Memoirs 5/8/00
Open Office Writer
Preface
What is a person? The question is fundamentally important and only second in priority to the question: What—who—is God? Such a question has eternal ramifications.
Until we are finally integrated, each individual remains two entities. Some have called these our true and our false selves. The “person” is the true self whereas the persona (Latin: “actors mask”) is the false self that we like to kid others and ourselves about. The persona is the self we erect and project to defend ourselves against others and to defend against who we think God is. It is the persona that must go. In its place must emerge person, that soul-ish, authentic entity that is a healthy composite of the good and bad parts of our selves, recognized and owned by our selves, personally.
There are few things worse than reading an autobiography of the persona, or false self—what we wish others to think about us. Such an attempt is hollow and does not ring true. The autobiographies that move us are those self-disclosures, revealing the whole person, written with ruthless honesty. I have to admit: it is far easier to see the double-dealing in others than to see it in myself, let alone write about it. But this I’ll attempt to do.
Who wants to read about me?
A friend has encouraged me to write a memoir. When I first read his recommendation to do this I blushed with false modesty, became embarrassed and self-conscious. What a presumptuous thing to do—write about ones own life! But encouraged by natural narcissism I continued to explore the idea. Boiled down, it all depends on perspective. If I can write about my life in relationship to God—his faithfulness, how he delivered me into “hell” and then tenderly extricated me from it and all the other muddle of my life—then there might be redemptive value in the effort.
We have all been “wrought in the lowest parts of the earth.” Even all of our days have been “fashioned” for us, “when as yet there were none of them” (Psalm 139:13-16). If God has this kind of power and influence over our lives, there is good reason to carefully examine each of them. Not in a spirit of triumph and grandiosity—for this cannot be the reality even for the best of us; but rather, in a spirit of confession, meekness and awe at the wonder of the infinite reach of the sovereignty of God.
I’ll try to write with ruthless honesty; that is, I will try to avoid writing in a way that presents me in the best possible light. If I can write of myself in all my weakness and failure, maybe I can relate some of the grace of God and others can be served (the grace of God had led St. Paul so far that he was able to boast in his weaknesses, even confessing them publicly).
My personal feeling and theology is that nothing happens by accident. It is God who orders life in all its failure as well as all its triumph—each day of our lives, planned out for us an eternity ago. Viewed from my perspective my life seems a jumble of randomness and caprice. I am not one of those whose theology exalts “free choice” above the sovereignty of God. I’ve been led to the same conclusion that dawned on the poet T.S. Eliot who said that all time is eternally present, leading inexorably to an end that we believe results from our actions, but over which our control is mere illusion.
My personal illusion, one that has plagued me most of my life, is that my “free” choices are the highest sovereignty in the universe—beyond God’s power to control—and therefore my eternal destiny lies ultimately in my own hands. God can only do “the best he can” according to J. L. Packer, regarding these choices.[1] Such a position is untenable, of course, for it is very difficult to be God. Our troubled lives ultimately teach us that we cannot be God, but must surrender them to our “Higher Power”—whoever and whatever that may be.
It’s taken me over fifty years to understand that “You (God) turn man to destruction, and say ‘Return you children of men’” (Psalm 90:3). That’s a hard truth to accept about God: that he is the one responsible for my demise (I guess that most my life I was just too busy flattering myself about my power of free choice to realize this). Which brings me to the final and most important reason for wanting to write a memoir: That my children would somehow benefit from it.
The writer of the book of Exodus stated that God passes down the sin of one generation “on the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate (him)” (Exodus 20:8). I think all this means is that our crazy-making behavior as parents negatively affects our children, insuring that they will become victims and eventual perpetrators. My lack of parental nourishment made me a victim (I don’t think my “psychological developmental stages” came off very well). My early childhood victimization launched my career in adult life as a perpetrator: I was very rigid with my children and also deprived them of the proper amount of father-nourishment. They are all now emotionally suffering from this lack. Jesus said, “whoever should offend one of these little ones”—it would be better for that person to be given a pair of concrete shoes and thrown into the sea.[2] My parents, operating from a near-empty tool bag, malnourished me severely—this due to their own wounded-ness and victimization. Then I went on to malnourish my children: it’s a trans-generation thing and not about blame. My parents were only playing the hand that was dealt to them.
But God is faithful, when we are faithless and after 45 years of God-destruction, I reached that critical pivot-point in my life when God said to me: “Return” (Psa. 90:3). I couldn’t have any more said “No” to that command than fly. This painful, inexorable experience of being drawn back to God these past 15 years is very much a part of my story. We all must experience some form of “destruction” as the sins of our father’s pass down to us and we begin the destructive “acting out” the prepared script of our own personal stories. But there comes a point in each of our lives where God says “Return,” the tide changes, and we begin to experience what I like to call: God, making us an offer we can’t refuse. Then the “curse” of the fathers transfigures into a blessing. It is my hope and prayer that, for my children’s sake, this memoir becomes a “blessing” to each of them.
When it is all over, I believe that our individual stories will be shown as fully engineered by God, for good and for bad. In his economy, both good and evil are used by him and for his glory (Psalm 139:12). For God “will not give (his) glory to another” (Isaiah 42:8). Because he is God, all things inevitably come to balance and equilibrium. That he would be somehow glorified in the process of my life is the goal of my effort. “I form the light and create darkness, I make peace and create calamity; I the Lord, do all these things.” (Isaiah 45:7). But he also promises, in regard to your life and mine, “He has made everything beautiful in its time” (Ecclesiastes 3:11). Our stories are about all we’ve authentically got. And no matter how bad they get, a “beautiful” ending is promised.
Pre-Memory
“That was the true Light which gives light to every man who comes into the world”—St. John, referring to Jesus.
I didn’t ask to come into this life (as far as I know), a fact that says a lot about God and the possible reach of his salvation. And I was born with no say in the matter in the winter of 1942—February 22, 1942—to parents who were very excited to receive me into their world. I was baptized shortly thereafter at the Waverly Heights Congregational Church and received what church people call “Holy Spirit”—considered by some to be the very spiritual life of the Creator.
I used to scoff at the idea of infant baptism, believing that only an “accountable” human being ought to be baptized, an act ultimately decided by ones “free choice.” This questionable belief turned out to be just another tenet of my legalistic, rational mind. Now I see infant baptism as an expression of pure grace, so much so that I believe God is just as sovereign in the lives of the un-baptized as in the lives of those who have undergone the formality of the ritual. Baptism represents the action of God way above and independent of my choices and so-called repentance. In later life, I would start making choices, and in some cases I would change some destructive thoughts and behaviors. But, on balance, my boneheaded choices have far out-number my good ones. Consequently, there is something restful in knowing that there is a priority, a power, a symbiotic Life form dwelling within me that is greater than any evil I may do, greater than any good that I may accomplish. It has also become helpful to me to realize that this faithful “God” resides in every other human being as well.
Anyway, I received a piece of the life of God at baptism. In the sacrament of baptism, God parachuted behind enemy lines and I’ve been walking around for 57 years with him in my head, though it seems he has rarely shown his face in my first 45 years of life. I’ll try to mention these times as I go along. I am very glad that God’s word (Jesus, the Light) never returns to him without accomplishing the saving purpose for which it was intentionally sent (Isaiah 55:11). No matter how many layers of denial, “sin” and human edifice we may feverishly build upon that Light, the Light is still there, inextinguishable.
I wasn’t held much during the first two years of my life and I don’t remember ever being held. There was a quack psychological fad prevalent in the early ‘40’s which basically said that if you don’t hold a baby in the first couple years of life he would likely go on to be strong and independent. I don’t know about that. If it’s to grow strong and independent like Mussolini, then forget it. All I know is what they tell me: I used to cry for hours on end—dad not letting mom hold me—as he held faithfully to his belief in the fad (once I cried so long and hard that I had to be taken to the hospital with a distended belly button). Consequently, I have also been walking around for 57 years as an emotional cripple and probably not very good company for God. Now the hard data is telling us that infants not held and nurtured in the first eighteen months of life will inevitable grow up unable to trust anyone. That’s me, not very trusting, ridden with catastrophic thinking and scared of my own shadow. Every problem of life, a divine retribution and full of menace. Every failure, a corroboration of my own ineptness. The redeeming thing is though, faith and trust become gifts from God to each of us. No matter what our background, his gifts always transfigure our worst psychosis, reform our worst behavior. There is not an evil that God is not greater than, not a sordid, destructive behavior God can’t command light to come out of, not a twisted, death-dealing behavior that he cannot command resurrection life to erupt from.
Why I Don’t Like My Name
“I have even called you by your name; I have named you, though you have not known me” (Isaiah 45:4)
I wonder what God has named me.
Robert Carroll Day. I have never much liked my name. It sounds contrived, middle- English, middle-brow, middle ages. “Robert” begs for a nickname, Bob, and that isn’t much better. It’s trivial if not downright primitive. Probably one of the first articulations out of the mouth of man was, “Bob.” Say it backwards or forwards, it makes no difference. Even a drooling idiot can say, “Bob.” I think I even heard my dog say it once.
As far as “Carroll”—well, to a boy in the American culture it’s a shoe-in for the most detestable name. I would guard with my life my middle name, but somehow it got out and I was teased a lot with it and usually lumped in with all the girl ballerinas in my class. Thankfully, kids started calling everyone by their last name. “Day” turned out to be O.K; better than the other two names.
The good news is that God knows my real name (and yours) because he named you (and me) from the beginning. But that name is not revealed to us until God gets done working us over in this life. Meanwhile, that we humans name each other suggests how “in control” we want to be. If we are sentimental and religious enough we might name our kid after an archangel, an apostle or some archaic saint—probably without a thought as to what God’s name for the child might be.
In olden times, God seemed to like to call a spade a spade and appears to be sensitive about names. Bible big shots were given names by God, I guess because they had a particular work to do that was to be recorded and set down in literary form—so the record had to be straight. God named the first man “Adam”, meaning, “red mud” probably to tell Adam not to start out life too proud. The first woman he named “Eve,” or, “life-giver.” Pretty straightaway examples.
“Noah” (the world’s first revealed drunk) means “rest.” If you can’t say something nice about somebody, then say nothing at all. So God disregards Noah’s sot status and speaks prophetically of him: God would use Noah to bring the earth a kind of “rest” from the pain of human crazy-making, “sin” in Bible talk. That God didn’t call Noah “Barfly” or “Lounge-Lizard” reveals how God likes to “keep the best and leave the rest”. Sometimes he changes a person’s name in the middle of life as he did for Abram. Changing his name to Abraham signified the work God was about to accomplish through him, even though Abraham turned out to be a liar and a bumbler, just like each of us. God was making a statement.
So much for a few easy names. How about the Old Testament name “Nabal” meaning, “fool”? In 1 Samuel 25 we get a glimpse of the life of this poor loser. Who named this poor guy “Fool” anyway? His parents? Whoever gave him this name wasn’t helping his self-image much. Who could walk around with a name like that? Why didn’t he get it changed (was he a fool?)? If his parents gave him this name, it turned out to be a kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy because “Fool” is shown to be very foolish in his life choices. Which makes this very sad point: we can provoke our children to “discouragement” leading them to “wrath”—the status of an angry person. And somewhere along the line Nabal became a very wrathful man (cp. Col. 3:21 with Eph. 6:4). I can relate to Nabal very easily.
Naming and name-calling has much to do with the “fall” and the subsequent “redemption” of mankind. We name our kids also by the way we treat them. Because I was “named” (treated) in a certain way, I began to “act out” accordingly. My children have suffered and do suffer immensely because this is true. To one degree or another all four of them are acting out according to how they were treated and in their own scripted way. But, more on this later.
One morning, I was having breakfast with my friend Doug, a gay person for whom relationship is most difficult. Doug knows that I am also an emotional cripple, but he also knows I am able to wrap myself around the cultural blanket of social sanctity and acceptance, being married and all. I am defined by the conventionality of my family life. Doug realizes we can’t “hear”—recognize—our real name yet spoken to us by God—too many layers of defense, denial and other nonsense, accumulated over many years of living in a world full of the nonsense of “sin”. So only God knows our name. We can claim to know our real name as we control, connive and manipulate our way through life. But the fact is, only God knows, and he will have to grow us into a place where we can hear (recognize) our real name. Our God-spoken name from the beginning was prophetic in nature and therefore must surely come to pass.
My wife, Sally—not her real name—for many years has wanted to hear God speak her name to her. There were problems with her name from the beginning. Her father was away at war when Sally was born and Sally’s mother named her Sarah Anne Dow. I really like that name. Her father came home from the war and insisted on adding “Jo” as an additional name, making “Sarah Jo Ann Dow.” There was even confusion about how her name appeared on the birth certificate. Sally’s nickname stuck which she doesn’t much care for, preferring “Sarah.”
Sally believes that, fundamentally, every one on earth craves to know the real name that God gave us from the beginning, though most of us are not in touch with this need/name. Just as each of us has a unique name, we each have a unique “wound”. The good news is that to each of us God has already spoken our name even as he is the only one who can heal our wound. What God speaks never comes back to him without failing to accomplish what he intends (Isaiah 55:11). It is good news to know that God has spoken the real name of every person who ever lived: “I have spoken it; I will also bring it to pass, I have purposed it; I will also do it” (Isaiah 46:11). How will he pull this off? I don’t know. But that it will happen is as sure as the heavens and earth were spoken into existence. Somehow he is going to take from us “the names of the Baals, and they shall be remembered by their name no more” (Hosea 2:16).