What the Church can Teach Us about Social Networking

When I retired a few weeks ago, I had to deal with a problem I never had leaving other churches in my 45 years of ministry:

What do I do about my Facebook friends who are members of the church I just left? 

This article by Jeremy Smith  helped me think through my ethical duties, and also gave me simple technical directions so I could fulfill those duties.

Nevertheless, I did some geezer grumbling about new-fangled ways of doing ministry and how it had all changed in the last decade. After all, when I was appointed to my last church in 2005,  Facebook was still a college  . . . uh  . . . facebook -- a pictorial directory allowing students to look up the name of the cute classmate sitting in the third row of Survey of Western Civilization.

But after some weeks away from the demands of pastoral care and church administration - and spending more time on  social media than I should - I realized that, in fact, the Church was the first social network and we can learn a lot from social networking geniuses like Jesus, Paul, John Wesley, and Frances Willard.  They can help us overcome the three sins of social networking and create purpose-driven networks that make a difference in this world.

The Three Sins of Social Networking

The things we all despise about social networking --  and too often participate in -- are: superficiality, shouting and oversharing.

Superficiality: 

Do I really have to spell this out? Are all those people really your “friends”?  Do you really believe Jesus denies knowing you in heaven if you fail to share a kitschy picture of Him on your newsfeed?

Shouting: 

Again, this is obvious. Note the contrast between the crass, even stupid, things your friends post in favor of the other candidate for president, and the tightly reasoned, insightful, and persuasive slogans in favor of your candidate.  Sadly, so many people are on the wrong side of every issue that right-thinking people like you and me feel like social media creates barriers rather than bridges.

Oversharing:  

Umm, did I ask you what you had for breakfast?

The Church as  Model Social Network:

Build Networks on Common Experience rather than Common Grievances

Paul’s letters and John Wesley’s correspondence reveal a network powered by shared experience. Paul described it as an encounter with the Risen Christ or the Holy Spirit. John Wesley would often invoke a “religion of the heart”.  These experiences united people of different cultures and social classes, just as the very first Christian Social Network, AKA “The Twelve Disciples,  pulled together a Zealot and a tax collector among many other strange bedfellows in their common loyalty to Christ.

Some of the more meaningful Facebook experiences I have had come from my membership in pages for UM Clergy and, especially, for wearers of cochlear implants. The latter is especially important to me because I wear two CI’s, but there are less than half a million people in the world who  have even one.  Those of us on the site may live in the U.S., Australia, Germany, Brazil, or in many other places. Our skin color and religions may be different. Some of us have graduate degrees and some are barely literate, but the common experience matters more than the differences.

Christians are people who have seen God at work in Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ at work in their own lives. Can we share that experience with others?

Use Networks to Hold People Close

It’s also clear that Paul used his letters to tell people that he loved them, he cared about them, he was thinking of them.  Again, we can tell from the names and addresses mentioned in these letters that these people lived on the other side of mountain ranges or the Mediterranean from Paul, but he wouldn’t let those barriers of distance separate him from his friends.

What can we learn from Paul about how to use social media to connect with people we don’t know, build bridges with people who are different, and hold tight the people who matter?

Use the Network to Do Good

Frances Willard, a primary founder of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, shared her spiritual ancestor, John Wesley’s, genius for creating social networks. Local chapters elected representatives to district organizations that, in turn, elected representatives to state, and then national organizations.  This influenced the structure of many mainline Protestant women’s organizations, especially what we now know as the United Methodist Women.

Regardless of what one may think about the social experiment of Prohibition, these social networks also hastened women’s right to vote and influenced countless other causes.

In the 1970’s, I served a small town congregation in Upstate New York. One of the UMW’s leaders was married to the owner of the local cheese company; if you have eaten New York State cheddar, the chances are good that you have eaten their cheese. At the time, the UMW was concerned about multinational corporations,  like Nestle, pushing third-world mothers into using baby formula that they could not afford and probably didn’t have pure water to make safely. This woman, whose political orientation would make Ted Cruz look like a liberal, was seated next to a high executive at Nestle at a formal dinner one evening and she challenged him on the company’s practices. All this because of her membership in the social network called the UMW.

We have seen the power of digital Social Media in events like the Arab Spring. Can we use what we already know, as the Church, to change the world today?

If we work with these questions, learning from the history of the most powerful and effective, and I think, the original international social network, I believe we can move from superficiality to love, building barriers to building bridges, and sharing only what matters.

Love Believes All Things: A Christmas Sermon in Verse

The Ministry of Friendship

I beseech Euodias, and beseech Syntyche, that they be of the same mind in the Lord. Phil. 4:2

The real work of the spiritual life is not done on mountaintops or monasteries, but on the road in the company of our friends.

The biographies of these two women, Eudias (“Prosperous Journey”) and Syntyche (“With Fate”), are lost to history, but Paul’s personal reference to them is one we all can identify with. Friends fall out – and friends forgive – and it is in that dance that we do most of the work of the spiritual life.

Jacquie and I just returned from a quick visit to our friends, Duane and Ida, in Rochester NY, and we are preparing for our friends, Jim and Cathy – and their dog, Henry – to stay with us for a few days before they return to Key West. Jim and Cathy have been friends for more than a decade and we actually shared a house with them for about 18 months. Duane and Ida have been friends for almost four decades and they have seen us grow from young parents starting new careers to grandparents thinking about retirement.

We have other folks we like and admire and whom we have known for years – even decades – and we connect with Christmas cards, and now, on Facebook, but these four friends seem to be in a different class entirely.

Last summer, I picked a passage from Lewis Smedes’ book, Caring and Commitment to be read in our worship services. He has this meditation on friendship:

Not even mutual admiration is, by itself, enough to keep a friendship alive that long. For one thing, we discover that even people we admire have feet of clay. The best of us is flawed. Our flaws show through eventually; we disappoint our friends, and sometimes their disappointment hurts enough to wound our friendship.

Besides even friends who admire each other a lot drift apart when one of them moves to another part of the country. If I do not see my friend for five years and do not stay in close touch, our friendship is likely to die of malnutrition.

I feel a good deal of melancholy when I think of it, but it is true that we cannot count on mutual admiration to make friendships last forever, any more than we can expect friendships to last because friends like each other or are useful to each other. If friendships like these do last a lifetime, it is probably because they are more than friendships of affection or usefulness, or admiration. Most likely, they are held together because the friends are committed to each other.

Commitment over the long haul is the key and there is a great difference between the people who have made those kinds of commitments and those who haven’t.

In this community where people live rooted for generations, I often do funerals for people who are mourned by friends they have had since grade school.

A real friendship takes time and energy. The actor, Peter Ustinov, once wrote: "Your friends are not always the people you like best, more likely they are the people that got there first."  He then goes on to say that we may meet people along the way whom we like better, but we decide we just can’t fit more friends into our busy lives.

The same can be said for spouses, of course.

Emily Dickenson put it this way:

The Soul selects her own Society--
Then--shuts the Door--
To her divine Majority--Present no more--

Unmoved--she notes the Chariots--pausing--
At her low Gate--
Unmoved--an Emperor be kneeling
Upon her Mat--

I've known her--from an ample nation--
Choose One--
Then--close the Valves of her attention--
Like Stone.

Israel pondered this mystery of choosing. God does it, too. Although God may be like Mrs. Baker, my wife’s 3rd grade teacher, who convinced every kid in her class that he or she was the teacher’s favorite.

The point is that we choose friends. We choose a spouse. We choose people with whom we will walk through life. We choose to stick with these people through all their ups and downs and, miracle of miracles, they choose to stick wth us.

All it takes is a lifetime of forgiving and being forgiven; a lifetime of searching for the truth about what makes that other person tick and a lifetime of letting go of that question. 

When Life doesn’t seem to be Worth Living

Since I’m not a professional counselor, I can probably count on the fingers of one hand the number of people I’ve talked to who were actively thinking about killing themselves. On the other hand, hardly a month goes by when I don’t have a serious conversation with someone who really can’t get very excited about being alive.

If Henry David Thoreau’s observation that “most people live lives of quiet desperation” is accurate, then that may explain why I have so many of these conversations.

It’s relatively easy to understand why some people may feel this way.

• They feel like they are serving a life sentence in a prison created by their disabilities.
• They maybe lonely – and not always because they didn’t reach out to people. It’s amazing how many people simply lose all their friends and relatives and are literally the “last leaf” on what was once a very fruitful tree.
• They may be in considerable physical or emotional pain.
• They may have failed at what they considered their most important life task so much that there is little hope of redeeming their lives.
• They may be facing death anyway, and getting it over with quickly may be more appealing than prolonging the process.

Some of these people may suffer from depression, but the truth is that the objective circumstances of many lives really are depressing.

Before you decide to jump off a bridge just from reading this, let me say that the good news is that many people have worked through these kinds of situations and have much to teach us.

One of them, believe it or not, was the Apostle Paul. He spent the last few months of his life – maybe up to two years – under house arrest in Rome. If the chronology of his letters goes the way most scholars think, Paul enjoyed many of the comforts of modern day politicians who are sent to federal prison for defrauding the public of millions of dollars. The difference is that Paul hadn’t done anything wrong and he had to pay for his incarceration out of his own pocket. But Paul enjoyed many visitors and a wide correspondence, at first.

The New Testament says nothing about Paul’s death, but tradition says that he was beheaded by order of the Emperor. At any rate, it looks like, as time ran out – so did Paul’s friends.

Paul’s letter to the Philippians was almost certainly written during this period of imprisonment – maybe when the executioner’s shadow was hanging over him. The tone of most of the letter is pretty joyful, but at the beginning the joy seems a little forced. Paul is experiencing all of the things I listed above that make people, if not suicidal, at least willing to consider the advantages of dying. This may be especially true of people who actually believe in life after death.

Paul says, “For me, living is Christ and dying is gain”.

He goes on to weigh – on the one hand – the advantages of dying “to be with Christ” or to hang on to life because he might still be of some use to someone out there, and he finally concludes that the latter is reason enough to go on living.

What I find helpful in this inner conflict that Paul shares with us is that it uncovers a conflict that many of us have at some time in our lives. It comes down to, “What am I living for?” or “What is the meaning of life in general – and of mine in particular?”

I just read a thoughtful column by Todd May, a professor of Philosophy that wrestles with this question from a secular standpoint.

Dr. May points out that the “meaning” secular society offers us generally boils down to whether we are good consumers or good investors. But, he isn’t sure that a eulogy that says,  “She always found the best bargains” or “He made a fistful of money” is really the description of a well-lived life.  He is not willing to say it’s God who gives life meaning – and I’m OK with that, because too often the pious answers are just intellectual and spiritual laziness.

He also recognizes that “meaningfulness” does not necessarily mean “happiness” or “fulfillment”.   It has to do with whether our life story, as we reflect on it, means anything. Charles Dickens probably comes closest to what he means by “meaningfulness” when he has David Copperfield begin his story by wondering, “Whether I shall be the hero of my own life or whether that station will be held by someone else.”

I’d like to suggest that Paul offers us a clue to meaningfulness that some of the wisest people I know – or know of – have also discovered for themselves.

A friend of mine once told me that his therapist had said, “If you can’t say ‘no’, you can’t say ‘yes’”.

Maybe this feeling that can sneak up on us – the question about whether life is worth living and whether we even want to go on – is a way to see that life is not non-negotiable. We are not sentenced to life. Paul certainly wasn’t. Whether you buy his conviction that there is a life after death – and that whatever comes next is good – or not, you have to admire his final “yes” to life. He is clearly considering the other alternative – and he rejects it – not because he is afraid to die, but because other people need him to live – even if they can’t communicate with him, they somehow need to know he is there and he is acting courageously. 

The Prince with the Big Nose and Personal Transformation

There is a “factoid” going around about American education. The factoid says, when the performance of American students is compared to the performance of students in other industrialized countries, they come out near the bottom in every area except . . . self-esteem. We lead the world in self-esteem. In other words, Americans may be dumber than dirt, but we feel good about ourselves.

Having spent a lot of time with people who were crippled by their low self-esteem, I have always felt that it doesn’t hurt to help people feel good about themselves. But I’ve recently begun to wonder if positive affirmation is really the path to living your best life now?

In the passage from Romans that I began commenting on last week, Paul talks about transformation. He even uses the word “metamorphosis” in the original Greek to emphasize the radical nature of this transformation, which begins with a “renewing of you mind” (Rom. 12:2).

In the “motivational literature” section of your library, the books will tell you that you need to think of yourself as capable of great things. That may be, but that’s not what Paul says. He says that real transformation comes when we “do not think more highly of ourselves than we ought, but to think with sober judgment”.

The Greek word, translated as “sober judgment” is often contrasted with Greek words for “crazy”. It implies a deeply sane and realistic approach to life. And when we adopt that approach to life, our lives really do change. But it isn’t always easy to get real – especially about ourselves.

This truth is illustrated by a French fairy tale. I invite you to leave this blog and read it yourself, but in case you don’t have time, here is the thumbnail version:

A king overcame the spell of an evil sorcerer in order to win the love of his future wife. The sorcerer then pronounced a curse on the king. The child that would be born to this couple, he said, “will never be happy until he discovers that his nose is too long.”

Well, as curses go, this beats being turned into a frog, or sleeping for 100 years after piercing your finger on a spindle. The king thought, “How would he not know his nose is too long? At the very least, I will tell him as soon as he is able to understand.”

Unfortunately the king died just before his son was born. In many ways, he was a beautiful child. He had his mother’s eyes and his father’s strong jaw, but he had a schnozzle that covered half his face. His mother who did not know of the curse because the sorcerer forced the king to keep it a secret, was taken aback, but her ladies-in-waiting assured her that it was simply a strong Roman nose. All the best people have large strong noses, and his mother began to see it as an asset rather than a liability.

Nevertheless, no one was admitted into the young Prince’s presence who did not have a very large nose – although even the largest didn’t come close to the Prince’s in size. Portraits of his ancestors were “touched up” to emphasize their noses. He was also pointedly taught by his instructors that Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, and other heroes all had very large noses. Cleopatra was an object of desire because of her nose.

At the age of 21, the Prince’s mother commissioned paintings of all of the eligible princesses in the lands surrounding their own, so the Prince could make a suitable choice for a wife. The Prince immediately fell in love with one princess, who, although she had a small nose, struck him as the most beautiful one of all.

The Prince set off to win her hand, but as he passed the boundaries of his own country, people began to laugh and point and hold their noses as he passed. He noted that all of them appeared to be nasally challenged compared to the people in his own retinue, and he assumed that they were jealous.

When he arrived at the home of the princess with whom he had fallen in love, the king, her father, welcomed him. The Prince had the resume of a fine potential son-in-law, but the king was taken aback by the size of his nose. He decided to let his daughter make the decision and summoned her, but before she arrived at the throne room, the sorcerer who had cursed the Prince before he was born, kidnapped the Princess and ran off with her.

The king told the Prince that if he could rescue the Princess, he would give her to the Prince as his wife. The Prince rode off in pursuit – a pursuit that was slowed every time he had to stop and ask people if they had seen a sorcerer carrying a princess pass by. Every time he asked for help, people would laugh so hard they could not answer for several minutes. This cost the Prince valuable time and he fell further and further behind.

Finally, unable to follow the track any farther, the Prince was in despair. Right then he met a good fairy who had been a friend of his father’s and who was willing to help. She could not, she said, absolutely defeat the Sorcerer, but she could get the Princess out of his hands by encasing her in crystal. All the Prince needed to do was kiss her hand – the one part of her that was not in crystal and the Princess would be set free to marry him.

The Prince followed the Good Fairy’s directions and found the Princess – encased in crystal, with only one small hand sticking out. He raced to her and bent to kiss her hand, but he could not. His nose got in the way. Turn which ever way he might, the Prince’s lips could not touch the Princess’s hand.  Finally, the Prince said in exasperation, “My nose is too big.” At which point his nose was immediately changed to a normal size, he kissed the Princess’s hand and she was set free.

They not only lived happily ever after, but the Prince turned into an exceptionally fine king because he had such a realistic view of himself and his faults as well as his strengths.

We often don’t see our own “big noses” and how they are getting in our own way, partly because the people who love us try very hard to tell us that our noses really aren’t that big – and besides, a lot of good people have the same characteristic.

However, nothing is as transforming as seeing the truth about ourselves. It may be painful, but in the end, it can be amazingly freeing to own a fault, a habit, or a particular way of looking at life that has been getting in our way.

One way to do this is to listen closely to our “enemies” who, unlike our friends, are often only too happy to tell us the truth about ourselves. Or they may, indeed, be friends who love us enough and have too much integrity, to not tell us the truth. At any rate, this may be why Jesus tells us to love our enemies (Matt. 5:44). 

Get out of Jail Free

This is the first of a series of blogs on personal transformation. 

American Religion – especially American Protestantism - has a strain in it that runs from Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science in 1800's through people like Norman Vincent Peale, Robert Schuller, and Joel Osteen – the latter preaches in a former pro basketball arena in Houston to some 16,000 people each Sunday - besides the ones watching on TV.

That kind of success is the point of this movement that says that God wants us all to be healthy and prosperous. One of the foundational scriptures for this movement is Romans 12.2:

 Don’t be conformed to the patterns of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds so that you can figure out what God’s will is—what is good and pleasing and mature (Common English Bible).

The "prosperity preachers" can say that the Bible makes it clear that we can change our lives just by thinking about it. 

The prosperity preachers have done us a favor. They have reminded us that we have both a mind and a body and that they interact with each other. They are  correcting the assumption that runs through all of Western Culture that divides mind and body. Indeed, the church that I grew up in taught me that all I had to do was get the right answers on the final Final Exam (aka “the Last Judgment”) and I was in – but woe unto me if I got one wrong.

Thanks, in part to these “positive thinkers” and “prosperity gospel” preachers – and a lot of scientific research – we are all beginning to see that our minds and our bodies really do effect each other for good or ill. If you want to be successful, you really can visualize that BMW, complete with blond in the front seat if you want, and a wallet full of enough cash to actually fill the tank – and you can get it. The power of the human mind to conceive something, then believe something and then achieve something is truly amazing.

This, in fact, is what my Hebrew professor thought the last of the Ten Commandments was about. You remember the one that says, “Thou shalt not covet . . .?”

Most English speakers are told that “covet” means something like “jealous” or “envious”. But the Hebrew word behind it describes this ability that we have to visualize getting something or achieving some kind of goal and then to plan and to make it happen. To catch a cultural wave - it is the SECRET!  .

My Hebrew professor said that the commandment, “Thou shalt not steal” probably refers to kidnapping to sell someone into slavery. The Hebrew word that we translate as “steal” probably means something like “manstealing”. 

“Thou shalt not covet” probably comes closest to prohibiting stealing as we usually understand it. That is, it's OK to say, “I'm going to marry that girl!” unless she is already married to someone else. It's OK to decide that you want a BMW unless it's the one parked in your neighbor's garage. The Tenth Commandment recognizes this incredible power that we all have to get what we set our minds on getting. It simply says we can't set our minds on getting those things that belong to our neighbor.

Paul's talk about transformation through the renewing of our minds also recognizes this power. The word “transformed” is the Greek word “metamorphosis” - that's how a caterpillar becomes a butterfly. And Paul says our lives can be transformed like that – with the renewing of our minds. “Renewing” translates a Greek word that could be used to describe rehabilitating an old house so that it looks like new.

But Paul isn't saying this so that we can be “successful”. Indeed, his attitude toward the preaching of the Prosperity Gospel preachers would be, “Why would you want to have the fastest wheelchair in the hospital?” “Why would you want to be the Dean of Death Row?” Why would you want to be the editor of the prison newspaper?” Why would you want to be the richest man in the graveyard?”

The point isn't to be the President of the penitentiary, it is to get out of jail. “Success” is all about being conformed to the values of this world. Transformation is about getting out of jail – free.

Next week: The Surprising thing that Transforms Us the Most.

Religion: Like a Rope in the Storm

Before powerful electric lights punched through the rural darkness, farmers in the Upper Midwest would often tie a rope between the house and the barn – especially if they knew a blizzard was coming. There were stories of men and women who had lost their way in whiteouts only to be found frozen a few feet from their front steps when the storm ended.

Our word “ligament” is related to the word “religion”; both of them come from a Latin root meaning “to tie” or “to bind”. So I think it’s legitimate to say that anything we use to keep our bearings in the blizzard of modern life’s challenges and distractions is like that rope the farmers used to follow from the barn to their home – and thus is our religion.

Let’s examine some of the ropes that we use – and that human beings have always used – to find their way through the blizzard of life:

Ritual: Rituals are usually associated with religion and complexity as illustrated by this video. But people who have just lost a loved one or gotten a cancer diagnosis can tell you that sometimes it’s the rituals that get them through the day. Brushing your teeth, feeding the cat, walking the dog, taking out the trash are humble reminders that life goes on. If the ritual is infused with deeper meaning, such as lighting the Sabbath candles or taking communion, people can find an even deeper meaning. Memories of holiday meals and kneeling beside a loved one at the altar rail come flooding back both to hurt  . . . and to heal. But ritual alone can also get in the way of real life, as anyone knows who has ever had to break the news to Mom that you are going to your fiancé’s house for Christmas so you won’t be joining the family for breakfast on Christmas morning.

Rules: Rules help us get back on the path or keep us from losing the way, in the first place. Theists and atheists all have made some decisions about what they will and won’t do even when no one is looking. All of us know the temptation to break those rules. Most of us, looking back, are glad for the times we were true to our sense of morality and are sorry for those times we weren’t. But rules alone can keep us from living a full life, as well. How do we relate to people who have different rules?  (You probably ran into this question the first time you slept over at a friend’s house).  How do we live with ourselves if we have broken our rules? If our rules are “sacred” how can we adapt them to new circumstances? If we chose our own rules, why would we follow them when the going gets tough? And as you can read in last week’s blog, we break our own rules even when there doesn’t seem to be a good reason to do so.

Reason: Since the 18^th century in Western culture, we have used reason as our rope. Indeed, all the others, including rules and rituals have to be “reasonable” if we are going to follow them. Reason works – usually – in the blizzard of life, if we really will sit down and think things through. No matter how much the advertisers and politicians and powerful interests want to snow us, 2 + 2 still equals 4.  And St. Augustine once said if your reading of the Bible says that 2+2 = 5, you need to read the Bible again. But, reason can quickly become rationalization. Few cultures were as “reasonable” as early 20^th century Germany, yet it produced World War II and the Holocaust. Reason can get us through the blizzard or it can be part of the snow.

Tradition: Traditions are contained in religious rituals, but especially in the Abrahamic faiths of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, traditions are also contained in sacred texts and the whole history of the interpretation of those texts in theological treatises, sermons, hymns, pious stories, ethical codes and even legal doctrines. Traditions inform rituals. Without a Haggadah, Passover is just a big dinner. Without a cross or an empty tomb, Easter is just a sugar rush. Without the Qur’an , Ramadan is one very long month of fasting. As Tevye will tell you, a fiddler on the roof is able to scrape out a happy tune without breaking his neck because tradition helps him keep his balance. But it is that same tradition that causes Tevye to disown his daughter, Chava, when she decides to marry a Gentile.

Spiritual Experience: Human beings have experiences that can be so vivid that they actually change the direction of their lives. These experiences may become like the bright electric lights that now guide farmers from the barn to the house in the middle of a blizzard. One things traditions do is to give people a way of understanding what has happened to them. Whether they refer back to Moses talking with the burning bush; Jesus in the wilderness; Muhammad in his cave; or the Buddha under the Bo tree, the “Wow! What just happened?” quality of these events can take on meaning and help a person understand that he or she isn’t crazy or alone. Rituals can sometimes be the contexts for such experiences. Isaiah is doing whatever priests do in the Temple when he has his vision. John Wesley was in church when he has his heart-warming experience. Unlike rules, rituals, or even reason and tradition, spiritual experiences never make people feel like crap. They may make people feel VERY humble, but that’s a lot different than feeling long-term shame, and despair, because no matter how humbling the experience may be, you also know – if you have such an experience – that the spiritual world exists in ways you never dreamed and that something or more likely, Someone, cares about you who is a whole lot bigger and more wonderful than you ever imagined.

The problem with spiritual experiences is that they too can be falsified. Any teenager who grew up in an evangelical culture knows the pressure to “be born again” and how much you need to be able to “testify” to meeting the Lord Jesus personally. There is also a very fine line sometimes between these experiences and mental illness.

My own “tradition” within the Christian tradition is Wesleyan and it is part of a larger Anglican tradition that tends to balance out all these “ropes”. The rituals, rules and texts of tradition get balanced against reason and direct spiritual experience. I can check those spiritual experiences against the tradition, and the rituals keep me going when the experiences run dry, and the rules keep me from going over the edge, until I break them, and then the spiritual experiences pull me, one more time, out of the pit of despair. It’s kind of crazy, but it’s my rope.