CALIBRATION

Permit me an indelicate story and a related observation.

Nowadays it is the rare public restroom facility that is not equipped with automatic sinks, toilets, soap and paper towel dispensers. These are controlled by electronic sensors – the urinal ‘knows’ you are standing in front of it doing your business, and when you are no longer standing in front of it having concluded your business it will, most of the time, flush or release of stream of fresh water into the urinal to rinse out of offending material.

In order for this type of equipment to work properly the sensors have to be rightly calibrated – that is to say, the sink has to know when you are standing before it with your hands outstretched and it has to know when you are done. The soap dispenser has to know when you are in need of a hand cleanser. The toilet has to sense when you rise from the throne to exit the stall having successfully completed your task.

At the tender age of fourteen I saw my first bidet at a luxury hotel in Europe. I didn’t know what it was, and at that age I was not about to be so uncool as to ask someone what the extra bowl in the bathroom was. I thought perhaps it was a foot washer, or that there was a special type of biological function I was not yet familiar with. I used it to wash my feet.

A few days ago at a truck stop in Texas I had the misfortune of an encounter with an appurtenance that was not well calibrated. While atop the throne, this toilet evidently thought I was leaving the stall every 10-12 seconds. Although I was far from done, it sent a ferocious spray of water onto my backside every time I made the slightest motion. Completion of one’s toilet without motion is not possible, I don’t t think, but I nevertheless tried - unsuccessfully. I was soaked, hoping to high heaven no one was beyond the stall door. I could not think of an explanation that did not sound ridiculous.

I had used my first Texas bidet.

I thought about trying to explain the problem to someone in management, but the logistics of this escaped me and I couldn’t think of a way to relate the story that didn’t make me sound like an idiot.

Sound calibration is essential and not just in public facilities. If the instrumentation with which we live our lives and conduct our relationships and make our decisions is not properly adjusted, we are likely to have some big problems. Uncalibrated ears may turn an affirmation into an insult. Uncalibrated eyes may mistake a friend for an enemy or vice versa. Uncalibrated hearts will invariably fail to measure the huge stores of grace available to us daily. Uncalibrated minds fail to practice wisdom, overlooking horseshit by glibly asserting that ‘everyone has a right to their own opinion.’ Uncalibrated souls will fail to notice the sublime dance of the Holy Spirit God stages for us daily.

Fortunately we are given a means of calibration which might keep us from getting soaked and might also enable us to move about in our world with sharper senses and a keener awareness.

In the Christian tradition, we call it prayer.

BREAKING BAD:  ORIGINAL SIN, ORIGINALLY DONE

In his definition of sin, Frederick Buechner gets quickly and gracefully to the heart of the matter:  “The power of sin is centrifugal. When at work in a human life, it tends to push everything out toward the periphery.  Bits and pieces go flying off until only the core is left. Eventually bits and pieces of the core itself go flying off until in the end nothing at all is left.” (Beyond Words, Harper Collins, 2004, p. 368-369)

“What’s so original about sin?” my old friend Dee Edwards used to ask. Nothing really. Sin is old stuff. It has been around a long time. Sin and its centrifugal power to scatter and decimate lives, communities, churches, families and nations is the oldest story there is. Its telling and retelling is the heart of much of our art and literature, though many would prefer to call it something else. Hubris, perhaps. Or amoral greed. Maybe unbridled ambition or the lust for power run amok. Fine.

I guess there is something a little distasteful in talking about sin, or, more precisely put, original sin. The power and relevance of the term gets lost in tides of shaming Sunday school lessons, stiff-collared pulpit rants, glad-handing character assassinations of our evangelical neighbors next door, and the tortuous brow beating of the life-killing Calvinist peckerwoods in white socks.

A much cooler and hipper version of the tale is found in AMC’s Breaking Bad whose fifth season finale launches here in a couple of weeks. Millions of us have watched the centrifugal meltdown of Walter White over the past four years, and it’s been hard for us to take our eyes off it. To say that it is compelling doesn't even capture the half of it. Perhaps mesmerizing is a better term to describe it.

The emergence of Heisenberg out of the ashes of Walter White provokes an interesting issue: Has this character lost himself or found himself? Has he become the real Walter White by shedding his vestiges, or has someone altogether different walked out of the fire? Has he evolved or devolved? Aberration or self-realization? Is the Emergent Walter White an unnatural monster or some sort or the recovery of his true nature?

The theologians of the Reformation coined the term ‘original’ in their consideration of presence and power of sin in the human condition, not to trap it in and endless and stupid debate about spiritual DNA, but to say simply, this crap goes deep. Whether it is present at the time of our conception and birth is not so much the issue. No matter how great our nurture, how loving our home, our instructive our religious training, how disciplined our moral instructions, how nice our disposition, how positive our role-modeling, we will more than likely, given half a chance, ‘centrifigate.’  Our spinout will probably not be on scale with Walter’s, but it may leave us asking, “Is this who I really am, or do I need to return to who I really am?”

Discuss.