Perceptions from a Pewboy

I experienced my first memorable nightmare back in the mid-1970’s.

Here’s the weird thing: My nightmare was based on a recurring television commercial. It wasn’t a commercial with a scary animal. It wasn’t a commercial with an intimidating character like Mr. Clean or the Brawny guy or Mr. Whipple squeezing the Charmin. Do you know which commercial it was that led to my nightmare?

OK, here it is. Try not to laugh or you might hurt my feelings.

In my nightmare, I was being chased around my house by the Fruit of the Loom guys.

Do you remember the Fruit of the Loom guys? They were men dressed up like big pieces of fruit, all for the purpose of selling undergarments! There was a big apple. Some purple grapes. Some green grapes. They look really cute in the television commercial. But, let me tell you, they don’t look so cute when they’re chasing you around the house in the middle of a nightmare!

To this day, I still get a little bit antsy when walking through the produce section of Giant Eagle. All that fruit!

Here’s the point: There was something about fruit that captured my attention and imagination back in the 1970s.

And there is something about fruit that is capturing my attention and imagination this weekend, as I make ready for the celebration called Pentecost in the Christian calendar. This weekend, however, it is not the Fruit of the Loom that I’m contemplating. Rather, it is the fruit of the Holy Spirit, referenced in the 5th chapter of Galatians—a portion of Scripture in which the Apostle Paul, in a moment of poetic creativity, invokes the image of fruit as a metaphor for the manifestation of God’s Holy Spirit in a human life:

…The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. (Galatians 5:22-23)

Why fruit? Why is it that Paul looks upon fruit as an appropriate metaphor for the work of God’s Holy Spirit?

I am not able to answer that question definitively, but I wonder how much of it has to do with the properties and characteristics of fruit. Most fruit is sweet to the taste and nutritious to the body. Fruit begins as something small but replete with potential, then grows and ripens until its potential is realized. Fruit is colorful and attractive. It is flavorful and fragrant. Its nectar is refreshing and its pulp is rich with nutrients.

Therefore, when Paul speaks of the Holy Spirit’s work in a human life as fruit, he calls to mind a Spirit who brings about a love that is sweet like strawberries; a joy that is flavorful like tangerines; a peace that nourishes like good apples; a kindness and generosity that are fragrant, like ripe melon; a faithfulness that grows like grapes on the vine; and a self-control that is as succulent as a juicy peach on a hot summer day.

What is the Holy Spirit like? Scripture tells us that he is something like good fruit. And in a healthy diet, fruit is irreplaceable, isn’t it?

I just read Barbara Bradley Hagerty’s new book entitled “Fingerprints of God: The Search for the Science of Spirituality.” I have enjoyed Hagerty’s work as a religion correspondent on NPR for the last several years and was drawn to her book’s objective: to explore the bridge, if one does indeed exist, between spiritual experience and scientifically observable processes.

Not surprisingly, Hagerty’s exploration led her to Laurentian University in northeastern Ontario and to the work of that university’s well-known cognitive neuroscientist and researcher, Dr. Michael Persinger.

Persinger, who has long believed that spiritual experience is generated by cognitive processes, created an apparatus several years ago that has come to be called the “god helmet.” This helmet, in essence, is a modified snowmobile helmet, the coils of which produce a complex magnetic field over the brain’s temporal lobe. Persinger reports that over 80% of those who have worn the “god helmet” experienced a presence in the room that they described as being “god-like” or, at the very least, mystically reminiscent of someone they knew who had died.

As you might imagine, there is much controversy around Persinger’s scientific methodology. Many have suggested that Persinger’s experiments are far too manipulated and agenda-heavy to be even moderately conclusive. Nevertheless, his work in the field of neurotheology has garnered much attention from scientists and theologians alike.

Barbara Bradley Hagerty devotes the seventh chapter of “Fingerprints of God” to Persinger and his helmet. According to Hagerty, Persinger’s foundational theory is that, since the left hemisphere of the brain is associated with language and the conceptualization of the self, the stimulation of that left hemisphere leads to an elevated sense of self-awareness.

The right hemisphere of the brain, by contrast, is much more connected to feelings, sensations, and emotional affectations. Therefore, according to Persinger, the stimulation of the right portion of the brain will produce the emotionally-charged sense of being in the presence of a relational entity—a mysterious “other” whose personality is palpable and whose vitality can seem larger than life.

To oversimplify a bit, Persinger sees spiritual and mystical experiences, not as supernatural occurrences, but as the scientifically traceable and reproducible byproduct of a stimulated right temporal lobe. To borrow Hagerty’s words, spiritual experience, according to Persinger, “is a trick of the brain” and can be generated “by head injuries and brain dysfunctions…by the earth’s magnetic fields and by machines like [Persinger’s] ‘god helmet.’” (page 136 of “Fingerprints of God”)

Personally, as a Christ-follower, I find Persinger’s neurotheological work to be far more affirming than discouraging. After all, in an age in which ecclesiastical decline is the talk of the town, it is refreshing to discover that spiritual experience is still a threatening enough concept to garner the attention and the dollars of skeptical scientists, many of whom are eager to reduce such experience to matters of neuropathy.

I will not share with you Hagerty’s description of her own personal experiment with the “god helmet” (since I hope that some of you will read the book for yourself). Suffice it to say that she is still a woman of deep faith. Furthermore, she still believes that her faith is based upon something more than an over-stimulated temporal lobe.

And therein, I suppose is the point of this blog post: Science and faith need not be enemies in our intellectual discourse, precisely because one will never be able disprove or eliminate the other. I suspect that, no matter how deeply scientists like Persinger delve into neurological processes, they will always be confronted with some portion of mystical experience that eludes their analysis, resists their truncations, and refuses to fit neatly into their carefully-formed equations and formulas.

Likewise, mystics, Pentecostals, and even some charismatic United Methodists may be led to acknowledge the possibility that some (not all, or even most, but some) of their spiritual experiences and discernments may have more to do with stimulated neurology than they do with the work of the Spirit.

All of this makes me grateful for the Wesleyan heritage’s affirmation that holy Scripture, while primary and authoritative in matters of life and faith, must be read and interpreted through the lenses of tradition, experience, and reason. Such a multidimensional hermeneutic prevents us from taking “god helmets” more seriously than we should while at the same time enabling us to appreciate honest and agenda-free scientific exploration.

I have become increasingly interested in the imagery of margins as a means by which to conceptualize the human community. Where do we create margins, socially and spiritually speaking? Who occupies those margins? Where is the church in relationship to those margins? And, more fundamentally, where is Christ in relationship to those margins?

At any rate, in recent days, I have been wrestling with the creation of a song (which, quite frankly, is the best way to describe my songwriting process). I want the song to be an expression of my reflection on margins. Here are the lyrics that I have so far. I offer them as a prayer today.

“The One in the Margins”

Final Chorus:
Help me to see the Christ in the margins
Help me to know his journey’s design
Help me to be with Christ in the margins
Standing with him whose love is now mine

Allow me to set the scene:

It was April of 1971. I can place the scene that specifically because, at the time, I was busy playing with the new G.I. Joe that I had just gotten as a gift for my fifth birthday (April 2, 1971).

The television was on in the living room, but I wasn’t really paying attention to it. I was far more interested in figuring out how to get the machete to stay in G.I. Joe’s hard plastic hand—no small task, given the fact that this was pre-kung fu grip.

Suddenly, words that I had never heard before began to permeate the ambience of our comfortable living room: “Space. The final frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise…” With G.I. Joe and his machete in my hands, I stared at the television screen, attempting to make sense of this unfamiliar show about spacemen and starships.

“Mom,” I said, “what show is this?” She came into the living room from the kitchen and looked at the screen. “Oh,” she said, “your brother and sister used to watch this show. I think it’s called ‘Star Track’ or something like that. But they cancelled it a couple years back, so you probably won’t be seeing reruns like this for very long.”

My mother was right about this much: The show had indeed been cancelled in 1969 after only three seasons. It had already found its way to syndication by 1971, much to the delight of a certain child in Grove City, Pennsylvania.

As a five-year-old, my fondness for all things frightening had already manifested itself as a portion of my personality, which made that evening’s episode of “Star Trek” all the more appealing to me. Entitled “Who Mourns for Adonais,” the episode begins with a rather terrifying scene in which a giant hand in space—or, more specifically, a concentrated energy field in the form of a giant hand—grips the hull of the Enterprise and holds the starship captive.

I was instantaneously transfixed. I mean, think about it: A cool space ship. Adventurous space travelers. And a giant scary hand. What more does a five-year-old imagination need?!

As the episode unfolded, there was much more that captured my attention. There was mind-boggling technology (including the “beaming down” of a landing party):

There was impressive gadgetry (including the liberal usage of the way-cool type 2 phaser):

There was a powerful and intimidating alien named Apollo who claimed to be a deity (which, of course, led Captain Kirk to theorize that aliens like Apollo had perhaps once visited ancient Greek culture, thereby initiating what we now know as Greek mythology):

There were some heavy-duty action scenes, including a moment in which Apollo blasts an impetuous Scotty with an energy beam that sends him sprawling in dramatic fashion:

And, of course, there was the ingenuity of Captain James Tiberius Kirk, which, in the end, always seems to win the day:

To say that my experience that night with “Star Trek” was love at first sight would be a gross understatement. Throughout the 1970’s I saw every episode at least five times (since reruns were televised two or three times a day). I had every model, every toy, every action figure. I would regularly convert my family’s living room into the bridge of the Starship Enterprise. The television would be the main screen. The stereo would be Mr. Spock’s station. The coffee table would be the helm. And my Dad’s lazy boy would be the captain’s chair. It all seemed perfectly reasonable to me!

“Star Trek” figured prominently in the formation of my imagination, my sensibilities, and even my conceptualization of the human pilgrimage. The multi-racial (and even multi-planetary) crew on the bridge of the Enterprise introduced me to an environment in which people really are judged “not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” The storylines compelled my young mind to ponder everything from nuclear proliferation to overpopulation—everything from the merits of non-interference to the question of what to do with rapidly-multiplying Tribbles. Best of all, the relationships between the main characters (particularly Kirk, Spock, and McCoy) deepened my appreciation for the creative nexus of nobility, duty, wit, sarcasm, and passion.

To put it as simply as I can put it, I cannot think of my childhood without also thinking about the “Star Trek” narrative.

And now, here I am, decades later, a United Methodist pastor in 2009. And what did I do on Friday night? I went with my beautiful wife to see “Star Trek” in a local movie theater. We spent the evening with some familiar friends: Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Scotty, Uhura, Sulu, Chekov, and the Starship Enterprise.

And we loved every minute of it.

The new “Star Trek” film is a cleverly-crafted and brilliantly-filmed retooling of the “Star Trek” universe that dynamically throws open (wide open, in fact) the door to much more storytelling about the famous starship and her brave crew. As a prequel that explores the youth and young adulthood of the main characters, the film strikes an effective balance between poignancy and playfulness; between reverence for the existing narrative and willingness to explore new territory; and between science fiction and sociological probing.

If you are already a fan of the Trek, the film will feel like a much-needed cinematic homecoming. And if the appeal of Trek has eluded you in the past, the film may very well be good enough to convince you to reconsider your relationship to Starfleet.

The film made me feel like a kid again, and that means a great deal to this humble old pewboy (who’s been feeling way too adult in recent days). Over the next several days or weeks, if I accidentally refer to my iPhone as a tricorder and my vehicle as the Galileo Shuttlecraft, I hope that you will understand.

I am frequently amazed by the kind souls that offer responses to my humble little blog posts. Your responses to my last, very personal, post were, in a word, overwhelming.

Thank you for your sensitivity to my father’s struggle. Thank you for your tender hearts. Thank you for your prayers, your friendship, and your willingness to stand with me in the Alzheimer’s journey. I have wept with tears of joy more than once as I have read and re-read your gracious words.

Interestingly, Tara and I have been watching “The Alzheimer’s Project” on HBO this week. It is a multi-segment documentary designed to illuminate some of the “faces behind the disease and the forces leading us to find a cure.” If you have a chance to see this documentary at some point, I encourage you to do so. It is a heartbreaking, heartwarming, and, ultimately, hopeful production, created with great attentiveness and sensitivity, that sheds important light on the Alzheimer’s journey in which millions of families currently find themselves. It is well-worth your time.

Again, thank you for ministering to my soul, even in the “temple” of blog.

God bless you.

On a lighter note, stay tuned for my reflections on the new “Star Trek” film! I will offer them as soon as we repair the matter/anti-matter reactor and replenish our supply of dilithium crystals!!!

Sadly, many of our conversations about the church’s hymnody these days take place in sour-spirited debates about worship styles and liturgical formats. In such debates, Christian hymnody is frequently treated as little more than an expendable liturgical component, the antiquity of which has made it anachronistic in light of current liturgical developments.

Personally, I have remained a staunch pacifist in the worship wars. Having been called upon to facilitate both “contemporary” and “traditional” worship over the last fifteen years (and, believe me, I don’t know what those adjectives mean any more than you do), I have had no choice but to craft a personal ecclesiology that makes room for both the ancient and the modern (or postmodern).

Last week, however, I experienced something that brought me back to the preciousness and power of the church’s historical hymnody. Pull up a chair, because I’d like to share the experience with you.

As some of you know, my father, who is a retired United Methodist pastor in the Western Pennsylvania Annual Conference, is in the midst of an Alzheimer’s journey. I describe it as a journey because that is precisely what it is. To make reference to it only as a “disease” would be to truncate what my father and my entire family have experienced over the last eight or nine years.

As I have said many times, my dad is my hero. Beyond that, he’s the man I want to be when I grow up. He taught me how to live and love, how to worship and pray, how to throw a baseball and stop the bleeding after a bad shaving experience. Most of all, through his discipleship, he taught me about the urgency of maintaining consistency between who I am in church and who I am everyplace else. To put it as simply as I can put it, my dad is the best man I know. Not being able to talk with him the way I used to is one of the most difficult and painful things that I have ever had to face.

That said, I’m still very grateful to God that Dad’s still here. Still laughing. Still loving. Still giving to us the chance to love him back, albeit in a different way and with a different kind of care.

Having experienced a recent stay in the hospital, Dad is currently undergoing a two-week time of physical rehabilitation at a nursing home. On Friday of last week, I spent the day with him there. Interestingly, in the nursing home setting, Dad goes into what I like to call “pastoral mode,” no doubt hearkening back to familiar patterns of pastoral care that are woven into the very fabric of his spiritual and vocational DNA.

Case in point, when I walked into the nursing home on Friday, I found Dad sitting beside a non-responsive and wheelchair-bound man, holding his hand and assuring him of God’s love and care. It made me wonder if Dad, in his mind’s current configuration, experiences regular glimpses of the thousands of nursing home visits that he made throughout his 42-year ministry.

Dad and I had lunch together on Friday. Then we took a long walk. Then we went back to his room for some rest and conversation. Something (or, perhaps more appropriately, someONE) inspired me to take a hymnal to the nursing home that day. I had no plans to use the hymnal. Something just felt right about bringing it with me.

The hymnal that I carried that day had a certain sentimental value to it. It was a commemorative hymnal from United Methodism’s 1980 General Conference in Indianapolis, Indiana. Dad, who was a member of Western Pennsylvania’s delegation for that general conference, purchased the hymnal and had all the members of the delegation sign it. I felt like I had a significant piece of history in my hands that day.

As we sat in Dad’s room, an impulse suddenly formed within me when I saw the hymnal lying on his dresser.

“Dad,” I said, “do you want to make some music together for a little while?”

“Music?”

“Yeah. I brought a hymnal, and I thought it might do us both some good to spend some time singing the faith together. I remember how you used to love to sing the hymns in church and even at home. You remember that, don’t you?”

“Sure I do. Those were great days of singing.”

“Well then, let’s make some music together this afternoon.”

We started with a hymn (written by Fanny Crosby) that I remember hearing Dad sing hundreds of times as he showered, shaved, and got dressed in the morning:

To God be the glory great things he has done
So loved he the world that he gave us his Son
Who yielded his life an atonement for sin
And opened the lifegate that all may go in
Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord! Let the earth hear his voice.
Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord! Let the people rejoice!
O come to the Father through Jesus the Son
And give him the glory, great things he has done

I sang the hymn quietly, and Dad did an interesting thing: Because it is difficult for him to process large collections of words, he began to whistle. Sweetly and perfectly, he whistled every note of the hymn. In a sense, I provided the vocals and Dad provided the instrumentation! We chuckled at the thought of what people must have thought as they walked by the room. The Park boys were holding an impromptu father-son hymn sing, and all was right in the world.

From there, we moved to a more regal and majestic selection: “Immortal, Invisible, God Only Wise.” (Dad stood up as he whistled that one, as though he sensed that the worship of God occasionally demands the inconvenient reverence of standing.) As I sang the third verse of that hymn, I could not help but think about Dad’s current journey:

To all, life thou givest, to both great and small
In all life thou livest, the true life of all
We blossom and flourish as leaves on the tree
And wither and perish but naught changeth thee

For nearly forty-five minutes, we leafed through the pages of that hymnal, singing and whistling our way through a good portion of the church’s rich hymnody. We sang hymns that are vibrantly doxological (“Praise to the Lord, the Almighty, the King of Creation…”); hymns that are poetically soteriological (“What a fellowship, what a joy divine, leaning on the everlasting arms…”); hymns that are deeply penitential and confessional (”Just as I am without one plea, but that thy blood was shed for me…); and hymns that give expression to the steadfastness of God’s presence in days of hardship and suffering (“Precious Lord, take my hand, lead me on, let me stand. I am tired, I am weak, I am worn. Through the storm, through the night, lead me on to the light. Take my hand, precious Lord, lead me home.”)

After a long while, Dad became very sleepy, as he often does in the afternoons.

“Dad,” I said, “if you want to take a nap, go ahead and climb into bed. I won’t be offended at all. I’ll just keep singing for a while.”

“I think I might do that,” he said.

I helped him out of his shoes and into his slippers. He was asleep before his head hit the pillow.

As my father slept, I sang these words as tears began to stream down my cheeks:

Abide with me; fast falls the eventide
the darkness deepens; Lord with me abide
When other helpers fail and comforts flee
Help of the helpless, O abide with me

It was one of the most tender moments of my life—a kairotic intersection of the eternal and the everyday, as a grateful son sang and prayed a hymn of faith over the man who had taught him that faith.

The hymns became something more than liturgy to me that day. They became language. MY language. OUR language. A language that I am able to share with my father, even when spoken communication is difficult to render. It is a language to be cherished, sung, prayed, and even whistled.

The church’s hymnody has never meant more to me than it did on Friday afternoon. As I type these words, I am looking at Dad’s hymnal which is currently on my desk.

And I am whistling.