Morrie's Little Yellow Bird

The following poem is in tribute to Morrie Schwartz and Tuesdays with Morrie:

I wrote an earlier blog, here, on my experience watching a made for TV version of the book.

 

Written by the Panhandling Philosopher

a beggar of ideas to be shared with beggars:

 

Morrie’s Little Yellow Bird

Photo downloaded from Shutterstock

Morrie’s yellow bird flew by,

The one that tells Buddhists

If this is the day they will die

I wondered with a sigh

Is this the day I will die?

Little yellow bird asked “why?”

If this is the day you will die

What would you this day try

Would it be an experience?

Or say to someone good-bye?

Little bird said and if five years

Would you shed fewer tears?

Would you plan some great deed

You have always thought dear

But failed to do for time and fear?

If I said it would be twenty years

Would you imagine a long life

with all the time in the world?

Or realize that is but a few days

Far too few to coast or court strife!

Morrie’s little bird said to me

Without knowing count your days

Do first what matters if this is the day

Then make plans for a five year stay.

But don’t forget to fly beneath the rays.

Little bird sitting on my shoulder said

I must be on my way, I must fly

I began to want to sigh and cry

Then said he looking me in the eye

You’ll see me the day you die.

I said as he turned and flew away

I’ll imagine you with me each day

I’ll ask you is this the day

And if I imagine you here to stay

Then I will try to count my days.

Discovering at last Tuesdays with Morrie

Discovering a TV movie version of Tuesdays with Morrie

Written by Dan McDonald

 

            I took up blogging a couple of years ago. I suppose at times I imagine myself a worthy commentator. At times I realize I am simply someone with a computer and an access to a blogging site. The sort of blogger I would like to become is one who is honest, informed, and yearns to provide a table around which to discuss matters of life. I believe I have the talent but I am increasingly learning there is so much need to add diligence in learning the information and the art form necessary to turn that wish into reality.

            If you are an adult, that remembers the years of your childhood - you might remember how each year was monumental as if a lifetime passed before the next year made its way into your life. Then as an adult it became so amazing how the years and then the decades seem to move so quickly from a distant future imagined, to a brief present moment to be experienced to a past that has so quickly become a more distant past than we can imagine. It seems it took me forever from being born in the mid 1950's to being an adult listening to Cindy Lauper in the 1980's and such a brief moment until I heard one of her songs and was reminded that this was more than thirty years ago. It is hard to realize how the days of our lives on this side of eternity are so swiftly passing us by.

            It seemed like a couple of years ago when I thought about buying a book called Tuesdays with Morrie. It was one of those many books I passively thought I would eventually purchase and read. Recently I saw a made for TV movie version of "Tuesdays with Morrie". In my mind the book was written four or five years ago, but then I discovered that the movie had been made in 1999. The thirty-something year old Hank Azaria who played Mitch Albom was now in his fifties, and Jack Lemmon who had played the Morrie Scwartz role had passed away in 2001. The years are passing away so quickly these days.

            A made for TV movie seldom can pass for classic art. But perhaps this was the time in my life made for me to see this movie. I’ve watched it three times this week. I will with more intention determine to read the actual book. The Morrie Scwartz presented to us by Jack Lemmon would tell us that we don’t know how to live until we know how to die. We don’t do ourselves a favor by refusing to think about death or imagining it is too morbid a subject to think about. In the movie Lemmon tells us how a Buddhist imagined a little bird on his shoulder so that every morning he would ask the little bird, “Is this the day I die?” I suppose that might be a morbid practice. But on the other hand would we live so complacently if we truly realized that instead of having all the time in the world, we really understood how the years of our lives are passing us by in a blur. Would we forever put off that vacation to the natural beauty we always wanted to see? Would we continue to fail to tell that special person how much they have meant? Would we put off to another day that dream of the one accomplishment we have always wanted to do before slipping away into eternity? If the imaginary little bird were there saying to us, "Maybe today, maybe soon, maybe in twenty years, but if you thought it today what would you want to make sure you got done today? If you thought it was in five years what would you begin to do that might take five years to accomplish? Wouldn't that help you look back with joy that living that way you were able to pack in so much more that really meant something than if you had simply told yourself that lie that you have all the time in the world?" What if a little bird upon our shoulders were to tell us that in the morning?

            There were questions in the movie that ought often to be asked. There were questions like “What is wrong with being number two?” For me as a blogger I have quickly learned that I have thoughts that are read by only a few people. I receive an occasional encouraging comment but my words are not the hot topic of the day. But I like writing. So now I am moved to ask myself how I can become a better writer, a more informed writer, someone who makes better use of my medium. I will work on those things until I believe it is time for me to write no more.

A photograph of Morrie Schwartz; who helped mentor us about death and life

 

            I believe that all of us would do well to have a Morrie Schwartz sort of mentor to remind us that we can hardly begin to live without figuring out how to die. Death is there. Death is not a morbid reality – it is simply a reality. The morbid reality is that we often believe the lie that we have all the time in the world. Living complacently because of that lie is what is morbid. Morrie Schwartz had a message for us based on a W. H. Auden poem. Perhaps the whole movie revolved around these lines pulled out of an Auden poem:

            All I have is a voice to undo the folded lie, …The lie of authority whose buildings grope the sky: … No one exists alone; Hunger allows no choice to the citizen or the police; we must love one another or die.”

            There it is – we must love one another or die. In Auden’s poem and in Schwartz’s view of the life lived by having learned to die there is but one objective in life – to love one another or die. It is a simple purpose for life, but perhaps it is the only purpose comprehensive enough to fill with meaning and purpose the experiencing of every moment and event that we will experience under the created sun.

            If you have found anything in this blog worthwhile do yourself a favor and read the following article from the Boston Globe written twenty years after Morrie’s battle with ALS began to be documented in 1995, the same year in which he died in November … https://www.bostonglobe.com/lifestyle/2015/03/15/nearly-years-after-his-death-morrie-schwartz-lives/58nvyoUXyn4ykC9RPAjLUO/story.html

 

 

Why the Old Testament Matters

Why the Old Testament matters

Written by Dan McDonald

 

            The Old Testament Scriptures pose an enigma for many Christians. Within the New Testament writings we find that much of what is taught in the New Testament is treated as a fulfillment of the Old Testament. The Apostles and writers of the New Testament seek to assure early Christians that what was being believed within the Christian faith was in accordance with the Old Testament’s teachings. At the same time our New Testament writings describe the Christian as one who lives under a newer and better covenant. The Old Testament writings furthermore have some passages difficult for many Christians to accept. One can find passages commanding Israel to commit a form of genocide against its enemies. It leaves room for slaveholding. It is regarded by many as almost a wholly different kind of faith than the later, more gracious, more loving New Testament. We can of course argue how true or not true these assertions are. It is not my desire to answer all those questions, partly because I accept a few of those questions to be part of the difficulties of trying to square my understanding of Christian justice and mercy with some passages I know exist in the Old Testament. But it seems to me that it is inherent within our Christian faith to cultivate a high regard for the Old Testament Scriptures even while we struggle to understand some of the more difficult passages within the Biblical witness. In the final analysis, within my own thinking there is one reason why I must treat the Old Testament with respect and personal humility. That one reason is that the New Testament describes our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ as having a special relationship with the Old Testament Scriptures which shaped and guided his thought. This relationship of Jesus Christ with the Old Testament Scriptures has significant implications when we relate this relationship to the Christian understanding of the incarnation. A brief blog cannot flush out all these implications but perhaps we can briefly highlight the importance of the Old Testament in the life of Jesus Christ.

          As we read the Gospel accounts of the life and ministry of Jesus Christ we can discover that his understanding of everything he believed, did, and taught were connected to his understanding of the Old Testament Scriptures.

            In the Gospels we discover that when Jesus went into the wilderness to be tempted by Satan, he answered Satan’s temptations each and every time with commandments of the Holy Scriptures. If the Sermon on the Mount is the most concentrated record of what Jesus had to say to his generation it is significant that very early in the sermon he tells his audience that he had not come to destroy the Law and the Prophets but to fulfill them. The concept of fulfilling the Law and Prophets probably has a broader meaning than we might imagine. The idea of Jesus’ fulfilling the Scriptures is probably not limited to our ordinary Christian checklist of how Jesus fulfilled all the Old Testament prophecies regarding the coming of Messiah. The idea of fulfilling a passage of the Old Testament also included rightly understanding the words and teachings of the Old Testament so that our practice of the faith might be in accord with the spirit of the teaching of Holy Scriptures. This is exactly what Jesus began to do in the Sermon on the Mount. He meant to open up the meaning of the Scriptures to his hearers. He wanted them not to have a minimalistic or legalistic view of the commandments. He wanted them to see the heart of the meaning of God’s commands not the ordinary understanding that allowed us to imagine ourselves as having kept the law but instead a spiritual understanding that showed us that the path to holiness was an invitation to a life which had depths that we would spend a lifetime seeking to attain.

            Jesus at once in the Sermon on the Mount is one who shows the signs of the having given his life to have his understanding to be guided and saturated in the Scriptures of the Old Testament, and yet he speaks of the meanings of these Scriptures as one having authority rather than like the scribes and Pharisees. He shows forth Messianic authority in complete submission to being guided by the Scriptures he proclaims. This is one of the marvelous indications of the mystery of godliness understood in the Christian understanding that Christ was God revealed in human flesh. He was God in the seeming contradiction of human weakness. In relationship to the Old Testament Scriptures he was wholly submissive as a human being and in that submission he asserted the authority of divinity.

            The Wilderness temptations reveal this so well. Satan tempts Jesus by saying, “If you are the Son of God – say this, do this, etc. But Jesus responds in the fullness of his humanity by quoting the commands of God not to the Son of God, but to ordinary men and women. Jesus submits himself to the Scriptures in the fullness of his humanity. But at the end of the Wilderness tempting with Satan trying to force Jesus to do a stunt to prove his divinity, Jesus says at last “Get thee behind me Satan” and the devil left him. The power of divinity was revealed in the weakness of humanity.

            When God created man, according to the Scriptures, we were created in the image of God. That image was defiled by our fall into sin. But the reality that man was created in God’s image left a stunning possibility for what God would do in his determination to redeem our defiled humanity. For if God were to create man in his likeness that we might bear his image, then it left the possibility that God might enter into humanity and fill the image he had created with his own divine presence in the ordinary weakness of human flesh. It was in this way that the light of the world which would enlighten every man was to shine forth in Galilee of the Gentiles.

            The mystery of godliness is described in I Timothy 3:16. St. Paul writes, saying, “And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifested in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen by angels, preached among the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up in glory.” This mystery of godliness seems to indicate one final reason why the Old Testament was so important to Christ.

            The reality of his humanity is that Jesus entered into humanity as a fetus developing in his mother’s womb, birthed into human life in the weakness of infancy, growing as a toddler in stature with God and men, asking questions of the teachers at age twelve, working, laboring, and finally entering the ministry as an adult at about thirty years of age. The writer of Hebrews described how Jesus learned obedience through the things he suffered or went through. He had to learn truth and wisdom in an ordinary human life.

            We have every reason to believe that the Old Testament Scriptures proved to be a tutor to him. For even as the Law was meant to be a tutor to Israel to bring us to Christ (Galatians 3:24) the Law proved to be a tutor to Christ’s humanity to bring him into the fullness of his humanity before God and men. The great distinction between us and Christ was that our humanity was defiled and thus the law revealed our transgressions and stirred up our inner contradictions to God’s holiness. But in Christ’s undefiled humanity the Law served simply as a tutor to bring Jesus to the fullness of his humanity that was meant to bear forth the perfect image of the Living God.

            Does this mean that we are no longer to see the New Covenant as a better covenant? I believe we begin to see in Jesus how he himself realized that his life was going to transform the faith for believers who followed him. We see this in at least two ways. Jesus came to realize that the Old Covenant served multiple purposes. It guided an Israel that struggled with sin. Inasmuch as the Old Testament Scriptures governed an Israel prone to sin it was a covenant which included provisions for sin. Thus Jesus could frankly describe the reason why God permitted divorce was the hardness of hearts within Israel. It was better that the Old Testament allowed divorce than for men and women to live in unreconciled hell holes. The New Testament has some provisions for the same struggles that we have with remaining sin.

Jesus also recognized and perhaps increasingly that his ministry and his redemption meant that the boundaries of Israel in comparison with the Gentiles would be eliminated. He indicated as much to the Samaritan woman in John 4. She asked about worship whether it was in Jerusalem or Samaria and he described to her that not on this mountain or that mountain but God would be worshipped in spirit and truth in every place. In proclaiming the great commission he tore down the boundaries between Israel and the Gentiles. A new covenant was to be proclaimed from Jerusalem to Judea to Samaria to the ends of the earth.

Thus I am not saying that there are no differences between the older and newer covenants, and between the Old and New Testaments. Nevertheless because of Jesus’ own relationship to the Old Testament Scriptures let our consideration of those Scriptures be guarded in humility. I fear that all too often we bring a cavalier spirit to the pages of the Scriptures. The cavalier spirit, within us, tends to fail to submit to the Word of God as the mystery of godliness – God manifested in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen by angels, preached among the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up in glory.” We end up trivializing the Word of God rather than seeing that this Word which Jesus searched, loved, and taught is meant to guide us to him who is the light which enlightens every man and woman who comes to be influenced by that light and learns thereby to leave the darkness.