Terrible Freedom

The first seventeen verses of the opening chapter of the Gospel of Matthew seem like a bad way to start a good story. There, Matthew gives us a genealogy of Jesus--dozens of names recited without color or commentary. I have often wondered how many new readers of the gospels we lose before the end of this first chapter.

A little background helps with the tedium. Students of the Hebrew Bible will recognize that the list includes kings and commoners, men and women, heroes and minor villains, the famous and the obscure. But, even if you know the players, it does not make for exciting reading for most of us.

And yet something important must be going on here. So commentators have identified a variety of compelling reasons Matthew may have begun his narrative this way.

They point out that through this genealogy Matthew, the most Jewish of the gospel writers, links Jesus to numerous titans of the faith, such as Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Ruth, Solomon, and, of course, David.

They note that the line of descent underscores a mathematical continuity within God's plan: fourteen generations from Abraham to David, and from David to the deportation to Babylon, and from the deportation to the birth of Jesus. Fourteen holds a special meaning because it is the numerical value of David's name in Hebrew and because the number seven is charged with symbolic significance. Still, this continuity is not without its problems since Matthew has to leave a few ancestors out in order to get the math to work.

Commentators also observe that Matthew uses this genealogy to set the stage, to give us a sense of historical momentum, to signal the working out of a grand, unfolding plan--the grandest of all plans throughout all of time.

This is a familiar literary device--beginning a story by using the past to tell us something about where the narrative starts and where it will go.

The great author Gabriel Garcia Marquez commences his novel One Hundred Years of Solitude this way, with one of the most famous sentences in all of literature: "Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice."

The device taps into a truth we all know and experience: where we come from matters. It matters to the now. It matters to the next.

We find this truth in William Faulkner's wry statement that "The past is never dead. It's not even past" and in Fitzgerald's closing remark that we are like boats against a current, borne "ceaselessly back into our past." And endless everyday canards and banalities remind us of it. As we all know, objects in the rear view mirror are closer than they appear.

But, in the gospel that follows this introduction, Jesus's lineage ends up playing a puzzling and not always consistent role.

Of course, the narrator continues to allude to Jesus's connection with David. But almost all of the other names fall away. And members of Jesus's community seem to have little interest in any part of his past, except to the extent that they question how the son of a local carpenter could make any credible claim to messianic status. As saviors of humankind go, they muse, it does not seem like much of a resume.

And the words and actions of Jesus himself seem stunningly dismissive of his immediate and distant family connections. When he is told that his mother and brothers are waiting outside to talk to him he asks "Who is my mother and who are my brothers?" He then points to his disciples and declares that his family consists of those who do God's will. And when the Pharisees and Sadducees invoke Abraham as a source of their authority Jesus replies: "Do not presume to say to yourselves 'We have Abraham as our ancestor.' (Something Matthew has told us Jesus could himself say in the most literal sense.) I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham."

Reasonable people can differ about how we should interpret this tension within the text--on one hand, pulling us toward the past and signaling the importance of lineage, on the other hand, severing the connection to the past and stressing the importance of the individual and how he or she lives here, now, at this very moment. We can fairly conclude that the text leaves us room to find truth in both of these messages--as I think it does and as I think we do. But it is the latter message that probably keeps us up at night.

After all, a message that frees us from our past also pulls us in conflicting directions. The message liberates us, allowing us to cast off burdens and baggage that could slow us down or crush us as we journey through the complexities of life. But the message also challenges us, making clear our dreadfully personal responsibility for our own decisions and our own behaviors and our own willingness--or unwillingness--to be a present and palpable manifestation of God's heart and hands. The philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre did not believe in God, and yet there is an unsettling resonance between what Jesus tells us here and what Sartre meant when he declared that we are "condemned to be free." It is a glorious freedom we have; and it is a terrible freedom as well.

The question of how we use and manage that terrible freedom is among the central questions of our existence. We have to decide what we will allow to limit that freedom. We have to decide whether to view those claims on our freedom as limitations. We have to decide what parts of that freedom we will give to our neighbor. We have to decide whether, in the end, we can justify holding any part of it back. We have to decide whether service to others curtails our freedom--or is the very essence of it.

It would be pretty to say that our intuitions, our cultural norms, our moral philosophy, the advice of friends or family or mentors, or something else will provide us with clear and precise guidance about how to proceed in making those decisions. But it would not be true. Our untidy lives resist tidy directives. And, even when we have the evident good fortune to get one, we still have to decide whether to pay any attention to it. It falls to us to decide what we will believe, what we will do, what we will refuse to do. Period. Full stop.

If I have made this sound like a daunting, sometimes overwhelming, occasionally terrifying, and frequently lonely process, well, then, I guess I got it right. And getting it right matters here because when we delude ourselves about the terribleness of our freedom or the almost impossible nature of our task then we can convince ourselves that we don't need any help working through it. But if we honestly and unblinkingly stare at the momentous nature of our responsibility and our choices, then we will humbly realize that we need all the help we can get.

The good news--the news that follows in all the verses after those first seventeen--is that help is available to us. We can find it by looking backward to that very first parent, the one who made us free, the one who whispers to us and nudges us and sometimes even gives us a bit of a shove. This is no distant ancestor, looming in the past. This is the most imminent presence in our lives, watching how we spend the gift of our terrible freedom, helping us to see and revel in the joy of its sacred surrender.

Amen. And amen. 

In Memoriam Jim Miner

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September 18, 2015

Ann Arbor, Michigan

We gather today to honor and celebrate the life of Dr. Jim Miner.

And what a life it was: a life of accomplishment; a life of dedication; a life of deep intellectual curiosity; a life of commitment to his patients; a life of conversation—and the occasional poker game—with close friends; a life of completely fulfilled partnership with his wife, Deanna; a life of boundless pride in his three children: Kriste, Brett, and Scott.

Sigmund Freud, who Jim revered, said that: “love and work are the cornerstones of our humanness.” And in Jim Miner this prescription was fully realized.

Jim’s life was uncontestably a life of love. To say that he loved Deanna is a masterpiece of understatement. As for his children, well, he loved them almost as much as he loved bragging about them. He loved his coterie of close friends. He loved to listen—which he did with exquisite care and without judging or condemning. He loved to think. He loved his work.

Ernest Jones, one of Freud’s biographers, observed that, in Vienna, Freud’s life “consisted of little besides work” and casual observers may have had the same impression of Jim. Indeed, his passion for his work was conspicuous. That he was privileged to do so much of it at a desk right next to Deanna’s made that blessing all the greater.

His hard work led him to great heights. Born in a small town in Iowa, Jim became a distinguished psychoanalytic therapist who was widely respected within his profession. Early in his career, he served on the faculty of the University of Michigan Department of Psychiatry. Jim’s tireless dedication to his work is evidenced by the fact that, at the time of his passing, he was still seeing patients.

But, like all interesting people, Jim was complicated and he was anything but one-dimensional. Indeed, when you consider the breadth and variety of Jim’s gifts and achievements it seems difficult to believe we are talking about only one man.

He was an athlete: a football player from the fourth grade through high school, where he helped his team win a state championship; then an avid runner; then a competitive tennis player. As I understand it, the only sport at which Jim did not excel was sailing catamarans, at which he was apparently somewhat dangerous.

As was characteristic of Jim, he was not just a participant in sport—he was a student of it. Over the years, he brought under his command vast stores of statistics, particularly about football. Of course, the dazzling memory that he enjoyed throughout most of his life helped him retain all of this information, but the exercise was not about accumulating data—it was about achieving a deep familiarity with and understanding of a subject. That is what Jim did, in every dimension and aspect of his life: he sought to understand.

While we are on this theme of sport, we should of course acknowledge Jim’s zeal for Michigan football. Zeal might seem like a strange word for a man who so often presented as elegant, distinguished, thoughtful, perhaps a bit reserved and removed from the crowd. But make no mistake about it: Jim was maize and blue, through and through.

Who but a died-in-the-wool Wolverine fan would move heaven and earth to buy the house that had once been owned by Fielding Yost, Michigan’s football coach in the early part of the twentieth century? If you do not understand why this meant so much to Jim then let me point out—as I think a disciple of sports statistics like Jim would want me to do—that while at Michigan Yost won six national championships and went 165-29-10 and that his famed “point-a-minute squad” outscored their opponents by 2,821 to 42. Those were the days.

But subjects other than work and sports piqued Jim’s interest as well. He was fascinated by ancient history and when he and Deanna traveled to Rome he spent hours wandering in the Forum and the ruins. When I met with Deanna to talk about our service today she brought with her Jim’s latest excursion into the topic: a thick, intimidating looking treatise on ancient history, marked where he had finished his reading the previous day.

We can imagine Jim working his way through that book, asking the questions that intrigued him throughout his life. How do people behave? Why do they do it? What is to be learned from it? In his eighty-first year, Jim’s curiosity about these issues was no less keen than it had been in every prior year.

Jim also had the spirit of a naturalist, perhaps instilled in him during his childhood years attending a summer camp in Minnesota. He knew a great deal about trees and wildflowers and the natural world. But he was particularly fascinated by birds and could identify countless species by their calls and songs. And, of course, because Jim did not just care about everything that interested him, but also cared for everything (and everyone) that interested him, he and Deanna set up twelve feeding stations in their backyard. It is safe to say that no bird that was ever observed and studied by Jim Miner went away from the experience hungry.

I do not mean to suggest by all of this celebration that Jim’s life was without its challenges. His eighty-one years brought him many battles and he came perilously close to losing some of them. He was revived after drowning while swimming; Scott saved him during a critical cardiac incident; the list goes on and on. On a remarkable multitude of occasions, death took Jim by the arm and started to lead him away. And, yet, over and over again Jim managed to slip from its grasp and to stay with us, to have another morning to hear the birds sing, to have another afternoon to watch football, to have another evening to read, and think, and wonder.

Indeed, Jim evaded death so many times that we could not be blamed if we had come to think of him as indestructible. Resilient people do this to us—they persuade us though their tenacity that they will be with us forever. And here’s the thing: it turns out that it’s true.

Jim remains with us in the lessons that his life conveys. Love what you do. Work hard. Think deeply. Set high standards. Be professional in your endeavors. Take time to play. When you become interested in something, learn as much as you can about it. Listen closely. Try to understand people—even those people, especially those people, who no one else understands. Be one with your partner. Help your children achieve—and then tell everyone about it whenever and wherever you can. Do not forget to pay attention to the wildflowers and the birds.

Today we celebrate the remarkable life that Jim Miner made out of his time on earth. But, of course, we also grieve. We do not grieve for him: he passed from this life peacefully, he is at rest, his worries are behind him, his anxieties are extinguished, he fulfilled so much of what he sought to do. Rather, we grieve for ourselves and for those times when we will feel his absence.

But I suspect that in the days, and weeks, and months, and years that come we will more frequently feel his presence. We will continue to experience his influence. We will continue to hear his voice. We will continue to talk to him—not just as if he were beside us, but as if he were inside us, because, of course, he is. He is in our hearts and our minds and our memories, where he had already lived for so long, and where he will stay.

When I met with Deanna on Wednesday I asked her: “Where do you think you will feel Jim’s presence most?” And she said: “Wherever the birds are.” Yes, that’s it, exactly—because the birds are all around us, now, and forever more.

*

I would like to close our service by reading to you from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s famous definition of success. In the last few days, as I have pondered Jim’s life, it has struck me that this fits perfectly with how he lived, and why everyone here loved and admired him:

“[T]o win the respect of intelligent people
and [the] affection of children;
to appreciate beauty, to find the best
in others; to leave the world a bit
better, whether by a healthy child
a garden patch or a redeemed
social condition; to know even
one life has breathed easier because
you have lived. This is to have
succeeded.”

Thank you, Jim, for the respect you earned from your colleagues and friends; for the deep affection you inspired in your wonderful wife and children; for finding the beauty in wildflowers and birds and ancient ruins and the complexities of human behavior; for helping your patients breathe easier; for leaving our world better.  

Your memory is a blessing to us all.

In Memoriam Elizabeth Amato (1915-2015)

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A eulogy delivered on Saturday, July 18, 2015 at St. Jude the Apostle Church, North Tonawanda, New York

Good afternoon. For those of you I have not met, my name is Len Niehoff and I have the honor of being married to Bob and Sally Guido’s daughter, Lisa, one of the many grandchildren of our beloved Elizabeth Amici Guido Amato, whose life we celebrate today.

I want to begin by acknowledging Teddy and her family for all that they did to care for Liz, particularly toward the end of her time with us. You were blessed to have her in your life. She was blessed to have you in hers.

Now, with all of these children and grandchildren and long-time friends present, you may wonder why I, of all people, am delivering the eulogy and the truth is that I’m not entirely sure. Many years ago, Liz asked me if I’d do it and of course I agreed although I didn’t quite understand the request. She confirmed it with me later, almost every time she saw me, and so here I am, because, as you know, Liz’s spirit was and remains an irresistible force of nature.

As you also know, Liz had a splendid sense of humor so maybe this was her last great practical joke on me and on all of you. But I hope not and I don’t think so. I think she may have been on to something when she asked me to do this. I’ll return to that possibility later.

Like many of you, I was present just a few months ago when we gathered to celebrate Liz’s one-hundredth birthday. Given the occasion, there was a great deal of talk about the sheer length of her life. This is understandable: one hundred years is a long time for any human being to spend on planet earth.

In fact, one hundred years is so long that it may be hard to grasp except as abstraction. I thought a little hard data might help with that. So here we go.

Liz was born in 1915—as were Billie Holliday and Frank Sinatra. When Liz was 18, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was still in his first 100 days as President. Liz’s life spanned seventeen Presidents, more than a third of the total forty-four.

Just about every major upheaval in the twentieth century occurred during Liz’s lifetime: both World Wars, the Russian Revolution, the Chinese Revolution, the Great Depression, the Korean War, the Vietnamese War, the wars in the Middle East, the end of apartheid in South Africa, the raising—and the disassembling—of the Berlin Wall, the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and the terrorist attacks of 911.

Her life included many things we take for granted now but that must have seemed miraculous then: the first motion picture, the first Disney cartoon, the first television show, the first Elvis and Beatles concerts, the first computers, the birth of the Internet, Lindbergh’s flight across the Atlantic, Neil Armstrong’s walk on the moon, and the recent missions to mars.

She witnessed lots of change for the better: the passage of child labor laws and the civil rights laws, Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier in major league baseball, the development of vaccines for tuberculosis and polio, the discovery of penicillin, and the constitutional amendment that gave Liz the right to vote. It is a good thing that got worked out because if they hadn’t given her the right I’m quite sure she would have taken it.

But if none of that gets your attention, then try this. If we think of our country as becoming a sovereign nation in 1787 with the ratification of the Constitution, then the life of Elizabeth Amici Guido Amato encompassed almost 44% of the history of the United States of America. Let me say that again: Liz’s life encompassed roughly 44% of our nation’s entire history.

That is a long life, indeed. And Liz was fortunate to share much of that life with her beloved sisters. There was Lucy, who Liz adored and who passed from this life to the next in her late seventies. There was Susie, who, like Liz, left us at age 100. And of course there is Gerry, who we are honored and delighted to have with us here today. I’d invite you to pause for a second to notice something that few, if any, other families could say: from these four women of this single generation, you have been blessed with more than 370 collective years of love, affection, care, and memory. It is a remarkable and singular gift you have all been given.

 When I was thinking about Liz’s life in preparation for today I remembered a sermon that Dr. King delivered in 1960. It is one of his most famous sermons, and it is called “The Three Dimensions of a Complete Life.” I think it offers some insight into why Liz’s life was so rich and complete, why she has been and will continue to be such a powerful influence on all of us, and why although she may have passed from our midst she will never pass from our hearts and minds.

In that sermon, Dr. King said that a complete and fulfilled life has three dimensions: length, breadth, and height.

Now, Dr. King did not mean length in the same way I’ve been using it. In his view, the length of life was not measured by its duration. Rather, he thought the length of life was measured by how well you developed yourself as a human being in the time you had and despite the obstacles you faced. Liz had a very long life in this sense as well.

Let’s talk for a moment about all of the challenges that might have prevented Liz from having a happy and fulfilled life. It is a daunting list. Indeed, it makes me feel pretty wimpy in comparison.

As I noted, Liz was born into a world in which women did not even have the vote—and where the idea that a woman might have a career was almost unthinkable. But circumstances pressed Liz to seek out opportunities and she secured a real estate license and became a successful broker. She must have been incredibly gifted at this—I suspect she could sell just about anyone just about anything—and I’m confident that if I had know her during this period she would have committed me to buying a bungalow in North Tonawanda instead of delivering this eulogy.

Along the way, Liz faced more than her share of troubles and concerns. In the early going, finances were tight. Over the years, she had bouts with life-threatening illnesses. Liz faced those problems bravely and never allowed them to define her.  

But Liz did not just face challenges—she faced tragedy. While Liz was still a child, her mother and infant brother perished during a flue epidemic. She watched her husbands Michael Guido and Jim Amato slip through her fingers and pass from this life to the next. She lost her beloved son, Michael, and treasured grandchild, Karen, long before anyone would have expected their time to come.

I suspect that psychologists would say that the most traumatizing experiences you can have in life are to lose a parent while you a still a child, to lose a spouse, to lose a son or daughter, and to lose a grandchild. If, as a result of all of these tragedies, Liz had become inconsolable, withdrawn, and bitter who among us would not understand?

But through all of this Liz sustained an indomitable spirit, a relentless passion for life, a dazzling resilience, and a restless intellectual curiosity. She and Jim Amato traveled the world, bringing back treats and tchotchkes for her grandchildren. Lisa tells me she has a distinct memory of purses made from coconuts that came back from Mexico. She hosted every family holiday party—and, as far as I can tell, fed just about everyone who ever showed up at her doorstep.

She learned American Sign Language because someone she loved knew it. She bowled and golfed. I am told that she played bingo in a way that seemed more intent on extending the game and giving her more time with her pals than it was on victory. At her birthday party one of the men who hosted the events she attended told me “I would go over to her and look at her card and say 'Liz you have a bingo!' And she wouldn’t care.”

She had a glorious—and sometimes randy—sense of humor and, well, enjoyed reading slightly racy novels. I remember when I first met Liz. She was in her eighties. Lisa had told me about her grandmother’s fondness for steamy romance books. I didn’t believe it until I saw a large stack of bodice-rippers occupying a corner of her TV room.

But, of course, Liz would tell you that her greatest source of joy and pride and delight was her family. And what a family it is. Look around you and do the math with me. Five children, fourteen grandchildren, twenty-three great-grandchildren, and six great-great-grandchildren. The numbers are so vast that I understand the family had a little difficulty figuring out whether they were correct, so I apologize if I’ve missed a half-dozen people here or there.

In any event, we know that Liz never lost track of any of you. Each and every one of you has a special place in her heart—and I do mean “has,” not “had.” A heart as big as hers may be forced to relocate, but it doesn’t leave. And it will never leave you. Not. Ever.

I suspect that this may be the reason Liz asked me to do the eulogy—precisely because I am not one of the vast numbers of children and grandchildren and great grandchildren and so on. As a bit of an outsider, I had the opportunity to hear Liz talk about all of you and (always) brag about all of you.

According to Liz, you’re quite an amazing bunch: brilliant, handsome, beautiful, successful, resourceful, kind, and so on. This is how she saw all of you, with all your gifts but also in your humanness and, let’s be candid, your imperfections. She adored you, and adores you still, and (even if indirectly) that's what she told me, and I think it’s what she wanted me to tell you.

Well, in that sermon Dr. King said that we measure the breadth of our life by reference to our concern for the welfare of others. Liz certainly led a full and complete life by this measure, too. Indeed, her generosity toward her family is not just famous—it is notorious. I suspect that any of us who ever brought a child to Liz’s home later discovered that Liz had stuffed cash into one of his or her pockets when no one was looking.

I remember—as I’m sure many of you do—sitting at the table and watching Jim Amato shake his head and say: “If I didn’t stop her she’d give it all away and we’d be penniless.” More than once I remember Liz flashing her beaming smile, shrugging, and admitting that it was probably true.

But I’ve always thought that the best indicator of her generosity and care for others were the phrases you heard her say over and over again when you were in her home. “Can I get you something?” “What would you like?” “What do you need?” “What do you need?” It did not take me long to figure out that the answer “Oh, nothing, thank you” was not acceptable and would not terminate the chain of inquiry. You see, Liz had a special insight. She understood that, actually, you did need something. You needed one person—at least one person in your life—who would always be asking you what you needed, even when you said you didn’t need a thing.

And that brings us to the final dimension of the fulfilled and complete life that Dr. King described—height. A complete life, he maintained, needs to reach skyward. It needs to stretch up toward that great and divine mystery that brought Liz into this world and that now holds her in its everlasting arms. A complete life, Dr. King argued, needs to include a relationship with God and to be an expression of God.

In this respect, Liz’s life had height enough to touch the heavens. The great theologian Martin Buber said: “One eats in holiness, tastes the taste of food in holiness, and the table becomes an altar.” Liz got this. Liz understood that when she welcomed us into her house, when she gathered us around her table, when she fed us and gave us wine, when she talked with us and joked with us and asked us what we needed, when she filled us with that abundance that came out of her kitchen and wrapped us in that abundance that came out of her generosity of spirit, this, this, was a sacred and a holy act.

And heaven only knows—and I mean that literally—how many times she did it. The gospels tell us that Jesus fed thousands. I wonder whether, when Liz met Him on Sunday, she asked if they could compare numbers.

Now, Liz had only one request of me with respect to this eulogy: she said “Len, please, don’t just talk about my meatballs.” And I’ve kept that promise. I’ve talked about lots of other things instead.

But … but I will close by saying this. I believe in a loving and gracious God. I believe the circle is, and will be, unbroken. I believe that Liz is here, living within us. I believe that Liz is there, reunited with those she has lost and waiting for each of us when our time comes to join her. I believe in heaven. And I believe that heaven cannot possibly be heaven unless all of us can have at least one more plate of meatballs with Elizabeth Amici Guido Amato.

         Will you please say “amen” with me? Amen.