Writing and WRITING and Insurance, Oh My.

Disclaimer: All situations described in this post are purely hypothetical and/or fictional. They have no bearing on any real person(s), company(ies), or letter(s). Any resemblance to any actual person(s), company(ies), or letter(s) is strictly coincidental.

I read this rather fine essay / blogpost yesterday, and it made me want to write. A lot. So, as I sometimes do, I resolved to write more. And as usually happens, that resolve was crushed into a very fine powder this morning by the inexorable, repetitive pounding of my index finger on the snooze button of my alarm clock.

After getting to work late, I worked like a madman all day because we were a person short and had a killer backlog in the wake of the three-day weekend. I worked through my scheduled shift as well as an hour of thoroughly frustrating unpaid overtime, then returned home and began to mow my jungle of a lawn.

As I mowed, I pondered the question of why my writing resolutions always come to nothing. The following Compelling And Pithy Answer came to me: Those who write for a living have a difficult time writing for the love of it. Like it or not, I am one of the former. Until that changes, I will always have difficulty forcing myself to write for the love of writing.

This line of thought led me to reflect further on my Other Writing -- the Writing I don't normally discuss with others because it is part of my daily capitalistic transactions with The Man. And, quite frankly, writing doesn't get much duller and drier than Life Insurance Letters. My first instinct was to consider this whole written genre inferior, simplistic, and much too common to be worthy of any kind of extended cogitation. Life insurance company employees write things like:

Dear Mr. Smith:

We are sorry to learn of Harriet Smith. Please accept our sincere condolences and extend them to the family.

Our records indicate the policy's beneficiary is Bill Smith, husband of the insured. In order to pay the claim against this life insurance policy, we require the following:

• An original certified death certificate indicating Ms. Smith's cause and manner of death. The certificate will be returned upon request, as we are unable to accept a photocopy.
  
• A Claim Form completed by you as beneficiary.

For your convenience, a self-addressed return envelope has been enclosed. If you have any questions, please contact our claim representatives at 1-800-LIFE-INS.

Sincerely,
Life Claims

Pretty prosaic, right? Bulleted, straightforward, written for the Lowest Common Denominator of readers. Certainly nothing my college English teachers would have given gold stars to.

But don't sell Life Insurance Letter-Writers short. They can be pretty suave and even artsy, in their own way, when the situation calls for it. For instance:

Dear Mr. Smith:

We value you as a customer and strive to provide you with exceptional customer service each and every time we do business with you. Please accept our sincere apologies for the problem that occurred with your policy's surrender check.

During a recent audit, it was discovered that you were inadvertently overpaid for the surrender of your policy. On June 1, 2010, a check in the amount of $20,000.00 was issued to you. According to our audit records, the correct surrender amount was $2,000.00.

We ask that the overpayment of $18,000.00 be returned to us. For your convenience, a self-addressed return envelope has been enclosed. If we do not hear from you within 30 days, this matter will be sent to our legal department for additional action.

Again, we sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this problem may have caused. We also apologize for any incorrect information you previously may have received regarding this overpayment. If you have any questions, please contact our service representatives at 1-800-LIFE-INS.

Sincerely,
Policyholder Services

Pretty straightforward, huh? You'd have to be pretty good at reading between the lines to guess that our hero(ine) is putting a brave face on the following facts:

• The "audit" was just one of the guys in Finance who finally caught up on his suspense reconciliations and realized that an error had happened
  
• The "inadvertent overpayment" occurred when a careless employee who had already given his two-week notice didn't stop to double-check the figures on a check he had requested (what a shock!)
  
• The error should have been caught by Finance but never was because the ridiculously Byzantine approval process fosters a fiesta of feverish clicking rather than a rational review of each case
  
• The customer had called in two weeks earlier to ask about the check and was assured that "everything is fine"
  
• A week after that, a letter was sent informing the customer that he owed $1,800.00 for this overpayment
  
• The letter-writer, having just spent an hour sorting out this issue and figuring out what the correct overpayment amount was, is tearing out his/her hair trying to leave his/her emotions out of this communiqué
  
• There is no Legal Department, and if there was, they wouldn't touch this issue because they'd be afraid of complaints filed with the state insurance commission
  
• The company doesn't utilize a collections agency for any overpayments under $20,000.00, so basically the letter-writer's only weapons are politeness and persistence

I hope you begin to see some of the artfulness and zeal that goes into this type of letter. They may not be pretty, but they can at least be functional.

In closing, I put the question to you, dear reader: With all the effort and emotional energy expended on cases like the one above, is it any wonder that people who have to write for a living have trouble writing simply for the love of it?

I thought not.

Good Gracious, NY Times!

The New York Times has really slipped of late. Once a paragon of journalistic integrity, it now regularly runs items that mislead -- if not downright lie to -- its credulous readers.

The latest example I have seen:

Mr. Scott is frequently damned and praised as a stylist, a genre-driven filmmaker whose aesthetic — the steampunk look of “Alien” and “Blade Runner” is now aped in the décor of various boutique hotels — is often seen as more influential than his films.

No, no, no, a thousand times no. This is not steampunk:

This is steampunk:

Yet another case of a second-rate journalist picking up a buzzword and running with it.  This is what happens when the copy editor of the student-run university newspaper does not possess the killer instinct of a ravenous wolverine: the mediocre reporters survive (and even thrive).  Even worse, the copy editors themselves become lazy, lethargic, and forgetful of their responsibility to be faithful fact-checkers rather than just picky punctuation police or stolid syntacticians.

While the survival of the mediocre is not an obvious evil, it does contain an insidious threat.  Survival allows these poor benighted souls, blind to their own inadequacies, to spread their terminal plague of near-competence to every corner of the journalistic world.  Regrettably, this includes even the ivory tower that, once upon a time, was the New York Times.

Human Sacrifice, Cannibalism, and Good Friday

It’s like a scene from a horror film.

. 

A terrified young man struggles against the ropes that cut into his flesh, keeping him stationary on the cold stones of the altar.  Meanwhile, a wizened old man in his twilight years, crazed eyes full of pious resignation, takes a deadly dagger from his belt and holds it shakily over the boy’s throat. 

All the man has to do is cut.  He is very good at this.  He’s done it thousands of times to sheep, to cattle, but never to a human.  Certainly never to his only son.

His eyes tear up, and his soul is anguished within, but this thing must be done.  He blinks several times, rapidly, and steels himself to do it.  He tries not to hear his son’s fearful, pleading cries for mercy.  One keen thrust, one quick pull, and it will be finished.

You know the rest of the story, no doubt.  If you don’t, it’s in Genesis 22: A voice from Heaven, a divinely appointed ram in the thicket, and a blessing from God before father and son descended together from Mount Moriah.

But what if the scene had ended differently? 

What if the knife had plunged, the blood had gushed, and the stench of burning hair and meat and bone that afternoon had come from Isaac’s body instead of from some hapless ram? 

What if Abraham had knelt down and lapped up the pools of his son’s blood?  What if he had sliced off chunks of the boy’s flesh and devoured them greedily, hoping to gain life and forgiveness of sins from the young man’s vitality and innocence?

I hope that image is disturbing to you; I know it is to me.  And yet, as a Christian, my salvation from sin and death depends on an even grimmer scene.

A man who loved all – especially the weak, the outcasts, and the misfits – is betrayed by one of his closest friends into the hands of his enemies.  He is spat on, mocked, and abused at the hands of his captors.  He is stripped naked; strangers gamble for his clothing.

A man who did no wrong – and, indeed, who spoke out against corruption and hypocrisy – is falsely accused before the civil and religious authorities.  The only charge they can prove against him is that he claims to be the son of God – a claim that his teachings and miracles seem to support.

A man who brought wholeness and joy – healing the sick, making the lame walk and the blind see, even casting out demons and raising the dead – is beaten, tortured, and crucified.  The skin of his back is torn to ribbons from repeated scourging, a crown of thorns is pressed down onto his head, and he is nailed to a cross to die the slow, painful, humiliating death of a criminal.

The very son of God —the one who left a heavenly throne for an earthly life of trouble and tears – has the full wrath of his Father poured out on him as he suffers on the cross.  He who despises sin with every part of his being becomes the very thing he hates so God can punish him on our behalf.

Somehow, surrounded by the filth and stench and buzzing flies of the town refuse heap, dripping blood and overwhelmed by the pain of the cross, my salvation was born from Christ’s suffering.  My life was wrought from his death. My darkness was suddenly flooded with a light I could not have known without the cross.

It is a fearful mystery, and one beyond my comprehension.  I don’t pretend to understand God’s motivation or why he worked it out the way He did.  I think the best explanation is probably in the 53^rd chapter of the prophet Isaiah:

He was oppressed and He was afflicted,
         Yet He did not open His mouth;
         Like a lamb that is led to slaughter,
         And like a sheep that is silent before its shearers,
         So He did not open His mouth.
    By oppression and judgment He was taken away;
         And as for His generation, who considered
         That He was cut off out of the land of the living
         For the transgression of my people, to whom the stroke was due?
    His grave was assigned with wicked men,
         Yet He was with a rich man in His death,
         Because He had done no violence,
         Nor was there any deceit in His mouth.
    But the LORD was pleased
         To crush Him, putting Him to grief;
         If He would render Himself as a guilt offering,
         He will see His offspring,
         He will prolong His days,
         And the good pleasure of the LORD will prosper in His hand.
    As a result of the anguish of His soul,
         He will see it and be satisfied;
         By His knowledge the Righteous One,
         My Servant, will justify the many,
         As He will bear their iniquities.

So that’s the human sacrifice: almighty God, in human form, gave himself up as a guilt offering for my sins and yours.  But don’t go yet; I also promised you cannibalism! 

In John 6, Christ says:

"Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in yourselves.

 "He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.

"For My flesh is true food, and My blood is true drink.

 "He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him.

 "As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats Me, he also will live because of Me.

 "This is the bread which came down out of heaven; not as the fathers ate and died; he who eats this bread will live forever."

This saying was a mysterious one, and it turned off a lot of his fair-weather followers (some of whom simply saw how Jesus multiplied the loaves and fishes and wanted to get more free food out of him).  Many of his followers turned away after this teaching – and who can blame them?  Cannibalism is repulsive.  Yet, in a sense, when we come to Christ, it is what we practice.  By believing him and accepting his sacrifice on our behalf, we admit that our very sustenance comes from his broken body, and that our forgiveness comes from his shed blood.

In Mark 14, we see more elaboration of what Christ meant when he talked about eating his body and drinking his blood:

While they were eating, He took some bread, and after a blessing He broke it, and gave it to them, and said, "Take it; this is My body."

And when He had taken a cup and given thanks, He gave it to them, and they all drank from it.

And He said to them, "This is My blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many.

"Truly I say to you, I will never again drink of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God."

Here, Christ isn’t literally slicing off pieces of himself and passing them around as snacks.  Nor is he draining a vein and passing his literal blood around in juice cups.  Rather, he is instituting a symbol to help his followers remember who they are – and, just as importantly, whose they are and what they believe. He knows that, in the future, as often as they replicate this ceremony, they will do so in remembrance of him and of the sacrifice he made on their behalf. 

The horrors of what we remember on Good Friday are indeed strong.  In fact, when I initially began contemplating what this day means, I was a little indignant at its name.  How can such inexpressible pain and suffering be called good?  How can we call a day “good” on which the only perfect one was brutally murdered for sins he did not commit?

Then I remembered that, although this day wasn’t good for the one who died, it also brought hope to the whole world.  Upon reflection, I must conclude that my own life would be hollow and bereft of meaning if Good Friday had never occurred. Because of the suffering that occurred on that cross about two millennia ago, I have life, hope, and peace that are not my own. 

And that is reason enough for me to agree that, despite the human sacrifice and the cannibalism, it remains a very Good Friday indeed.

timeout

ERROR: timeout

each print job a unique piece
of correspondence,
informing welathy businessmen
and penniless widows alike
of "important information
regarding your life insurance policy" --
beneficiary designations,
policy changes,
requests Not In Good Order --
a trove of life-or-death information
frozen in a digital limbo,
irrecoverable.

OFFENDING COMMAND: timeout

too many, too fast,
print device not ready:
error printouts
instead of carefully crafted letters,
the opposite of useful on this busiest day
of the tax season,
when recently bereaved lovers
and cranky old retirees
queue up telephonically,
dozens deep,
for policy information
and claim forms,
a day when it is all you can do
to hit "print" between calls.

STACK:

and now, all those hurried "prints"
add up to something
whose sum is less than nothing,
a timeout
on a day when there simply is
no more time

What Have I Done?

You can't see this, O my faithful reader(s), but I have been reasonably busy since last you heard from me. In the waning months of 2009, I:

* Read some books
* Felt my little baby trying to kick his/her way out of my wife's womb
* Worked like a madman
* Sang some songs
* Got to see Andrew Peterson and the wonderful musicians who were with him on the Lamb of God tour
* Dealt daily with my fleshly desires and sinful tendencies
* Led a kids' club for church
* Met some wonderful new friends
* Enjoyed some wonderful old ones
* Had an unforgettable campout with men from my small group
* Got stuck in a snowy parking lot
* Wrassled with my pride
* Spent almost a week living with my in-laws because of inclement weather and holidays
* Broke my lawnmower, but right before it snowed, so it's ok
* Started writing a novel
* Struggled writing a novel
* Stopped writing a novel
* Applied for some new jobs
* Didn't get them
* Was very ok with that -- the process taught me how great my current job is
* And a host of other things

Life, in other words, has been proceeding apace. I get up in the morning, run if I'm not too sleepy (in other words, run VERY occasionally), grab a string cheese for breakfast, go to work, drink some coffee, do my best to be productive and competent for about nine hours, go home, have dinner, do stuff with my wife or friends or brothers and sisters from church, maybe play a game or watch an episode of Numb3rs or The Office, read a little bit, pray, and sleep.

Today at lunch, I was talking with the 1:00 p.m. lunch crew about LeBron James, the 25-year-old phenom who plays for the Cavs and whose monster ego nearly matches his impressive feats on the hardwood. During the course of the conversation, I mentioned that nothing could compel me to trade places with him.

I have a rewarding job, enough money to meet my obligations, a beautiful wife, an energetic baby on the way, a very satisfying relationship with God, many friends, a great family, and, in general, an exceptionally nice life. Things happen to remind me of my proper place in the universe and to make me very glad that I'm in it.

Why on earth would I want to trade this for the pressure-filled, performance-demanding life of a superstar who makes too much money, is surrounded by hangers-on, and has entirely too high an opinion of himself? If anything, I pity the man. He's never known a moment of normalcy, and he's been pushed to do too much, too early.

My friends at lunch think I'm crazy. "I'd take his life in a heartbeat," one of them told me. "I could sure find a way to use that money, and who wouldn't want to be famous and amazingly good at sports like that?"

Me, that's who. I guess when you're satisfied with what you have, it's hard to imagine wanting to move.