Next week I am going to Chautauqua Institution with my in-laws and sundry family members -- 9 people to a jointly rented house for a time of fun, food and learning. We did this last year too, and I still marvel over some of the incredible lectures we heard. The speakers provided me new ideas and food for thought to last the whole year, and I am expecting/hoping for a repeat performance.
I want to tell one favorite story from last year: One of the most eloquent and moving of the many excellent speakers had just finished his lecture, having had the audience of hundreds eating out of his hand for the entire time. An elderly gentleman stood to complement the speaker and ask a question. The speaker seemed a little startled at first, and then became extremely deferential. He explained to the audience that this was one of his most dearly loved and respected mentors and he showed, through gestures and in the tone of his voice, his delight in the complement and the great reverence for the man. It was clear that the honor he'd received he wanted to give back tenfold. In fact, it seemed to me that the collective aura of the whole audience, which the speaker had so deftly owned and manipulated during his lecture, was now effectively turned by his hands to bow at the feet of the august mentor. There was a hush that went over the crowd like a collective holding of breath. The crown of the speaker's accomplishment had been laid at the mentor's feet, and we hundreds were participants in the nevertheless quite intimate ceremony. It was one of those rare sacred moments that I will remember for a lifetime.
This story is entirely true. However, I think when you read about my "incredible" speakers you heard, as I meant you to, that I heard "really memorable, out-of-the-ordinary, amazing" people whose words I have thought of again and again during the year and who I learned much from. I doubt that you heard "incredible" as "not believable," even though that is the literal meaning of the word. And I doubt that anyone really believed I was part of an entire audience that literally ate food given out by the speakers hands, or took me to mean that my two eyes saw (as opposed to my inner eye) an aura that became a physical figure that then bowed at someone's feet, or that there was a real crown taken from the speaker's head and laid at the elderly man's feet. I used metaphorical language that is common enough to all of us that I would be surprised if anyone thought much about it at all. Most readers would have an easy time separating the inner meaning I was trying to convey from the physical description of the setting.
But, think how the above passage might read to someone in a few hundred years from now, or even translated literally from English into another language where the culture might not use the same common expressions and imagery. My story would seem in(not)credible indeed! If I insisted, as I also did above, that it was a true story, you would assume that I must be talking about miracles.
This morning in Sunday service we heard about some "miracles" that Jesus performed during his ministry in Galilee, and our minister asked us if we were ready to jump out of a boat on the St. Lawrence River (nearby) and walk across the water. Did we have enough faith, if we thought God asked us to? Doing so sounds pretty incredible to me -- the impossible kind of incredible. No, I am not ready. But, I forget that stories of miracle workers and supernatural occurrences were commonplace in first century Jewish life. The audience for this gospel story would have been used to hearing of special, memorable, amazing people doing in(not)credible things and, I'm sure, believed them to be true -- just as I assert that my story is true -- without a thought that, in the literal sense, the "facts" just don't line up with the world as we experience it.
I cannot be the type of Alice in Wonderland Christian who forces herself to believe "six impossible things before breakfast" in order to assert my credentials as a "believer." But I think that the authors of these miracle stories encountered someone really memorable, out-of-the-ordinary, amazing, and incredible who, just possibly, introduced them to something life-changing and precious beyond the ability of ordinary language to express. Not because I believe the impossible, but because I recognize the extraordinary, I believe that it is instructive and will be worth my while to take a closer look at these stories and "see what the Spirit is saying to the Church."
Sunday, August 7, 2011
Sunday, July 31, 2011
Transforming Love
Although it is obvious from the bulk of my writing that I approach things from a distinctly Christian perspective, I try to write about things of the spirit that are more broadly relevant across a variety of spiritual traditions. I think there is so much we can learn from each other, and I believe "that truth" is not the sole property of any one religion or tradition. One thing that definitely does not translate well across beliefs, or even across denominations within the Christian tradition, is Church politics. Few of us are interested in the inner workings of polity and authority even of our own particular tradition, much less someone else's. However, today I want to venture into this frequently mundane territory. There is a current argument in my Episcopal Diocese of Albany that I believe resonates on a much larger human scale. So, bear with me for a little bit of background and I promise to get to a point...
The Diocese of Albany is one of the more conservative/evangelical dioceses in the Episcopal church. Of the six New York dioceses, five bishops were in support of the same-sex marriage law and four will now allow Episcopal clergy to perform same-sex unions. The Diocese of Albany is the lone hold-out, whose bishop just sent a pastoral letter to be read in every parish reiterating his continuing ban not only on performing these weddings, but on clergy participating in any way in such weddings or recognizing such relationships. In it, he claims a "long-standing commitment to acknowledge homosexual persons as loved by God, and as recipients of pastoral care within the Church" and makes the entirely unsubstantiated (nobody ever asked us!) claim that the "overwhelming majority of the people and clergy in the Diocese of Albany do not and cannot support the new marriage legislation." The Bishop is quoted by Dennis Wisnom in the Albany Via Media webpages as characterizing those who disagree with him as "well intentioned people, but they are misguided." I am told by those who know him better than I that the Bishop is "a very loving person," but that it is also characteristic that he believes he has the whole truth in this matter (and in others) and that he sees himself as right and others as wrong or misguided when they disagree.
Thus, we get to the point of my concern and my larger question. I wonder if it is possible to really love and at the same time to be sure that one is "correct" and others "misguided"? I submit that it is not!
It gets down to the meaning of love. Even though we do lip service to the great commandment that includes "love the other as you love yourself," we have turned "charity" [the Latin version of the Greek work agape -- according to Encyclopaedia Britannica defined in the Christian tradition as "man’s love for man ... based not upon the desirability of its object but upon the transformation of its subject through the power of divine agāpe"] into something that we think of more as "alms giving," and we think of "compassion" as "pity" rather than in it's literal sense of "to suffer with, or to feel with." That is, we deprive these words of much of their power by focusing on the object of the love rather than the original sense of transformative love that has at its core the subject's vulnerability and openness to change.
And our greatest love does come where we are open to the greatest personal change. Perhaps no one has more universal claim to our greatest love than our own child: One who can initially give nothing in return but who transforms our life and our identity completely -- I am now a mother, a father, my purpose in life has changed, my priorities rearranged. At our best as new parents we can be so transformed that the standard refrain is "I never knew I could feel so much love."
True love does not require that the other receive, or even know of that love. What is essential is not a change or response in the loved one, but a transformation in the lover, and this transformation can be the impetus to love as much as the result of it. Teachers, musicians and artists, public individuals: we can truly love those who cause us to think, understand or feel in new ways and open new worlds to us, even when they have no idea that they have done so. The gratitude for inspiring us to dig deeper, to become more, opens our hearts to love even when there is no true relationship.
But, how much greater the love when there is true relationship. If I love you, then I must be open to being changed by participating in your life, feeling with you, seeing as you see; and when I sense that you love me I know my experience has changed you too, and that you have willingly entered into my life and volunteered to understand what it is to see as I see and feel as I feel. We can neither of us come out of a love relationship unchanged, and therefore, cannot truly enter into a love relationship without being willing to be changed by it.
So, when I hear people asking why we can't just allow them to "love the sinner but hate the sin," or "accept the pastoral care of the church" without anticipating that the church will be transformed by the experience of its new members -- No, I don't see true love. You can't truly love and care for people you invite into the community without being open to being transformed by seeing as they see and feeling what it is to be them. To say "you are welcome in but we are not open to change" is not to welcome at all. And, yes, loving the previous outsider may turn the inside world upside down. First Gentiles were allowed into the church and centuries of certainty about what God meant in "the law" were transformed by their perspectives. Slaves were allowed in and, once people began to understand and see through their experience, theologies of man's relationship to other men underwent drastic revisions. When men finally sought to understand the world through women's eyes, some finally understood why the protestations of traditional patriarchy that they weren't paternalistic fell on generally deaf female ears. A new theology of a God that is neither male nor necessarily mediated through an all male priesthood began to become mainstream. And, yes, if we welcome in lesbians and gays, and transgender folks, and anybody else who is "different" from us in ways that maybe scare us, and if we really love them, we will continue to be changed by our love for them in ways that may now seem downright "wrong" but will not with our newly transformed eyes.
Certainty, fixed, unalterable, I'm right, you're wrong -- these are all words that are at odds with love. Where there is no openness to transformation, there is no love.
The Diocese of Albany is one of the more conservative/evangelical dioceses in the Episcopal church. Of the six New York dioceses, five bishops were in support of the same-sex marriage law and four will now allow Episcopal clergy to perform same-sex unions. The Diocese of Albany is the lone hold-out, whose bishop just sent a pastoral letter to be read in every parish reiterating his continuing ban not only on performing these weddings, but on clergy participating in any way in such weddings or recognizing such relationships. In it, he claims a "long-standing commitment to acknowledge homosexual persons as loved by God, and as recipients of pastoral care within the Church" and makes the entirely unsubstantiated (nobody ever asked us!) claim that the "overwhelming majority of the people and clergy in the Diocese of Albany do not and cannot support the new marriage legislation." The Bishop is quoted by Dennis Wisnom in the Albany Via Media webpages as characterizing those who disagree with him as "well intentioned people, but they are misguided." I am told by those who know him better than I that the Bishop is "a very loving person," but that it is also characteristic that he believes he has the whole truth in this matter (and in others) and that he sees himself as right and others as wrong or misguided when they disagree.
Thus, we get to the point of my concern and my larger question. I wonder if it is possible to really love and at the same time to be sure that one is "correct" and others "misguided"? I submit that it is not!
It gets down to the meaning of love. Even though we do lip service to the great commandment that includes "love the other as you love yourself," we have turned "charity" [the Latin version of the Greek work agape -- according to Encyclopaedia Britannica defined in the Christian tradition as "man’s love for man ... based not upon the desirability of its object but upon the transformation of its subject through the power of divine agāpe"] into something that we think of more as "alms giving," and we think of "compassion" as "pity" rather than in it's literal sense of "to suffer with, or to feel with." That is, we deprive these words of much of their power by focusing on the object of the love rather than the original sense of transformative love that has at its core the subject's vulnerability and openness to change.
And our greatest love does come where we are open to the greatest personal change. Perhaps no one has more universal claim to our greatest love than our own child: One who can initially give nothing in return but who transforms our life and our identity completely -- I am now a mother, a father, my purpose in life has changed, my priorities rearranged. At our best as new parents we can be so transformed that the standard refrain is "I never knew I could feel so much love."
True love does not require that the other receive, or even know of that love. What is essential is not a change or response in the loved one, but a transformation in the lover, and this transformation can be the impetus to love as much as the result of it. Teachers, musicians and artists, public individuals: we can truly love those who cause us to think, understand or feel in new ways and open new worlds to us, even when they have no idea that they have done so. The gratitude for inspiring us to dig deeper, to become more, opens our hearts to love even when there is no true relationship.
But, how much greater the love when there is true relationship. If I love you, then I must be open to being changed by participating in your life, feeling with you, seeing as you see; and when I sense that you love me I know my experience has changed you too, and that you have willingly entered into my life and volunteered to understand what it is to see as I see and feel as I feel. We can neither of us come out of a love relationship unchanged, and therefore, cannot truly enter into a love relationship without being willing to be changed by it.
So, when I hear people asking why we can't just allow them to "love the sinner but hate the sin," or "accept the pastoral care of the church" without anticipating that the church will be transformed by the experience of its new members -- No, I don't see true love. You can't truly love and care for people you invite into the community without being open to being transformed by seeing as they see and feeling what it is to be them. To say "you are welcome in but we are not open to change" is not to welcome at all. And, yes, loving the previous outsider may turn the inside world upside down. First Gentiles were allowed into the church and centuries of certainty about what God meant in "the law" were transformed by their perspectives. Slaves were allowed in and, once people began to understand and see through their experience, theologies of man's relationship to other men underwent drastic revisions. When men finally sought to understand the world through women's eyes, some finally understood why the protestations of traditional patriarchy that they weren't paternalistic fell on generally deaf female ears. A new theology of a God that is neither male nor necessarily mediated through an all male priesthood began to become mainstream. And, yes, if we welcome in lesbians and gays, and transgender folks, and anybody else who is "different" from us in ways that maybe scare us, and if we really love them, we will continue to be changed by our love for them in ways that may now seem downright "wrong" but will not with our newly transformed eyes.
Certainty, fixed, unalterable, I'm right, you're wrong -- these are all words that are at odds with love. Where there is no openness to transformation, there is no love.
Sunday, July 17, 2011
Love Unto Death
In celebration of New York's final entry into the new millennium with legal provision for same-sex marriages, a friend of mine sent me a copy of the sermon recently preached by the Very Rev. Peter Elliott, Dean of Christ Church Cathedral, Vancouver, celebrating the marriage of his friends Steve and David. In it, Dean Elliott said; "the greatest intimacy we can know is spiritual intimacy: and that’s the deep companionship that sustains a life long commitment. If you make a vow to accompany someone through to the end of life you are making a soul commitment. And love is the energy that sustains that commitment."
The idea of a soul commitment that involves a vow to last to the end of life is one that especially resonates with me today, although I am thinking about it in broader contexts than just marriage.
The possible extent and cost of a soul commitment was captured eloquently in a song (In Sickness And In Health) that a friend of mine included on a recent new album (highly recommended!). The song -- about the effects of an early, devastating, and fatal illness on the caretaker spouse, from the perspective of the ill spouse -- echoes with the refrain "you (we) didn't know what you signed on for when you said that you'd be mine." It asks the question; "When we said 'in sickness and in health,' although you've surely kept that promise, have you almost lost yourself?" and, "As my body betrays me, are you patiently waiting to be set free?"
For, however much we try to shelter ourselves from the reality of it, death is a part of life and we are called to participate in it -- even sometimes to linger overlong in its precincts. Although at its utmost extremity death is something we face alone, all of us are invited to share in either being ushered to that threshold by our own loved ones or in ushering others we love to that common destination.
Jan and I often joke that we must make a pact to die instantaneously in an accident that takes us both, because to either one of us the idea of losing the other -- either with the quick devastation of surprise or the slow despair of long illness -- seems too painful to contemplate (not to mention having to deal with the mess of the other's estate!). Yet we know that the odds are otherwise, and we willfully continue in this perilous and uncertain existence because that is where the heart leads.
But, the human heart leads to other commitments even more certain of leading to "love unto death" and we, as in humans everywhere, continue to step willingly onto these paths.
A few years ago, a friend whom I hadn't seen for awhile told me that the reason I hadn't seen him recently was that he had been at home dealing with chemotherapy from a cancer that had been diagnosed at about the time I had seen him last. My reaction, which I think is the reaction most of us would have, was not relief that I had missed out on being there with him but sorrow that we had not been good enough friends yet for him to call on me for support in his sickness. I immediately threw myself into the process of cementing the friendship that I had hoped from from before would grow deeper, even though, or perhaps especially because, a voice at the back of my head said that he was going to NEED my friendship later. There was no particular reason to feel that foreboding -- his cancer was supposedly in remission and the treatment had an 80% success rate; there was no reason to suspect a recurrence. And, we did go on to become best friends and to have some wonderful times before his cancer recurred. The second time around, the prognosis wasn't so good -- it had spread to his liver and remission rates were far less positive. Nevertheless, we went through 6 months of chemo and hope, all the while cementing our friendship and nourishing my growing friendship with his life-partner, parents, other friends, etc. In the end, as "best friend," I was the one who was asked to let him know that the options were all gone, that he was going to die. We were all there around him until the end, and I felt like I had jumped in at the beginning with the knowledge that this was all going to happen just as it had. He needed me and it was enough.
I faced a similar time with my mother, with her death from breast cancer, and more from the sidelines but equally painfully with my dad. I know -- if I live long enough -- that I face other times of care-taking, disease, and facing death with my dearly loved in-laws, my own generation of siblings and friends, and even with the possibility of losing some of the next generation. Each is painfully unthinkable just as is it ultimately inevitable. And, it's not just people who bring us to face-to-face with the inevitability of disease and death.
As I age, the number of pets I have loved and lost keeps growing, as has my experience of the variety of ways to participate in their suffering and to ultimately lose them. The first cat I had to put down was my beloved Sadie-cat of my post-college years. I met her loss with much trauma and angst, which unfortunately also communicated the same to her as I took her on the final trip to the vet. While no less painful, I have learned to have more compassion on the dear little ones who have loved me unto death, and now deal with that decision with their welfare utmost in my mind. But, oh the pain and loneliness when they are gone!
Each time I lose a loved one, I feel that so much of me is gone with them that I can never again be whole. In the midst of care-taking and decision-making, do I long to be set free? No. The question is, rather; "When to set free? When to finally let go?" And, although torn apart and tired, if I really look at what is left I find a bigger me than I began with.
I carry them all, all the ones whom I have loved and let go, the force of their love and the precious scars of their loss, deep inside me -- and the pressure of that love on my heart keeps it expanding outward to limits that I did not know were possible.
In the Epistle reading for today from the Lectionary (Romans 8: 12-25), the apostle Paul talks about being "set free from the bondage of decay" to await the "freedom of glory ... the redemption of our bodies." I don't believe that we need to understand this as some expectation of life after death or any miraculous resurrection. I think that there is a "redemption of the body" in meeting death and decay head-on, releasing it of its existential dread, and coming to terms with the impermanence of our own self and that of our loved ones; learning to live this ephemeral existence fully in-the-moment because of it.
Looking at things from the middle of a family member or friend's prolonged illness or ultimate death, or even in the middle of my own prolonged illnesses and frailties (as longer life has allowed me to experience), would I have "signed on" if I had known where it would take me? Perhaps not. But age and endurance have the advantage of providing distance and perspective. Today, I can say that I treasure each of these experiences and would sign on again willingly for the precious gift of sharing life AND death with everyone that I have loved and who has loved me. Far from losing myself, I have become myself by immersion in their impermanent lives and through the grace of their transcendent love.
The idea of a soul commitment that involves a vow to last to the end of life is one that especially resonates with me today, although I am thinking about it in broader contexts than just marriage.
The possible extent and cost of a soul commitment was captured eloquently in a song (In Sickness And In Health) that a friend of mine included on a recent new album (highly recommended!). The song -- about the effects of an early, devastating, and fatal illness on the caretaker spouse, from the perspective of the ill spouse -- echoes with the refrain "you (we) didn't know what you signed on for when you said that you'd be mine." It asks the question; "When we said 'in sickness and in health,' although you've surely kept that promise, have you almost lost yourself?" and, "As my body betrays me, are you patiently waiting to be set free?"
For, however much we try to shelter ourselves from the reality of it, death is a part of life and we are called to participate in it -- even sometimes to linger overlong in its precincts. Although at its utmost extremity death is something we face alone, all of us are invited to share in either being ushered to that threshold by our own loved ones or in ushering others we love to that common destination.
Jan and I often joke that we must make a pact to die instantaneously in an accident that takes us both, because to either one of us the idea of losing the other -- either with the quick devastation of surprise or the slow despair of long illness -- seems too painful to contemplate (not to mention having to deal with the mess of the other's estate!). Yet we know that the odds are otherwise, and we willfully continue in this perilous and uncertain existence because that is where the heart leads.
But, the human heart leads to other commitments even more certain of leading to "love unto death" and we, as in humans everywhere, continue to step willingly onto these paths.
A few years ago, a friend whom I hadn't seen for awhile told me that the reason I hadn't seen him recently was that he had been at home dealing with chemotherapy from a cancer that had been diagnosed at about the time I had seen him last. My reaction, which I think is the reaction most of us would have, was not relief that I had missed out on being there with him but sorrow that we had not been good enough friends yet for him to call on me for support in his sickness. I immediately threw myself into the process of cementing the friendship that I had hoped from from before would grow deeper, even though, or perhaps especially because, a voice at the back of my head said that he was going to NEED my friendship later. There was no particular reason to feel that foreboding -- his cancer was supposedly in remission and the treatment had an 80% success rate; there was no reason to suspect a recurrence. And, we did go on to become best friends and to have some wonderful times before his cancer recurred. The second time around, the prognosis wasn't so good -- it had spread to his liver and remission rates were far less positive. Nevertheless, we went through 6 months of chemo and hope, all the while cementing our friendship and nourishing my growing friendship with his life-partner, parents, other friends, etc. In the end, as "best friend," I was the one who was asked to let him know that the options were all gone, that he was going to die. We were all there around him until the end, and I felt like I had jumped in at the beginning with the knowledge that this was all going to happen just as it had. He needed me and it was enough.
I faced a similar time with my mother, with her death from breast cancer, and more from the sidelines but equally painfully with my dad. I know -- if I live long enough -- that I face other times of care-taking, disease, and facing death with my dearly loved in-laws, my own generation of siblings and friends, and even with the possibility of losing some of the next generation. Each is painfully unthinkable just as is it ultimately inevitable. And, it's not just people who bring us to face-to-face with the inevitability of disease and death.
As I age, the number of pets I have loved and lost keeps growing, as has my experience of the variety of ways to participate in their suffering and to ultimately lose them. The first cat I had to put down was my beloved Sadie-cat of my post-college years. I met her loss with much trauma and angst, which unfortunately also communicated the same to her as I took her on the final trip to the vet. While no less painful, I have learned to have more compassion on the dear little ones who have loved me unto death, and now deal with that decision with their welfare utmost in my mind. But, oh the pain and loneliness when they are gone!
Each time I lose a loved one, I feel that so much of me is gone with them that I can never again be whole. In the midst of care-taking and decision-making, do I long to be set free? No. The question is, rather; "When to set free? When to finally let go?" And, although torn apart and tired, if I really look at what is left I find a bigger me than I began with.
I carry them all, all the ones whom I have loved and let go, the force of their love and the precious scars of their loss, deep inside me -- and the pressure of that love on my heart keeps it expanding outward to limits that I did not know were possible.
In the Epistle reading for today from the Lectionary (Romans 8: 12-25), the apostle Paul talks about being "set free from the bondage of decay" to await the "freedom of glory ... the redemption of our bodies." I don't believe that we need to understand this as some expectation of life after death or any miraculous resurrection. I think that there is a "redemption of the body" in meeting death and decay head-on, releasing it of its existential dread, and coming to terms with the impermanence of our own self and that of our loved ones; learning to live this ephemeral existence fully in-the-moment because of it.
Looking at things from the middle of a family member or friend's prolonged illness or ultimate death, or even in the middle of my own prolonged illnesses and frailties (as longer life has allowed me to experience), would I have "signed on" if I had known where it would take me? Perhaps not. But age and endurance have the advantage of providing distance and perspective. Today, I can say that I treasure each of these experiences and would sign on again willingly for the precious gift of sharing life AND death with everyone that I have loved and who has loved me. Far from losing myself, I have become myself by immersion in their impermanent lives and through the grace of their transcendent love.
Sunday, June 26, 2011
Hard Work!
Some friends and I have been reading Karen Armstrong's The Case for God recently and one of the things she repeats several times is that religion is hard work. God has never been easy to understand and some of our finest mystics and theologians assert that God is found more in the questions and contradictions, and the struggle the struggle to understand, than in answers and doctrines.
We've had different responses to this idea. Some of us want at least some core -- some basic set of unalterable truths to be taught and to teach our children -- around which some of the other questions can exist as points of discussion or difference. Some of us are willing, or even eager, to question everything and to challenge all our positions radically. I think it's been good for us all to hear the perspectives of the other, and to be open to the diversity of our paths.
Today's gospel, if you read the longer passage (Matthew 10:34-42, instead of just 40-42) is one of those places where all the questions and contradictions seem to come to a head. At first Jesus says "I have not come to bring peace, but a sword" and talks of setting everyone against each other. But, the passage ends with the "whoever welcomes you welcomes me" passage about radical hospitality. It's enough to set the mind spinning. Just at first it doesn't seem quite so contradictory -- love God first and foremost, and then others, and treat them like you would treat Jesus. That's what we heard in the sermon. But, the more I think about it, the less clear it becomes. If I am to treat even one of these little ones like I would welcome the Lord, then how can it be that "one's foes will be the members of one's own household"? How can I fully recognize and respond to God in everyone and yet expect that the result will be not peace, but a sword? Why are these so apparently contradictory teachings given practically in the same breath (at least as the gospel writer has recorded it)? Is it, perhaps, the contemplation of the contradiction that is the point? The either/or interpretation works for some people -- sometimes it is like this, sometimes like that. But, for me, it's is the both/and question that is the most profitable. How can both instructions be true at the same time, what is the meaning of the paradox?
As I have been trying to learn more about gardening the past couple of summers (my historically brownish-black thumb is showing a few signs of green around the edges), I have discovered that my plants respond very differently to pruning. Some have to be pruned very gently, and may even die if you cut away too much or at the wrong season. Some, like my lilacs, are almost impossible to kill and do best if old growth is cut away completely not long after they finish blooming. I guess I respond most like a lilac. I do best when my strongest held and most solid beliefs get chopped all the way back to the root every once in awhile -- everything up for rethinking and possible revision. The resulting chaos and even trauma make me dig deeper and bring out new growth and (one hopes) new blooms in due season. But, I also need to be careful not to inflict my drastic pruning methods on plants or people who respond differently.
As Armstrong also says in her book, the proof of a religious doctrine or point of faith isn't in it's being right or wrong, it's whether it is helpful or unhelpful in helping us to live the life we want to live and be the people we want to be. We won't all get there in the same path or by the same set of beliefs and doctrines.
We've had different responses to this idea. Some of us want at least some core -- some basic set of unalterable truths to be taught and to teach our children -- around which some of the other questions can exist as points of discussion or difference. Some of us are willing, or even eager, to question everything and to challenge all our positions radically. I think it's been good for us all to hear the perspectives of the other, and to be open to the diversity of our paths.
Today's gospel, if you read the longer passage (Matthew 10:34-42, instead of just 40-42) is one of those places where all the questions and contradictions seem to come to a head. At first Jesus says "I have not come to bring peace, but a sword" and talks of setting everyone against each other. But, the passage ends with the "whoever welcomes you welcomes me" passage about radical hospitality. It's enough to set the mind spinning. Just at first it doesn't seem quite so contradictory -- love God first and foremost, and then others, and treat them like you would treat Jesus. That's what we heard in the sermon. But, the more I think about it, the less clear it becomes. If I am to treat even one of these little ones like I would welcome the Lord, then how can it be that "one's foes will be the members of one's own household"? How can I fully recognize and respond to God in everyone and yet expect that the result will be not peace, but a sword? Why are these so apparently contradictory teachings given practically in the same breath (at least as the gospel writer has recorded it)? Is it, perhaps, the contemplation of the contradiction that is the point? The either/or interpretation works for some people -- sometimes it is like this, sometimes like that. But, for me, it's is the both/and question that is the most profitable. How can both instructions be true at the same time, what is the meaning of the paradox?
As I have been trying to learn more about gardening the past couple of summers (my historically brownish-black thumb is showing a few signs of green around the edges), I have discovered that my plants respond very differently to pruning. Some have to be pruned very gently, and may even die if you cut away too much or at the wrong season. Some, like my lilacs, are almost impossible to kill and do best if old growth is cut away completely not long after they finish blooming. I guess I respond most like a lilac. I do best when my strongest held and most solid beliefs get chopped all the way back to the root every once in awhile -- everything up for rethinking and possible revision. The resulting chaos and even trauma make me dig deeper and bring out new growth and (one hopes) new blooms in due season. But, I also need to be careful not to inflict my drastic pruning methods on plants or people who respond differently.
As Armstrong also says in her book, the proof of a religious doctrine or point of faith isn't in it's being right or wrong, it's whether it is helpful or unhelpful in helping us to live the life we want to live and be the people we want to be. We won't all get there in the same path or by the same set of beliefs and doctrines.
Sunday, June 12, 2011
Parental Guidance Suggested
Today was "youth Sunday" at the Church I visited. More about that later...
When I got up this morning, I found myself thinking of my grandmother who was "raised a Methodist" and was always determined to "die a Methodist" as well (her reaction to the rest of our family joining the Southern Baptist church in town when the local Methodist church closed). Perhaps I thought of her because I planned to visit another church this morning, my Episcopal church having moved services to the evening so that the vicar and vestry could attend Diocesan Council downstate. I chuckled a bit while thinking that perhaps she should have been Presbyterian instead, since she certainly believed in predestination. However, her version of predestination didn't have much to do with God's foreknowledge but had everything to do with her own determination and will. She was determined that we grandchildren were destined for the future she planned, at least as far as she had energy to make it happen. My brother was to take over the farm, my sister was to be an artist, and I was to be the church musician. In the last, she had the assistance of my Great-Aunt Georgia to reinforce her will. My Aunt Georgia was the church organist/choir director and my Grandma Grace the church pianist. As far as they were concerned (and that settled it!) it was my destiny to take over for them as the local church organist and pianist and choir director, and they started me in lessons when I was just 6 years old. Although I felt I had very little choice in the matter, I learned to love the music and was happy with my fate. Unfortunately, Aunt Georgia died only a few months after my first lessons with her, but my Grandma did live to hear me sing and play both piano and organ in our hometown church. My sister also became an artist, so Grandma managed to live to see predestination confirmed for at least 2 of her grandchildren. (I do not, however, admit to any organ playing skills at all--I did it once just to please her, but I never got the hang of playing with my feet, or of pushing and pulling knobs while simultaneously trying to play the keyboard!)
I had a wonderfully rich Christian upbringing. Our home and our church were full of Bible stories, hymns, Christian books and study guides, and testimonies of faithful people. Life was a succession of worship services, Sunday School, youth group, vacation Bible school, and twice yearly revivals (especially after we became Southern Baptists!). I had read the whole Bible through by the time I was in my early teens, and knew the Old Testament stories and the stories of the Gospels through and through. My parents clearly believed that early church education was essential and made sure that we children were exposed to as much as we could absorb, but without ever forcing us to go or insisting that we believe.
I could wish, however, that they had spoken to us more about what they believed, how they believed it, what parts they struggled with, and how they integrated it all into their lives. I look back now on what I believed then, who I listened to, what I accepted without question, and I find much of it very troubling. I was not very discriminating, and I had very little guidance to help me navigate the very many conflicting claims on "God's truth."
Which brings me back to "youth Sunday" at this church I visited; I could not help but wonder whether anyone was guiding them to think critically about what they accept. The music was young and hip and surprisingly good from a musical standpoint, but the lyrics were troubling. One song had young David thanking Jesus (!) for his defeat over Goliath. Another challenged Christians to take their religion back into the schools as a replacement for the humanism and evolution being taught there. I didn't think this particular church had a reputation of being fundamentalist or teaching compulsion in religion! Parents and church leaders, are you listening to what your children are being taught? Are you asking them what they think? Are you telling them what YOU think?
I cringe at the person I became in my teenage years -- I sang "I wish we'd all been ready" and truly believed that the Rapture was imminent. I preached to all my friends about the coming Armageddon, surely presaged by the formation of the World Council of Churches, who were undoubtedly harboring the Anti-Christ as their leader. (If the Anti-Christ wasn't, in fact, the Roman Pope -- another good contender!) I carried my Bible everywhere and dropped tracts wherever I went that outlined the 4 Spiritual Laws, the formula by which one could step from one side of "the line" to the other and become "saved--that is, not like OTHER people."
I read my first (pretty mild) pornography while on a panel of people trying to persuade schools to censor this kind of stuff from impressionable youth. (My colleagues thought I was older than I was, and I wasn't about to disabuse them. It was the only access I had...) All the time I was publicly decrying exposing our nation's youth to such "filth" I was secretly devouring the examples, our proof texts, in the hopes of learning something about this new and scary world of sexuality, which was otherwise completely taboo to us "good Christian youth." Later, I bought a whole series of books on dating and sexuality from a Christian publisher. They taught complete abstinence until marriage, and insisted that masturbation and even romantic/sexual fantasy were as sinful as actual premarital sex. The books and their advice bent, twisted, folded, and crumpled me into myself, binding me thus tighter than the compressed bales of hay with which we filled the barn for winter fodder, but my parents never asked about what I read or what I was thinking. I was, after all, reading good Christian books from a reputed conservative publisher -- I must be getting the advice I need, right?
I was a typical teenager. It's not easy to talk to a teenager, who by definition knows everything and understands it all so much better than an adult who is, also by definition, over-the-hill and irrelevant. I remember once my dad mentioned some Mormons had moved nearby, and I went into a long tirade about how Mormonism was a cult and dangerous and how good people should beware lest Mormons try to spread their faith any further or try to gain political or economic influence. My dad responded, "Now wait a minute. I though for the most part, Mormons are good people with strong families and a good work ethic?" Of course, I contradicted him at the time, but I also immediately KNEW, the moment he called me on it, that I was being a self-righteous prig spouting a "party line" of stuff I'd been told and never even bothered to investigate. I realized right then that I deserved to be challenged, and I also never forgot the lesson.
I would have benefited from many more such lessons, but I, for the most part, didn't get challenged in my excesses. I wish I had known then -- I wish I knew now -- what they thought of my early fundamentalism, my anti-intellectualism, my exclusivism, my tendency to swallow whole what ever certain charismatic youth leaders or musicians taught. Were they even aware of it, or did they think that Church is generally benign and therefore not really pay any attention to what I was getting out of it? What would they have said if they had known what I was really into? It was so important in our family that we read the Bible, know the stories, sing the hymns -- and they modeled this -- but, I wish I knew more about what difference these things made to my parents and grandparents and family as people. Somehow, I can't quite imagine that they had the same kind of tight, confining, exclusionary faith that I was being taught and was swallowing whole. But, they never said and I never took the chance to ask them about it.
When I was 13, to insist on "dying a Methodist" because you were "born a Methodist" was clearly just stubbornness and resistance to change. Some four decades later I understand much more about what it means to claim a heritage and identity, and to find meaning and strength in choosing a path and sticking to it, even if it is just one path among many. I have my own ideas about what being a Methodist meant to my Grandma because I know what being Christian and Episcopalian mean to me, but I will never know for sure just what she was trying to say. I wish I could ask her. I wish she had at least tried to tell me.
When I got up this morning, I found myself thinking of my grandmother who was "raised a Methodist" and was always determined to "die a Methodist" as well (her reaction to the rest of our family joining the Southern Baptist church in town when the local Methodist church closed). Perhaps I thought of her because I planned to visit another church this morning, my Episcopal church having moved services to the evening so that the vicar and vestry could attend Diocesan Council downstate. I chuckled a bit while thinking that perhaps she should have been Presbyterian instead, since she certainly believed in predestination. However, her version of predestination didn't have much to do with God's foreknowledge but had everything to do with her own determination and will. She was determined that we grandchildren were destined for the future she planned, at least as far as she had energy to make it happen. My brother was to take over the farm, my sister was to be an artist, and I was to be the church musician. In the last, she had the assistance of my Great-Aunt Georgia to reinforce her will. My Aunt Georgia was the church organist/choir director and my Grandma Grace the church pianist. As far as they were concerned (and that settled it!) it was my destiny to take over for them as the local church organist and pianist and choir director, and they started me in lessons when I was just 6 years old. Although I felt I had very little choice in the matter, I learned to love the music and was happy with my fate. Unfortunately, Aunt Georgia died only a few months after my first lessons with her, but my Grandma did live to hear me sing and play both piano and organ in our hometown church. My sister also became an artist, so Grandma managed to live to see predestination confirmed for at least 2 of her grandchildren. (I do not, however, admit to any organ playing skills at all--I did it once just to please her, but I never got the hang of playing with my feet, or of pushing and pulling knobs while simultaneously trying to play the keyboard!)
I had a wonderfully rich Christian upbringing. Our home and our church were full of Bible stories, hymns, Christian books and study guides, and testimonies of faithful people. Life was a succession of worship services, Sunday School, youth group, vacation Bible school, and twice yearly revivals (especially after we became Southern Baptists!). I had read the whole Bible through by the time I was in my early teens, and knew the Old Testament stories and the stories of the Gospels through and through. My parents clearly believed that early church education was essential and made sure that we children were exposed to as much as we could absorb, but without ever forcing us to go or insisting that we believe.
I could wish, however, that they had spoken to us more about what they believed, how they believed it, what parts they struggled with, and how they integrated it all into their lives. I look back now on what I believed then, who I listened to, what I accepted without question, and I find much of it very troubling. I was not very discriminating, and I had very little guidance to help me navigate the very many conflicting claims on "God's truth."
Which brings me back to "youth Sunday" at this church I visited; I could not help but wonder whether anyone was guiding them to think critically about what they accept. The music was young and hip and surprisingly good from a musical standpoint, but the lyrics were troubling. One song had young David thanking Jesus (!) for his defeat over Goliath. Another challenged Christians to take their religion back into the schools as a replacement for the humanism and evolution being taught there. I didn't think this particular church had a reputation of being fundamentalist or teaching compulsion in religion! Parents and church leaders, are you listening to what your children are being taught? Are you asking them what they think? Are you telling them what YOU think?
I cringe at the person I became in my teenage years -- I sang "I wish we'd all been ready" and truly believed that the Rapture was imminent. I preached to all my friends about the coming Armageddon, surely presaged by the formation of the World Council of Churches, who were undoubtedly harboring the Anti-Christ as their leader. (If the Anti-Christ wasn't, in fact, the Roman Pope -- another good contender!) I carried my Bible everywhere and dropped tracts wherever I went that outlined the 4 Spiritual Laws, the formula by which one could step from one side of "the line" to the other and become "saved--that is, not like OTHER people."
I read my first (pretty mild) pornography while on a panel of people trying to persuade schools to censor this kind of stuff from impressionable youth. (My colleagues thought I was older than I was, and I wasn't about to disabuse them. It was the only access I had...) All the time I was publicly decrying exposing our nation's youth to such "filth" I was secretly devouring the examples, our proof texts, in the hopes of learning something about this new and scary world of sexuality, which was otherwise completely taboo to us "good Christian youth." Later, I bought a whole series of books on dating and sexuality from a Christian publisher. They taught complete abstinence until marriage, and insisted that masturbation and even romantic/sexual fantasy were as sinful as actual premarital sex. The books and their advice bent, twisted, folded, and crumpled me into myself, binding me thus tighter than the compressed bales of hay with which we filled the barn for winter fodder, but my parents never asked about what I read or what I was thinking. I was, after all, reading good Christian books from a reputed conservative publisher -- I must be getting the advice I need, right?
I was a typical teenager. It's not easy to talk to a teenager, who by definition knows everything and understands it all so much better than an adult who is, also by definition, over-the-hill and irrelevant. I remember once my dad mentioned some Mormons had moved nearby, and I went into a long tirade about how Mormonism was a cult and dangerous and how good people should beware lest Mormons try to spread their faith any further or try to gain political or economic influence. My dad responded, "Now wait a minute. I though for the most part, Mormons are good people with strong families and a good work ethic?" Of course, I contradicted him at the time, but I also immediately KNEW, the moment he called me on it, that I was being a self-righteous prig spouting a "party line" of stuff I'd been told and never even bothered to investigate. I realized right then that I deserved to be challenged, and I also never forgot the lesson.
I would have benefited from many more such lessons, but I, for the most part, didn't get challenged in my excesses. I wish I had known then -- I wish I knew now -- what they thought of my early fundamentalism, my anti-intellectualism, my exclusivism, my tendency to swallow whole what ever certain charismatic youth leaders or musicians taught. Were they even aware of it, or did they think that Church is generally benign and therefore not really pay any attention to what I was getting out of it? What would they have said if they had known what I was really into? It was so important in our family that we read the Bible, know the stories, sing the hymns -- and they modeled this -- but, I wish I knew more about what difference these things made to my parents and grandparents and family as people. Somehow, I can't quite imagine that they had the same kind of tight, confining, exclusionary faith that I was being taught and was swallowing whole. But, they never said and I never took the chance to ask them about it.
When I was 13, to insist on "dying a Methodist" because you were "born a Methodist" was clearly just stubbornness and resistance to change. Some four decades later I understand much more about what it means to claim a heritage and identity, and to find meaning and strength in choosing a path and sticking to it, even if it is just one path among many. I have my own ideas about what being a Methodist meant to my Grandma because I know what being Christian and Episcopalian mean to me, but I will never know for sure just what she was trying to say. I wish I could ask her. I wish she had at least tried to tell me.
Sunday, May 29, 2011
Turning Things Around
When I began this blog, I promised myself that I would, as much as possible, try to write something every Sunday. It doesn't always look like I've done very well at that, but what you don't see (and I don't want to see when I revisit my blog months down the road!) is all the stuff I write that is clearly not worth posting. Having just finished a letter criticizing my own preacher for saying very little worth listening to, I have to admit that I have less of interest to say than I thought I did when I started the blog. Sometimes I feel really inspired, but inspiration is elusive even when I do apply perspiration to the task!
What survives of my musings from last week is below:
Some friends and I are reading Karen Armstrong's Case for God together, and one thing she says early in the book is that atheism requires a doctrine of God to oppose -- that it's not possible to be in opposition to something without some definition or conception of what it is that one's against. She is (and I am also) an atheist to the God of most fundamentalist Christians (as well as other fundamentalists of various religions) and perhaps to the God of many other Christians as well. In fact, I find that many of the Criticisms leveled by the Dawkins, Hitchens, Hawking, etc. crowd of neo-atheists to be extremely on target. Yet, I listen to them with a great deal of frustration because I don't recognize the God that they don't believe in -- at least that God is foreign to me on so many levels, yet they seem to insist that anyone who professes to believe in God must hold at least some of these beliefs that they oppose. (I could, perhaps, argue that I hold none of them and yet STILL profess to be a Christian -- it all depends on what one means when one uses words to describe things essentially not describable with words. There are always different angles and different interpretations.)
I like too what Armstrong says about evaluating religious ideas and practice not in terms of right and wrong, but in terms of skillful and unskillful (or helpful and unhelpful). Does something (a belief, a practice, a text, ...) help me to connect with others, to feel integrated and whole, to find meaning and purpose, or not? And, are other people finding those things that do the same for them?
I'll finish for today with one of those things from the Bible that opens so many questions for me about the nature of God, of faith, of how we look at things and what they might possibly mean: The gospel for today (John 17) says, "And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent." Actually, pretty much along with our neo-atheists, I'm one of those people who has very little of either fear or expectation from death, I think it is just the end, like birth is the beginning, and that the two endpoints in some sense encompass the total of my being. But, there's nothing in the above that contradicts from that at all -- it says "eternal life" is "to know God." If you look at that from some vantage points it blows the traditional idea of "life after death" quite out of the water. Time and space are related and derivative, properties of the physical universe, rather than outside of it. Perhaps to know God is to touch something which transcends time and space? Beyond that, my thoughts grope blindly... but, does anything essential in scripture actually insist on a "life after death" perspective? [That people have, at times, believed in life after death? -- yes. That it is an essential belief for faith in God? -- I haven't found it!]
Last week, Jesus spoke to his disciples of "In my father's house are many mansions," and "I go to prepare a place for you." But, is he necessarily speaking of some kind of life after death? "My father's house" could equally well be something we encounter in this life. Jesus knew he was going -- this life was ending -- but with his life and death he had perhaps shown how, prepared us for, finding a dwelling place in God for our being, not someday, but now. Of course, "a dwelling place in God" could be equally many things, or nothing at all. Isn't that the point; to keep asking these questions and searching for answers, looking from as many angles and vantage points as possible while we still can?
What survives of my musings from last week is below:
What I "believe," how I think or speak about anything spiritual, changes with every approach I make to the subject. Sometimes I believe it all, sometimes none of it, and most often bits and pieces, but it's all dependent on how I look at things at the moment. Just a slight change in angle or time makes everything look different and elicits a different response. Anyone reading these pages can see that what I say is not "consistent" in any common use of the term, I make no attempt to avoid contradicting myself and claiming essentially opposite things -- I just write as I feel at any particular moment. And yet, it never seems that what I actually feel, behind the attempt to put it in words, changes all that much. How I describe it changes radically depending on the perspective, the viewing angle, but the reality behind all the striving to put it into words is as steady and unchanging as it is elusive and impossible to describe...In somewhat related thoughts this week, I heard the preacher ask "Is it sufficient just to believe in God, to be a Christian?" but my heart responded with the question, "Is it necessary to believe in God to be a Christian?" Because I often don't "believe" in God -- or at least, what I do believe has very little in common with how many would define God. Nevertheless, being (in some sense, not everyone would agree) a Christian is central to who I am, and I doubt I could walk away from defining myself so even if I wanted to.
Some friends and I are reading Karen Armstrong's Case for God together, and one thing she says early in the book is that atheism requires a doctrine of God to oppose -- that it's not possible to be in opposition to something without some definition or conception of what it is that one's against. She is (and I am also) an atheist to the God of most fundamentalist Christians (as well as other fundamentalists of various religions) and perhaps to the God of many other Christians as well. In fact, I find that many of the Criticisms leveled by the Dawkins, Hitchens, Hawking, etc. crowd of neo-atheists to be extremely on target. Yet, I listen to them with a great deal of frustration because I don't recognize the God that they don't believe in -- at least that God is foreign to me on so many levels, yet they seem to insist that anyone who professes to believe in God must hold at least some of these beliefs that they oppose. (I could, perhaps, argue that I hold none of them and yet STILL profess to be a Christian -- it all depends on what one means when one uses words to describe things essentially not describable with words. There are always different angles and different interpretations.)
I like too what Armstrong says about evaluating religious ideas and practice not in terms of right and wrong, but in terms of skillful and unskillful (or helpful and unhelpful). Does something (a belief, a practice, a text, ...) help me to connect with others, to feel integrated and whole, to find meaning and purpose, or not? And, are other people finding those things that do the same for them?
I'll finish for today with one of those things from the Bible that opens so many questions for me about the nature of God, of faith, of how we look at things and what they might possibly mean: The gospel for today (John 17) says, "And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent." Actually, pretty much along with our neo-atheists, I'm one of those people who has very little of either fear or expectation from death, I think it is just the end, like birth is the beginning, and that the two endpoints in some sense encompass the total of my being. But, there's nothing in the above that contradicts from that at all -- it says "eternal life" is "to know God." If you look at that from some vantage points it blows the traditional idea of "life after death" quite out of the water. Time and space are related and derivative, properties of the physical universe, rather than outside of it. Perhaps to know God is to touch something which transcends time and space? Beyond that, my thoughts grope blindly... but, does anything essential in scripture actually insist on a "life after death" perspective? [That people have, at times, believed in life after death? -- yes. That it is an essential belief for faith in God? -- I haven't found it!]
Last week, Jesus spoke to his disciples of "In my father's house are many mansions," and "I go to prepare a place for you." But, is he necessarily speaking of some kind of life after death? "My father's house" could equally well be something we encounter in this life. Jesus knew he was going -- this life was ending -- but with his life and death he had perhaps shown how, prepared us for, finding a dwelling place in God for our being, not someday, but now. Of course, "a dwelling place in God" could be equally many things, or nothing at all. Isn't that the point; to keep asking these questions and searching for answers, looking from as many angles and vantage points as possible while we still can?
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Falling Down on the Job
I mentioned in my last post an elderly friend who died on Easter. She fell, knocked herself unconscious, and died a few days later as a result of the trauma. The following Sunday, I too fell -- about halfway down a flight of wooden stairs while carrying two suitcases and a glass. While I didn't hurt myself very badly, I did get bruised and shaken up quite a lot, and the recovery time explains my lack of blogs for the month...
One thing about falling down the stairs; it takes a remarkably long time. Between the fatal misstep and the final crash at the bottom is PLENTY of time for regrets and apprehensiveness. As I stood at the top of the stairs, I briefly thought that I should not attempt to carry so much down all at once. But, going up and down the stairs hurts my bad hip and I did not want to have to make another trip. I thought, "I'll just be careful," forgetting that said "bad hip" often fails me at the critical moment. A few steps in, a sharp pain hit as my hip complained of the extra weight, the foot slipped, I started to catch myself and then realized that it is too late! Simultaneously, in those stretched-out seconds while I fell, I was thinking: "Don't tense up, try not to twist, be careful of the glass..."; "My partner has already started driving to Virginia; she'll have to turn around to get to the hospital, or maybe plan the funeral!"; "How stupid! Why didn't I listen to my good sense and not try to carry two bags at once!" "I'm too young to die!" And when I finally hit bottom, I gingerly moved a muscle at a time and thought what a miracle as everything seemed to work, for the most part. "Artificial hip still in place? Check. I can move my right leg out from under me? Check. Left leg? Also check. Hand? Lots of tiny cuts -- rapidly turning red all over and lots of smashed glass all around, but no spurting blood anywhere. No major cuts! OK. What hurts? Major gash on the left leg, I don't want to look... My inlaws are running in--No, not dead. Ice please! And let's just sit here for awhile before trying to get up..."
As it turned out, I was tremendously lucky. No major injuries, although enough minor ones to keep me sore for a couple weeks and reflecting on the lesson: "Listen to that little voice that tells you when you are trying to do too much!" Much gratitude for having another chance. Whether or not God exists as we envision, it seems necessary at times to feel that overwhelming gratitude for second chances--just as it is sometimes necessary to rail against God over the tragedies of the world. Sometimes faith isn't a conscious choice, it just seems to be human nature.
With my fall behind me as I sat in church this past Sunday, listening to the familiar words of the 23rd Psalm, I thought a bit about "thy rod and thy staff." As with many familiar Bible stories, I had never really gone back and revisited my early Sunday-School interpretation of this Psalm and what it means. What we had always been told is that the rod and staff mean that sometimes God punishes us when we are wrong, so that we will know to do right later ... sort of a Biblical "Story of Ping" with the Good Shepherd waiting to hit us across the rear with his staff -- consequences teach us to appreciate punishment when we see what trouble we would get in without correction. But today I wonder how often shepherds go around hitting their sheep? Although I don't know much about herding sheep, I do know a lot about herding and chasing cows. My father always insisted that we were NOT to hit the cows. We carried large staffs to whirl around our bodies and make ourselves look bigger, so that it was easier for the cows to see us and understand our directions, to be guided -- not hurt! Only if the cows were going in the wrong way or charging would we threaten them with the staff, and only if they were charging directly at us would we ever resort to hitting them. That was a last resort!
So, this Sunday when I heard "thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me," I thought about that voice that whispered in my ear, "don't try to carry too much down the stairs!" Remember to look for guidance! It is given to comfort, not punish.
One thing about falling down the stairs; it takes a remarkably long time. Between the fatal misstep and the final crash at the bottom is PLENTY of time for regrets and apprehensiveness. As I stood at the top of the stairs, I briefly thought that I should not attempt to carry so much down all at once. But, going up and down the stairs hurts my bad hip and I did not want to have to make another trip. I thought, "I'll just be careful," forgetting that said "bad hip" often fails me at the critical moment. A few steps in, a sharp pain hit as my hip complained of the extra weight, the foot slipped, I started to catch myself and then realized that it is too late! Simultaneously, in those stretched-out seconds while I fell, I was thinking: "Don't tense up, try not to twist, be careful of the glass..."; "My partner has already started driving to Virginia; she'll have to turn around to get to the hospital, or maybe plan the funeral!"; "How stupid! Why didn't I listen to my good sense and not try to carry two bags at once!" "I'm too young to die!" And when I finally hit bottom, I gingerly moved a muscle at a time and thought what a miracle as everything seemed to work, for the most part. "Artificial hip still in place? Check. I can move my right leg out from under me? Check. Left leg? Also check. Hand? Lots of tiny cuts -- rapidly turning red all over and lots of smashed glass all around, but no spurting blood anywhere. No major cuts! OK. What hurts? Major gash on the left leg, I don't want to look... My inlaws are running in--No, not dead. Ice please! And let's just sit here for awhile before trying to get up..."
As it turned out, I was tremendously lucky. No major injuries, although enough minor ones to keep me sore for a couple weeks and reflecting on the lesson: "Listen to that little voice that tells you when you are trying to do too much!" Much gratitude for having another chance. Whether or not God exists as we envision, it seems necessary at times to feel that overwhelming gratitude for second chances--just as it is sometimes necessary to rail against God over the tragedies of the world. Sometimes faith isn't a conscious choice, it just seems to be human nature.
With my fall behind me as I sat in church this past Sunday, listening to the familiar words of the 23rd Psalm, I thought a bit about "thy rod and thy staff." As with many familiar Bible stories, I had never really gone back and revisited my early Sunday-School interpretation of this Psalm and what it means. What we had always been told is that the rod and staff mean that sometimes God punishes us when we are wrong, so that we will know to do right later ... sort of a Biblical "Story of Ping" with the Good Shepherd waiting to hit us across the rear with his staff -- consequences teach us to appreciate punishment when we see what trouble we would get in without correction. But today I wonder how often shepherds go around hitting their sheep? Although I don't know much about herding sheep, I do know a lot about herding and chasing cows. My father always insisted that we were NOT to hit the cows. We carried large staffs to whirl around our bodies and make ourselves look bigger, so that it was easier for the cows to see us and understand our directions, to be guided -- not hurt! Only if the cows were going in the wrong way or charging would we threaten them with the staff, and only if they were charging directly at us would we ever resort to hitting them. That was a last resort!
So, this Sunday when I heard "thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me," I thought about that voice that whispered in my ear, "don't try to carry too much down the stairs!" Remember to look for guidance! It is given to comfort, not punish.
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