Following the Thread, part 2

When the moon hits your eyes
like a big pizza pie
That's Amore
When the world seems to shine
like you've had too much wine
That's Amore

When the stars make you drool
Just like pasta fazool
That's Amore
When you dance down the street
With a cloud at your feet
You're in love
When you walk in a dream
But you know you're not dreamin', signore
'scusa me, but you see, back in old Napoli,
That's Amore
(words and music by Harry Warren and Jack Brooks)

Is that really love -- drunken, drooling, dancing dreaminess? I'm in favor of such delight. Woozy romance has fallen rather out of favor in recent years -- maligned as the shaky, ephemeral foundation on which to build a genuine relationship. "Love," it is insisted, "is a choice, not an emotion." Fine. But even green leafy vegetables and high-fiber foods cooking can have a scent that attracts the hungry and makes the eating a culinary experience rather than mere nutritional fortification. Sure, emotions rise and fall; sure, romance flares and fizzles, but I wouldn't subscribe to any effort to do away with them altogether.

It could be that we savor the experience of romance precisely because we recall the rattling, metallic echo of its absence. Hunger pains, after all, lead some to scrounge a little more urgently for food. Would that the world could see a little bolder scrounging for real love!

Romance, I know, is not the same thing as love. But it might well be its scent. Romance, if I read the dictionary right, is about the celebration of, the honoring of, something -- or someone -- that has come to have significance for the person involved. Hormones may well be involved, but surely the celebration of another is more than that. And isn't love birthed in the recognition of another's precious value? I'm thinking we could do with a little more romance than we are accustomed to nurturing. Maybe the approach of Valentine's Day, while triggering flowers and chocolates and who knows what other expressions, could also be the stimulus for taking stock of all those relationships whose vitality we treasure, and celebrate -- romance -- them as well.

They may not all be the drooling kind, but if one just so happens to be..
...drool away. Tissue is cheap.

The Dangerous Wisdom of Those We Know Well

Yesterday's reading for many in the church told the story of Jesus' less than positive reception among the home folks. After the obligatory head patting -- the nice young man who had been away, now returned amid exclamations about how much he had grown, questions about whether he always wears his hair like that and what exciting job he has managed to land -- Jesus offers a few reflections on their scheduled reading of the day. It didn't go well. The thoughts were not well received. They tried to throw him over a cliff. In the midst of it all, Jesus muses, "No prophet is accepted in the prophet's hometown."

What have we said about experts? A briefcase and an address at least 50 miles away. The mileage requirements may vary, but the conclusion is often sound: distance imputes credibility. Or as someone else has put it, "familiarity breeds contempt." It doesn't always happen this way -- how many organizations prefer to promote from within? -- but the wisdom of our own comes at a discount. At least twice in my ministry I have heard adults from one generation vent frustration over advocacies rebuffed by an older generation with the observation, "But you taught me to think this way. I sat in the Sunday School classes you taught and took to heart what you said. How is that now you oppose this?" Ah! Unruly children.

It all makes me wonder about the unnoticed wisdom lurking under my very nose -- from those I know the best or see most often -- and what it takes to seriously consider an opinion or view I am prone to reject. What does it take for me to recognize and honor a prophet -- home folk, or not?

The Enlarging Grace of Agitation

That Abraham Lincoln surrounded himself with his rivals is the very premise of Doris Kearns Goodwin's stunningly beautiful book, Team of Rivals. That he did it less as a shrewd political tactician than as an humble statesman seeking the best for his country is the more awe-striking lesson I retain as I finally turn the last page. Having populated his inner circle with those jealous for the job they, themselves, had coveted, he went about the even more strenuous task of listening to them, drawing honest counsel from them, and deferring to their particular expertise. It was, after all, the particulars of their expertise on which he believed the nation would depend. A few of the rivals became deep and abiding friends. Some simply became colleagues. One, at least, remained, to the end, a rival and was ultimately replaced for allowing his personal ambitions to supersede his public responsibility. Even then, however, Lincoln respected the considerable gifts and wisdom of this political mosquito whose incessant buzzing had created such distraction. When the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court died and Lincoln considered how to fill the vacancy, it was ultimately to this same rival that the President turned. It wasn't sentimentality that drove the selection, nor certainly affection. Lincoln later told a confidant that he "would rather have swallowed his buckhorn chair than to have nominated" this particular candidate, but he believed it was right for the country. Following Lincoln's death, another of those rivals-cum-colleague, William Seward, reflected on Lincoln's surprising Cabinet choices, concluding, "a Cabinet which should agree on every such question would be no better or safer than one counsellor (sic)" (p. 747).

It occurs to me that our culture must soon be chairless. If Lincoln opted to utilize the right people, regardless of their political fidelity and pedigree, rather than eat the chair he would have preferred, our practice by contrast has devolved into eating the furniture rather than risking the advice and counsel of those with whom we may not agree, and maybe not even like -- even at the expense of what is right or what is good. It's easy to point at politicians, where the promotion of political hacks and cronies is, sadly and tragically, assumed. But while employment and promotion are rarely my privilege, my practice of gathering wisdom is seldom more noble. I, too, tend to surround myself with echoes, rather than alternate voices. Thusly validated and seconded, I proceed on my merry, if impoverished, way, convinced of my sagacity and narrowed by my naivete.

If an intellect, like a rock, is polished by agitation, how dull my thinking must be. And how humbling.

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Following a Loose Thread of Love

I'm saving all the love
That I'm supposed to give to Jesus
So that I can give it all to you
And the Lord's gonna be jealous
But he ain't never seen you let your hair down
...I'm gonna give it all to you
("Saving all the Love" by Joe Firstman,
from the 2003 album The War of Women)

Ah! Love. I was preparing the Bible study for tonight's high school youth group meeting and came back across this song. I had forgotten about it, having purchased the album after accidentally seeing the artist in concert a few years ago. Don't ask me. There is just something appallingly, blasphemously funny about it that gives me a kick. I'm odd that way.

Anyway, the Bible study for the youth group. The curriculum session is focused on the difference between "love" and "compassion," but I stalled out with the whole notion of love. Valentines Day is coming up, after all, and it seems a relevant topic. We invent so many terrible ways of loving that a little remedial reflection could come in handy. Just for starters I would suggest that the songwriter, while delightfully clever, has gotten one thing fundamentally wrong. There really is no inherent conflict between love for Jesus and love for another. As I recall, he rather advocated the idea. I know, I know: hypothetically speaking there is that insidious danger of idolatry lurking behind every box of candy and bundle of roses. But as a species we seem far more likely to love each other too little than too much. I'm all for us letting our hair down a a little if that would help such a transformation along.

My concern for the songwriter, however, is less over his muddled spirituality than with the ego-centrism that has a way of masquerading as devotion. "I love you" too often means "I love me and you are one of the ways I indulge myself," which quickly becomes more about consuming another rather than honoring them.

So, what is love and how might we both celebrate and practice it? I have a few ideas that I hope to feather out between now and February 14. In the meantime, I'm hoping the high school kids can set me straight tonight.

Less "Off" Than "Open"

Monday is an odd day of the week for a preacher who isn't scheduled to preach on the next upcoming Sunday. Most Mondays are usually spent reading more carefully the designated bible reading and revisiting the sermon title listed on the sign in the lobby and beginning the Sisyphean project of rolling the next homiletical stone up the hill. It is a character-building regimen, often exhilarating and sometimes wearisome.

But next Sunday is laity Sunday for our car on the ecclesiastical train, and by some novel stroke of providence, a layperson from our congregation is actually filling the pulpit. My pulpit services will not be needed. So without the press of an impending sermon to prepare, what do I do?

The list, given any thought at all, isn't hard to populate. Since, as my retired minister father once pointed out, "Sunday comes around with ruthless regularity," I could always get started on the following week's pulpit offering. Or I could give some attention to the seasonal planning that routinely gets denied. Or there is the pile of books that only gets taller. Or...

As the Personnel Committee would be quick to remind me, it's not like preaching is the only thing I do. There is, I might defensively assert, plenty to keep me busy. There are calls I could set up -- visitors to connect with; absentees to check in on, grieving and convalescing I could comfort or encourage. I could actually push back from the desk, back out the car and head over to any one of the many care centers where members unable to "come to church" would be thrilled to see the church "come to them."

Or I could, in the midst of it all, recall that my worth is not integrally linked to my pastoral production, close the door, bow my head, and center into the leading, enlarging Spirit of the one who called me here in the first place; the Apostle's admonition to "pray without ceasing" having received about as much attention lately as the shut-ins.

And who knows, that same Spirit could even waft into my soul some clue about which, of the many options available, might beckon my renewed energy, passion and attention...
...first.

Pastoral Care for the Anonymous

Last Saturday it was a baptism; today it was a funeral. Neither involved lives that I had heretofore known. Strangers, opaque in anonymity, reaching out for help. I'm not sure how they keep finding their way into my pastoral care; it's not like I advertise free Saturdays. It is also true, of course, that neither is truly anonymous. They are well-known to families of people -- parents and children, neighbors and grandchildren, classmates and co-workers and doctors and friends. Illness they had in common; cancer -- one battling it, the other succumbing to it. Anonymous, then, to me, but known to and beloved by others.

The funeral preparations started out comically enough -- a call from a funeral director; a family without clergy connections; a son from out-of-town who wanted the best for his mother who, "er, uh, would like to visit with you a little before deciding for sure whether you'll be involved."

"You mean I need to audition," I translated.

"Well...yes," the funeral director admitted. I could tell she was embarrassed. We've worked together more times than I like to count. Serving a church with a sizable elderly membership, I have single-handedly pronounced benedictions over acres of cemetery real estate. The funeral director knows me, but the bereaved son does not, and that, I could appreciate, was what mattered. So, I phoned, we sat down the next day, and apparently I passed. Perhaps it was the bow-tie or the maybe the Texas twang; perhaps it was that I didn't drool and could form complete sentences -- or perhaps he was, by that time, simply desperately resigned. Whatever might have given him permission to exhale and relax, we moved forward from there. Stories, memories, laughter, tears. A single mother, a tough and determined Iowa lady; a woman who rolled with more than her share of punches -- a divorcee, a widow, a veteran of three kinds of cancer, and more.

And before very long, she wasn't anonymous at all; hardly, to me, even dead. Though I had never known her, she had come to live in the fertile relational space between us; in the lives touched and animated by devotion, by determined hard work and protective, encouraging, embracing love; and she had come to live in the moment of amazing and profound grace that invited me into the stories past and now unfolding in eulogy, hymn, prayer and farewell. And I was humbled to be a part. Honored and blessed.

May the Lord bless you and keep you;
May the Lord's face shine upon you and be gracious to you;
May the Lord look upon with you a smile
And give you peace.

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Straightening out the Boiler -- and More

The timer control on the boiler somehow got confused -- just how is beside the point -- a problem, given the kind of weather we've been having. Specially configured little screws strategically apportioned around the clock-wheel flip the boiler "on" or "off", depending on the screw, allowing for some measure of conservation during the building's fallow hours. At least in theory.

Unfortunately, actual practice is another thing. Studying the wheel we observed four "on" screws consecutively affixed -- "on" in the wee small hours of Monday morning; "on" again late that same afternoon; "on" again on Tuesday and then "on" again Tuesday evening. We were "off" for awhile on Wednesday morning -- presuming, I suppose, a weekly hump-day warming trend -- and then a few more "on" triggers paused briefly by intermittent "offs." I think we have worked out the erraticisms into a more regularized alternation, but the mix-up has been a bit humbling.

It's not that I had misapplied the screws. Thankfully, that's not my area of responsibility. It's that the screws reflected so metaphorically the pattern of my life, and the lives of those around me: mostly "on" -- on, on, on, on -- and only erratically given permission to be "off."

On, on, on, on...off...on, on, on, on...

If the building has seemed perpetually ill-tempered under that scenario, why would I expect my life to be any different? I have to believe the concept of Sabbath was meant to challenge and correct that obsessive and excessive pattern. On, but also off -- rhythmically, routinely; like the tide's ebb and flow, or the lung's filling and expelling.

On, but also off.
Talking, but also listening.
Giving, but also receiving.
Loving, but also being loved.
Waking, but also sleeping.
Or, as in the case of the boiler, heating up, but also cooling down.
Amen.