A Measured Life

So what do you think it means to live 'a measured life'?  I've heard this said about people I know....not know well, mind you....but acquaintances. It sounds stingy to me. The image I get is one of a Scrooge-like person, barely opening a change purse to pinch out a few coins. If life were a bank account, they'd have millions saved but offer little in return. I see a scale where their heart should be. And what, exactly is the measure?  Is it a cup? A teaspoon? A tablespoon? A bushel?  Is love and compassion ladled out in measured doses? When I'm laid out in that box, the last thing I want people to say about me is that I lived a measured life.  I want them to say that I overflowed with love. That laughter with me was like a waterfall. That the dinners I cooked filled the belly and the soul. That my friends and family never felt hemmed in with me, or limited by boundaries of time or distance.  Now that I think about it, I don't usually "measure" anything. When I cook, I add a little bit of this and a lot of that. When I put a picture on the wall, I don't measure the exact distance from corner to corner to make sure the artwork is centered just so.  I don't balance my checkbook. I've never been a big fan of math. Maybe because it's measured. One right answer. Show your work. Equations. Story problems (yikes!).  Not much room for imagination or coloring outside the lines there.  My life is messy. Different segments of my life spill over into others. Sometimes I let my emotions get the better of me. I cry at Hallmark commercials. I yelp at the movies when something unexpected happens. I am not great at time management (there's that measurement thing again!). Let's put it this way: If I were a Star Trek character, I definitely wouldn't be Mr. Spock. So when I hear a description of someone's life as being measured, it makes me want to run over and muss their hair, yank their tie until it's askew, untie their shoe laces, or tickle them until they squeal.  If you're standing in line at the grocery store some day, looking all serious and counting out your pennies from your little change purse, don't be surprised if a short, middle-aged Italian woman reaches over and flicks your nose. It's just me trying to measure up.

I Can't Hear You

I recently signed up for and began receiving a Quote of the Day from The Frederick Buechner Center's website. Years ago, a very dear friend of mine wrote down the words of a famous Buechner quote that inspire me to this very day. The quote is,  'The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet.'  I just sat here and re-read those words three times.  It knocks me out. I feel those words in my soul. They really speak to me and I hear them.  Every time.  So today, my Quote of the Day was about words (a passage originally published in Buechner's book, Now and Then). Buechner begins by saying that words 'get tired and stale the way people do.'  This is especially true, he says, of religious words.  Buechner uses "blessed are the meek" as an example. We've become so used to those words that we don't really hear them any more. I rolled that thought around in my head for a while. I love The Sermon on the Mount and, at first, I disagreed with Buechner.  Those words are powerful. I still feel and hear them even though they are, in Buechner's words, 'too familiar'.  But, I was willing to go along for Buechner's ride and see where he was heading. Here's part of Buechner's point: What if, instead of saying 'blessed are the debonair' we said, 'blessed is Fred Astaire in white tie and tails' ?  Paints a picture, doesn't it?  Buechner urges us to, 'arrange the alphabet into words that are true in the sense that they are true to what you experience to be true. If you have to choose between words that mean more than what you have experienced and words that mean less, choose the ones that mean less because that way you leave room for your hearers to move around in and for yourself to move around in too.'[emphasis added]  We can all talk in platitudes and even Bible verses, but until we start talking in experiences we may be doomed to mouthing empty words and phrases. There's no room to move.....for the spirit to move.  I'd even go a little farther.  We say things such as; the meek, the homeless, the poor, the LGBT community.  Who are they?  We must put faces, experiences and names to these groups. Only then will they be real, have substance, be heard!