For the Unanswered Prayers, Missed Trains, and Blessings to Come

I have no idea how I wound up here.  Over 7 years into this almost ludicrous adventure it still baffles my mind and teases my soul.  A constantly schooled, city-bound, office shaped guy living on a farmstead, raising vegetables and chickens…and smiling in the company of an indulgently loving and endlessly curious wife, observed by amazed and amused kids who still wonder what happened to their Dad.  It is not what I prepared for.  It is not the brass ring toward which I had reached.  It is…fascinatingly…gloriously…laughably…different.  How did this happen?  

Some have speculated a lost mind.  Some have guessed “mid-life crisis.”  Some have indulged my enigmatic, inexplicable sense that this was where I was being called to be.

Who can say?  It still takes my breath away.

 Years ago, Garth Brooks famously gave thanks for unanswered prayer — that divine dispensation of grace that saved him from the myriad consequences of the stupid, or even well-meaning but misguided, things for which he had earnestly asked. I always loved that song, even though I had no real clarity about the hypothetical eventualities from which I’d been spared.   Regardless, perhaps that accounts for some part of an explanation.  

Years later, my brother introduced me to a song by Walt Wilkins with a similar but differently turned sentiment:

Here's to the trains I missed, the loves I lost

The bridges I burned the rivers I never crossed

Here's to the call I didn't hear, the signs I didn't heed

The roads I couldn't take the map that I just wouldn't read

CHORUS

It's a big ole world but I found my way

From the hell and the hurt that led me straight to this

Here's to the trains I missed

Lunacy.  Unanswered prayers.  Missed trains that led me straight to this.  Perhaps.  All I know is that this is where I am, and this is what I am doing, in partnership with a beloved whose very presence in my life amazes and blesses me and constantly surprises me -- all despite everything that I had intended, prepared for, dreamed of and practiced.  I know all that, and that I am grateful.  Unspeakably grateful.  And happy.

Standing here in the waning candlelight of an old year ending, approaching the threshold of a New Year still gelatinous and unformed, I wonder what insight my past has to pass along to my future.  At the very least it suggests that I am not as bright as I like to think I am, and certainly not as prescient.  My bigotries and preconceived ideas lead me to think I know what’s best — for myself and quite possibly others.  My experience, however, suggests an humbler reality.  As often as not, I don’t.   I hope and pray I can take that to heart.

In this New Year erupting I have no idea what’s ahead, nor which trains I should catch — or miss.  I will do my best to pay attention and discern; I will run down the tracks in pursuit of those engines that seem promising and prudent.  But I pray for the circumspection to anticipate that, as often as not, I’ll be wrong.  

And to be relieved and thrilled by what that mistake and missed opportunity occasions in its place; that I had no way to predict.

Here, then, to the ever-surprising possibilities of the New Year, whatever they may be.  I’m open to them.  

“Night is drawing nigh,” wrote Dag Hammarskjold, former Secretary General of the United Nations in his journal, Markings.  The night of this day, to be sure, but more poignantly the night of this old year.

“For all that has been — Thanks!

To all that shall be — Yes!”

Thanks…

…and Yes!

That's a pretty good way to say "goodbye" and "hello."

Happy New Year.

The Great and Holy Circle Of Love

After singing “ Do You Hear What I Hear” a couple of weeks ago with friends, all of us hauntingly implored to “pray for peace, people everywhere,” I confessed that most of my life I had thought peace to be all about absence — absence of stress, absence of conflict; absence of war; absence of fruitcake. And while all of those things are blessed contributions to it, I’m finally coming to comprehend that more than any absence, peace is above all a presence. 

I should have known it. Scripture is pretty forthright about it — in the flood story where Noah is instructed to make sure that every animal is represented on the Ark; in the Gospel parable in which the servants are commanded to go out to the highways and byways and urge everyone to the feast; in the vision that Peter has of a sheet being lowered down from heaven bearing every imaginable creature, with the instruction to take and eat; to which Peter responds, “I can’t eat what’s unclean.”  “Don’t call unclean what I have called clean,” the voice pushed back. 

In fact, I should have caught a glimpse of it in the very first chapter of Genesis, at the end of the creation story, where…“God looked at everything created and said, ‘It’s very good’”.  Everything.

As if to drive that point home, Paul writes to Timothy what may well be the most challenging assertion in scripture:  that “Everything God created is good, and to be received with thanks.” (1 Timothy 4:4, MSG)

Everything, which is a challenging affirmation on the farmstead where bugs and rabbits invade the vegetables and possums and raccoons invade the chicken yard.  But there is the biblical insistence:  Everything. It’s the reason Jesus came among us according to John 3:16:  because God so loved this world.

We borrow the Hebrew word for it — shalom — without bothering to grasp the expansiveness of its meaning.  Far more than the mere absence of fighting, shalom refers to the presence of wholeness; fullness; completeness.  

In recent months Lori and I have had the joy of organizing and teaching a Sunday School class for Burmese refugee children.  Nearing the end of one of the first sessions, helpers began distributing snacks.  One little boy immediately tore into his packaged treat and began to nibble away.  Another boy, perhaps 6 years old, touched his arm and kindly, but sternly, told him, “You need to wait.  We all do this together.  And first we need to pray.  

Together, with a prayer.  Shalom.   

Peace, then, not so much an absence, but rather the beloved presence of all that God loves.  Like each one of us, and each other.  On his new CD released last month, Minnesota singer/songwriter Peter Mayer sings of just that expansive awareness…

Jesus spoke, entreating them

To live together in a great circle of love

When his followers asked him then

“Who should be included?”

Jesus said…

Let everybody in, everybody in,

Everybody in to the circle, circle.

Everybody, everybody; everybody, everybody,

Everybody into the circle, circle.

 Everybody.  That which God managed to communicate to Noah, and to Peter and the other disciples we are still trying to get our hearts and minds around:  that when any one of us is excluded, we are all diminished — which, more than stars and snow and stables and shepherds, may well be the bigger Christmas message. 

Shalom, then.  Peace on earth, good will to all. 

All of us in this great circle of love. 

Light in the Longest Night

There is a full moon tonight -- forthrightly there, anchoring the night sky just beyond the Christmas tree window.  On first impression it might seem that we could use the extra light because tonight also marks the Winter Solstice — the point at which the earth’s axis is tilted as far away from the sun as it will be all year.  For those of us in the Northern Hemisphere that cosmic tilt results in darkness; the longest night of the year.  It doesn’t soothe us much to know that those in the Southern Hemisphere are simultaneously enjoying their longest day as a result of precisely the same phenomenon.  That these things eventually balance out is little consolation.  Culturally, and perhaps even psychologically speaking, being “rich in darkness” has never really seemed like wealth.

Ours the pity. How else would we see the stars?  How else to fully embrace the perfection of this glorious moon?  How else to give our eyes a break and flex our other senses?  Absent sight we hear more acutely, smell with heightened discernment, and feel our way around with fingers become antennae.  Pressed to eat, we taste with a sharpened mixture of caution and exploration.  All of which is to indulge the reality that darkness both invites and occasions awakened attention.

To my knowledge, no one survives who attended the birth of Jesus.  Nonetheless, absent first hand verification, we persist in locating this occurrence “after hours”.  Whimsical or not, I rather like the idea.  Whether or not the night was “silent”, I’m certain it was holy.  Births, of course, are always holy; but more than that, the darkness would have added a kind of wondrous pregnancy all its own.

Capacity.
Possibility.
Wonderment.
A crackling electricity of fearful hopefulness...

...the very kind of essential nourishments so easily overlooked or crowded out in the light of day.  We are so distracted when the sun is up -- frenetically trying to "get it all done", trying to see it all and do it all.  But, of course, in the urgency of such pursuit we miss more than we catch. 

When else would grace be born but in the expansive infinity of darkness?

I have heard these present days referred to as darkness, and I am aware that the description is not intended as a compliment.  I’m inclined, though, to receive it as such.  If, indeed, it is only at night that we see the stars and appreciate the full splendor of the moon; if, indeed, it is only amidst the darkness that our senses flex their muscles, then let this be a long and deep darkness in which we can “see” most clearly...

What is true...
What is bright...
What is noblest...
What is our highest aspiration for ourselves and the community we hope and help to fashion.

Let it be dark, so that we might feel the pain of others, taste the bile we have churned, smell the stench of injustice and hear the cries of those who are lost.  If it is, indeed, in the dark of night that our soul’s antennae are most exposed and receptive, then withhold even longer the sun.

Minnesota-based singer/songwriter Peter Mayer offers this musical invitation:
Come with drums, bells and horns
Or come in silence, come forlorn
Come like a miner to the door
Of the longest night
For deep in the stillness, deep in the cold
Deep in the darkness, a miner knows
That there is a diamond in the soul
Of the longest night
Of the year.

There are diamonds, then, to be discovered; work to be done this Winter Solstice.
Lots of discerning, healing, birthing work.

Thankfully, this longest night of the year affords us a little more time — a few extra and darkly precious minutes to get it done.

Don't be afraid. 
Use it well.

Happy Solstice.

Morning-After Kissing

First of all, thank you to all who offered themselves up as candidates to the rigorous eternity of tire-kicking that is the campaign season. You’ve done something quite heroic. Go back to whatever you did before this began with a merit badge of civic blessing.

Secondly, congratulations to those who prevailed. Take this brief moment to enjoy a deep breath. That’s about all the respite you will get. It’s time to set yourself to the task — and it won’t be easy. The process, itself, sees to that.

There is a country song that ruefully acknowledges, “It’s hard to kiss the lips at night that chew your ass out all day long” (The Notorious Cherry Bombs).

It’s a clever turn of phrase which, when it is on track, is country music’s stock and trade.  Earthy, I'll admit, but clever.  It makes me smile.  But it’s a wry smile.  Most of us know how difficult it is to walk back out of hurtful words we’ve spoken into a more promising and productive space.

I think of that challenge on a day like today — the day after a bitter political season ground to a close; the day after the clock counting down the hours of a very long “day” of ass-chewing finally ran down.  It won’t be easy in the coming days and months for these elected officials to practice statecraft with these lips that have spent this season in character assassination and moral diminishment.   We are increasingly brutal in our politicking— increasingly personal, and dishonest in our representations.  Suddenly, then, with the votes counted and the machines stored away until next time, fierce opponents are supposed to cohere into a productive and representative governing body.  It’s going to take more than puckering, but if we are going to be a functioning country that’s the work ahead.  

And it’s not just the politicians, of course, who have this difficult relational work to do.  Given our collective comportment over the past year and more, there is a good chance there will be a few lips gathered around our holiday tables in the month we aren’t looking forward to kissing.    The carving knives aren’t the only sharp objects laying around, and we will have some relational healing and accommodating to do.  But if we are to be a functioning family and community that’s the work ahead.  

So how will we manage it?  I remember reading about the awkward difficulty American clergy experienced in the wake of World Wars preaching healing and reconciliation after so lustily preaching against the enemy throughout the war.  It’s easier — and usually more fun — to froth up our righteous indignation and demonization than to work up a sweat in service to healing and common cause.  Which ought to give us pause.  Like it or not, we are going to have to kiss these lips.

I’m not suggesting we merely throw another log on the campfire, hold hands and sing “Kum Ba Ya” — although I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t humming it right now.  Life together in this public space is more complicated than that, and infinitely more difficult.  I’m simply saying we had better find other ways to debate the very serious matters confronting us — global warming and the degradation of the environment, racism, anti-semitism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia and the genuine challenge of existing as but one member of a diverse and messy global community, and our various and seemingly multiplying ways of abusing each other — than with our teeth.  

And listen afresh to what our various religions teach us about the value of human life, the care of our neighbor, and the imperative to love.

Because there isn’t finally anywhere for us to go but into each other’s arms.  

And may God help us to finally comprehend this fundamentally basic truth:

That it is hard to kiss the lips at night that chew your ass out all day long.

Voting With a Different Rubric

I haven’t yet voted. I am happily among the dinosaurs of this citizenry who still enjoy stepping into the voting booth on Election Day and penciling in my choices. As this impending opportunity approaches, I have been thinking about my rubric — how I decide for whom to cast my vote.  In elections past I have carefully reviewed the candidate responses to media questionnaires, noted scores on issue-based report cards, watched televised debates and read with interest the newspaper’s endorsements.  In elections past, positions reigned supreme. But I’ve grown weary of the mud wrestling.  And I’ve become increasingly disgusted by the moral fibers out of which those “representing” me are woven.  So, I’m changing the way I prepare to cast my vote.

While my interest in the positions a candidate espouses on the myriad of issues remains a priority for me, that consideration this time around has been demoted a notch.  After all, it is precisely this kind of blindered voting that has gotten us into the odious mess we are in. 

So it is that I have moved into the place where if “who you are speaks so loudly that I can’t hear what you are saying,” the odds are good that you don’t get my vote.  This time around, then, I will impose a prior screen that has lamentably fallen into collective neglect.  In this election, and those that foreseeably follow, I will only consider those who: 

• to the best of my ability to determine it, keep their zipper up/skirt down, and their hands to themselves; 

• honor their spousal vows if they’ve entered them, and professional integrities, believing that if someone doesn’t keep faith with those closest to them I can’t expect them to do so with me;

• respect the validity of facts, even when they are inconvenient;

• have more than a passing acquaintance with the values of circumspection and humility; 

• demonstrate, beyond the campaign trail, a reverence for the sacred value of humankind and the world in which we live;

• pause to think and consider rather than jumping to immediate action; 

• can meet an opponent’s position with equanimity rather than ridicule;

• come from particular places and tribes but exercise the capacity to see beyond the parochial, not simply for the good of the moment but the good beyond their time. 

Only then, from among those who remain viable after such a vetting, will I consider their politics variously espoused.  

I know there are those who consider this to be an impossibly high bar for a candidate to clear — an assessment I find to be embarrassingly sad. To the contrary, I view it to be such a pathetically low standard so base that it’s hard to imagine how we could have possibly abandoned it.  Surely this is simply the least of what we should expect of each other.  

And tomorrow, in the voting booth, I will.  The days and years after, as well. 

Because another election is never far away.

Happy Birthday; Don’t Rest In Peace

Happy birthday, Lady Liberty.  I read this morning that on this day in 1886 the Statue of Liberty was officially unveiled and opened to the public. France had been the birth mother, shipping the statue in 214 crates to be assembled in New York.  Thinking about the generosity through contemporary eyes, I’m astounded by the gift.  Today it’s hard to imagine one country doing anything like this for another, but as the 19th century ebbed to a close the French apparently felt an extravagant appreciation for — maybe amazement at — the love of freedom they felt we held in common.   According to my source, dedication day was inclement, but crowds ignored the chill and the rain and jammed the space.  Responding to mixed signals, the sculptor Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi, who was alone in the statue's crown, dropped the veil prematurely, interrupting the festivities.  No one seemed to mind.  It had been the statue that had drawn the crowds, not the prospect of tedious speeches.  

In the years leading up to this historic birth, the project’s pregnancy was not without difficulty.  Fundraising stalled, delaying the completion of the pedestal on which the statue would be installed.  In 1883 poet Emma Lazarus wrote and contributed a sonnet to an auction held to raise money for the lagging project.  Eventually, in 1903, the poem was cast onto a bronze plaque and attached to the statue’s base.  

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,

With conquering limbs astride from land to land;

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

MOTHER OF EXILES. From her beacon-hand

Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she

With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

I think of it as something of a baptismal name.  

A post-natal consecration.  

A lens, amplifying it’s intrinsic identity. 

And there she stood, symbolic flame alight, her invitational lyrics sung out.

“Stood.”  It’s a vacant pedestal these days.  We don’t much care for immigrants these days, erecting barriers literal, procedural and relational to bar them entrance.  Only the uninformed or the politically blind complain about our “porous” borders.  It takes years to navigate the system — often decades.  And money.  Unless, of course, you are well-connected, in which case you can cut to the front of the line.  Unless, of course, you are willing to perform a job that no one else wants to do — like cut meat in a meat packing plant, or harvest fruits or vegetables in a scorching hot field — in which case we will turn our head and ignore your presence until that is no longer convenient.  Meanwhile, if you are caught we will cage your children like dogs and send you elsewhere.  “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”

There is, in the news of recent days, a caravan of refugees — thousands — walking north from Central America toward our southern border.  They aren’t, and won’t be, welcomed here.  I have every expectation that their arrival will be met with resistant, repelling force, if not brutality.  We will collectively, and with a mixture of righteousness and helplessness, assert that we had no other choice.  We have our laws and a border to defend.  And we have all these precious jobs to protect…that nobody actually wants.

And believe me, I do not know the alternative.  There has to be, I acknowledge, some kind of a screening process.  But I have never sensed that the Ellis Island gates through which most of our ancestors passed erected quite such labyrinthian obstacles, and somehow we all managed.

I don’t suppose I really blame the politicians.  They, too, have their job to do; their laws to enforce.  What puzzles me are the good and conscientious church folk who read their Bibles as faithfully as I.  Unlike the varieties of modern topics about which we volubly argue on which scripture only vaguely or ambiguously speaks — and often then only by extension and extrapolation — on the subject of immigrant welcome, the expectations are repetitively clear.  Old or New Testament, it doesn’t matter:  “hospitality” is to be our name.

“Don’t exploit or mistreat the refugee,” commands the prophet Jeremiah.  “Don’t forget to show hospitality to strangers,” notes the book of Hebrews, “for some who have done this have entertained angels without knowing it.”

These two among dozens of others.

And so it may well be that as happens on many other issues, our patriotic interests conflict with our Christian obligations.  Sadly, we can seldom tell them apart.

And so it is that on this day, 132 years ago, that the Statue of Liberty was born.  October 28.  It’s less clear to me if there is an equally specific date on which she died.  It just doesn’t take much of a look around to confirm that she has. Lazarus' sweeping invitation has been replaced by our stern warning:

“Don’t even think of bringing us any tired or poor.  Keep your wretched refuse on your own teeming shore.  We won’t have them.  These golden doors are dark.  And closed.”

May she never Rest In Peace.

Pied Piper Beyond the Chocolate Bunnies

It wasn’t a promising beginning. 

In the early years of my Iowa ministry I enjoyed the company of a small, ecumenical clergy group that met regularly for support, friendship, and shared learning.  Someone along the way recommended that we read together a book by Eugene Peterson.  I was skeptical.  Through the years I have vetted authors unfamiliar to me by the publishing companies who promoted them.  Peterson’s publisher at the time was one who raised red flags for me.  I gritted my teeth, bought the book and read along.  It was fine, but my prejudice got in the way.  

Some years later I encountered his writing at a more receptive moment.  I was growing sick and disenchanted with the state of the contemporary American church.  It had less to do with the congregation I was serving at the time — which was pushing mightily against the tide — but the ecclesiastical milieu at-large was becoming suffocating to me.  Seduced by the lure of success; hypnotized by the siren song of the marketing world’s emphasis on “bigger, better, more”; adopting the language of business, fixated on expanding market share and popular attention, we quoted “leadership” gurus as glibly as scripture, designed glitzy programs, gave away chocolate bunnies to the kids at Easter and advertised special guest appearances by “Sky Divers, Beauty Queens and Professional Quarterbacks for Jesus” to draw a crowd; installed cup holders in the theater seats, giant video screens in the chancel, and amped up the praise bands.  Infatuated with flame and fizz, mock-turtlenecked or Hawaiian-shirted pastors waved platitudinal shiny objects and orchestrated constant frenetic movement through the worship space, while the “amazing technicolor dream church” slipped effortlessly into the lifestyle of religious prostitutes, willing to turn ever more unsavory tricks in pursuit of butts and bucks.  I wasn’t any good at it, and it made me increasingly ill to feel the pressure to jump on.  Besides, I looked stupid in a Hawaiian shirt.

And then Peterson quietly but forcefully spoke up from the pages of his current book.  “The church is not called to be a purveyor of religious goods and services,” he cautioned.  And I exhaled.  Throughout that book and the subsequent volumes I hungrily consumed, he mapped a more integral path.  He wrote of his own discovery of the nature of congruent pastoral work — one that led him away from “staying awake at night laying out a strategy or ‘casting a vision,’” and into the lives and souls of his parishioners.  It was, for me, like being handed a cup of cool water.   I found in him not only a life raft, but a literary conversation partner.  Eventually, an actual conversation partner.

Always interested in writing, I was constantly frustrated with my inability to work the discipline into my ministerial life.  Competing responsibilities, tasks and distractions were a constant.  Peterson, I observed, hadn’t seemed to have that problem.  Incomprehensibly to me, he had managed to publish dozens of books while serving as a local church pastor.  How, I wondered, did he find the time and the mental focus?  The only way I could think of to learn the answer was to ask.  I tracked down an address, shared in a letter my frustration, and asked the question.  By return mail I received a two-page, single-spaced reply, outlining first how he organized his daily work, and then how he and his congregation had come to understand and validate that work as an extension of their shared ministry.  It was a beautiful, generous gift, closed with this contextualizing and nudging P.S.:  “Through the years, the most important Christian writing has been done by local church pastors…like the New Testament.”

Some years later, while attending a small conference at which he was presenting, I had the opportunity to express my appreciation, though I almost squandered it.  Finally overcoming my inhibitions late in the experience, I approached him with my copy of The Message.  Usually surrounded by fans, he was in this moment uncharacteristically alone.  I apologized for asking him to autograph a Bible, but confessed that it was the only one of his volumes that I had brought along.  He smiled gently as he took my book, set it in his lap, and replied, “when it first came out, I refused.  And then I thought to myself, ‘Oh, get over it.’”  We both chuckled, and he handed back my now-inscribed Bible.  But I couldn’t manage to say more, until a day or so later, on the crowded ferry back to the mainland, I found myself wedged against the railings next to Peterson.  It wasn’t a perfect setting, but it was now or never.  “I want to thank you for saving my professional life,” I blurted out, and then the rest of the story spilled out into the conversational, wave-sprayed opening.  He patiently listened, smiled, and patted my arm, receiving with uncomfortable grace my gratitude.  And that was it.  

Until a few months ago.  Hearing a replay of a broadcast interview with him from a couple of years prior, I felt again the full weight of my indebtedness.  Rereading one of his more recent books, I once again tracked down an address, composed a missive again recounting his indelible fingerprints on my life, and dropped it through the mail slot.  Truthfully, I had forgotten about it when, a few weeks later while collecting the mail, I shook out a letter with a Montana postmark.  Inside was a preprinted card from Janice Peterson, Eugene’s wife, acknowledging my letter and noting that Eugene wasn’t corresponding much at this point.  And then, in the white space remaining on the card she had handwritten, “I’ve shown him your letter and he has reread it multiple times.  Thank you.”

Two weeks ago I learned that he had entered hospice care, and last night I learned that he had died.  I’ll confess that it feels like a part of me has, too.  And that the church has lost a critically important, steadying voice.  

But only, I know, in a certain sense.  The rest of that truth, perceived through my tears, is that every time I see chocolate bunnies being handed out during a children’s sermon, every time I see the liturgists swinging figuratively through the sanctuary in a tawdry performance of “Church du Soleil,” I’ll hear the humble music of his voice piping us toward a more faithful way.  And he will be moving among us — at least alongside me — again.  

Thanks, Eugene, for the metaphors, the theological poetry, the attention to spiritual integrity, and your rigorous ability to write it all down, through it all encouraging us to live “the Christ life in the Christ way.”

A Few Traveling Reflections

We traveled this month primarily for pleasure — we were celebrating an anniversary and work hard never to take such roadside altars for granted. Since we determined early on that the best gifts we can give each other are experiential rather than material — durable as only the ephemeral can be — we travel. And we do our best to pay attention...to whatever finds it’s way into our sphere of senses. We plan, but loosely; leaving porous places in the days where serendipities can seep in — as, enabled, they invariably will. Which is also to acknowledge that, beyond the simple pleasure of it, travel is intrinsically enlarging. We return as different people.

And so it is, as those different people, that we have returned from a few weeks in France. Aside from the pleasures, what did we notice? With apologies for the jetlag still cobwebbing my brain, a few random thoughts come to mind.

Thought 1:  I came to a new respect and appreciation for my high school friends who studied French. I didn’t. And so it was that, as a language, I found French to be melodically beautiful but functionally inscrutable. I never succeeded in differentiating individual words within the aural sweep of a speaker’s sentences. As a people, however, I found the French to be surprisingly, generously gracious. I say “surprisingly” because we ventured into this excursion having internalized and braced ourselves for the oft-cited slander of French aloofness to — or outright disdain toward — tourists in general and non-French speakers in particular. Our experience was the exact opposite. At every turn we were shown kindness, hospitality, charity and grace — from the jogger in Avignon who ran past us, only to return to ask if she could help us two obviously lost travelers trying to find the train station; to the train conductors who showed us how to fill in the blanks on our tickets instead of charging us the penalty for not having already done so; from the patient shopkeepers who helped us count out unfamiliar currency, to the miscellaneous passersby who volunteered translations. We were given rides, welcomed into homes, and made to feel like family. We were constantly humbled, grateful and profoundly indebted to this consistent kindness to strangers.

Thought 2:   Kindness is one thing; accommodation is quite another — or maybe accommodation is simply kindness at an institutional level. Every day of our travels we were as grateful for as we were dependent upon the bilingual provisions Europeans make — in public spaces like elevators, train stations, airports and museums — but in more intimate ones as well, like shops and sidewalk cafes. Menus commonly included English translations. Announcements were routinely given in multiple languages. Brochures  were always diversely translated. We were never far away from someone or some tool that would help us bridge the language gap. We were utterly and completely at the mercy of these considerations. And I was sobered by the realization of how seldom we, in this country, reciprocate. Paralyzingly mono-lingual, we condemn foreign travelers to their own resources, in so doing condemning ourselves to our own prejudiced or clueless insularity. That they routinely succeed is more to the credit of those travelers multi-lingualism than our hospitable provision. Thank you, France, for extending your hand to help us navigate the stumbling divides.

Thought 3:   I love our home, our land, our heritage, and it was, in any number of ways, warming to return after such a wonderful excursion. That said, it was relief and delight to be away; to gain distance from and perspective on the roiling stomach of this profoundly ill American culture. Left or right, angry or appalled, righteous or repulsed, surely we can agree that we are together in a very unhealthy civic space. Europeans certainly have their own problems and cultural viruses, but blessedly they went out of their way to screen us from them. Meanwhile, in their keeping, we could cleanse ourselves — ever so briefly — of the moral, political and social vomit that is drenching us these days. And now back, to consider fresh avenues for wading restoratively back into the stench.

Thought 4:  I was, through all these steps, mindful of things we, in our country, do well. As one example, I don’t really know how people with mobility limitations function in the areas we visited. Rarely is there a ramp. Routinely are there steps. Occasionally there are handrails, but just as often you wobble at your own risk. One of our apartments required stooping and almost comically careful contortions to access. Anyone with crutches or a wheelchair would be sleeping in the courtyard. We have passed laws to look after such loved ones. Where we visited in France I suppose such people just stay home.

On another occasion we were spending an unexpected afternoon learning from an older gentleman. In the course of the conversation he lamented the exodus of young people from France where they are given little room to grow. “We don’t value young people,” he said with a sigh, “and so they leave.” I could have countered that in our country the situation is reversed — we revere only the technological facility of the young and ignore the wisdom of age — but either way there is room to improve.

Which ultimately is the residual taste in my mouth from our time away.  Yes, we had lots of fun away.  Yes, we looked forward to returning home.  But having returned I even moreso than before bemoan the precious time we waste as a country in self-congratulatory boasts of our own greatness — “we are the best in the world,” blah, blah, blah — when it would be so much more productive...and interesting...to explore and lean toward what we might yet learn and how we might grow still better. It’s fine to keep in mind how far we’ve come; even better to be resiliently honest about where we can still beneficially go.

With that, I think I'll take another nap.

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In Search of a Bigger Pocket

“This is of course the ultimate temptation of Christianity!  To say that Christ has locked all the doors, has given one answer, settled everything and departed, leaving all life enclosed in the frightful consistency of a system outside of which there is seriousness and damnation, inside of which there is the intolerable flippancy of the saved—while nowhere is there any place left for the mystery of the freedom of divine mercy which alone is truly serious, and worthy of being taken seriously.”
—-Thomas Merton

None of us, I suppose, have very big pockets.  There is a limit, then, to what we can carry along.  And the things we choose can’t take up much room.  Preference is given to the concise, the economical, the sturdy.  The bulky, fragile, fussy and complicated need not apply.  Small, smooth stones are in.  Mysteries are out.  Certainties are easy to pocket.  Ambiguities take up way too much space.  Little wonder that Christianity has fallen captive to the stony economy of certitude.  It’s easier that way — all those clear and circumscribing answers that delimit wonder and truncate questions.

But why, then — if the Evangelists of scripture are to be believed — would Jesus make such heavy use of metaphor and parable that defy dogmatic reduction in service to prodding curiosity; lengthy chewing as opposed to easy swallowing?  Why did Jesus work so hard to push the envelope rather than licking the adhesive to seal it closed?

David Wilcox, one of my favorite singer/songwriters, has a new song that confesses, “everything I know, I think.”  Which is to acknowledge the tentativeness that tempers all of our supposed “knowing.”  We conclude, we go out on a limb, we stake our claim…but at the bottom it’s finally supposition.  It’s a best guess…at best.

If we were to take seriously the biblical definition of faith —  “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” — couldn’t we have the humility to acknowledge the imperfection, or at least the incompleteness, of those very hopes and convictions?   Given our incapacity for bona fide certitude, can’t we give ourselves and each other permission to protect the space for mystery?  As simplifying as it might be, it is ultimately dispiriting to think I might have something — anything — so large and ultimate and salvific boxed, contained and “figured out.”  Stand beneath a starlit sky and dare to say, “I get it.”  Watch the waves at the beach roll in undulating fury and claim to comprehend it.  Stand on a mountaintop and gaze at the vista and pretend to take it all in.  Gaze into eyes of any human being, be it spouse, sibling or total stranger from across town or across the globe, and claim anything more than marvelous but finally unfathomable inscrutability.  I’ll call you seriously deluded.  I’m grateful for the gift of what I need to know, but dare not presume it to be all there is to know. Such is the ultimate hubris.  Surely it’s all larger and more amazing and mysterious than can fit in my head…or soul.

And so I’ve scissored off the bottoms of my pockets.  If it can be contained there, it’s too small.  I treasure what I’ve learned — or at least what I think I understand and have come to believe — but I treasure in equal measure the breathtaking profundity and life creating immensity too large for me to fathom.  Give me the messy complexity of ambiguity and possibility; the the joy of that much-maligned “mystery.”  Give me wonder, what David James Duncan defines as “unknowing experienced as pleasure." Give me the “mystery of the freedom of divine mercy” that is surely deeper and rounder than my capacity to understand it.

Give me, in other words, a God who is big enough to take seriously, rather than one tidy enough — two-dimensionally transparent enough — to fit in the palm of my hand, or oily enough to fuel my prejudice...

...That I might sidestep the “intolerable flippancy of the saved.”  Give me, to beg it another way, bigger pockets.

May we all be so fortunate, so capacious,

and so blessed.

Now That the Light is On

“The question from agnosticism Is, ‘Who turned on the lights?’ The question from faith is, ‘Whatever for?’”——-Annie Dillard

A despairing cynic might answer that second question, “not so much.”  Insert here the now familiar axiomatic summation of fatalism, “Life’s a bitch and then you die.”

I might indulge a bowlful of cynicism from time to time, but it’s poured from a box of disappointment rather than despair.  The truth is I’m daily animated by the conviction that the question is endlessly provocative and stirringly promising even if we never arrive at a completely satisfying answer.   It represents the existential hunger that keeps us searching for the next nourishing morsel of insight.

“Whatever for,” indeed.

For a certain strain of Christianity the Shorter Westminster Catechism answers the question, What is the chief end of man” with the conviction, “to glorify God and to enjoy him forever.”  I’ll go out on a limb here and speculate that it’s the chief end of woman as well.  It’s a good biblical answer, but I’m not sure how much further down the road that gets us.  What, after all, does this “glorification” look like every morning as I shake off the sleep, open my door and step through with an urge to justify my inhalations?

We continually try out options.
Self-actualization.
Rigid compliance to religious rules.
Piety.
Profit.
Indulgence.
“Growth.”
“America First.”
And countless others, each with its own allure.

But reading the list reminds me of a Q & A session some of us had in college with a well-known preacher.  “What do you think of ‘speaking in tongues,’” one of us asked.  After a moment’s thought he responded, “it’s sort of like spiritual masturbation.  You get all worked up, you feel real good, but then you’ve got nothing to show for it.”

Culturally speaking, we have elevated the enjoyment of "nothing enduring to show for it" into an art form.  It's our own little take on collective “motivational masturbation."

Even then, I suppose, there can be some value in our perennial trials and errors.  I think it was Parker Palmer from whom I heard the story of a desperate hiker lost in the woods who came upon another traveling in the opposite direction.  “Please, sir, do you know the way out of these woods.”
“No,” he replied.  “But I can steer you away from a hundred others that only lead farther in.”

If we are paying attention at all — and keeping track — we are developing an extensive and useful inventory of existential dead ends.  Surely we can do better, which is why we keep trying.

I can’t help but believe that the path we keep assiduously avoiding actually holds the greatest promise.  It isn’t the path of bumper stickers, self-congratulatory billboards or hats, but rather the one of wonder-filled appreciation and discovery.  Nature daily, seasonally, annually teaches her students the essential value of mutually beneficial relationships. It’s not merely an oddity that some trees are tall while others are short; it’s essential.  It’s more than interesting that there are so many varieties of apple trees.  If the trees are ever to bear fruit a community of the same species is useless.  A different variety is necessary.  Every part of nature has a irreplaceable part to play — a unique gift to give.  This isn’t gushy fluff talk.  This is the way the system works, and  why, when pieces are taken away, it doesn’t.  I don't quite understand why taking this path along with the rest of creation looks so scary, but I'm increasingly convinced we had better get over our fear.  We are, quite pragmatically and literally, each other's life blood.

Perhaps that is part of the reason the lights were turned on:  to enable us all to better see the gifts we bring to each other -- us Christians and Muslims and Jews and other variously believing and unbelieving; us men and women, old and young; us Americans and Iraqis, Russians, Mexicans, Koreans and more; the "us" that is all of us -- gifts the exchange on which...

... our very lives depend.

Perhaps A Different Kind of Independence Day Crown

"The huge masquerade of evil has thrown all ethical concepts into confusion.  That evil should appear in the form of light, good deeds, historical necessity, social justice is absolutely bewildering for one coming from the world of ethical concepts that we have received.  For the Christian who lives by the Bible, it is the very confirmation of the abysmal wickedness of evil."                     ----Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a theologian -- an academic; a Lutheran.  It's not the likeliest description of one predisposed to public activism -- at least in our usual stereotype.  We more likely picture classrooms and libraries and lofty lectures and papers.  Certainly there are and have always been noisy exceptions, but I suspect that Bonhoeffer would not have included himself among them.  He was a pastor, a prolific writer on the spiritual life; he was a musician and wrote fiction and poetry.

But the spine anchoring all those other descriptions was his faithfulness.  His most famous book, after all, is titled, The Cost of Discipleship.

Bonhoeffer read the prophetic calls for a different relationship with each other and God -- one that finds treasure in the diverse uniqueness of every part of creation, and welcomes the stranger along with the outcast; one that embraces and enfleshes the divine purpose in love -- and took them to heart.  He watched and took as exemplary Jesus' way in the world, internalizing his teachings about the least, the lost and the last; and was convicted by Jesus' willingness to lose himself on behalf of those he loved.

And so it was that he "left the classroom," so to speak.  Unlike most of us -- myself included -- who mutter among our friends or mouth off on Facebook from time to time and call it enough, Bonhoeffer got to the end of his rope with the "huge masquerade of evil" that had "thrown all ethical concepts into confusion"  and confronted that evil with his life.  Joining a plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler, in whom he came to believe that masquerade of evil had become embodied, Bonhoeffer was eventually imprisoned when the plot failed, housed in a concentration camp, and ultimately brought quite literally to the end of his rope; executed by hanging at the ripe old age of 39.

I quite frankly don't know what to do with Bonhoeffer's example.  I won't backseat drive his choices.  I wasn't there; I wasn't in the thick of it.  It was, indeed, a despicable, dehumanizing time.  It's impossible to condone assassination, but then I suspect he, under other circumstances, wouldn't either.  And yet there he was, choosing what I have to imagine seemed to him to be a lesser evil to overcome one still greater.

And then I wonder what his counsel would be today when it feels, for all the world, like the "huge masquerade of evil" has thrown everything, not merely ethical concepts, into even greater confusion?  What would he say, and more importantly, what would he do?

At the very least he would speak the truth as the gospel had trained him to see it.  Since he did so in his own moment I have no doubt that he would caution, indeed chastise, those in ours who elevate patriotism over discipleship -- or dare to conflate the two.  He would condemn those would build walls in protection of their own at the expense of those who have nothing left to protect.  He would scoff at our collective celebration of flash and fizz; our contentment with facade; our capitulation to empty and paternalistic promises.  He would recoil at the deification of "economic forces" and tribal allegiances and would weep at the trivialization and contamination of our "life together."

If, as he once said, "The ultimate test of a moral society is the kind of world that it leaves to its children," ours would almost certainly earn a failing grade.  We eat garbage.  We talk trash.  This once-noble experiment in governance and culture on different and better terms is bequeathing our children a fetid inheritance.

As our calendar inexorably shoves us toward July 4 and tempts us with the usual self-congratulatory celebrations, maybe we could choose a different course.  Instead of telling ourselves how wonderful we are -- "the greatest nation in the world" -- perhaps we could prayerfully reflect upon the kind of nobility to which those founders aspired, reaching back behind the mere words of the documents to the aspirational soul to which they hoped to give voice.  This year, maybe lamentation should take the place of celebration -- the candles of penitent confession rather than the fireworks of proud assertion.

Whatever else, I'm sure Bonhoeffer would insist that it's worth the effort.  Surely we have not been so corrupted that we can no longer recognize the corruption; the decay.

This week my dentist affixed a crown to repair a broken tooth.  It wasn't as easy as snapping over the fracture a hardened and durable cover.  A week or so before, some drilling was required to remove the resulting decay; a mold was taken so as fashion the desired replacement and a temporary "fix" was put in place with the admonishment to be careful what and where I chew.  The "meantime," after all, is fragile.  And then this week the more permanent fix.  That, too, involved air on exposed nerves, a little more drilling and wincing and tapping and capping.  The process was tedious and laborious and hardly free of pain.  But it was worth it. 


 Maybe that's the kind of work that could begin this 4th of July:  naming the cracks, drilling the decay, remolding nobler intent, and submitting to the nerves and the need to heal.

It's just a thought.

Runnin’ On...Full

Growing up, I knew all of Jackson Browne’s songs.  I don’t mean that I was simply acquainted with his catalogue or knew all the lyrics.  I mean I KNEW them.  I bought (OK, my Mother bought for me) all the printed music folios for each of his albums, and I learned to play them.

Every song.

I had to.  I had to be ready.

Normal kids fantasize about going to the moon or running off with the circus, or becoming President (thought these days those three sound redundant).  I, meanwhile, fantasized about filling in for Jackson Browne.  What if something happened to him in the rough and shuffle of touring?  What if he tripped over a speaker cable and broke a finger in the fall?  What if the piano lid unexpectedly fell on his hands?  What if the bus door closed too quickly and caught his fingers as he entered?  He could still sing just fine, but he couldn’t possibly handle the piano or his guitar.  The cry would go out near and far, “Does anybody know how to play these songs?”

Shyly, but confidently, I would raise my hand and step forward.  I was perpetually ready.  The concert could go on as planned.

Understand, I didn’t want anything very bad to happen to him.  Certainly nothing permanent.  After all, I idolized him.  I merely wanted to help out.  And I needed to be ready.

OK, so it was a self-serving fantasy.  But, then, who ever has selfless fantasies?  Regardless, and alas, I was never needed.  Abilene never seemed to make it onto his tour schedule.  

The closest he came was Fort Worth in my freshman year of college.  It was his “Runnin’ On Empty” tour and I wasn’t about to miss it.  How I had the money for it I haven’t a clue.  But I even took a date — a dear friend from high school then attending Baylor University.  Clear evidence of adolescent insanity, I borrowed a fraternity brother’s car, drove the 90 miles south to Waco, picked her up, drove back to Fort Worth for the concert, and then back to Waco to take her back to her dorm, before getting back into the car to head back to Fort Worth where I no doubt fell into bed...exhausted but still humming.  And smiling.  

I’ve seen him a dozen times since — with a band and more lately solo acoustic.  It doesn’t matter to me.  As long as I get to hear him.  He typically honors requests shouted out from the audience.  Somehow always asks for “Rosie” and he always smirks and replies, “Oh, so you are THAT kind of crowd,” before playing the song.  Everybody laughs.

He’s still going strong, writing and recording, though I’m guessing, given the vagaries of broadcast media, his new stuff doesn’t get as much radio time as his old.  The latter certainly shows up in the rotations of “oldies” stations, but that necessarily precludes the current material.  That’s alright by me; I don’t much listen to the radio anyway.

And so it is that tonight Lori and I will once again take our seats in his audience — “the best darn seats,” to borrow a line from Bill Murray, “in our price range.”  And I’ll be smiling; no longer fantasizing, but simply relishing the joy of being there, listening.  Runnin’ On Full.

I’m trusting that he’s healthy. I’m long since out of practice, although I can still bang out a pretty good “Doctor My Eyes” and “The Pretender.”  

Besides, at our age, neither Jackson nor I need anybody wishing us ill.  We need all the positive energy we can get, if we are to keep runnin' at all.

I Guess We’ll Have to Stay

“Here’s how we are going to do this,” he said matter-of-factly over the phone.  

 After living my entire life in one part of Texas or another I had accepted the call of a congregation in Des Moines, Iowa.  I didn't know the first thing about Des Moines.  Its neighborhoods were foreign lands to me; its style and norms were unknown.  But I had to find a place to live.  I had spent the better part of two weekends “house hunting” in the company of Jerry Aldrich, a longtime member of the church and even longer-time realtor, and had finally identified a potential residential candidate.  

But in the course of assembling my financials to make an offer and apply for a mortgage it became absurdly clear to Jerry that I was ill-prepared for securing a mortgage.  Having lived in church-owned parsonages up to that point, I had no equity.  My credit rating, while not altogether bad, was flaccid enough to invite any bank’s rejection.  And as for assets, there weren’t any.  As for consumer debt, there was too much. To most eyes — including my own — this all added up to a hopeless dead end.  But not to Jerry.

I have no idea how many phone calls he made, or what sales pitch he employed — all without my knowledge—but in a matter of days the phone rang.  “Here’s how we are going to do this,” he said from a thousand miles away.  He gave me the name and address of a then-faceless couple in the church and said that I would be making my monthly payments to them.  I didn’t understand the technicalities until much later, but in essence Jerry had arranged for that couple to buy the house outright and then sell it to me — at the current mortgage rate — on contract.  

And that was that.

Until about 20 years later when I once again found myself over my head with a very different real estate challenge.  His life had changed considerably in the ensuing years, as had mine; in fact it was in the process of changing, still.  

I had been claimed by the cockamamie conviction that I needed to learn how to grow food.  As the idea fleshed itself out it was obvious that the townhome in which we were living offered very few agricultural options.  Some friends had pointed out a property they thought might interest us.  And it did — at least it interested me.  Lori was the rational one who readily comprehended the lunacy of us purchasing it.  It was too big, too far, too fraught with managerial complications, and too expensive.  Nonetheless, we visited several times with the listing agent, but when it all reached the point of put up or shut up we thought we should have our own agent.  In stepped Jerry.  And when our meager offer was summarily and conclusively rejected by the sellers, Jerry waited a few compassionate seconds (to honor my disappointment and Lori’s relief) and said, “I know of some other properties that might better suit you.”

And indeed he did.  After internalizing our various criteria — our “must haves” and then our “want to haves” — Jerry methodically went to work.  Over the subsequent few weeks we placed our necks in Jerry’s yoke and visited several possibilities, ultimately settling on this one that has happily and gratefully been our home for nearly seven years.  

Throughout the process of purchase, and in the cracks and crevices of life in the subsequent years, we talked through the ups and downs of church life, world affairs, family life, cancer, ballroom dancing and soil composition.  He even gifted me several of his geology books from college.  

When I visited him last month I had to wait for him to complete the final frames of a Wii bowling tournament he was enjoying with neighbors down the hall in the care center.  Once back in his room he pointed to the calendar and noted the date by which time he was supposed to be dead:  the last day of the month.  He wasn’t morose about it.  Indeed, he was concerned that he was, thus far, too healthy to make that date.  With true business pragmatism — like he had exhibited to me for the previous 25 years — he lamented how much this heightened level of care was costing him, and how he hated the thought that those expenses would spill into a new month.

When I prepared to take my leave I asked him if he wanted me to have a prayer. After responding in the affirmative, Jerry went on to coach me as to the prayer’s needed content.  “Ask Him to move this process along.  Tell Him I’m not having any fun down here.”

Jerry missed his deadline by 18 days, a fact that no doubt rankled him.  But albeit late, he ultimately got his wish.  He always told me that he intended to beat this cancer, and at last he has succeeded.  

Whatever else his passing means, and along with my sadness and multiple layers of gratitude, I’m guessing it means that we, too, are finally home.  I don’t know how we would ever move without him.

Needing to Tinker Again With the Engine

We were push mower people throughout my childhood years, but there was one aberrant interlude when a riding mower graced our shed.  Throughout the circuits of our lawn I fantasized the turf as the asphalt of the Indianapolis Speedway.  Or at least a go-cart track.  It was, indeed, a fantasy because in reality the mower was a study in slowness.  It could go even slower if throttled down, but its top speed would lose to a casual walk. 

When the mower passed out of lawn service my Dad agreed that my brother and I could “tinker” with it.  I charitably include myself in that permission knowing full well that I am not a tinkerer — neither then nor now.  My brother, on the other hand, is another story.  Whether by exploration, hearsay, or the kind of knowledge gleaned from the quivering harmonics of the universe to which I have always been deaf, he somehow discovered and subsequently manipulated a fascinating element of that riding mower’s Briggs and Stratton engine called a “governor”.  The governor’s assigned function on the engine was to limit speed.  The engine, in other words, had all kinds of power.  It was simply being restrained by this simple mechanical device, quite probably to keep adolescent boys from racing around the neighborhood — which, having liberated the horsepower from the Governor, we promptly proceeded to do.

I was thinking about that old mower in recent days while lamenting with some friends what we described as “the coursening” of our culture.  If once upon a time there were generally accepted mores about decency and decorum — common courtesy, if you will, among acquaintances and strangers alike — those days seem to be gone.  We’ve become a profane citizenry of grunters and scoffers and name callers who mock and belittle, castigate and denigrate, always in all-caps or disregarding volume.  What once was known as courteous respect is now derided as mere “political correctness.”  We’ve become…course — rough, sharp and prickly — hellbent on, or indifferent to, inflicting as many social abrasions as possible.

Somehow we’ve lost our governor.

In an earlier time the religious community served that function, but not anymore.  Churches are routinely and cynically — and in large measure correctly — viewed as mere shills for one political party or another.  Elected representatives once contributed to that role — actually governing; demonstrating diplomacy and respectfulness in the milieu of diverse opinions— but that arena has become the most course and mean-spirited of all; “statesmanship”, alas, as elusive as unicorns; political “rising stars” from both parties routinely grounded by revelations of despicable behaviors that contradict their glossy public personae.  This, as the nation’s chief executive — who has replaced the White House organic garden with a mud wrestling pit (thus far, at least, only metaphorically) — elevates repulsiveness and repugnance to patriotic duty; who according to his own braggadocio grabs, fondles, despises, manipulates and bullies.  Meanwhile, true journalists have largely been replaced by talk show hosts and commentators whose ratings require ever more strident theatrics.  And have you seen the things we say to each other on social media?

But who is to tell us anything different?  What we need is a governor — the cultural equivalent of the level-headed spouse who can catch our eye or speak our name or touch our elbow in just that discreet way that ineffably communicates that we are perilously close to encroaching on the borderlands of decency.  Or to change the imagery, perhaps we need some new Galileo-like visionary who can help us rediscover some awareness of a “true north” of which we have completely lost touch.

I’m pretty much out of ideas, so I think I’ll call my brother.  He’s the tinkerer.  Once upon a time he figured out how to disarm the engine’s governor to give us a little more speed.  It was fun for awhile, but now I’m thinking it hasn’t gotten us very far.  It’s not that all this mess is in any way his fault — after all, we weren't trying to corrupt the world.  We were just kids hoping for a little more wind in our short cut hair.  But maybe it's time we slowed back down.  So I’m thinking that maybe with a little time and encouragement and methodical tinkering surely he can figure out how to activate it again.

The governor.

On Reclaiming the Tender, Respectful Care of Words

"Sticks and stones can break my bones but words can never hurt me."

"I love words," I clumsily blurted out some way into my first date with the brilliant and beautiful woman who, even after this curious admission, would go on to become my wife.  I no longer recall what prompted the comment, and to this day I have no insight into why I thought this information was important to share.  "They are like paints," I recall continuing, "with which you can paint whole worlds."

And though all these years later I still feel sheepish about that courtship conversation, I stand by both parts of my comment.  I do love words, and they are, indeed, beautifully and evocatively potent.  Which is why even at an early age I somehow sensed the absurd falsehood of that familiar childhood chant.  Words can hurt a lot -- even moreso than sticks and stones -- because they are not simply beautiful; they are powerful, and touch or bruise not simply the skin, but the heart.

People who read religious texts have encountered this notion before.  In the very first words of Hebrew scripture God, the Prime Mover, creates a world...with words.  Out of nothing, something.  In the same way that a candle flame overwhelms a dark room, the divinely spoken word transformed the silence.  I wonder if it felt, to God, like work or like fun?  Like construction, or like art?  All we know is that God stuck with it, talking and speaking us and all into being.  Only blasphemous fools assert that God, alone, has that power -- that only the words passing through God's lips amount to anything of consequence. 

We act as if that were true.  Increasingly I have come to lament the tawdry state of vocabulary in our culture.  We spew and strew words cheaply, as if they were so much water through a fire hose.  We tweet them, we text them, we shout and mutter and disregard them.  Marketers cleverly co-opt and trivialize them; politicians gratuitously bend and capitalize on them, all to the end that we scarcely know what words mean any longer -- if, as we cynically wonder, they mean anything at all. 

But though we dismissively convince ourselves that we have beaten words into submission, making of them whatever we choose at any given time, Eugene Peterson -- that wise and careful intellectual poet of the soul -- has a warning:

"We cannot be too careful about the words we use.  
We start out using them, and they end up using us."

I hope and suspect I'll spend the rest of my life pondering what he means by that, and the myriad ways my words are using me.  But at the very least, his insight prompts me to form them in my mind and mouth more cautiously, more reverently, more circumspectly.

They are powerful things, after all -- beautiful, yes, and as precious as gold.

But powerful, above all. 

So let us be careful with them; for whether or not we could ever break them, they can surely break us.

The Holy Determination to Lose Absolutely Nothing

“Why does it say, ‘I won’t lose anyTHING he has given me’?” a classmate asked in the Sunday School class this morning.  “It seems like it should be ‘anyONE.’”

We were reflecting on the story in the Gospel of John in which Jesus describes himself as “the bread of life.”  In the course of his sermon on the subject Jesus notes that, “…I won’t send away anyone who comes to me,” but then expands that theme to acknowledge more.  “I have come down from heaven not to do my will, but the will of him who sent me.  This is the will of the one who sent me, that I won’t lose anything he has given me.”

It’s a wonderfully wide embrace; one that ought to puncture and start letting the air out of the various prejudices we have erroneously assumed God props up as vigilantly as have the rest of us. “Whites, but not blacks.”  “Protestants, but not Catholics.”  “Christians, but not the Jews who gave us spiritual birth, or Muslims, our spiritual siblings.”  “Straight people, but not those LGBTQ+ folks.”  “Us, but not them.”  “America first,” which might make political sense but is ultimately as spiritually blind as it is relationally naïve.

As I pondered my classmate’s good and observant question I thought about the old adage that “history is written by the victors.”  At least those who consider themselves victorious.  Which reminded me of Galileo and Copernicus before him (this, alas, is the way my mind works, even in Sunday School).  Theirs is a sad and tragic story, not simply because of the harsh and despicable treatment they received, but because despite what the science books attest and the astronauts observe, those ancient thinkers never really convinced the rest of us.  We still blindly and arrogantly believe that we are the center of the universe — racially, religiously, ethnically, sexually, geopolitically…

... even humanly.  We like to believe that we are the big “it” — as though the sequence in Genesis’ first account of Creation was in order of importance.  Lowly light, up through critters and crawlers, flowers and flyers, until God finally worked God’s way up to the really important stuff; the crown jewel of it all:  us.  But of course that’s not what it says.  What Genesis actually says is that God looked back over everything made and declared it special.  “Very good!” 

Everything.

And so it makes sense, when I think about it, that the will of this One who made it is not to lose anyTHING.  Not merely anyONE, but anyTHING.  We seem to be the only part of God’s creation unconcerned about and completely content with the prospect of losing the mountains and the trees, the aquifers and the streams, the air and the birds that flutter on its breezes, the soil and the billions of life forms contained in every teaspoon of it.  Or, as the old hymn poeticized it, “rocks and trees and skies and seas…” You know, all those THINGS out there that aren’t human.  All that stuff that isn’t us.

But the tear contained in every drop of rain is God’s knowing lament that we all survive together, or we don’t survive at all.  I suspect that the sun — firstborn of creation and orbiting anchor of all that subsequently came to be — chuckles in bemused amazement that we (the caboose in the creative train) ever thought of it any other way.