Every so often I do an illu­sion res­o­lu­tion. I notice that I am invest­ing in some­thing that really does not go any­where — either in addi­tional hap­pi­ness or toward the gen­eral wel­fare of oth­ers. I resolve it by either tak­ing a dif­fer­ent view of the action or by delet­ing it com­pletely. So far I have a list of things that I have released from life: that any­thing out­side of me can make me happy; that it mat­ters all that much exactly where I am on the planet; how I look as my body ages (not an excuse for let­ting myself go); that I am going to live on the planet for­ever; that I have to do any­thing per­fectly; that things have to go my way. Occa­sion­ally, one or more of these will sneak back into my psy­che and I will be on its tread­mill again. Illu­sion res­o­lu­tion can be repeated with­out hav­ing to beat your­self up emotionally.

Do what works and see if your life is not bet­ter. Stick with real­ity. If mate­ri­al­ism alone would bring peo­ple hap­pi­ness, then this coun­try would be filled with ecsta­tic peo­ple. It isn’t. Some­thing else is in the mix. The cor­re­la­tion between things and well being is appar­ently illusory.

Find ulti­mately sat­is­fy­ing ways of being and stick with them. Here are a few things that I have found to be ulti­mately sat­is­fy­ing: being aware of God; treat­ing myself with dig­nity and respect; doing right by other peo­ple; being opti­mistic; liv­ing in trust; turn­ing most of my con­trol needs loose.

Con­se­quently, I have found that there is lit­tle I need to own and no one I need to impress. It is amaz­ing what accep­tance can do to destroy waste­ful illusions.

Have you ever watched a wasp or a fly try to get through a win­dow pane? It looks clear, so they should be able to fly right through it. They can­not, so they try again and again. They notice they can walk on it, but they are prob­a­bly not even sure of that. It is tedious. They get frus­trated. They try harder and harder. Even­tu­ally, they give up, or they drop to the lower crack in the screen or door from whence they arrived and thus escape.

I won­der how many sim­i­lar illu­sions I have expe­ri­enced (or am going through now). The trick to any illu­sion is that you really do not know you are in it — except by frus­tra­tion and pain. If an insect can learn patience, glass is the way to go. Some bugs will try for days before they finally find the “hid­den” open­ing that you and I clearly see. It is sort of like hav­ing an angelic view of humans. How patient they must be to watch us keep try­ing things that do not work — espe­cially his­tor­i­cally pop­u­lar illu­sions. Here are a few: a war to end all wars, mak­ing more peo­ple poor in the name of help­ing the poor, think­ing that being in any form of media makes one an expert on any­thing, that some­one else is going to solve our prob­lems, or that we are here on this planet alone as merely some sort of evolved species.

The bug soci­ol­o­gist in me won­ders if more male or female bugs get caught in the win­dow pane illu­sion. My bet is that more males get caught and for the longest peri­ods of time. Argu­ing from my expe­ri­ences as a higher life form, I am con­vinced it is males. They just will not read a map or try alter­na­tives until totally exhausted. Female bugs are prob­a­bly more apt to shop around for a bet­ter way through the glass and con­sider it an adventure.

Illu­sions are exhaust­ing, painful, and with­out pos­i­tive reward. Each trip up the glass becomes a trance that invites another try. Ori­en­tal reli­gions warn of life’s illu­sions. There are many. Some are within and some with­out. Both are pretty mis­er­able. Sal­va­tion is in seek­ing alter­na­tives. One more trip up the glass will not make a bit of dif­fer­ence. You have noth­ing to lose. Try the keyhole.

Terms of endear­ment come in many forms. They are a pri­vate lan­guage sys­tem between indi­vid­u­als express­ing love and appre­ci­a­tion. These words express an intent that may be the oppo­site of the com­monly held def­i­n­i­tion of the word itself. It all has to do with the con­text — who says it and why.

Melissa and Valessa were once mem­bers of a very small youth group in a church I once served. Some­times they would go on day trips with our senior cit­i­zens (with per­mis­sion from their teach­ers). It was an odd sort of arrange­ment — senior cit­i­zens plus two girls skip­ping school for the day. The redeem­ing fac­tor for them and the teach­ers that let them go was the fact that our trips were very edu­ca­tional (places like the world’s largest sun tele­scope at Sunspot, New Mexico).

Peo­ple express their appre­ci­a­tion in some funny ways. On one return trip, Melissa called me a “Dork” — as I drove the van full of older peo­ple back to El Paso. A cou­ple of the older church mem­bers were offended that she did that. I just laughed. I knew what she meant. I sensed the intent behind her voice. She is allowed to call me a Dork because of the tone in which she said it. It was by no means an insult. She was smil­ing with this lit­tle insight. The truth is: I am sort of a Dork.

A Dork is an odd per­son that is a lit­tle bit nerd, not always socially cool, but some­one you might like to have around any­way. A Dork is a car­toon Ziggy or Char­lie Brown. We have large heads but do not always use the brains that are in them. Heaven only knows what our redeem­ing qual­i­ties might be.

Melissa and Valessa and I have kept up with each other through the years. They call me “dad” as another term of endear­ment and irony (no, I am not their bio­logic par­ent). We are friends but more than friends; we con­sider our­selves fam­ily. Though we sel­dom see each other, we main­tain an odd close­ness far away. They have chil­dren of their own now. I once flew back to do the wed­ding for Melissa. “Fam­ily” is any­one you love…and even­tu­ally even those you don’t — as you mature in the faith.

Any­time I take myself too seri­ously, I hear Melissa’s voice in the back of my head: “Dork” — a con­jured term nor­mally an insult but used as endear­ment. The next time I have to sign a doc­u­ment for the church requir­ing a title, I think I will sign it as I sign this lit­tle blurb:

His Dork­ness, Dale Andrews

I love the com­mer­cial in which there is only one word used to express a range of sit­u­a­tions, emo­tions, and responses by young men. The entire com­mer­cial is made using the word “Dude” in var­i­ous con­texts. It is really very funny and illus­trates one of the rules of seman­tics — that 85% of the mean­ing of a word is accord­ing to the given con­text (the sur­round­ing circumstances).

If Jesus lived and min­is­tered today in our soci­ety, he would have used the word “Dude” on a fairly reg­u­lar basis. Jesus con­fronted peo­ple using a wide range of words and actions. The dynamic equiv­a­lent of some of those would be “Dude!” — especially in ref­er­ence to some of his clos­est fol­low­ers. I can hear him now after Simon Peter told him he was not going to die in Jerusalem: “Dude! The Son of Man has to die…” Instead of say­ing, “Get behind me Satan…” he might have said some­thing like, “Dude you are totally off track and have joined the dark side!”

The Holy Spirit uses our own words, and is not lim­ited to Eliz­a­bethan Eng­lish or King James expres­sions. There is also a close­ness to us that is famil­iar yet tran­scen­dent. I can hear the God-given lit­tle voices of rea­son, san­ity, and spirit inside my soul say­ing things like: “Dude you missed the point.” When I really mess up I can hear: “DUDE!!!! — What were you thinking?”

A mod­ern day Saul of Tar­sus on the road to Los Ange­les from Frisco would hear: “Dude! Why are you kick­ing my shins?” What is most threat­en­ing to humans is the close­ness and famil­iar­ity of God. In response we cre­ate all sorts of spe­cial terms to try to keep God at dis­tance. Spir­i­tu­al­ity is rel­e­gated to a sort of “mys­ti­cal terms” approach that can be monop­o­lized by reli­gious insti­tu­tions and pro­fes­sional classes (clergy and theologians).

Dude! Don’t try to keep God at arm’s length with fancy words! He wants to be close to you. Dude! Don’t waste your time try­ing to make God polit­i­cally cor­rect or in your own image. Dude! Be your­self! The first words you hear after death may well be: “Dude! Wel­come home!

Dude!