WITH - 4

For the past six months I have been working on a personal project of spiritual growth and theological understanding.  It has been on a personal sojourn to try an unlock some of the secrets of how we are made as human beings, the exact nature of God's relationship with us, some of the problems with what is going on in our American political context right now.  More broadly, what I am interested in, is what is critically wrong with Christianity as we know it in the North American context today.  And so, I have been writing a book.

The book is entitled, "With: The Transformative Power of Going With People Rather Than Against Them".  Over the next 18 weeks, I will be writing blog posts that will flesh-out aspects of this book.  I want to invite you into the conversation.  I want to get your help in writing this book.  If anything I write over the next several weeks strikes a chord with you in any way, please let me know.  If you, like me, are as interested in unlocking the secrets of God's relationship with us, then perhaps we can embark on this journey together.  What I am after is nothing short of, as Hemingway once said; "writing something true".  And so now, if you are still WITH me...here is installment #4:

***

What Is “Going With”?

What It Means Exactly…

            What does “going with” mean exactly?  According to Macmillan’s online Dictionary[i] of phrases and expressions, there are at least three different definitions of the phrase “going with” in modern American parlance.  The first definition is implies something that is provided with another thing (as in; “Does this corner office go with this job?”).  This definition mostly refers to objects rather than people, and so this usage doesn’t get to the meat of what I am attempting to do with the phrase through this book.  The second, and more common usage is general acceptance or agreement with of an idea (as in; “I’m just going to go with it”).  If you live in California where I live, you hear it all the time (“just go with it”!).  This usage gets much closer to the meaning I am attempting with this book.  The problem with this second usage is that it also carries with it the connotation of moral relatively and of, perhaps, acquiescing one’s own moral principles when one doesn’t feel comfortable doing a certain thing.  So, this second usage is insufficient as well.  The third usage is a rather antiquated term for a dating relationship (ie; “Who are you ‘going with’ this semester?”).  Even for those born of the generation when “Going with another person” meant being that person’s girlfriend or boyfriend, this final phrase usage won’t offer much help.  And, this final phrase definitely bears no meaning upon the general content of this book. 

            While the phrase “Go with” may seem a bit clunky, the trouble is that there really is no other phrase in the English lexicon which gets to the meaning and main concept of this book.  Consider this list of alternatives:

·          To be in relationship with – seems to heavy

·          To be in covenant with – seems too religious

·          To agree with – simply isn’t often the case

·          To be in alliance with – seems overly political and strategic

·          To be in community with – seems too amorphous

·          To be in friendship with – may or may not be the case

·          To be in fellowship with – feels a little “churchy”

·          To resonate with – again, may or may not be the case

·          To be committed to – seems too antiseptic and cold

·          To love – seems too non-descript and also emotionally loaded

And so, at the risk of sounding overly simplistic, we shall use the word formula “going with” throughout this book.  It is my hope as an author, that for a generation of millennials, this term simply won’t need any definition, but will be self-evident in its usage and application.  A basic definition might be this:

Going With – Moving in the same general direction as another person (emotionally, intellectually, philosophically, politically, theologically, or interpersonally) in order to gain a deeper understanding of and appreciation for that person - and to potentially have a positive transformative impact on that person’s overall wellbeing, health and livelihood.  

A Whole Book Which Is Based On One Preposition?

It would seem like an act of folly to base an entire book upon one single preposition.   With this in mind, I am reminded of the young recently graduated seminarian who, being a bit overzealous about his Greek training, said to his congregation one morning; “The word for AND in the bible is KAI.  KAI is used 41 times in the text we are looking at this morning.  So, over the next month, we will be analyzing the various uses of the word KAI and how it impacts our faith in God.”  On hearing this, an older gentleman turned to his wife in the back pew and said, “And the word ‘Farewell’ occurs just once in the text, and that is enough for me.  Come on honey, we are out of here!” 

If a case could be made for the composition of an entire book based on one single preposition, there are, it might be argued, a lot of more interesting ones to choose from than the ones that find themselves strewn throughout the pages of this book (eg: “amongst”, “considering”).  According to the English Club: The world’s premier website for learners and teacher of the English language, there are officially 150 prepositions in the English language.  Of this list there officially 94 one word prepositions (behind, by, beneath), and 56 complex prepositions (“on account of”, “along with.  Although this is the case, there is one quite unassuming preposition, composed of one vowel and three consonants which is potentially the most important word in the entire English language for understanding who God is – and what exactly our relationship with God constitutes.  That preposition is, of course, WITH.

Coupled with the active verb – GO (of which there are over two-thousand examples to choose from in the Bible[1]), creating “Go with”, the two words combine to create an entirely new meaning.

Going With is Basically What It Means to Be a Pastor

            I was on a plane recently, traveling to a foreign country to be a part of a mission trip.  And the person sitting next to me engaged me in a conversation about what I do for a living.  I always hate this question on an airplane, because my answer (that I am a pastor), either ends up in halting the conversation altogether, or developing the airplane relationship into a full blown four-hour extravaganza about faith, God and everything else.  But I gave my usual blunt, and snipped answer – “Uh, I’m a pastor.”  But then the person I was sitting next to followed up with a question that I am rarely asked; “Wow!  What is it REALLY like to be a pastor?” 

            I had to pause to answer this, but upon a few moments of reflection, I told my friend that it is basically about being WITH people, in God, through any number of life’s benchmarks.  I told him that it is about being WITH brand new couples as they are having a baby.  It is about being WITH who are exchanging vows at an altar, and it is about being WITH people as the pass, on a hospital gurney, from one life to the next.  It is about celebrating the highs in people’s lives with them (anniversaries, boat dedications, business kickoffs, neighborhood block parties), and it is about holding their hand when they experience the lows in life (divorces, the passing away of loved ones, being terminated from jobs, losing a lot of money in a financial deal). 

            As I write this, I can already hear the critics voice their opinions about that parsimonious definition of ministry, and the an-affiliated religious people marveling at the all too stultifying simplicity of that formula.  “What?  You study for three years at a seminary, learn Greek and Hebrew and history and theology, philosophy and ethics simply to learn how to go WITH other people????”  The short answer is YES.  The long answer is that, as this book will show, going with other people, especially during difficult times of life, or through difficult inter-personal experiences (enemies) is extremely hard.  Also, more theologically conservative Christians might observe that it seems a little thin to simply go with another person without offering some more didactic approach to life (some life lesson, or doctrine or theological rubric).  The more progressive voices will view the act of going with as a bit, perhaps, presumptuous and interventionist.  So, going with others will be an attempt at finding a "middle way" through all of our life challenges together.

All For Now,

GB  

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[1] The fact remains that there are more incidents of the word “Go” in the Bible than the words for “Love” and “Sin” combined – but that is a topic for a different book entirely.

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[i] macmillandictionary.com

WITH - 3

For the past six months I have been working on a personal project of spiritual growth and theological understanding.  It has been on a personal sojourn to try an unlock some of the secrets of how we are made as human beings, the exact nature of God's relationship with us, some of the problems with what is going on in our American political context right now.  More broadly, what I am interested in, is what is critically wrong with Christianity as we know it in the North American context today.  And so, I have been writing a book.

The book is entitled, "With: The Transformative Power of Going With People Rather Than Against Them".  Over the next 18 weeks, I will be writing blog posts that will flesh-out aspects of this book.  I want to invite you into the conversation.  I want to get your help in writing this book.  If anything I write over the next several weeks strikes a chord with you in any way, please let me know.  If you, like me, are as interested in unlocking the secrets of God's relationship with us, then perhaps we can embark on this journey together.  What I am after is nothing short of, as Hemingway once said; "writing something true".  And so now, if you are still WITH me...here is installment #3:

Chapter 1 – A World That Is More Often Against

“When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it.” - Henry Ford

“In life we make progress by conflict and in mental life by argument and disputation…there must be confrontation and opposition, in order that sparks may be kindled.”

Christopher Hitchens

            In 1914, in a rural farmland suburb just north of Boston, a would-be poet began to scribble on a tiny writing pad a poem that would totally encapsulate the primary conflict embedded within every human soul.  As the spring snow began to melt, and the sun beamed down in color banded rays tipped with beads of melting snow, the poem seemed to flow easily off the end of his pencil.  So easily did the poem flow, in the very forefront of a World War that was about to begin, that the author himself wondered if the poem wasn’t about the larger divisions in the world.  He wondered, more deeply, whether the words themselves didn’t represent a deep and primal human truth, that were, in fact etched into his own soul, somewhere at the beginning of time.  The poet was Robert Frost, and the poem would later be named, “The Mending Wall.” 

The poem is, of course, about a New England farmer who wakes up one day and notices, after a long and frozen winter, that the wall between his property and his neighbor’s property has fallen-down.  A tipped-over pile of rocks lays on the ground where a wall had once been.  And so, the farmer that wants his wall to be rebuilt, contacts his neighbor and asks him to come alongside him, and to help him rebuild the wall.  They can rebuild it together.  The second farmer agrees.  As the two men work through the morning, heaving one stone upon the next, one bit of mortice after the other, the first farmer, the one who finds that the wall has fallen, becomes anxious.  Maybe he has made a big mistake.  He wonders whether it is such a good idea, after-all, to have a wall between neighbors.  Maybe separation is not the key.  Maybe a division is a bad thing.  And so, he says out loud to his friend words that have found resonance within every college writing class ever since; “something there is that doesn’t like a wall.”  He repeats the line several times throughout the work on the wall; “something there is that doesn’t like a wall.”  He’s upset.  The wall isn’t sitting well with him.  For the purposes of this book, the farmer that doesn’t want the wall represents the “Going With” side of the human spectrum.  He would rather go with his neighbor than go against him.  He would rather have nothing dividing him from his neighbor’s property.  He would rather there be no wall!

In response to the first farmer’s desire not to have a wall between them, the second farmer outwardly disagrees with his friend.  We aren’t sure when the rancorous response occurs, but when it does happen, it is distinct and clear; “Good fences make good neighbors.”  Like his neighbor, he repeats the line throughout the morning, “Good fences make good neighbors”.  The second farmer wants this division, he wants a separation, he wants a demarcation between properties.  This second farmer might be considered, again for the purposes of this book, the “Going Against” side of the human spectrum.  Here are the two sides laid out in a kind of diagram:

“Something there is that doesn’t like a wall”  (With) Vs. “Good fences make good neighbors” (Against)

The tendency is to see the second farmer, the one who “Goes Against” as unfriendly, un-neighborly and particularly angry and aggressive.  But we should not fall prey to this tendency.  He just feels that boundaries are a healthy part of every human relationship.  “Good fences make good neighbors.”  The internal and external debate continues between the two farmers all morning -  the “Going With” side and the “Going Against” side.  All the while, though, and throughout the morning the wall is continually going up.  In the end, of course, the wall gets built – the “Going Against” side wins.  Amidst the ongoing protestations of the “Going With” side – “where it is we do not need a wall” – the “Going Against” side – “Good fences make good neighbors” – wins.

And so it has been down through the ages.  There have been two sides in almost every conflict and peace negotiation.  There have been two sides in almost every argument or attempt at resolution.  There have been two sides in every war, every political debate, every attempt at reconciliation.  There have been two sides within every human heart.  There has been a “Going With” side, and there has been a “Going Against” side.  This book will be about the “Going With” side.  It will attempt to show that human development and human progress are, in fact, more helped by people who “Go with” than those who “Go against.”  It will attempt to show that people do better when people go with them, than when people go against them.  It will attempt to show the transformative power of the act of tearing down of walls between people. 

However, in order to understand the totality of the conflict between both sides in this internal and external debate, this first chapter will attempt to show how strong and salient the “Going Against” side is.  It will show how the “Going Against” side is, actually, a fundamental part of our human identity, and a critical part of our human development.  Without a “Going Against” side, we would not be able to function as human beings, and our primary identities as people would not be able to form.  Some of the best examples of this theological and philosophical perspective actually come from the Bible.

Consider, for a moment, this vignette from the first century in the country of Israel.  Here is the story of one, John the Baptist, a man who stood against all the things that ever stood against him…

All For Now,

GB

WITH - 2

For the past six months I have been working on a personal project of spiritual growth and theological understanding.  It has been on a personal sojourn to try an unlock some of the secrets of how we are made as human beings, the exact nature of God's relationship with us, some of the problems with what is going on in our American political context right now.  More broadly, what I am interested in, is what is critically wrong with Christianity as we know it in the North American context today.  And so, I have been writing a book.

The book is entitled, "With: The Transformative Power of Going With People Rather Than Against Them".  Over the next 19 weeks, I will be writing blog posts that will flesh-out aspects of this book.  I want to invite you into the conversation.  I want to get your help in writing this book.  If anything I write over the next several weeks strikes a chord with you in any way, please let me know.  If you, like me, are as interested in unlocking the secrets of God's relationship with us, then perhaps we can embark on this journey together.  What I am after is nothing short of, as Hemingway once said; "writing something true".  And so now, if you are still WITH me...here is installment #2:

**

Introduction

This book is about a powerful, singular and central concept.  It is about the transformative power of going with other people.  That’s it!  Going…with…people.  If you already have a facility for this life skill, or are good at it, then feel free to put this book down right now.  It will be a waste of your time to read it.  But if you are like me, and for whatever reason, are pretty capable at doing a whole lot of other things, but have never been really very good at going with other people, then this book is for you. 

And, I must admit, that it has been quite a surprising self-revelation to me that I am not good at going with people, because, as I said, I have shown an aptitude at several other things in life.  I am pretty-good at being a pastor.  I am a reasonably good father.  I am a fairly adept leader.  I like strategic planning and visioning.  I have been told I have some gifts in public speaking.   Cooking.  I like to sing!  I play the bagpipes and the piano and the guitar.  I can do all three (though, not usually at the same time).  But going with other people….that elusive and ineffable life skill which seems to require a gear that I have not been given…appears, somehow, and mysteriously to be lacking in me all these years.

Now, I want to be clear.  It is not that I don’t care about people.  I do.  A lot!  I know that I have a certain level of “empathy” in my character swath because a recently taken skills and personality test has shown me that.  But it is the intentional act of going with other people – the art of listening and not giving advice, the coming alongside and not acting superior towards others, the practice of taking information deeply into my soul and not just nodding and smiling that I lack.  It’s just - going with that is somehow hard for me. 

And who is it that I desire to have more intentionality and ability to go with?  I want to be better at going with neighbors that I live next door to, better at going with the spouse that I am married to, better at going my children that have miraculously come into my life, better at going with co-workers that I labor beside, better at going with friends through health-struggles, better at going with colleagues through terminations from jobs, better at going with people who hold different religious beliefs from me, better at going with people who have different sexual preferences, better at going with people who have physical and psychological challenges, better at going with the average person I meet on the street, better at going with the sales clerk at the store who opens a dressing room for me, better at going with the homeless person on the corner who holds out a sign for money.  This basic life skill set is what I have sought to learn and discover, to become better at and to become more disciplined about, through the writing of this book.  This has been my literary and spiritual journey.

The Problem - I’m Not The Only One

            What I have surprisingly discovered, through the writing of this book, is that I am not the only one who is lacking in this fundamental human skill set.  An increasingly large number of people in our world are, it would seem, also lacking and increasingly devoid of the ability to go with others. 

            Consider the following examples of how isolated, separated and alone our modern American landscape has become as it finds an almost total inability to go with one another.

·      *  In the year 2016, almost as many people got divorced from one another as got married to one another in the United States.  In other words, almost as many couples decided to go against one another as decided to continue to go with one another.

·      *  Most people don’t have friends or even contacts who are in different political parties from them, have different religious affiliations, or are a part of different cultural backgrounds.  Most people do not go with people who are not like them politically.

·      *  Most fathers spend less than an hour a day with their children - and a total of only seven hours a week with their kids.  Most dads, in other words, do not go with their own kids

·    *    Most couples spend less than 5 minutes a day with one another in meaningful, uninterrupted conversation.  Most couples do not spend meaningful time going with one another.

·     *   Half of the entire population of the of United States do not know the name of their own their next-door neighbors.  We do not go with those we are living in close-proximity with.

·      *  Most Christians don’t have friends who are in different religious traditions from their own.  Most Christians do not go with people in other religious traditions.

·       *  60% of Non-Christians in North America do not know anybody in their world, or their social set, who is a practicing Christian”.  Most non-Christians have chosen not to go with people of the Christian faith.

·      *  Less than half of all people who self-identify as heterosexual in North America have friendships with people who are gay.  Most straight people do not go with gay people, though the opposite trend (of gay people going with straight people), is not the case.

·      *  Most people who watch Fox News never watch MSNBC, and most people who watch MSNBC don’t watch any Fox programming.  Most politically conservative people do not go with those who are more politically progressive, and vice versa.

·      *  In a recent survey of the political leanings of people, the percentage of people in the United States who labeled themselves as “consistently conservative” or “consistently liberal” (as opposed to consistently moderately conservative or consistently moderately liberal) has increased to 21 percent of the population.  In other words, people are becoming more bifurcated and extreme politically, and therefore, more separated from one another.

·      *  While men tend to be worse in terms of having close friendships, most people today say they have less close friends than ever before.  We, as a society, are choosing to go it alone!

            In short, it would seem that more and more people in the United States are going against than they are going with.  More people are going in opposite directions, than they are coming together.  To paraphrase one of the great social commentary books about the American landscape in the previous century, The Closing of the American Mind, by Allan Bloom, “We are like lonely shepherds living on a site where great civilizations once flourished.”

And, in the place of continual and ongoing relationship and even what might be considered as the most basic and “minimal association” with one another there is an increasing sense of separation.  There is separation from one another and there is separation from ourselves.  Within this separation there is, as the late twentieth century theologian Paul Tillich, once said, a level of (to use a Christian word for it), sin: “sin is separation”.   We are separated from God, separated from one another, and separated from ourselves.  So, isolated have we become from one another, that in the place of common and civil dialogue there is often heated conflict and protest.  In the more modern words of the famous conflict negotiations expert Bill Ury, author of, Getting To Yes; “conflict in our country seems to be at an all-time high.  We are at the most intense time ever.  We are not at the most dangerous time in history, that was during the Cold War, but we are definitely at the most intense time in history.”  At the same time that our personal relationships in America seem to be getting more and more bifurcated, our national relationships and political conversations are becoming increasingly separated.

                                                                     ***

All For Now,

GB

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WITH - 1

For the past six months I have been working on a groundbreaking personal project of spiritual growth and theological understanding.  I have been writing a book.  Yes, I know that that six word phrase, "I have been writing a book", can sound pretentious and somewhat loaded (especially when uttered on the outskirts of LA where I now live, and where everyone seems to be writing something), but it is true.  Every day for six months now, I have been working on this project.

But more than a mere book (what the world really needs now is another....book, right?), I have been on a personal sojourn to try an unlock some of the secrets of how we are made as human beings, the exact nature of God's relationship with us, some of the problems with what is going on in our American political context right now.  More broadly, what I am interested in, is what is critically wrong with Christianity as we know it in the North American context today.

The book is entitled, "With: The Transformative Power of Going With People Rather Than Against Them".  Over the next twenty weeks - starting today - I will be writing blog posts that will flesh-out aspects of this book.  The reason I am writing blog-posts about these ideas is because I want to invite you into the conversation.  I want to get your help in writing this book.  If anything I write over the next several weeks strikes a chord with you in any way, please let me know.  If what I share doesn't seem correct to you, I would also like to hear from you.  If you, like me, are as interested in unlocking the secrets of God's relationship with us, then perhaps we can embark on this journey together.  What I am after is nothing short of, as Hemingway once said; "writing something true".  And so now, if you are still WITH me...here is installment #1:

***

Downtown Los Angeles - 1982

           The morning translucent glow of Los Angeles, which, in a previous era could often be mistaken for smog, was still enshrouding the city of Los Angeles at 9:30AM on a Sunday morning.  Though weekends were less jammed with traffic on the California freeways, there were still the myriad of ecclectic and sundry people who were out and about for their ritual morning gourmet coffee fix.  Roller skaters, cyclers, senior citizens, dogs with their doting owners, mothers jogging alongside their babies in strollers were all meandering the streets of downtown LA.  Head-banded work-out instructors with magenta colored tights and pastel shaded leggings were all rushing to their jazzer-size classes. 

            And a few people were on their way to church.  A very few!  Christ our Lord Presbyterian Church, once the center of upward mobility and the epitome of Southern Californian establishment culture, wasn’t what it used to be.  The building had become run down, the sandstone edifice had become charred with years of decay, and the membership had dwindled from multiple thousands to a bare handful of a hundred. But, on pellucid blue mornings like this, the old church still occasionally resembled it’s previously successful and grandiose self.  

The actual church service that morning hadn’t been particularly memorable or noteworthy.  The choir sang the usual old dirges from the deep purple church hymnal, and the octogenarian pastor trotted out the same cliché’s and platitudes in the sermon.  Arthur, a retired pastor himself, hadn’t really been listening to the sermon anyway.  He was really there just to teach his assigned Sunday School lesson to a handful of fellow octogenarians and to receive his weekly teaching stipend check from the church secretary which paid for the sundry expenses of retirement.  It was an otherwise uneventful morning, though, it did stand out for one reason.  For Arthur, there was something unsettling about his life lately.  A non-descript, and indescribable ache and annoyance had been troubling him.  The trouble emerged from deep within his soul, and had been agitating for some time.  He couldn’t say why, but he was just very angry for some reason - he was very, very upset.  Like an itch in the middle of a back that could not be reached or scratched, Arthur was unable to reach or scratch the thing that bothered him.  

            The general annoyance began with the toast at breakfast which was cooked beyond the point where Arthur preferred it.  And then there was the fact that his kids and grandkids hadn’t called him what seemed like months.  The morning newspaper featured another downtick in the stock market.  Most of all, what bothered Arthur was that he had been losing his memory - he had been getting more forgetful.  Whereas at earlier points in his life, he was very good at knowing all of the capitals of all the major countries of the world (London – England, Prague – Czechoslovakia, Sydney – Australia), he couldn’t remember any of them now.  Frankly, Arthur couldn’t even remember his own street name sometimes.  He would go on a walk and not remember his own address.  Arthur sometimes even forgot the names of his own kids and grandkids.  Details which used to come easy to Arthur could no longer access. 

Ellen, Arthur’s wife had noticed a change in Arthur of late as well.  He just wasn’t himself.  Aside from his memory loss, he was also flying-off the handle with rage at the smallest and most insignificant things.  Arthur would yell at the television with such vehemence that Ellen was often afraid that he might actually get up out of his chair attack the character inside the frame of the screen.  He would be sent on a small errand to go fetch the mail from the mailbox, and he would come back hours later, having wandered around the garden all morning, not knowing exactly why he was out of the house.  But worse, he would get very angry with himself for the mistake.  The doctor had said that it might be early signs of Alzheimer's Disease.

            And so, when Arthur and Ellen got into their two-door, brown Datsun hatchback after church, to return home from the morning’s church service, it was never a forgone conclusion where the car ride, from that point forward, would eventually take them.  Leaving the church parking lot in Los Angeles Sunday morning rush hour was never fun.  Sometimes it seemed like all of LA was one big left hand turn, with no chance of ever turning right – even though the freeway entrances were invariably on the right of wherever you wanted to go.  “You have to go left Arthur, if you want to go right, you will have to drive around the block in order to go where you want to go,” Ellen said encouragingly.  “I KNOW THAT, I KNOW THAT,” “YOU DON’T THINK I KNOW THAT?????” yelled Arthur, gesticulating with his hands in a chopping motion while un-nervingly taking his eyes off the road.  “Arthur, watch where you are going, honey, these LA drivers are crazy.”  “YOU DON’T THINK I KNOW HOW TO DRIVE?!???” “I AM A VERY GOOD DRIVER!!!” Arthur demanded.  “I have driven these roads hundreds of times before.  Just keep your mouth shut, and let me do the driving.”  Ellen was stunned.  She had never known Arthur, in all of their 50 years of marriage, to be so verbally abusive to her.  Arthur was just not....Arthur.

            Seeing that she could not have a coherent or calm conversation with Arthur, Ellen decided to try a new approach.  She had heard other friends talk about the technique, adapted from the world of anger management, but more recently applied to those who suffered from Alzheimer's Disease.  It was the technique of simply just - “going with” people who are struggling.  Rather than correct them, or get angry with them, or insult them or teach them or preach to them or demean them, the technique was simply to - "go with" them.  And because Arthur seemed hell-bent on going where he wanted to go anyway on this morning, it seemed the course of least possible resistance.  

           And so, as Arthur merged onto the freeway taking their small car, not to the north of Los Angeles, where they lived, but onto the south of Los Angeles where they did not want to go, Ellen decided to just…go with it.  As they passed the signs going south, through Englewood and Vermont Square and Florence and Watts, in dangerous enclaves, going in the wrong direction, she went with it.  As Arthur prattled on about some minor nuance of Biblical exegesis on a Biblical text that nobody ever read or cared about, Ellen went with it.  She said to herself, “I’m just going to go WITH IT…wherever IT may lead.”

            Eventually they passed the exit leading to Glendora, and headed out towards Barstow, and Palm Desert, at least an hour beyond their initial exit heading southward.  Riverside County with all of its build-up and suburban housing passed them on their right.  Ellen told herself that she would just imagine that she was on Sunday drive.  Eventually, Arthur would come to his senses, or they would run out of gas.  One way or another, this Sunday morning escapade could not go on forever.  Ellen with with it.

            It was right on the border of California and Arizona that Arthur, all on his own, seemed to come to his own intellectual border crossing.  As Arthur was driving past the huge field of windmills that mark the last part of California, he came to a kind of epiphany.  It was the sort of self-realization which doesn’t happen very easily, or very often, and is always self-induced.  Arthur realized that he was wrong!  Wrong.  In fact, that he had been on the wrong road for at least two hours.  So wrong was Arthur, that he and is wife were now four or five hours away from home, rather than the normal twenty minutes that they usually took to go home from church.  

           Arthur pulled the car over to a rest-stop on the side of the road, and pulled the car into a parking place near to the public restrooms.  There he sat, staring forward, with both hands on the steering wheel, and his head bowed downward.  He said, with sadness and a tear that trickled down his wrinkled cheek, “I’m sorry, Ellen, I guess I am lost.  I guess I need some help getting home.”   Ellen could not believe her ears.  In 50 years of marriage, Arthur had never apologized for anything.  She had prayed many days and nights for this moment of self-contrition, and here it was, falling upon her ears like a feather wafting off of an old pillow-case - an apology.  Ellen also knew that Arthur's moment of self-understanding had occurred, in large part, because of her newly learned technique of - "going with".  “It’s ok honey, I’ll help you get home.  We are in this together.  Let’s just turn the car around and start driving back home.  It’s a beautiful day, and we with each other, and that’s the important thing.”  It had truly been a morning and a lesson in – “going with”.

           Going with others, rather than going against them, or going above them, or going instead of them, is singly the most transformative tool we all have in the lives of the people around us.  In a world that loves to demonize, sermonize, and criticize those who disagree with us, the tool and the remedy is, ironically found in the opposite action - in "going with".  What applies not us for victims of Alzheimer's disease, but for all people - the act of moving in the same direction as, of going alongside though not always agreeing with, of persevering through the conflicts with actually plays a transformative roll in the lives of the people around us.  It is so simple to understand,  and yet it is so hard to do.  

           Next week, in installment #2, we will talk about how foreign the practice of going with other people has become in our modern day American society.  We have become, it would seem, a culture of going against, rather than a culture of GOING WITH!

All For Now,

GB