Category Archives: Spirituality

It’s My Parents’ Fault

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Suffice to say, my personal life has gotten significantly more difficult of late. Obviously, this isn’t the time or place for any details. Just know, as your humble blogger, I am “compartmentalizing” these days.

The GalPal wants me to find a therapist to help make things less difficult. I know lots of people who are benefitting from therapy, and intellectually I am definitely pro-therapy, but when push comes to shove, I am Resistant to seek the help of a mental health counselor myself.

Not only am I pro-therapy, I believe our well-being depends largely on the quality of our closest interpersonal relationships, and those relationships depend largely on our willingness to be vulnerable about our inner lives.

The gender stereotype that males think and talk almost exclusively about tangible objects—whether news, weather, or sports, okay maybe cars too—doesn’t apply to me. I’m always thinking about deeper things than just how bad UCLA men’s basketball is this year.* What to do with the nearly constant deeper inner dialogue, that is the question.

Two imperfect answers spring to mind. The first was modeled by a friend a week ago when he asked if we could talk. He suggested a bike ride, and despite the frigid temps, of course I was in. Looping FishTrap Loop shoulder to shoulder, I initiated, “So, what’s up?” “It’s a long story,” he started, but really it wasn’t. It was a very good talk/ride and I’d like to think he felt better afterwards.

What’s imperfect about that? With occasional exceptions like the one just described, my closest friends, being of the male persuasion, aren’t as adept as women at talking about their feelings. As a result, it’s rare for a male friend to genuinely ask, “So, what’s up?” Could I take more initiative with my friends in digging deeper into “real” life? Fo sho.

In theory, writing could be a helpful outlet too. That is, if I could figure out the endlessly convoluted privacy concerns of those nearest and dearest to me. Which I can’t. And before you suggest it, journaling ain’t the answer, because that’s just a more visible form of the inner dialogue.

So, given those limitations, why not just “do” therapy? Asked differently, what the hell is wrong with me, that I’m so resistant to “professional” help?

I’ve been mulling that around and around.

What I’ve concluded is that the Good Wife doesn’t fully appreciate just how much I am a product of my parents’ “too extreme for their own good” intense independence. Both my mom and my dad grew up without much, during the Depression, in eastern Montana. When my dad died, his obituary was in the New York Times. Individually and together, they developed resilient, “grin and bare it” approaches to life that worked for them.

Mostly. Better for my dad than my mom who would have benefitted greatly from therapy after my dad’s death, from which she never really recovered.

Again though, that knowledge of how helpful therapy can be is overridden by my parents’ modeling which was rooted in the brutal conditions of eastern Montana in the 1930’s. Suffering was synonymous with living. You just endure it, in whatever form it takes.

Asking me to just dial up a therapist feels like asking me to break from my past and my people, to defy my DNA. Despite all the decades, I am still of eastern Montana, still of Don Byrnes, still of Carol Byrnes, still of believing that I must grin and bare it mostly alone.

For better, or more likely, for worse.

*thank goodness for the women

The Church Is Up Against It

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Post pandemic congregants not returning to the pews. Evangelicals under Orange Jesus’s spell. Secularism running amok.

As if that’s not enough Oregon spanked Liberty 45-6 in the Fiesta Bowl. Add to that, today’s ESPN headline, “Grambling women beat College of Biblical Studies 159-18”.*

Don’t be surprised if historians point to the College of Biblical Studies loss as the church’s low point.

*Reminds me of one of the youngest’s middle school basketball games, which her team lost 49-7. “Dad,” she said afterwards, “we lost by the square root!”

The Only New Year’s Resolution You Need

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Because I’m amazing, this time of year I provide an amazing service to family and friends. I assign personalized New Year’s Resolutions. Even if they don’t always show it, I know, deep down, my family loves off-loading the resolution making to me! Here’s just one example of my genius. This is the year The GalPal is going to load the dishwasher from back to front.

This year I’m streamlining things and providing the only New Year’s resolution you need. Repeat after me, “I hereby resolve to not let an artificial moment in time make me feel like I’m not enough. Next year, I will not lose any weight, I will not save more money, and I will not exercise more. Instead, I will strive to change one thing about me. To be more accepting of my unique self, including all my imperfections, and to practice self-compassion.”

You’re welcome.

The Big Question In Retirement

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Who am I now that I’m not working? That’s the question Stephen Kreider Yoder, 66, and Karen Kreider Yoder, 67, reflect on in this Wall Street Journal essay.

Karen writes:

“I no longer have the career that was the dominant part of my identity. Instead, I have a many-faceted identity.

Sure, there are mornings when I feel melancholy, often when the coming day feels unstructured or without purpose. On rare occasions, I stay in my pajamas all morning and wish I were back to my routine of setting off before dawn by bike to the ferry, across the San Francisco Bay and back on the bike for the last leg to the university. It was an invigorating commute, and I had heady work building a department that made an impact in the community.

But the pressure and the stress? The sleepless nights preparing for meetings and classes? I am happy to have left that behind, and the place it had in my identity. Now, if I’m not satisfied with my day, it’s my own fault.”

I wonder though, is it her own fault?

I’m struck by the limited opportunities for retired peeps to share their unique skills and work/life experiences, insights, and wisdom. A cynical view would be that “society” just doesn’t care. That it has an ageist, “thank you for coming”, perspective.

Sure, retired people can volunteer for any number of non-profits, and some create “encore” careers, but for the vast majority it’s not easy to find the right fit. To be able to make similar contributions as they did when working, just in significantly less time, and with less stress.

I wonder if I happened onto a large part of the answer when I entered the crib last Saturday afternoon. The GalPal had just finished tutoring a recently retired lawyer-friend who is learning Spanish. Afterwards, she said she felt a sense of purpose that is decidedly more elusive in her post-teaching life.

I wonder. If for retired people struggling with their new, post paid work identities, the answer may be informal small groups where each participant contributes a unique skill.

Which leaves me wondering. How might we facilitate more grass roots, retirement, purpose making?

‘Financial Crossroads’

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The pastor just wrote. Said, “We are at a financial crossroads in this journey of Good Shepherd’s renewal.”

But Good Shepherd has had serious budget issues for ten years so I’m not sure that’s the correct metaphor.

Churches, schools, and other non-profits often get used to perpetual budget crises. And struggle to step back and take a wide-angle view of what to let go of given economic scarcity.

Can You Explain This To Me?

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A few days ago I was cycling southbound on the Chehalis Western Trail (CWT), a gem of Thurston County public infrastructure. And thanks to attentive parents, I successfully dodged a few 3 year-oldish riders on those amazingly small bikes that darn near enable babies to ride home from the hospital under their own power.

And I wondered what would it be like to be three years-old, to live through the 21st Century and check out sometime in the 2100’s? On the surface, probably pretty great since technology and medical advances continue to amaze and you don’t have to go the Department of Motor Vehicles in person anymore. And some of us don’t have to go to gas stations. And global poverty is way down. And despite Fox News propaganda, crime is down. And despite serious income inequality and low savings rates, people can find jobs and the economy is resilient.

And yet.

I wouldn’t want to be my tiny CWT cycling friends because if I had to capture the current zeitgeist in one word it’s “sad”. Despite continuing substantive improvements to our quality of life, a critical mass of people in the (dis)United States seem, for lack of a better term, sad. Why is that?

And why don’t I know the answers to that. Does my multi-layered privilege blind me? Short answer, of course.

I don’t think I’ll beat myself up for not knowing, because as I tell my students, “It’s okay to not be okay. And it’s okay to be okay.” Still, I would like to better understand why you are sad or why people you know well are sad. Is it as simple as the rent is too damn high or is it climate anxiety or is the answer more abstract, philosophical, even spiritual?

If you accept my premise, that we’re in the grips of a wave of sadness that shows no signs of abating, please enlighten me as to why. Thank you in advance.

When The Big Church Eats The Little Church

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In the business world, “mergers and acquisitions” is a common phenomenon. Larger, better financed businesses regularly purchase and subsume more vulnerable ones. Now, according to this article, we’re entering a church “M&A” era where larger, younger churches are taking over much smaller, older ones.

The crux of the issue is that “The average Christian congregation in the U.S. is in precipitous decline, with just 65 members, about a third of whom are age 65 or older, according to a 2020 pre-pandemic survey.” Our local Lutheran congregation has approximately 150 members, about two-thirds of whom are age 65 or older.

Given the declining number of people attending church, should we assume collective spiritual longing has ebbed? Have we, for whatever reasons, become more materialistic, more secular, more Western European and Scandinavian?

The aforementioned National Public Radio article makes me think not. It suggests that young adults still find existential questions just as compelling as previous generations. It’s just that they want more vibrant spiritual experiences.

Here’s the conundrum. The 65+ crowd is holding tight to church traditions that are familiar and comforting to them. Like old hymns, and in the case of many Lutheran churches, Norwegian jokes. Traditions that unwittingly create distance between those on the “inside” of the tradition and those left “outside” them. Thus, leaving the older, smaller churches less diverse with respect to age, ethnicity, class, and life experience more generally. Which makes them even less welcoming to younger seekers.

I guess we shouldn’t be surprised that we’re in the process of having far fewer, albeit larger churches. Why should churches be any different than big box stores or airlines or mega-tech companies or any other sector of our economy where we’ve seen constant consolidation to the point where dated anti-trust laws are proving inept.

The challenge for the new, larger churches will be creating somewhat diverse, close-knit communities within their larger congregations. Communities within their community where people make friends, are known, and genuinely connect with a small group of people that are somewhat different than them.

The Southern Baptist Convention Is Long On Misogyny

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In today’s Wall Street Journal there’s an essay titled “The Competition for Believers in Africa is Transforming Christianity and Islam.”

Here’s how it begins:

“On a recent Sunday morning in Lagos, Nigeria’s biggest city, members of the faithful clutched their hymn books and chanted God’s praises as they danced to the beat of tambourines. A preacher led the congregation in praying for the health of their children and success at work.

The service resembled Pentecostal Christianity, a movement that originated in the U.S. and has swept Africa in the last few decades. But the participants weren’t Christians. They were Muslims, practicing an ecstatic style of worship that has developed in response to the challenge posed by Pentecostalism. Across sub-Saharan Africa, religion today is in ferment as different versions of Christianity and Islam vie for believers—a contest that is transforming both faiths and disrupting long-established terms of coexistence.”

If one accepts the premise that world religions are in a competition of sorts, maybe it also makes sense to think of Christian denominations as being in a type of competition. If you’re a pastor, how do you get people to attend your church and not those that are closer?

And if you’re Southern Baptist, how do you get people who believe men and women are created equal, are of equal intellect, work equally hard, and are at least as good leaders, to attend your church when your denomination explicitly excludes women from leadership?

A quick google search for “What do Baptist believe about women’s role?” produces this gem:

“Southern Baptists believe that God created man first, then woman; consequently, this sequence renders women subordinate to men, and undeserving of authority or leadership over them.”

How convenient for the patriarchy.

Banking their future on gender inequality, the Southern Baptist Convention is long on misogyny. Imagine the New York Times trying to compete against the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times with only male reporters. Or imagine Microsoft trying to compete against Meta and Apple with only male software engineers. Or imagine an all-male publishing house or independent bookstore competing against ones with equal numbers of smart, capable, hardworking women. Similarly, fill in the blanks for any public sector organization seeking to maximize their contribution to the common good.

I understand why so many SBC men buy into and promote the male superiority paradigm, but I don’t understand at all how so many SBC women passively accept the related conclusion, that they are inferior.

Rise up SBC women. The future of your denomination depends upon it.