Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Engraved and Cursive Prayer

Generally, Latin-based scripts fall into two categories: formal—the scripts used as the instrument of authority; and informal—the cursive or quickly written scripts used for everyday transactions. History repeatedly shows formal scripts degenerating into cursive forms, which are, in turn, upgraded, finally achieving formal status as new hands in their own right.
—David Harris, The Art of Calligraphy, 6

The engraved invitation is formal. The cursive scrawl on torn notebook paper, even if it’s letting you know you’re welcome at the wedding, is not. The hand-written thank-you note on 20 lb. vellum gets your attention in a way a tweet or voicemail can’t convey, no matter how cheerfully you chirp.

Still, I believe we need some of both when it comes to prayer, which is our way of verbally placing ourselves in the presence of God.

At times, prayer is a casual, cursive conversation, a garden walk on a bright afternoon. You can sense God strolling along with you, smelling the flowers, humming a silly tune. You chat about the weather and the Final Four. God points out a cloud that looks like a swan. You laugh and shake your head, because you think it looks like a bear.

But at other times, prayer is hand-lettered, in careful meter and verse. You get out the good stationery of the soul, dip your spirit’s pen in the inkwell and let your lifeblood flow. You scent the prayer with your best eau de toilette and seal with hot wax. The subject matter is serious, deep, moving, rooted in longing, skirting the edge of loneliness or despair.

Cursive at times, at others engraved, my prayers have led me on a good journey. I hope your prayer life has been richly varied this season. I hope you have been able to listen for God.

Along the Way, I wish you God’s peace on today’s stage of your Lenten spiritual journey. May Christ’s companionship bless you with confidence for the day, comfort you in trouble, and put a spring of joy in your step

Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Command Performances

…Then he turned his face to me one last time, / as on the day he died in my arms, and said, I would like to add / two more commandments: / the Eleventh Commandment, “Thou shalt not change,” / and the Twelfth Commandment, “Thou shalt change. You will change.” / Thus spoke my father, and he turned away / and disappeared into his strange distances.
—Yehuda Amichai, “My Parents’ Lodging Place,” in Open Closed Open, 58-59

As a parent I understand. I treasure the moment. I want it to last. You know that instant when your child is on stage, the spotlight picks up every gesture, the disbelief is suspended, and you see your son, your very own, become the star of the show. You can die happy now. You know the hug at bedtime as your daughter’s tiny arms circle your neck and you drink in the fragrance of soap and toddler. Eternity is like this. Don’t ever change.

And yet, there is also the thrill of legs and arms growing longer, the changing shape, voice, smell, and touch. You can see the magic of growth, not just physically but emotionally and spiritually. He gets better at baseball; she’s in pointe shoes now; she’s perfecting the robotic Legos; he’s developing his own journaling style. You hear the whispering promise of perpetual evolutionary motion, the generation of possibilities, the possibility of generations to come. There may be grandchildren, someday! Change, change, thou shalt change!

I can say, “Don’t change,” because I love you as you are, and “Do change,” because I love you as you are becoming. Is it wrong to claim both the present and the future and give thanks for each? I believe there is a place where delight meets hope, where the snapshot leans into the unknown. It’s what it means to be a parent. It’s what it means to be someone’s child.

Along the Way, I wish you God’s peace on today’s stage of your Lenten spiritual journey. May Christ’s companionship bless you with confidence for the day, comfort you in trouble, and put a spring of joy in your step.

Monday, March 29, 2010

One Body at Work

Because so many eyes witness the unthinkable, there must be eyes that see hope. Because so many ears hear the ringing of solitude or the explosion of disaster, there must be mouths to speak words of love. Because there are so many bellies that cry out to be nourished, there must be hands to feed them. Because so many feet walk such long, lonely paths, there must be legs of strength to walk alongside them. Because so many bodies are broken, the Body of Christ, the whole body, with all of its various parts, is at work in the world.
—Laura Evans Mahn, “Compassion and Caring: Giving Concrete Expression to our Unity in Christ

We are one body. What an awkward thing to say! Of course, we’re not one body—we’re myriad bodies, of multiple minds, a swirl of conflicting emotions. How can anyone say we’re one? We feel so disconnected. And yet…

There’s too much suffering in the world for us to pretend we’re not united in Christ. I trust that we are one. Without one body that can see hope, speak love, feed the hungry, walk with the lonely, and heal brokenness and division, the world is lost and the future ridiculously scattered. If God is love, and if we are made in the image of God, then we must be, at some level, one. And we have to work together.

When we try to act otherwise, a conservative arm slaps at a liberal leg, and an orthodox ear refuses to cooperate with an agnostic eye. How crazy our dance must look to outsiders! It’s helpful to remember that old line from Rupertus Meldenius, oft-quoted by our movement’s founders, “In essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty, in all things charity.”

Jesus reminded us of what’s essential: loving God and neighbor. He was also clear on the fine print. Our neighbor? Once there was a man on the Jericho road who fell among thieves…

Along the Way, I wish you God’s peace on today’s stage of your Lenten spiritual journey. May Christ’s companionship bless you with confidence for the day, comfort you in trouble, and put a spring of joy in your step.

Sunday, March 28, 2010

Relinquish Everything

He had already relinquished, of his will, because of his need, in humility and peace and without regret, yet apparently it had not been enough, the leaving of the gun was not enough. He stood for a moment—a child, alien and lost in the green and soaring gloom of the markless wilderness. Then he relinquished completely to it. It was the watch and compass. He was still tainted. He removed the linked chain of the one and the looped thong of the other from his overalls and hung them on a bush and leaned the stick beside them and entered it.
—William Faulkner, “The Bear,” in Go Down, Moses, 208

Luke Skywalker had to set his targeting computer aside and rely on the Force in order to destroy the Death Star. The boy in Faulkner’s epic tale had to set aside gun, compass, and watch—the tools of the hunter—or he would never see the Bear. What must I set aside to know God?

So much of my journey is spent relying on tools—my Bible, my library, commentaries, historical and textual critics, philosophers of language and ethics, theologians, and preachers who have gone before. Could I set these aside and still preach? Unlikely. But until I set them aside and clear my mind of all the stimulating chatter, I may be unable to listen.

Elijah fled the wrath of his own leaders and went up to a mountain, where he could not hear God in all the mighty acts going on around him—whirlwind, earthquake, fire. But afterward, the still small voice came to him, admonished him, and sent him back to work.

What will you relinquish today in order to make a still, small, vulnerable place in your soul for God, who like Faulkner’s Bear appears “immobile, fixed in the green and windless noon’s hot dappling, not as big as he had dreamed it but as big as he had expected, bigger, dimensionless against the dappled obscurity”?

Along the Way, I wish you God’s peace on today’s stage of your Lenten spiritual journey. May Christ’s companionship bless you with confidence for the day, comfort you in trouble, and put a spring of joy in your step.

Saturday, March 27, 2010

Silence is Key

Having lived most of my life thinking that it was risky to look forward, especially because of my mother’s death at forty-nine and my father’s at sixty-two (my age at this moment), I’ve come to count each day as a gift beyond anything I ever expected. I wouldn’t go back to change a thing… Of course I would prefer not to have encountered spasmodic dysphonia. At the same time, I know that the illness has provided me with an opportunity to examine aspects of my life that I might otherwise have neglected.
—Diane Rehm, Finding My Voice, 239.

Have you found your voice? So many forces in our culture compete for it. Advertisers ask us to speak with our wallets. Politicians ask us to speak with our vote. Ethnicity and culture ask us to speak with our identity. So many voices! Host of her own NPR talk show, Diane Rehm discovered she was stricken with a disorder that affects her ability to speak. The only treatment she’s found effective is a series of Botox injections directly into her throat. Following treatment, her voice eventually comes back. But the treatments do not last. “Experiencing silence has become the key,” she says, “to finding my voice.”

I hope never to face a physical ailment that interferes with my ability to speak. Still, silence—and the extended solitude that can come with it—is the key in finding and claiming my voice. In silence I can set all other voices on “mute” for a moment, to set aside the politics, to set aside all that is ideological and polarizing. Instead of figuring out what to say, I can figure out how I am supposed to be.

It is in silence that I can hear my own voice developing because in silence my deepest relationships become clear: husband, father, son, brother, friend. These are relationships not based on what I do or what I think but who I am and to whom I am connected. From here I find my voice.

What relationships come to you in silence, relationships that are really gifts that help you find your voice?

Along the Way, I wish you God’s peace on today’s stage of your Lenten spiritual journey. May Christ’s companionship bless you with confidence for the day, comfort you in trouble, and put a spring of joy in your step.

Friday, March 26, 2010

The Grand Drama

…Where is Old Fiddler Jones / Who played with life all his ninety years, / Braving the sleet with bared breast, / Drinking, rioting, thinking neither of wife nor kin, / Nor gold, nor love, nor heaven? / Lo! He babbles of the fish-frys of long ago, / Of the horse races of long ago at Clary’s Grove, / Of what Abe Lincoln said / One time at Springfield.
—Edgar Lee Masters, “The Hill,” Spoon River Anthology, 2

Our son was born a dozen years ago this week. I recall that early morning in the recovery room, skin to skin, exploring the wonder of new life. Since then, there have been funerals, family members who have died, and births as well, with cousins born on one side of the family and on the other having children of their own.

The sweep of life has been on my mind today, the grand drama spread across the years.

Early in our marriage we visited the Lewiston, Illinois, cemetery where Edgar Lee Masters was inspired to write Spoon River Anthology, a collection of poems in the form of epitaphs that tell the stories of the community. We picnicked on a sunny hillside, then walked among the markers, reading Masters’ poems when we recognized a name. The graves are marked with numbers for those on self-guided tours.

The honesty of the verse is stark, as it cannot harm the dead to tell the truth about themselves. Painful loss, betrayal, vanity and secrets are revealed. Honor, too, and goodness of the heart. Admonitions, pleas, and even gentle reflections grace the page. I wonder how honest my own epitaph will be the day my “dust to dust” returns to earth.

My prayer is for our son: that one day he will see the panorama of his parents’ lives and find there a story he is pleased and proud to share. At least a verse, a couplet, perhaps a sonnet with its trademark twist near the end; I cannot hope for an ode.

My prayer for us all is that we become worthy ancestors to the generations who follow us. How will your life honor the future? How will those who knew you remember and be changed?

Along the Way, I wish you God’s peace on today’s stage of your Lenten spiritual journey. May Christ’s companionship bless you with confidence for the day, comfort you in trouble, and put a spring of joy in your step.

Thursday, March 25, 2010

Licking the Bowl

Thy kingdom come. That’s what co-creation with our Maker is all about, the coming of the kingdom. Our calling, our vocation in all we do and are to try to do is to help in the furthering of the coming of the kingdom—a kingdom we do not know and cannot completely understand. We are given enough foretastes of the kingdom to have a reasonable expectation. Being a loved and loving part of the body; praying together; singing together; forgiving and accepting forgiveness; eating together the good fruits of the earth; holding hands around the table as these fruits are blessed, in spontaneous joy and love, all these are foretastes.
—Madeleine L’Engle, Herself, 144.

When I bake cookies, I lick the bowl. Sometimes I’m generous and let someone else lick it. Either way, there’s a foretaste—in the cool batter on the tongue, the crunchy granulation of sugar, the smooth roundness of butter and flour together, the stray chocolate chip—of what the batch will taste like when it’s baked.

In the act of creation, whether in the kitchen, at the office, or in the studio, we get glimpses of what will be. God, I believe, gets glimpses of the future, too, in us. We’re works in progress. But what makes us so spectacularly different and wonderful is that we have a role in our own creation. We’re co-creators of our life, along with God.

That’s something the cookies can’t do. They can’t change their own ingredients or proportions. They can’t bake themselves. We, on the other hand, can determine what sort of people we become. There’s a physical dimension—we are what we eat, after all, and we can shape our bodies to some extent by exercise and healthy habits. There’s a moral dimension—we become how we behave. Aristotle was right. There’s also a spiritual dimension—we shape our relationship with God and one another through prayer, study, ritual, liturgy, confession and forgiveness, and various spiritual disciplines.

When we work together with God in the kingdom’s kitchens, we both get to lick the bowl. We each get a holy foretaste of what our lives will be like. We have the ability to add a little sugar, a little salt, or a few more chocolate chips. Co-create your life today. Taste the batch in the mixer. And let the kingdom come.

Along the Way, I wish you God’s peace on today’s stage of your Lenten spiritual journey. May Christ’s companionship bless you with confidence for the day, comfort you in trouble, and put a spring of joy in your step.

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Beyond our Vision

It helps now and then to step back and take the long view. The reign of God is not only beyond our efforts. It is beyond our vision. We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is God’s work. Nothing we do is complete, which is another way of saying the reign of God always lies beyond us. No statement says all that could be said. No prayer fully expresses our faith. No confession brings perfection. No pastoral visit brings wholeness. No program accomplishes the church’s mission. We cannot do everything but there is a sense of liberation in realizing that because this enables us to do something and to do it well. It may be incomplete but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for God’s grace to enter and do the rest.
— Ken Untener , “The Prayer of Oscar Romero” at http://ow.ly/1qveP

Oscar Romero, the archbishop of San Salvador, El Salvador, died 30 years ago today. After calling on the international community to protect those being killed by his own government, he was assassinated. It took place as he was raising the chalice celebrating communion.

I’d like to think that as disciples of Jesus we make a difference. And the reality is that we do. Show up with a fresh loaf of bread when someone comes home from the hospital, and you’ll make a difference in that person’s day. Recycle your plastics, cans, paper, and glass, and compost your food waste, and you’ll take better care of our planet.

But how many of us are willing to risk our lives for the benefit of others? How many of us celebrate communion as a radical act of political solidarity with the oppressed?

Remembering Romero and envisioning a world that is peaceful and just, my challenge is to trust God’s promise for the future while I work to make the world a better place. I pledge to acknowledge the limited good I can do and to trust in God’s grace to inspire those who come after me to carry on.

I hope no more Romeros will die. But I hope as well that Christians will always speak out against exploitation of the powerless by the powerful, regardless the risk. Beyond our vision, just past the horizon, is the coming reign of God.

Along the Way, I wish you God’s peace on today’s stage of your Lenten spiritual journey. May Christ’s companionship bless you with confidence for the day, comfort you in trouble, and put a spring of joy in your step.

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

The Plague of Self-Service

Self-service is the worst of inventions. There we are, all with our own tray, own little bottle of wine, own little sachets of sugar, salt and pepper. It’s terrible to assume that everyone is going to eat and drink a standard quantity, and do it alone into the bargain. How much more human to have a nice big bottle from which everyone can pour as much as they want, and one nice big dish so that everyone can make sure that the others have what they need. Then meals are no longer a solitary and egotistical business but a time when each person shares and loves.
- Jean Vanier, Community and Growth, p. 323

I remember the song our children’s choir sang when I was a kid. It came from the Avery and Marsh Songbook:
I can be a Christian by myself,
Leave my dusty Bible on the shelf.
Sing a song and pray a bit.
God can do the rest of it.
I can be a Christian by myself.

Sometimes I think we fall into that ugly trap. Our faith becomes individualized to the point where we forget we need one another. Just like self-service meals, we practice self-service religion. As if that were possible! I’ve heard the “spiritual but not religious” line before. What it usually means is that the church has failed to be the community God intends for it to be. More particularly it means that some of us have forgotten how to invite, and others have forgotten how to say yes to the invitation.

We’re getting closer to Jerusalem each day, on our walk. And while each one of us takes our own steps, we’re still on the path together. When we pause for refreshment and encouragement, we call it worship. It’s really a holy meal. The table is set family style. There’s a loaf large enough to share, and arms and hearts wide enough to hold each other up. Jesus has invited us. Let’s extend the invitation and throw wide the doors.

Now, will you please pass the bread?

Along the Way, I wish you God’s peace on today’s stage of your Lenten spiritual journey. May Christ’s companionship bless you with confidence for the day, comfort you in trouble, and put a spring of joy in your step.

Monday, March 22, 2010

Thievery and Mystery

There is a wonderful sentence in Augustine. I wish I could remember the Latin. It is even finer in Latin than in English. “Do not despair; one of the thieves was saved. Do not presume; one of the thieves was damned.” This sentence has a wonderful shape. It is the shape that matters.
—Samuel Beckett, quoted in David Cunningham, “Do not presume,” Christian Century, March 23, 2010, 30-31.

So spoke the playwright when asked about his two characters in Waiting for Godot. Beckett seemed to suggest they were modeled on the thieves crucified beside Jesus.

One of the thieves mocks Jesus. The second asks Jesus to remember him when he comes into his kingdom. Jesus tells the second one, “Today, you will be with me in Paradise.”

It’s not clear what happened to the first thief. Tradition has assigned him, in art and story alike, the role of villain. He gets, we presume, what comes to those who mock God. Oddly, though, in the gospel Jesus doesn’t engage this mocking thief in dialogue at all. There’s no mention of his fate. We are the ones who create balance, shaping our theology to match our sense of fair play—good vs. evil, heroes vs. villains—where perhaps none exists. When it comes to grace, scripture avoids balance the way nature abhors a vacuum. Grace isn't fair!

I’d rather re-punctuate the second part of Beckett’s supposedly-Augustinian sentence, removing the semicolon: “Do not presume one of the thieves was damned.” It suggests something far more challenging than the tidy dualism of good versus evil. Perhaps we go too far filling in the other thief’s blanks. If we have confidence in the overflowing grace and mercy of a loving God, isn’t it possible that Beckett’s balance gives sin more credit that it is due? Isn’t it just as likely that Jesus welcomed both thieves into God’s presence?

There were not only two crosses on that hill. There were three. I believe the One who died in the middle reconciled the whole world to God—thieves and sinners all—in a moment of mystery and grace.

Along the Way, I wish you God’s peace on today’s stage of your Lenten spiritual journey. May Christ’s companionship bless you with confidence for the day, comfort you in trouble, and put a spring of joy in your step.

Sunday, March 21, 2010

Houses for Strangers

When Christianity came out of the catacombs, one of the first things the universal council of Nicea did was to establish xenodochia – “houses for strangers – in every region. Basil, Bishop of Caesarea, for example, built such a structure on the edge of town. Its rooms were dedicated to the lodging and refreshment of poor, wayfaring strangers. Eventually a wing was added for those who were sick and needed bed care, then a separate ambulatory care wing, then a wing for the aged, another for the crippled, another for lepers, another for infectious diseases, another for care of foundlings and orphans. A crib was placed outside the foundling wing for any who might choose to deliver their newborn to the care of the Christians. Every day Basil sent out “guides” to find needy people and bring them in. The church in Caesarea ran a combination shelter, poorhouse, nursing home, orphanage, rehabilitation center and urgent care center. The church was a hospital for sinners.

-R. Wayne Willis, “Pastoral implications,” Lectionary Homiletics 13 (7) June 2002: 11

Health care reform is on my mind. It's also on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives. But setting aside the legislation, I'm thinking about what it means to follow Jesus.

Here's what I believe. Jesus healed people. He saved them. The verb is the same: sozo. Salvation and healing are connected. They have the sense of deliverance, rescue, safety, preservation, cure, being made well. When we talk about health, we're talking about something at the core of Christian ethics. We're focused on a significant part of Jesus' ministry.

Is it any wonder Christians build hospitals? Is it any wonder we become doctors, nurses, therapists, counselors, and other medical professionals? We're walking along the healing path with Jesus. I wonder if insurance agents feel the same way. I know some do. They get into the business in part to make a living, but also because they know they are helping people secure the health care they need. The healing vocation can be practiced in a variety of careers.

You may have better ideas about health care reform than the Senate bill being passed by the House of Representatives. But as a Christian, I applaud whatever we can do to extend access to healing care to people who are at the margins, especially the poor. It's part of what it means to build "houses for strangers."

Along the Way, I wish you God’s peace on today’s stage of your Lenten spiritual journey. May Christ’s companionship bless you with confidence for the day, comfort you in trouble, and put a spring of joy in your step.

Saturday, March 20, 2010

God on Guitar

After a lifetime of leaning over his guitar,
Segovia offered this aesthetic of craft:
Not more,
not less. When approaching the romance of spirit,
Put on the brakes. Too much music, isn’t music.
Be calm. Let the word do its work. Allow
each string its resonance in silence.

—Joseph Stroud, “Hacedor,” Below Cold Mountain, 23.

I want to stretch my usual metaphors for God as Creator. Too often I limit them to the physical: God the Architect, arranging all the pieces just so, or God the Potter, fashioning us from dust, breathing into our nostrils the breath of life. Occasionally, I even imagine God the Author, writing out complicated plot lines, fleshing out characters, spinning out the myths and stories that bring us meaning and joy.

Stroud’s poem leads me to set the physical imagery aside. What if God played guitar, I now wonder? What if the events in our lives were the notes, and each life a song?

I think it’s liberating, imagining God leaning over my life like Segovia over his guitar, allowing each string to resonate in the silence, waiting to hear what it will do. The sweet melodies, the deepening themes, even the dissonant chords and suspended sevenths that demand resolution—all of it in God’s careful fingers. Never too much, never too little—God always playing, sometimes delighted at the result, at other times perhaps concerned. But always calmly, allowing the word to “do its work.”

Perhaps some lives are etudes, studies upon a theme, testing various techniques. Perhaps others are sonatas, folk songs, or dance tunes. I’d like to think many of us are jazz combos, a series of intimate twelve-bar phrases with a little improvisation to work things out against the silence to which all music returns.

What’s your song sounding like? Are you keeping your instrument tuned? Can you feel God’s fingers on your strings?

Along the Way, I wish you God’s peace on today’s stage of your Lenten spiritual journey. May Christ’s companionship bless you with confidence for the day, comfort you in trouble, and put a spring of joy in your step.

Friday, March 19, 2010

Theological Disobedience

Civil disobedience can be accomplished by two forms: violating a law which is obnoxious; or symbolically enacting a law which is urgently needed. When Negroes sat-in at lunch counters, they were engaging in both forms: they violated state laws on segregation and trespassing; they were also symbolically enacting a public accommodations law even before it was written into the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
—Howard Zinn, Uncommon Sense,112

Civil disobedience got my mother arrested at a lunch counter on March 31, 1960. It was in Montgomery, Alabama, with Ralph Abernathy, one of Martin Luther King’s most trusted allies. The police blocked the street with their cars, then charged Mom and the rest with creating a public disturbance. Her mother, my Grandma, was mortified when saw her daughter on the national nightly news being loaded into a paddy wagon. As for me, born on this side of the Civil Rights Act, I’m proud of my mother’s nonviolent civil disobedience.

But I wonder about my own complacency. When I do nothing in the face of injustice, I’m engaged in the inaction of theological disobedience. When I do nothing in the face of injustice I violate a higher law which is essential and good. That law is the command of Jesus to love God and neighbor.

I’m pondering my theological disobedience this season, my sins of omission when I fail to act for what Paul calls the common good. When Virginians Against the Death Penalty keep silent vigil in front of the church each night the Commonwealth executes a convict, am I standing with them? When Equality Virginia calls on the governor to protect gay and lesbian state employees from discrimination, am I writing letters and calling my delegate and senator to insist on equal treatment? When health insurance is unavailable to 45 million Americans, am I working to align U.S. law with the compassionate healing witness of Jesus?

Let my theological disobedience end, and, if necessary, my nonviolent civil disobedience begin. I want my life to reflect the law of love. I want to be my mother’s son.

Along the Way, I wish you God’s peace on today’s stage of your Lenten spiritual journey. May Christ’s companionship bless you with confidence for the day, comfort you in trouble, and put a spring of joy in your step.

Thursday, March 18, 2010

New Mistakes

Always make new mistakes.
—Esther Dyson, internet entrepreneur, cosmonaut

You’ve heard the well-worn definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over expecting different results. Making old mistakes may not really be insanity, but it’s certainly not productive. Still, I keep making old mistakes. My singular challenge today is to make a new mistake instead.

It sounds odd, in a way, to want to make new mistakes. But what it really means is that I’ve learned from my old ones and have stopped my insane insistence on repeating what hasn’t worked and never will. If I’m making new mistakes, it means I’m trying things I haven’t tried, looking for solutions to problems I haven’t solved.

Thomas Edison said, in 1890, “I would construct a theory and work on its lines until I found it was untenable. Then it would be discarded at once and another theory evolved. This was the only possible way for me to work out the problem. ... I speak without exaggeration when I say that I have constructed 3,000 different theories in connection with the electric light, each one of them reasonable and apparently likely to be true. Yet only in two cases did my experiments prove the truth of my theory” (Talks with Edison, Harpers, vol. 80, p. 425).

Creativity for tomorrow is always among my nightly prayers. But how often do I really follow through on the deeply difficult work that can make such a prayer come true?

Ask yourself: When was the last time you managed a truly new doozy, a whopper of unprecedented scope and proportion? When was the last time you wiped out completely because you were trying something new? It might not have been the solution you were looking for, but you got closer by taking a calculated risk, eliminating one more dead end.

If I make a new mistake today, it will be humbling. But unless I’m trying new paths, I won’t find the right path. It’s time to take that risk. And this time, I might just succeed.

Along the Way, I wish you God’s peace on today’s stage of your Lenten spiritual journey. May Christ’s companionship bless you with confidence for the day, comfort you in trouble, and put a spring of joy in your step.

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

We Lived Elsewhere Once

On this day of all days in the Irish-American calendar, when ethnic pride swells, let’s raise a toast: Here’s to the Irish, and here’s to the rest of us. May we never forget where we came from… We are all people who have lost our land in one sad way and found another. Whether we lament and celebrate in a pub or cantina, whether our tricolor flag has a cactus on it or not, we are closer to one another than we remember.
—“San Patrico,” editorial in The New York Times, March 17, 2010

Whether we were kicked out or left home on our own, we identify with the wanderer, the ex-patriot, the exile, the rogue. Our movies and novels, folktales and songs, often speak to the wanderlust in us. We all came from somewhere, and that somewhere is rarely where we find ourselves now, except in those emotional moments of discovery when we realize we can never really go home.

We’re spiritually displaced, too. The childhood certainties no longer hold. Our image of God heats, cools, and is tempered by experience. Sometimes it shatters, sometimes grows strong. Just as we no longer speak Gaelic or German, Swahili or Urdu, at least not fluently as our ancestors did, we also don’t speak Presbyterian or Methodist or Catholic or even that newer language of Disciples of Christ very well.

On St. Patrick’s Day, we celebrate our memory of having lived elsewhere once upon a time. We recognize—and sometimes lament—the path we’ve taken. But the biblical witness is strong and clear: God leads exiles and wilderness wanderers to new lands, new relationships, new understandings and knowledge. God is with us now as God was with us then.

May the road rise up to meet you.
May the wind always be at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face,
and rains fall soft upon your fields.
And until we meet again,
May God hold you in the palm of His hand.


Along the Way, I wish you God’s peace on today’s stage of your Lenten spiritual journey. May Christ’s companionship bless you with confidence for the day, comfort you in trouble, and put a spring of joy in your step.

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

The Point on the Horizon

If you ask a farmer how he ensures that he is plowing a straight furrow, he will give you this advice: Fix your eyes straight ahead on some fixed point on the horizon—a tree perhaps—and keep moving steadily toward it. Don’t watch the furrow. Just keep your hands on the plow and your eyes on that fixed point.
—Margaret Silf, Inner Compass, 37

So many things change, it seems like life is in constant flux. Everything seems out of control, as in the W. B. Yeats poem,

Turning and turning in the widening gyre,
the falcon cannot hear the falconer.
Things fall apart. The center cannot hold;
mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.

Depression, anxiety, confusion, despair—all are characterized by a loss of focus, or, rather, focusing on something less than ultimate. To have a healthy spiritual life, it helps to focus not only on a fixed point, but on the right fixed point. Wealth, health, happiness—these are all fine goals for life. But none is ultimately the right point.

What is the fixed point in your life? Family can seem fixed, and it’s true, you can’t change how you were raised or to whom you were born. But those are fixed points in the past. What fixed point is in front of you? Where do you fix your eyes so that the furrow you plow is straight?

Margaret Silf says this: “Jesus is our fixed point. He is at the head of each of our personal lines of oxen teams. It is his risen life and energy that provide the power for our every movement.” I believe she’s right. When I fix my eyes on the horizon, I see the overflowing love and grace of God before me. Fixing my eyes on Jesus I manage to stay on track.

Along the Way, I wish you God’s peace on today’s stage of your Lenten spiritual journey. May Christ’s companionship bless you with confidence for the day, comfort you in trouble, and put a spring of joy in your step.

Monday, March 15, 2010

The Revolution in Personalized Religion

An explosion of research in the past few years has taken us from a general observation that diseases tend to run in families to the discovery of very precise DNA variations that play a predictable role in many diseases, and that can be used to make increasingly accurate predictions about an individual’s potential future likelihood of illness.
—Francis S. Collins, The Language of Life: DNA and the Revolution in Personalized Medicine, xvi

Medicine is discovering precisely how alike we are and individually how different at the level of our basic encoding, our DNA. Francis Collins headed up the international Human Genome Project, which has mapped now, in exquisite detail, the 3.1 billion rungs on the human DNA ladder, containing over 20,000 individual genes. Mutations in the pattern, he discovered, account for the subtle and sometimes not-so-subtle differences among us. Illness and health, susceptibility and immunity to certain types of disease, and the ability to respond to certain treatments are largely genetic.

I imagine each of us has our own spiritual DNA. And it may be as complex as our biological genome. Our spiritual DNA isn’t made up of base chemicals, sugars, and phosphates. Instead, it’s shaped by how often we went to church as children, our parents attitudes toward religion, the particular Sunday School teachers we had, the number of times we dozed off listening to a dull sermon, the church camp games, the powerful bonds from youth group, the mountain top experiences we’ve had, the response that we received when we started questioning, and 19,992 other factors. Our religion can be as personalized as our physical health.

But as different as we are, as Christians we still have most of our spiritual DNA in common. We may mean slightly different things by it, but we confess Jesus as Lord and Savior and commit ourselves to living out his commandment to love God and neighbor. In the shorthand of the old hymn, we trust and obey. We share baptism and communion. We share scripture. We share a common tradition. We’re susceptible to many of the same spiritual diseases.

When you map your own spiritual genome, note the differences that make you unique, the weaknesses, the strengths. But note also what you have in common with other Christians. You may find we have more in common than you think!

Along the Way, I wish you God’s peace on today’s stage of your Lenten spiritual journey. May Christ’s companionship bless you with confidence for the day, comfort you in trouble, and put a spring of joy in your step.

Sunday, March 14, 2010

Making a Scene

A visionary light settled in [Mrs. Turpin’s] eyes. She saw the streak as a vast swinging bridge extending upward from the earth through a field of living fire. Upon it a vast horde of souls were rumbling toward heaven. There were whole companies of [lower class whites and blacks], and whole battalions of freaks and lunatics shouting and clapping and leaping like frogs. And bringing up the rear of the procession was a tribe of people whom she recognized at once as those who, like herself and Claud, had always had a little of everything and the God-given wit to use it right… They were marching behind the others with great dignity, accountable as they had always been for good order and common sense and respectable behavior. They alone were on key. Yet she could see by their shocked and altered faces that even their virtues were being burned away.
—Flannery O’Connor, “Revelation”

We want to think well of ourselves, to believe that we’re good and decent people, honest as the day is long, generous to a fault, hospitable and kind to strangers, willing to give anyone the benefit of the doubt. And of course, we’re kind to puppies. But in reality, we’re like all but the saintliest of saints—we take pride in our own accomplishments and are genuinely perplexed, if not a bit upset, when others aren’t as passionate about our aims as we are. It’s hard to try to better ourselves without measuring against those who choose a different path and then judging them.

Mrs. Turpin put great stock in the way she composed herself. She looked down her nose at anyone who wasn’t her equal. In her revelatory vision, she was simply shocked to see a bridge to heaven that had people like her walking behind all the folks she looked down upon.

It’s easy as a reader to shake our heads at her pretensions, her ignorance. But the brilliance of O’Connor’s story is that, just as I make judgments about Mrs. Turpin, I become her. She indicts my own sense of pride, because I suspect that if I were seeing her vision, I’d be in that last group, too, even as my self-claimed virtues burned away.

Maybe this is what it means to enter the kin-dom of heaven, to be separated no longer from anyone, by neither vice nor virtue, prejudice nor honor. As I look forward to Jerusalem with Jesus this season, I want to see who’s in the crowds. Who’s throwing down their coats at his feet? Who’s shouting Hosanna? Are they like me? Can I possibly be like them?

Along the Way, I wish you God’s peace on today’s stage of your Lenten spiritual journey. May Christ’s companionship bless you with confidence for the day, comfort you in trouble, and put a spring of joy in your step.

Saturday, March 13, 2010

Saying Grace

Reverend Sykes’ voice was as distant as Judge Taylor’s. “Miss Jean Louise, stand up. You’re father’s passin’.”
—Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, 242

At our dinner table, we say grace before each meal. We offer thanks for the day, the food, our family, our time together, and in a phrase I learned from my father, “all our many blessings.” It’s a good umbrella, and it covers a lot of ground.

What I don’t always appreciate is the connection between thanksgiving and grace. Thanksgiving is our way toward God. As Meister Eckhart has said, if the only prayer you ever say in your life is thank you, it is enough. But God’s role is what I sometimes forget. There would be no need for thanksgiving without grace.

Grace is the selfless giving of oneself for another. Grace is the undeserved over-and-above, the unmerited extra mile, the overflowing cup when a sip is all that is expected or required. It can’t be parceled out in tiny packages, because it flows like a mighty, everlasting stream from the very heart of God.

Grace is Atticus Finch defending Tom Robinson against trumped-up charges and Scout defending Boo Radley’s privacy. Grace is God’s gift to us revealed in the life, death, resurrection, and living presence of Jesus. Grace is the source of the challenges and blessings of each day.

I expect Rev. Sykes had it right, telling Scout to stand up as her father was passing by. At the dinner table, maybe offering our thanksgivings isn’t enough. Perhaps we should also stand.

Along the Way, I wish you God’s peace on today’s stage of your Lenten spiritual journey. May Christ’s companionship bless you with confidence for the day, comfort you in trouble, and put a spring of joy in your step.

Friday, March 12, 2010

Wild Things

And when he came to the place where the wild things are they roared their terrible roars and gnashed their terrible teeth…
-Maurice Sendak, Where the Wild Things Are

Max is aptly named.

Maurice Sendak’s solitary, lonely boy experiences his emotions—particularly anger—at maximum velocity. He chases the dog with a fork in his hand; he howls at his mother; he storms off to bed without any supper. And when his bed sails away to where the wild things are, he meets their monstrous, terrible roars with the magic trick he never learned at home. He says to them, “BE STILL!” And the wild things are stilled. They make him their king.

Do you ever wonder what it’s like to be able to reach that place where emotions can be tamed? To silence the wild caterwauls of anger, despair, or frustration is to harness deep psychological forces. To control the sulking, silent groans of resignation is to discover spiritual health. Hair-trigger rage is a wild thing that can damage the soul. Bitterness, jealousy, envy, greed—the church has named them all before.

Max gives me hope that I can plumb spiritual depths and not get lost. The wild things are still there, but they no longer have control of my life. In centering prayer, I can recognize their power and not be overcome; in the stillness of contemplation, I can find the calm that gives life to my soul.

My prayer for you today is that you find that spiritual place where the terrible roars within and the gnashing of terrible teeth become still. It’s not our doing, but the grace of God, that allows us to find a meal still warm on the table after the raging storm.

Along the Way, I wish you God’s peace on today’s stage of your Lenten spiritual journey. May Christ’s companionship bless you with confidence for the day, comfort you in trouble, and put a spring of joy in your step.

Thursday, March 11, 2010

Holy Silliness

Gadgets for God: the Hallelujah Button – Just won the lottery? Just been told by your boss, “We’re going to have to let you go”? Either way, the Hallelujah Button is a godsend. Simply hit the button (or shake your iPhone) and a few seconds of the Hallelujah Chorus burst forth. It’s perfect for use in church services too... just hold your iPhone aloft when the preacher finally concludes the sermon. The Hallelujah Button. As developed by George Frederick Handel.
shipoffools.com

This makes me laugh. Not in a sarcastic, bitter way, but out loud, from the gut. Yes, the Hallelujah Button is real, and yes, I can imagine the congregation all holding up their iPhones at the end of the sermon—the only improvement I can imagine would be if it let each user choose tenor or soprano, alto or bass.

It’s foolishness, Paul suggested, to stake our claim on a crucified savior. It’s holy silliness, Batman, to ride a donkey into town. That whole temple-torn-down-and-rebuilt-in-three-days thing? God poking fun at human pretension. And why not? You can’t take seriously a guy who turns water into wine.

But isn’t that just the way with faith? It blows up balloons and twists them into giraffes for children. It listens for God’s laughter through tears at the foot of the cross. Faith smiles knowingly when Mary mistakes the risen Jesus for the gardener. It laughs out loud when the Spirit at Pentecost makes Peter insist the disciples really aren’t drunk. Healing from illness, wholeness from fragmentation, life from death—there’ll be joy in the morning on that day!

Sure, I take my faith seriously. I get passionate in particular about Jesus’ teachings on social justice. But I also have to wear it lightly. In our church art gallery there’s a print of a laughing Jesus, his eyes crinkled and sparkling, his head thrown back. I love the image. Yes, Jesus wept. But surely he also was in on the holy humor of God’s ridiculous grace. Surely (“hey, stop calling me Shirley!” ba-dap-boom), Jesus also laughed.

So should you. So should I.

Along the Way, I wish you God’s peace on today’s stage of your Lenten spiritual journey. May Christ’s companionship bless you with confidence for the day, comfort you in trouble, and put a spring of joy in your step.

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Run!

I beg you, look for the words ‘social justice’ or ‘economic justice’ on your church Web site. If you find it, run as fast as you can. Social justice and economic justice, they are code words. Now, am I advising people to leave their church? Yes! … If you’ve got a priest who is preaching social justice, find another parish.
—Glenn Beck, The Glenn Beck Show, March 2, 2010

Throughout Lent, I’ve been meditating on the spiritual journey. Where do we begin, where are we going, and who are our companions along the way? I’ve been sharing the path with plenty of people I like and respect, people whose thoughts stimulate me to deeper places in my soul.

But it’s good for me to remember that there are others on the path from whom I learn because they and I fundamentally disagree. There’s something about an argument that forces me to consider carefully what I believe. Glenn Beck is one of these from whom I learn this way. A few days ago, he urged his listeners to look out for code words that their religious leaders were really promoting Nazism and Communism using terms like economic or social justice. He told his listeners to run away from such churches and report their pastors to church authorities. I had to chuckle a bit as I wondered what Jesus would say to someone tattling on us. We have our shortcomings as a church, but we’re pretty much in agreement that Jesus expects of us a love rooted in just and right relationships among friends and enemies alike.

I want to hang a banner out on the lawn that says, “Social justice is what Jesus meant by the Kingdom of heaven.”

And another that reads, “Economic Justice is part of the Economy of Salvation.”

So I want you to know what I’ve done. I’ve sent Mr. Beck an email telling him that I’m a social justice Christian. I’ve told him that if he’d like to visit us some day at First Christian Church, he will be welcome here, and he’ll find that everyone is welcome, even people who don’t always agree with each other or with him. He’ll find a congregation that believes love and justice are flip sides of the same divine coin—and we give to God what belongs to God. Our actions show it. He’ll find a church that believes God cares about poverty, illness, hunger, and social marginalization. He’ll find a church that’s running all right, but it’s running toward the gospel, not away from it.

He’ll find a church that sees a vision of God’ justice before us, and as we set our faces toward God’s kingdom, we’re prepared to RUN.

Along the Way, I wish you God’s peace on today’s stage of your Lenten spiritual journey. May Christ’s companionship bless you with confidence for the day, comfort you in trouble, and put a spring of joy in your step.

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Temples of an Unimaginable Mercy

Who among us would accept a universe in which there was not one voice / Of compassion, pity, understanding? / To be human is to be completely alien among the galaxies. / Which is sufficient reason for erecting, together with others, the temples of an unimaginable mercy.
—Czeslaw Milosz, “Religion Comes,” in Second Space (2004), 58

The world is not impersonal. Oh, it seems like it at times: cold, uncaring, callous. But that is not the world I accept as my ultimate home, either in the future or here and now. It is not the world that determines the decisions I make each day. I hear mercy and compassion in the human song. It gives me hope. It grants me a glimpse of God.

None of us is immune to the evil around us. But neither must we accept that Hobbes was right—that life without some tenuous social contract is nasty, cruel, brutish, and short. Selfish desires are our bane, but what makes us as human beings “alien among the galaxies” is that we have the capacity for compassion. Altruism isn’t just a cover for some deeper self-interest. We really do have the capacity for love.

Remember when you first fell in love. Didn’t something tingle inside? It was a connecting point in you that was tied by an emotional cord to a connecting point in someone else. It was your identity moving from within your skin into the larger sphere of relationship. It was your soul accepting a universe whose underlying cause is love.

When Jesus alludes to his body as a temple, he’s speaking about being torn down and raised up. But I believe there’s also something of the unimaginable sacredness of human community behind his words. It is as community that we are his body, his temple that can never be torn down completely, because we are always being raised up by the compassion, mercy, and love of God.

Along the Way, I wish you God’s peace on today’s stage of your Lenten spiritual journey. May Christ’s companionship bless you with confidence for the day, comfort you in trouble, and put a spring of joy in your step.

Monday, March 8, 2010

Adams and Eves

Watching my toddlers in their highchairs taught me that food is miraculous, its myriad colors and shapes, its glorious textures, an invitation to play. Squishing peas or squeezing fistfuls of mashed potatoes, my children were Adams and Eves discovering the wonder of creation for the first time, reaffirming the gift of this world and offering it back… and as I obeyed their infant commands to name the things of this world, the world became holy.
—Suzanne M. Wolfe, “This is My Body,” Image (Winter 2009), 82

How as adults do we discover the miraculous, the holy, especially when we don’t squish the peas anymore, when we don’t respond to the mashed potatoes’ invitation to play? I wonder how to reclaim our delight and surprise when everything around us was creative and new.

Perhaps there is a command in the play of toddlers and infants, an obligation, a moral imperative, for adults also to name the world. Isaiah was right. The way forward is found when “a little child shall lead them.” It is in the early naming of things, people, and relationships that we discover who we are, our roles and possibilities. We reaffirm the world. We offer it back… to whom? To one another, yes, but more. The world around us becomes holy when in our toddler-like discovery, we offer it back in wonder to God.

For a moment today, rediscover your inner Adam, your inner Eve. Discover a miracle. Give thanks.

Along the Way, I wish you God’s peace on today’s stage of your Lenten spiritual journey. May Christ’s companionship bless you with confidence for the day, comfort you in trouble, and put a spring of joy in your step.

Sunday, March 7, 2010

Family Celebration

It is so important for a family to celebrate all together. It is so important for the children to laugh and play and sing with their parents and to see their parents happy to be together.
—Jean Vanier, Community and Growth, p. 315

So many things get in the way of family celebration: work, school, laptops in the family room. There is distance, both emotional and physical. Few would deny that the forces tearing families apart are strong.

How much stronger, then, are the celebrations that truly overcome the daily grind? You don’t have to throw a party, but at least carry a playful spirit into each day. Parents who laugh around their children—with them and not at them—teach by example what it means to live into the kin-dom of God. And the occasional party is like icing on the cake!

Along the Way, I wish you God’s peace on today’s stage of your Lenten spiritual journey. May Christ’s companionship bless you with confidence for the day, comfort you in trouble, and put a spring of joy in your step.

Saturday, March 6, 2010

Draw Me a Sheep

“If you please, draw me a sheep…”
When a mystery is too overpowering, one dare not disobey. Absurd as it might seem to me, a thousand miles from any human habitation and in danger of death, I took out of my pocket a sheet of paper and my fountain pen. But then I remembered how my studies had been concentrated on geography, history, arithmetic and grammar, and I told the little chap (a little crossly, too) that I did not know how to draw. He answered me:
“That doesn’t matter. Draw me a sheep.”

—Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince, 10

When the pilot met the Little Prince, it was in the wilderness, after crash-landing his plane. The pilot’s singular focus: to repair his plane and get back on his way. This was, as he said, a “matter of consequence.”

The Little Prince, however, was a mystery. He seemed completely unconcerned about the pilot’s plight. Instead, he drew the pilot into his own search… for a sheep to protect his flower from the baobab trees growing on his planet far away. Ridiculous, of course! And a distracting interruption to the pilot! But how often does the overpowering mystery of another’s concern appear ridiculous? Most all the time, I fear.

Except for this: we become responsible forever for those we love. The pilot in time discovered that the Little Prince’s life had meaning because he loved his rose. His life had purpose because he fed, watered, and protected her. He endured her faults and adored her. In the end, he even gave his life for her. In the end, the pilot understood. And he drew the sheep.

Whom do you love? Is there someone you have fed, watered, protected, endured, and even prepared to give your life for? If so, you may find yourself asking strangers odd questions. This Little Prince gives me hope for all of us. Perhaps we each will find our purpose in loving others and draw strangers into a life-giving relationship. Perhaps we will remember we are responsible for those we love.

Along the Way, I wish you God’s peace on today’s stage of your Lenten spiritual journey. May Christ’s companionship bless you with confidence for the day, comfort you in trouble, and put a spring of joy in your step.

Friday, March 5, 2010

Good Health

Certainly one of the best ways to good health is to follow a well-balanced diet and the motto of the American Institute of Wine and Food: Moderation, Small helpings, A great variety of food, No snacking, Weight watching and sensible exercise, Above all—HAVE A GOOD TIME.
—Julia Child, The French Chef Cookbook (rev. 1998), iii-iv.

Few of us could live long on a diet of cheese soufflé, salmon mouse, Crêpes Suzette, Chicken Cordon Bleu, and fois gras. The cholesterol alone is frightening! Yet most of us have at least heard of these dishes, thanks to Julia Child. Trying them once in a while is a culinary treat, and, if you’re the one doing the cooking, a nice challenge.

Spiritually speaking, there are practices that few of us could successfully do every day. But occasionally it’s worth doing something out of the ordinary. Fasting, perhaps, or a day of silence, or even a particular yoga position—any of it can be a challenge worth trying, even if it’s not part of your daily spiritual diet.

What such disciplines highlight is that we each do have a daily diet. It may seem like meager stuff by comparison—a morning prayer may be a lot like a simple bowl of oatmeal; a quick glance at a daily devotional calendar may be like mashed potatoes—spiritual comfort food. But it’s the regular spiritual practices—morning or evening prayers, regular reading of scripture, weekly worship—that sustain us in the long run. It’s the occasional Coq-au-vin or Saute de Porc aux Champignons that then feeds the soul in deeper ways.

I hope you’ll find a way to splurge a bit, spiritually speaking this season. Step out of your ordinary routine and try something a bit more challenging. It might not be everyday fare, but it’s still good for the soul. And HAVE A GOOD TIME.

Along the Way, I wish you God’s peace on today’s stage of your Lenten spiritual journey. May Christ’s companionship bless you with confidence for the day, comfort you in trouble, and put a spring of joy in your step.

Thursday, March 4, 2010

Be a Good Ancestor

Lesson 21: Be a good ancestor. Stand for something bigger than yourself. Add value to the Earth during your sojourn. Give something back. Every minute you drink from wells you did not dig, are sheltered by builders you will never know, are protected by police and soldiers and neighbors and caretakers whose names are in no record books, are tended by healing hands of every hue and heritage, and are fed and clothed by the labors of countless others… What will your obituary say? What will you’re your legacy in life be?
—Marian Wright Edelman, Lanterns: A Memoir of Mentors, 166-167

I wonder what sort of ancestor I’ll be. Or you, what sort of ancestor will you be? What will your children’s children tell their children about you? I hope they’ll say we were trusting and good. I hope they’ll be glad about the care we took for the earth and its peoples and be proud of something we accomplished that made this world a better place. I hope they’ll have stories to tell, like that time when someone came to us hungry and we sacrificed our convenience to be sure they were not only fed but watered. Or the love we passed on in the family, or the difference we made in the community, or the (you have to use your imagination… how do your hopes fill in the blank?). We hope. We hope.

Perhaps that’s one place hope come to us, from the future. It’s not about irrational dreams that we cynically and secretly think will never really come true. Hope is about imagination rooted in possibility. Hope is the trust that someday a well we dig will satisfy someone else’s thirst. Hope is the trust that someday someone we loved will pass that love on to someone else.

I hope I’ll one day be a good ancestor. I hope your great-great grandchildren will be pleased to say you were a branch on their family tree. Even more, I hope that those who never know our names will be glad we were here, when we’re no longer David or Sherry or Bob, and we’re just “ancestors.” How will we work today to make their lives flourish?

Let your imagination fly.

Along the Way, I wish you God’s peace on today’s stage of your Lenten spiritual journey. May Christ’s companionship bless you with confidence for the day, comfort you in trouble, and put a spring of joy in your step.

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Navigating the Intersection of Politcs and Faith

Nobody in his or her right mind would want to be a member of a socially acceptable religion. It's very dangerous for the soul. A nation is in the business of doing Caesar's work, not God's. There's a distinction we get from the New Testament between religion and politics. That's not to say, however, that one shouldn't vote according to one's personal beliefs. All of us do that. But it is to say that one should never expect the state to function in accord with passionate faith. It won't. It can't. It shouldn't. That would be a confusion of roles.
—Phyllis Tickle, interviewed by Becky Garrison in The Wittenburg Door, 11/28/2007

We all live at the intersection of politics and faith. It’s a busy intersection, so we have to be careful not to get run over! Perhaps the trick in standing at the crossroad between politics and faith is to decide if you’re there to dodge traffic or to help people cross the street.

Last night the Lynchburg City Schools shared the deep challenges faced by next year’s budget cuts. It was an event filled with political realities and passion, anguish and cold, hard facts. Students, faculty and parents spoke up in defense of their schools. Several from our church were there. Christina Maclay spoke on behalf of Perrymont Elementary, where she teaches. Tickle is right in principle that Caesar’s work and God’s work are separate, but many of us have to juggle both. There are places—like public education—where people of faith don’t set aside their compassion and commitment to justice just because Caesar signs their check. In one way or another, most of us live in this intersection.

What is our role as Christians in the public square? I believe that it is to be faithful to the compassionate claim Jesus makes on all his disciples. So we speak up for the marginalized. “Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,” the prophet Isaiah reminds us. Will you write a letter or make a phone call? Will you encourage a child to do his best? Will you show appreciation for a teacher who doesn’t know if she has a job next year? Advocacy is hard work, but all it means at its root is to speak up. Look around you today. Who needs to hear your voice speaking up, speaking out, speaking tenderly when needed? Who needs your help to cross the street?

Along the Way, I wish you God’s peace on today’s stage of your Lenten spiritual journey. May Christ’s companionship bless you with confidence for the day, comfort you in trouble, and put a spring of joy in your step.

Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Jesus at the Crossroads

Jesus was not crucified in a cathedral between two candles, but on a cross between two thieves; on the town garbage heap; at a crossroads so cosmopolitan that they had to write his title in Hebrew and in Latin and in Greek (or should we say in English, in Bantu and in Afrikaans?) at the kind of place where cynics talk smut, and thieves curse and soldiers gamble. Because that is where he died. And that is what he died about. And that is where church [members] should be and what church [member]ship should be about.
—George F. MacLeod, quoted on Richard Pulley’s home page at The Intersection

We have a cross between two candles on our communion table. It’s important that I never forget that cross is there to point me beyond my own experience. It points beyond the church walls, out into the street, up and down Rivermont Avenue, one arm toward downtown with its inner city challenges and the other out toward the mountains and rural poverty.

The cross on the table reminds me that the church at its best lives at the crossroads. Whether we’re serving a meal at Gateway with men working to overcome addictions or hammering together wheelchair ramps for the homes of people with disabilities, we’re where Jesus lived and died. When we’re picking up trash on our adopted section of the street, or paying a power bill for a single mom, or assembling diapers and sleepers into Baby Kits, we’re where we belong.

We’re not sent only to nice people who pray, sing, and think like us, even though we're sent to them, too. We won’t necessarily find Jesus at a fancy dinner party unless we go out behind the kitchen where he’s taking out the trash. But we’ll find him. Because we’re not an imperial church. We know full well where he was crucified. We remember by whom. And, just as importantly, we remember by whom he was raised.

Along the way, I wish you God’s peace on today’s stage of your Lenten spiritual journey. May Christ’s companionship bless you with confidence for the day, comfort you in trouble, and put a spring of joy in your step.

Monday, March 1, 2010

Interconnected and Interdependent

Every individual matters, nonhuman as well as human. Every individual has a role to play. Every individual makes a difference. We cannot live through a single day without making an impact on the world around us. And we all have free choice—what sort of difference do we want to make? Do we want to make the world around us a better place? Or not?
—Jane Goodall, in Lorne Adrian, The Most Important Thing I Know, 83

Not only are we interconnected, we’re interdependent. Interconnected things are part of a structure, organized, attached, perhaps even orderly. Certainly the church is an interconnected web, where one person’s joy or grief is felt by all the others. Pull one string of the web and the vibrations are felt throughout.

But we’re also interdependent. Interdependence rises a level above just being connected. Interdependence means that not only do we sense each other’s existence, but we also need one another. We each matter not just because we’re attached, and for one of us to go missing is like the unraveling of a fishing net, but because we make a difference in each other’s lives. My joy is impossible without yours to feed it; my sorrow is unbearable without you to share it.

Paul said the same thing organically when he spoke of the body needing hands, eyes, ears, and feet. Imagine a body where the hands are connected but they don’t ever wipe the tears out of the eyes. Imagine a body where the ears are connected, but they don’t share with the feet a cry they hear for help. Interconnected is not enough. We’re interdependent. We each have a role to play in one another’s lives.

And it/s not just other people with whom we’re interdependent—our ecosystem depends on us and we on it. Our society depends on us and we on it. Even God is part of this interdependent dance, as we depend on God and—here’s the radical part—God depends on us. From the office to the home to the whole of creation, we can choose each day to make things better. Or not.

How will you make a difference today, to your friends, your coworkers, your community, your world, and to God?

Along the Way, I wish you God’s peace on today’s stage of your Lenten spiritual journey. May Christ’s companionship bless you with confidence for the day, comfort you in trouble, and put a spring of joy in your step.