Hats . . . Is it You?

During my undergraduate studies I had an Educational Psychology professor who was well-loved by the students despite being hokey.  He claimed that hokiness from being raised on a Kansas.  His theme song for his childhood was John Denver’s song, Matthew:

 

Yes, and joy was just the thing he was raised on

Love is just the way to live and die

Gold is just a windy Kansas wheat field

And blue is just a Kansas summer sky

 

That, said Paul Welter, was the foundation of his life.

 

One of Welter’s most popular lectures was on the “hats” people wear.  He would state we all wear “hats” that we constantly change depending on the situations we are in and the people that we are with.  In those cases, we wear the hat that fits.  I suppose the point was that as individuals we are fluid. Fluid in the sense that we have many different roles and identities that make us who we are.  That we play roles.  He would go through the lecture and then drop the “big” question—which hat is really you?

 

That is a “big” question and even in my “golden years”, I’m not sure I can answer that question any more definitively than I could back then when he first posed the question.  The fact is that life is a journey and none of us are where we started—at least I hope not.  We have all grown . . . changed . . . evolved.  That is the goal of life.  To discover who we were created to be and then become the best “me” we can be.  That’s a journey . . . a trip.  For me, quoting the Grateful Dead, “What a long, strange trip it has been.”

 

Everything on our journey pieces together to make us who we are.  The words we hear spoken.  The people we encounter.  The music we listen to.  The spirituality we explore, embrace, and leave behind.  The movies we watch.  The books we read.  The politics we embrace and rail against.  The religions we explore.  The education we seek.  The relatives we encounter, idolized, ignored, and despised.  The cultures in which we live and lived.  The ethnocentricities around us.  The landscape we grew up in and live in.  The peace and the war.  The tension and the calm.  Everything pieces together like some cosmic puzzle to mold and shape us into who we are . . . and it is a journey.

 

It is a journey of a million, billion steps and decisions with each discovery we encounter.  Robert Frost equates it to being a journey through the woods upon which he comes to a fork in the road.  At that point a choice must be made . . . a decision made.  That is life—constant choices . . . constant decisions.  In that the difference is made proclaims Frost.  The wise old Yankee, Yogi Berra, said that when you come to a fork in the road, take it.  That is life—a journey of discovery.

 

Now it may look and feel like there has been a map that laid the journey before us, but reality and experience tell us differently.  We may think it is all pre-ordained by God . . . that God has it all planned out, step-by-step, but it is not!  Nope.  God leaves that up to us knowing that we are going somewhere.  Somewhere that is up to us . . . that is closer to being who we are.  God believes in us.  Maybe we should too.

 

The choices and decisions are up to us.  We pick and choose.  But with which “hat” do we do this picking and choosing?  Trust me, the “hats” influence us.  They truly do.

 

The goal of my journey has always been to be who I was created to be.  To be perfect in who I am.  Of course, in popular faith stances—Christianity in particular—that is practically a blasphemous statement.  Only Christ was perfect.  Yet that is what Jesus calls us to be—ourselves.  In being ourselves with all our strengths and weaknesses, good and bad points . . . who we are. And then accepting ourselves as we are.  If we can master that, we can master perfection.  Didn’t William Shakespeare say, “This above all: to thine own self be true . . .”

 

That is the goal.  It begins with us.  Discovering who we are.  Learning to love ourselves—all of who we are.  We begin there.  If we cannot love ourselves, then how can we ever love another?

 

That is the problem in my estimation, with the world today.  It doesn’t seem as if too many people love themselves.  Just take a gander at the world we live in—watch the news on television, listen to the radio, read the newspapers, cruise the Internet and social media.  Sure doesn’t seem like a warm cozy place we are living in.  No, far from it.  People need to learn how to love themselves so that they love others.

 

Which means we need to make the journey.  As we make the journey we need to realize that it is a “long strange trip” with lots of forks in the road calling for choices and decisions.  Choices weighed upon discernment and for no better word—prayer.  We need to weigh the voices and experiences of the past as they pull and push us.  Discern the “truth
 as we know and understand it.  Someone once said that the “truth will set you free.”

 

Self-discovery. Self-love.  It all leads to how we love ourselves and love others.  Anything less is to pay a heavy price.  This I have learned through the years.  It is a heavy price.  It could cost us our souls.

 

As individuals and as a group we must figure out which “hat” truly represents us . . . that says who we are.  I am still working towards discovering that “hat” that says “me”.  Still wading through them all, but I can honestly state that I have fewer hats than I used to have.  I am getting closer.  I guess I always knew what Dr. Welter was getting at, but I just wasn’t ready to give up my “hats”.  They were comfortable.  But life is not always about being comfortable . . . sometimes it is about wearing something new, different, and real.  They say that hindsight is 20/20!  “Love is just a way to live and die.”  That’s a hat I think we could all wear.

 

How’s your hat collection?  

Everything Has a Voice

Someone once said that “everything has a voice if we just listen.”

That’s the key . . . are we listening?

 

Theodor Seuss Geisel was an American children’s author known for his work writing and illustrating more than 60 books.  Everyone knows him as Dr. Seuss.  Before becoming a children’s book author, he was an illustrator and cartoonist—political cartoonist.  Surprisingly one of my favorite Dr. Suess books reflects the fact that he never could completely step away from the moral and political issues of his day.  The book? Horton Hears a Who.

 

Prior to World War II, during and afterwards, Geisel harbored strong anti-Japanese sentiments.  That changed after he visited post-war Japan.  After his visit he began to view the Japanese as fellow human beings worthy of acknowledgement, respect, and acceptance.  Everyone belongs.  Everyone has a voice.  If you listen, you can hear.  Horton Hears a Who is Geisel’s allegory for the United States occupation of post-war Japan.  On his visit he witnessed the atrocious aftermath of the Hiroshima bomb.  It changed his heart.  He dedicated the book to his friend: “My Great Friend, Mitsugi Nakamura of Kyoto, Japan.”

 

The story is simple.  Horton, the elephant, finds a speck of dust floating in the jungle of Nool.  Inspecting the dust speck, Horton discovers the tiny city of Who-ville and its residents.  He can hear them but cannot see them.  They are too small to see, but they can be heard.  Forming a relationship with the Who-ville mayor, Horton promises to transport the tiny city to safety.  The problem?  No one else in the jungle believes Horton and create all sorts of opposition to the point that they are about to “boil that dust speck.”  Horton pleads for them to listen.

 

The famous line from the book?

 

“A person is a person, no matter how small.”

 

We are living in a time in which the silence around us is deafening.  I doubt anyone would argue that these are not divisive times, not only in our nation but across the world.  Yet, this is not new to our times . . . it has always been across the full spectrum of history.  It is a struggle for power . . . struggle for control.  In that struggle you are either “with us or against us.”  Unfortunately, such a mindset creates huge chasms of separation and casts the “unwanted” into the shadows . . . to the outside . . . longing and wanting to be accepted and to belong . . . to be acknowledged.  They go by many names . . . the poor . . . different cultures, races, and nations other than our own . . . women . . . the disabled . . . the LGBTQIQ . . . religions other than our own . . . liberal/conservative . . . minorities . . . political parties . . . skin color . . . the naked, oppressed, imprisoned, forgotten.  Anyone who is not like us.  The intolerance of the world we live in has silenced those who have been thrown to the shadows . . . and that silence is deafening.  We are all slowly inching our way into that shadowland . . . into that silence.  We are slowly becoming the outsiders.

 

And it is not new.

 

It has always been there.

 

Remember these words written by Pastor Martin Niemoller?  His is a complicated story, and like Geisel he had a change of heart, thus these famous words written in 1947:

 

First they came for the Communists

And I did not speak out

Because I was not a Communist

Then they came for the Socialists

And I did not speak out

Because I was not a Socialist

Then they came for the trade unionists

And I did not speak out

Because I was not a trade unionist

Then they came for the Jews

And I did not speak out

Because I was not a Jew

Then they came for me

And there was no one left

To speak out for me

 

Everything has a voice if you just listen.

 

We need to listen.  That deafening silence echoes with the voices of those on the outside . . . those thrown out . . . those deemed not “worthy” . . . the expendables.  Are we listening?  There are so many voices crying out to be heard . . . and, yet, it seems that they are not being heard.  Which is a lie.  The voices are being heard.  They are being heard and ignored. 

 

Why?

 

I can’t speak for anyone else, but I will go out on a limb and venture that the silence of response is grounded in fear.  Fear that if one speaks out that he or she will be cast aside like those they are speaking for.  That in speaking and standing for those on the outside will get you ostracized as being one of those who need to be removed.  Retaliation and mudslinging is an effective tool in our day and age of silencing those who would rise up to speak for those who are not being heard.  Don’t believe it?  Check out the political world we are living in and tell me it is not true.  The silence only grows.

 

It is scary to speak up.  Ask Horton.  Again, I can not speak for everyone, nor can I speak for the “church” with a capital “C”.  I can only speak as one follower of Jesus Christ.  My understanding is that Jesus calls those who follow his ways to listen and to speak out for those who are on the outside and in the shadows.  I am not sure that the “church” with a capital “C” does that as its factions are busy trying to survive.  Yet Jesus calls those who believe in his ways to listen and speak out . . . to love . . . the outsider.  To bring them to the table and let them take their God-given place at the table no matter who they are.  That is God’s kingdom.

 

Remember Matthew 25:31-46?  It is a classic case of “were you listening” straight out of the mouth of Jesus.

 

As I have said before, this is not something new.  We probably have been dealing with this since the beginning of time.  For some reason, though, it seems worse today.  Maybe it is the innocents who are killed in the wars waged between nations and political ideologies.  Maybe it is in the political battles that are stripping human rights from those within our own families, within our own nation, laying waste to so many lives.  Maybe it is the way that those who are different are so easily disregarded and marginalized . . . thrown away.  Maybe it is the blatant downward spiral of human decency that cannot acknowledge and accept those who are different despite them all being created in the image of God. It just feels worse and the future does not look bright . . . especially those who are on the outside looking in.  And believe it or not, more of us are joining that group.

 

Everything has a voice and if we listen, we can hear.

 

And if we listen, will we respond . . . will we act?  Isn’t that the question that we need to answer?  “Prayers and thoughts” are no longer good enough.  When I hear that someone offers “prayers and thoughts”, I think that is taking the easy way out and making oneself look good in the eyes of others.  It is cop out.  If we really cared, then we should act . . . we should do something . . . speak out.  We should stand by those who are silenced and be their voice. 

 

We should not compound the silence of the world screaming out to be heard by adding our own to it.  We should speak out . . . even if it is one voice at a time.  Others will hear it and find strength to join.  Truth and love cannot be silenced.  Everyone and everything deserves to be heard . . . deserves to be accepted . . . deserves to be love . . . just as God created them.

 

God or whatever you want to call the higher power or spirit is the keeper of the table . . . not us.

 

Let us listen and hear before it is too late.  Before there is no one to hear and speak for us.