Saturday, March 28, 1998

Learning to treasure the things that matter

By TOM EHRICH

c. 1998 Religion News Service

(Tom Ehrich is the author of "On a Journey," daily meditations available through Journey Publishing Co. If you have feedback or want to suggest a question for a future column, e-mail Ehrich at journey(AT)interpath.com).

A friend in Texas has started writing poetry.

He writes about a mother holding the lifeless body of her 13-month-old son, and how "the ghost of her presence walked into the hallways in search of someone who would never be found."

He writes about his own mother and watching her pour out her life at a clothesline. And about a handicapped family member who was loved. And how "mourning filled every cup" the day his friend Milton lost his wife.

David Stringer doesn't write about the Oscars and what Jack Nicholson wore to receive his statuette. He doesn't write about Lowell Paxson, chairman of Paxson Communications Corp., who, serving as a compensation committee of one, awarded himself a $1.9 million bonus last year as his company prepared to launch a TV network centered on "family values."

To my knowledge, he hasn't penned a single line about sex in the Oval Office, or the buzzing along Madison Avenue over marketing changes at Coca-Cola, or politics in the church.

Why should he? Those things don't matter. Oh, we get curious, and people make a lot of money pretending they matter. But in the end, what we remember about our lives and what we treasure in other people have nothing to do with Coke vs. Pepsi, Starr vs. Clinton, or how much money even we ourselves have earned.

In writing about his childhood, my friend remembers the relative who stumbled and fell outside their house on the way to the car and the friends who rescued him from embarrassment. He says nothing about how large the house was or how showy the car.

In remembering my grandfather Lindley, I don't remember him as a successful businessman, but as the gentle man who drove me to his beloved Purdue University for a football game against Ohio State and showed me his memories.

As I reflect on my day yesterday, I realize the single most important moment was when my 6-year-old son asked me, "Dad, do you want to play ball?" and I said, "Yes." The 50 urgent phone calls at work that preceded his question counted for little. The most regrettable moment was when he hit the ball over our fence and I welcomed that as an excuse to stop playing.

What happens to us when we fix our minds on things that don't matter? We miss life. We might accumulate wealth, we might be the envy of someone else, we might etch a brief line in some employer's record, but by not tending to things that matter, we squander the one life given us.

This is tragedy: children planted in front of TV sets six hours a day, having their minds sucked dry by mindless entertainment and their dreams distorted by toy ads.

This is tragedy: people spending nearly half a year's pay to buy a vehicle that sits in a parking lot, while they treasure some edge in having what someone else doesn't have.

This is tragedy: laptop-toting marketers crowding into airplanes to fulfill a buyer's or-else demands, while spouses wake up alone, children miss hugs, and neighborhood streets are empty.

This is tragedy: religion's proprietors getting so fixated on power and success they forget that the point of the Sabbath was to stop world-stuff and remember God, and the point of the Eucharist was to remember sacrificial love.

When we miss life, we become empty and edgy, like a child on a marshmallow diet. Consider the ugliness -- drivers swearing at each other, parents molesting children, bosses toying with workers, stockbrokers churning accounts, spouses holding grudges, politicians stealing, and lawyers chasing fees. I wonder how much of that is a consequence of emptiness.

When we miss life, we become easy prey for the merchants of non-meaning. Breathless car ads stir our loins. The boss' disfavor seems like a mortal wound. Snagging a bit of sex begins to seem a life mission.

Maybe we should all write poetry. Not for publication necessarily, but to strip away the non-sense, non-meaning and non-important, and see the tragic grace of the day Milton became a widower:

"Every blade of grass has been devoured today, reminding us that ash and dust spoke first, will speak last -- and cannot be persuaded otherwise!"