great distance there is an allure, a glitz to the American way that is intoxicating to much of the world. From a distance my dear friends can know I live in a large fourteen room house with only a small cat to compete with in the morning for one of three bathrooms. What is harder to see at a distance is the vast sense of isolation and loneliness I have often felt in that house over the years in spite of my greatest efforts to fill it with people. My Welsh friends can't see that I have never been invited into my neighbors' houses in six years, that I don't even know who lives in them. How many times I have wished I could live in a smaller more compact village, walk to work, have friends nearby instead of spread out over a three-hundred mile radius, know my neighbors.
Fifty years ago the average American house was 950 square feet with a one-car garage. Now, many new garages are larger than the entire typical house of 1950. By any sociological or psychological measures that have been made in the past five decades, Americans were happier in 1950 with their tiny houses, one black car, and one income than they are in 1998 with their vast houses, garages, brightly colored imports, and two incomes.
My artist friends live in a small village where the town centre is vibrant, alive, with no vacancy of commercial property. The school is directly off the centre of town. One can easily shop, socialize, work, and play without ever getting into a car. Most of my town center is abandoned, boarded up, with shopping, schools, and social opportunities accessible only by taking a car through a gauntlet of red lights, four lanes, and aggressive drivers afflicted with road rage.
In the United States it is estimated that 68% of all marriages consummated in the later part of the century will end in divorce. Many of my peers have been married and divorced several times with some having done so seven times. In my own family, my mother married four times, my older brother three times, my only maternal cousin three times. I never gambled on marriage. My mother died alone. I wonder if I will.
A large-scale survey in my county reveals that 57% of the population has markers for clinical depression. I spent Thanksgiving in one of the most prosperous of the American states, where the state government does not even bother to collect an income tax. A week after Thanksgiving, an attractive gifted woman I shared turkey and dressing with, committed suicide, depressed over her financial problems.
The United States is the richest nation on earth yet has the lowest savings rate in the Western World. In the richest nation on earth, which is seven years into an economic miracle, more people will file for bankruptcy this year than will graduate from colleges and universities. A finding published this week shows that the number of children living in poverty in my region of the state has increased by 45% in the past six years. For the past six years three young children living two houses down from me have spent every night alone. Their mother works as a night teller in a Wal-Mart. The house is disintegrating and if you walk on the deck, you will fall through to the ground twelve feet below. Yet, there is a wide-screen TV, VCR, Nintendo, computer, several stereos, a new car, and virtually nothing saved for retirement. In six years I have never once seen the father.
Chambers of Commerce, Tourist Boards, and the like do not usually paint a realistic view of what life is like in the places they represent. My friends in Wales can't see our collective angst of soul from across the Atlantic. Satellite downloads of American TV sure don't tell the truth. For certain, brokers of consumerism and materialism don't put warnings on their products stating the contents might leave one depressed, lonely, bankrupt, and empty of soul.
King Solomon, who was real well off, figured out thirty-five centuries ago that 'stuff' doesn't fulfill. "He who loves money will not be satisfied with money, nor he who loves abundance with its income. This too is vanity."
Fifteen centuries later another warning was issued, suggesting that materialism was a dead-end that did, in fact, often end in spiritual death. Jesus said that "it is harder for a rich man to get to Heaven than it is for a camel to get through the eye of a needle." There is more commentary in the New Testament about money than about Heaven and Hell. It seems Jesus was suggesting the pursuit of material bounty was itself a distraction from those very things that could provide contentment, fulfillment, happiness, and purpose of life. It seems that if material pursuits can keep us from stopping to smell the roses, they will do an even better job of keeping us from pondering matters of eternity which are lost from view in the haze of consumerism.
"For what will a man be profited, if he gains the whole world, and forfeits his soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul? For the Son of Man is going to come in the glory of His Father with His angels; and will then recompense every man according to his deeds."
Alienation of Affection Last year in North Carolina a woman was awarded $253,000 in a civil judgement against another woman under a rare statute. It seems the defendant had successfully drawn the attentions and affections of a married man away from his wife, effectively disrupting the plaintiff's marriage. In three states it is possible to sue another who has been shown responsible for causing the loss of affection from one's marriage partner. The legislatures of these states have rightfully determined that loss of affection from one's spouse is a serious matter and has allowed for financial recourse under a civil statute called "Alienation of Affection."
There is a fine small college campus near the hospital where I work and a number of years past I often enjoyed walking on this forested campus with a physician during our lunch hour. We often spoke of finding our personal destinies and gaining self-fulfillment. His enthusiasm grew for this and we shared spirited conversation over the months.
One day my friend seemed especially animated and he let on to me that he had met a woman at a healing conference and was quite taken with her and could communicate with her like no other in the world. He admitted to staying evenings in his office after seeing his last patient and spending extended periods of time on the phone with this distant consort. His state of entrancement grew and I repeatedly warned him that if he continued to have correspondence and calls with her, he would only succeed in destroying his own family and hers. I often said "Don't do it! Doooon't do it!"
He did. He left the church, sold his practice, left his fine wife, his four children, and all his friends. Next thing we heard he was living in the same state and in the same city from which the defendant hailed. On occasion I cross paths with his ex-wife in the hospital and see in her hollow tear-stained cheeks the clear mark of alienation and abandonment. Unfortunately, in this state the plaintiff has no statutory grounds for an action against the thief who stole her husband's affection and she has been forced to leave her children and home and return to the workplace.
Several years back I watched this same haunting scenario occur in my own office under my very own eyes on a daily basis. Our devoted Christian secretary left her church, husband, children, job, friends, and home for a profane fellow that boasted of disrupting marriages. When this fellow first came to work in our office, Janet had no use whatever for Bill. Yet, he was ultimately able to steal her affection away from her husband and have a son by her. Years later both of these episodes still spook me and I realize in a fallen world how fragile loyalty and affection really are.
For several years now I have rather enjoyed the company of a small gray tabby cat I call Puderd. I mean really enjoyed. There was no other cat in my life and there wasn't going to be, that is until Blondie. I had not seen my good friend Paula in many months and a few days ago I visited her house. It was there that I encountered the most magnificent, affectionate, attentive, beautiful blond tabby cat one could ever wish for. It was love at first sight. When I got home later in the day and found Puderd waiting for me, it was different for me, really different. I realized that my affection had been stolen by Blondie, that Puderd would have had a case for civil action against me if we had lived in North Carolina, had been human, and we had been married. After all, Blondie was more affectionate, attentive, and attractive than Puderd. Seriously, I was quite amazed at how my affection for my wonderful household pet had been altered so noticeably.
After this small but very real experience with these two cats, it occurred to me that I was no different than my physician friend or my secretary. My affections can be stolen be a friend's cat or a magnificent woman entering my world for the first time. How many times have my vain imaginations about what seems to be the perfect woman stolen all my attentions away from the one I'm with. In fact, this has been enough of an issue as to keep me from having ever married. It seems that Paula's cat had unwittingly made an indictment as to my true nature.
As tragic as it is to have a spouse take his affection and give it to another or as painful as it is for a girlfriend to be dumped for another, there is another alienation of affection that is even more devastating with much farther reaching consequences. Taking our affections for God and things of the spirit and giving them to the world can cast us into a vortex of alienation and emptiness that would make a cosmic black hole look inviting by comparison.
The writers of the Old and New Testaments well understood human nature; that we can be easily distracted by many things around us and forget our callings as heirs to the Kingdom of God. Like the prodigal son, we want to take the money and run and experience all the glamour the world has to offer. So often we merely end up homeless in a pig pen, bankrupt of soul, eating trodden spoils from the mud. We have traded in the new Cadillac for a broken-down Volkswagen.
The important issue at this point is deciding if we will stay in the pig sty or if we will get up, face home, and start walking. We might just find a warm embrace and warm robe at the end of our long journey, as did that young wanderer thirty five centuries ago. His father understood human nature as does our Father in Heaven. It is to our great good fortune that the One who was before the foundations of time has never wavered in His affection for us. He nailed that down for us.
"Whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ. More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish in order that I may gain Christ, and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith."
