("The Severed Head of St. John the Baptist," Aguste Rodin, 1887, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
“Now some of the Jews thought that the destruction of Herod’s army came from God, and that very justly, as a punishment of what he did against John, that was called the Baptist: for Herod slew him, who was a good man, and commanded the Jews to exercise virtue, both as to righteousness towards one another, and piety towards God, and so to come to baptism; for that the washing [with water] would be acceptable to him, if they made use of it, not in order to the putting away [or the remission] of some sins [only], but for the purification of the body; supposing still that the soul was thoroughly purified beforehand by righteousness. Now when [many] others came in crowds about him, for they were very greatly moved [or pleased] by hearing his words, Herod, who feared lest the great influence John had over the people might put it into his power and inclination to raise a rebellion, (for they seemed ready to do any thing he should advise,) thought it best, by putting him to death, to prevent any mischief he might cause, and not bring himself into difficulties, by sparing a man who might make him repent of it when it would be too late. Accordingly he was sent a prisoner, out of Herod’s suspicious temper, to Macherus, the castle I before mentioned, and was there put to death. Now the Jews had an opinion that the destruction of this army was sent as a punishment upon Herod, and a mark of God’s displeasure to him."
--Flavius Josephus' account of the death of John the Baptist
Sometimes, my spiritual director brings up some very touchy topics for me.
I had been relating my week to him, and one of the things I related was a small battle I had taken on against "corporate"--the corporation that owns the hospital that is the main client in my practice. I have been trying to convince them that the way they want some paperwork done is just stupid, and time consuming, and costly for my practice (of course, they don't care about MY costs as a vendor, they care about THEIR costs as a corporation,) and so far, they are not listening. Never mind their demand does absolutely nothing to further patient care. I have an ally in my connection to the matter, but all indications are above us, in the nebulous corporate headquarters, that anyone is listening.
So he looks at me and says, "You kind of like to fight authority, don't you?"
Now, this was a little laughable considering my spiritual director, who's a Roman Catholic priest, is always squabbling with his Bishop. Our meetings are often punctuated with calls from his Bishop's office.
But I respected his question and didn't react because, after all, "it takes one to know one."
"Weeeellll," I said, "It's not so much that I LIKE to butt heads with authority, but sometimes it just irritates me when authority is being stupid or petty or short-sighted."
Then he leans back and says, "But now, at the same time, you strike me as a person who is very obedient to authority. I mean, you took an oath as a physician. As best as I can tell, you have been very obedient to a higher authority--the history and traditions of medicine, the well-being of patients, things like that. You also submit to the authority of the federal government for Medicare billing, and you submit to the authority of insurance companies for reimbursement. What's up with those two sides of your personality?"
So as we talked, I realized there is an interesting paradox in my life story. Overall, under the auspices of "a higher authority," I actually grow and become a better person. But my history is one of occasionally being on the short end of a gross misuse of authority. Certain things make me distrust authority and that there will be a certain amount of conflict in me about that. It also has often resulted in me "going it alone," because I got tired of waiting on getting permission, or annoyed that no one else wanted to join me with something. Sometimes that has resulted in good things, but sometimes it has resulted in situations where I realize I had stepped over the line. I paradoxically need both "strong fences" yet will still "push at the fences."
So then he switched gears and said, "I'm thinking about one of your favorite characters in the Bible--John the Baptist."
My spiritual director has known for some time that I am quite fond of John the Baptist. I like to think of him as this Jeremiah Johnson sort of character--this mountain man sort of guy, wearing his hair tunic and eating bugs with honey. A guy like that has some pull when he's running around yelling, "Repent and be baptized!"
Likewise John recognized real authority when he saw it--he knew Jesus was the real deal, and made no bones about it. He was perfectly willing to accept Jesus' authority.
But that still didn't change the fact "the authorities" found John a dangerous element, and we are shown both in the Gospel version of the story and in Josephus' account, that both lap dancing and political unrest can have the ultimate result of your head being put on a platter.
It's a distinct lesson in "squelching the ministry of John vs. squelching the ministry of Jesus." As John Dominic Crossan put it, "John had a monopoly, but Jesus had a franchise."
John was out there all by himself. Knock off John and you've knocked off John's influence on the politics of the region.
Jesus, on the other hand, gathered 12 disciples. Knock off Jesus and you still have 12 disciples and probably some other unnamed, unseen disciples out there. They have infiltrated the tissue of the region.
My pathologist's view of it is like this: In the eyes of the Romans, John was a benign tumor, but Jesus was a cancer. How much "good tissue" would have to be removed to clear the region of the cancer?
My spiritual director pointed out to me that Jesus instructed the disciples to go out and teach and preach in pairs. We talked about a crazy colleague of his from years back who would sit alone in his room and celebrate the Eucharist by himself. He confronted the guy and said, "You might be saying the Eucharistic prayer, but you're not holding Mass. You have to have two people for it to BE Mass!"
What I came to realize in this conversation was Christianity survived because it was a franchise, and what I need to always be mindful of in my own works and efforts for the glory of God is to strive to be a franchise player, not a free agent. There's too much risk in getting the heads of our good works chopped off.
That's a hard one when we consider our egos like "winning." We like wins, we like being shown in the box score, and we like being credited for the win. Even when our motives are honest, we often get hooked on the "good feelings" of our spiritual journeys, and sometimes that is a mistake. Of course we want our spirituality to feel good. That "feeling good" is what spurs us on to persevere. But not all of our journey is about feeling good. I'm reminded of a very recent quote by the theologian Richard Rohr: "Real holiness doesn't feel like holiness; it just feels like you're dying." We may well be dying into new life, but that doesn't exclude the dying feeling!
Ultimately, what it means is, when we do find ourselves butting heads with "authority," to be mindful of whether we are doing it for a higher reason, vs. our own egos. Never underestimate someone else's view of "political unrest," or the power of someone else's lap dancing!
(Fragment of extremely rare pink calcite courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
Most loving Father, whose will it is for us to give thanks for
all things, to fear nothing but the loss of you, and to cast all our care on you who care for us: Preserve us from faithless
fears and worldly anxieties, that no clouds of this mortal life
may hide from us the light of that love which is immortal,
and which you have manifested to us in your Son Jesus Christ
our Lord; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the
Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
--Collect, 8th Sunday after Epiphany, Book of Common Prayer, p. 216-217
Unless one is a total liturgical calendar geek, Sunday, Feb. 27, 2011 would have slipped by unnoticed, save the events of the day. But for the liturgically nerdy, it was a very rare day in the church calendar.
The last time we had an 8th Sunday after Epiphany was in 1943. As best as I can tell, looking at a chart of Easter dates, the next time we will have an 8th Sunday after Epiphany will be in the year 2095. There are three people in our parish for whom this was the 2nd time they have experienced a Sunday like this, and perhaps some of our youngest parishioners will do so again, but for most of us, it was the only time we would live this day.
When I had discovered this fact from one of my Facebook friends, I immediately set out to find out as much nerdy detail as I could about it. I found it absolutely fascinating that since our present Book of Common Prayer was put into use in 1979, the contemporary form of this collect had never been used. Chances are, the next time this Sunday rolls around in the calendar, our prayer book will have been revised again, possibly even not just once, but more than once.
I shared this with my vicar and several other people in the parish on Sunday, and with my Facebook friends. I laughed at how it was almost a litmus test for the "liturgically nerdy." My contacts who also live on the liturgically geeky side of life also found it fascinating. The ones that don't, as expected, dismissed me lovingly as a hopeless nerd--which was all fine.
But as I pondered these little facts, a desire grew in me for this Sunday to be a special day--more special than usual. I wanted to be just a little cleaner, a little more ready, a little more grace-filled, and a little more liturgically smooth as acolyte that day.
From that thought grew another thought: Every Sunday is a special day. This is the day the Lord has made; rejoice and be glad in it. The thought kept growing, as I got in the truck and drove to church. Every day is a special day. Not just this Sunday. Not just Sunday. Every day of my life is a special day, with none of them just alike.
Why is it we hunt and hunt for "special days" in our life, and have a need to rank order everything? We even rank order holidays, liking this one better than that one. Why is it, on our worst days, we can't simply back up from it and go, "Wait a minute. Yes, there are some things about today that really bite--but I am alive to see the end of it. This is a special day, even if it is only because I survived it." But the fact is we do rank order our days, our friends, our food, and our needs.
But it didn't change the fact I wanted Sunday, Feb. 27 to be special.
Now, honestly, I didn't do much that would ever be deemed "special." I went to church. I was acolyte. I had what I would call "a good day at church," but I would never claim it was a red letter day. I did some errands. I worked on throwing more things out of the house, in anticipation of the people coming for the furniture. It was good, but not special.
So for my "special activity" for the day, I decided since this collect was possibly the most seldom-used collect in the Prayer Book, I would spend some quality time with it...and this was the line that jumped out at me:
"Preserve us from faithless
fears and worldly anxieties, that no clouds of this mortal life
may hide from us the light of that love which is immortal..."
Well, I've certainly had plenty of those faithless fears and worldly anxieties. I am pretty sure I have more coming up. To snitch a couple of phrases from my blog friend Elizabeth, I have eaten from the family-size loaf of the Bread of Anxiety, and I have a gold level membership in the Anxiety Airlines frequent flier program. I often remark that I have a hypertrophied paranoid gland.
But next Sunday, our readings remind us of a cloud far different than the clouds of this mortal life--the cloud mentioned on Mt. Sinai as Moses received the commandments, and the cloud that was present at the Transfiguration that contained the voice of God, saying, "This is my son, the beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!"
It's a reminder that God has a tendency to speak from the fog, not from the sunny clear sky.
Maybe, in that sense, there is a purpose to anxiety.
Perhaps it means that every time we feel ourselves headed for the next gate for the next flight from the Anxiety Airlines terminal, we need to consider our anxieties as invitations--invitations to hear God in the vast cloud of unknowing. That would certainly be different. It might even be "special!" Who knows--maybe one of those opportunities is a once in a lifetime opportunity, as rare as the 8th Sunday after Epiphany!
(Tefillin illustration from Wikimedia Commons)
Isaiah 49:8-16:
Thus says the LORD: In a time of favor I have answered you, on a day of salvation I have helped you; I have kept you and given you as a covenant to the people, to establish the land, to apportion the desolate heritages; saying to the prisoners, "Come out," to those who are in darkness, "Show yourselves." They shall feed along the ways, on all the bare heights shall be their pasture; they shall not hunger or thirst, neither scorching wind nor sun shall strike them down, for he who has pity on them will lead them, and by springs of water will guide them. And I will turn all my mountains into a road, and my highways shall be raised up. Lo, these shall come from far away, and lo, these from the north and from the west, and these from the land of Syene. Sing for joy, O heavens, and exult, O earth; break forth, O mountains, into singing! For the LORD has comforted his people, and will have compassion on his suffering ones.
But Zion said, "The LORD has forsaken me,
my Lord has forgotten me. "
Can a woman forget her nursing child,
or show no compassion for the child of her womb?
Even these may forget,
yet I will not forget you.
See, I have inscribed you on the palms of my hands.
Sunday, I ended up being impromptu lector, as our scheduled lector was absent. The reading from Isaiah was the one that stuck in my mind after church, partially because my ears always perk up when hands are involved, and partially because of what I know about the Jewish practice of laying tefillin.
Tefillin, or phylacteries, consist of Torah inscribed on parchment and bound to a long leather strip, typically just under three feet long, and its accompanying leather box. It is common for observant Jews to lay tefillin on their head and arm because of the instructions in Deuteronomy 6:4-9:
Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise. Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead, and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.
This commandment is also the primary prayer of Judaism, the Shema.
Our tendency, when we hear the Isaiah reading with the mind of a 21st century Christian, is to think about tattoos. However, at the time Isaiah was written, tattoos were a definite no-no, forbidden in Leviticus. More than likely, the passage was alluding to tefillin.
It's important to remember that the shape of the wrappings on the hand makes the Hebrew letter shin, which often represents Shaddai, one of the Hebrew names for God. The inscribed part of the tefillin touches the skin, so some of it would be touching the palm.
So, on humans who have laid tefillin, it is essentially a representation of God, with God's words touching our hand.
But our visual flips it over--we are treated to a glimpse of God's hand, with us lying against his palm, wrapped in a shape that represents humankind. In other words, God's "prayers," as it were, require us. It requires our presence.
Our passage at the top of the page opens up another realm of possibility; namely, that when we are in prayer, we are being laid upon God's hand and arm as a "holy thing.'
The other thing that stands out for me is when we are given human imagery for God in the Bible, we are treated to many images of God's head--ears, eyes, mouth--and hands--but when the word "heart" is mentioned, it is generally a statement about OUR heart. When devout Jews lay tefillin, it does not cover the heart--just the head and the shoulders and the arm. We are given glimpses of God's emotions--pleasure, joy, wrath, anger--but when it comes to statements about the heart in the Bible, it is about the hearts of humankind.
It gives me the impression that God's intention in this divine/human relational dynamic is for us to have free, unbound hearts in following God.
Our imagery in romance is to "steal someone's heart." Of course, we know, ultimately, hearts can't be stolen, they can only be given. It seems this is an innate aspect of our relational state with God. God's desire is for us to freely give our hearts--even to the point of leaving them unbound. It's interesting we call this "free will"--which implies the mind--but what we are really talking about is "free heart."
I like this image, as we speed towards Lent, that part of my preparation is to understand this relationship of each of us, inscribed on God's hand, as holy a thing as a strip of tefillin. All of us together, inscribed on it, yet with our own hearts free to turn.
Where will our hearts turn in this holy season, as we ponder how we are to be God's hands in this broken world? I certainly don't know, but the prospect is exciting!
(photo of Zyklon-B from Wikimedia Commons)
1 Corinthians 11.17-22:
Now in the following instructions I do not commend you, because when you come together it is not for the better but for the worse. For, to begin with, when you come together as a church, I hear that there are divisions among you; and to some extent I believe it. Indeed, there have to be factions among you, for only so will it become clear who among you are genuine. When you come together, it is not really to eat the Lord’s supper. For when the time comes to eat, each of you goes ahead with your own supper, and one goes hungry and another becomes drunk. What! Do you not have homes to eat and drink in? Or do you show contempt for the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing? What should I say to you? Should I commend you? In this matter I do not commend you!
One of the things that I used to do like clockwork was watch the 6 p.m. and 10 p.m. local news. But in recent years I tend to simply look it up on the Internet. The good news is I can choose the stories I want to see rather than impatiently wait through stories of lesser interest, or deal with the frustration of missing the stories I wanted to see because I got a phone call, or something in preparing supper demanded my attention, or some other distraction.
The bad news is I occasionally get drawn in to read the comments. I don't know why I let the commenters bother me. But at times, they do, especially when the story involves an arrest, or it involves a story of someone down on their luck. There's this little cadre of vultures who follow those stories and pile on with their vitriolic, mean, and sometimes downright bigoted comments. They tend to paint themselves as "oppressed" in some way, and often do things like attack local law enforcement, diss local businesses, and regularly engage in character assassination. ("I got my utilities turned off five days after my bill was due, and that person got to be in arrears for three months." "You can tell by looking at him he's a child molester, castrate him right now and save the state the expense of jailing him." "I know this woman and she sits around and smokes cigarettes and is on Facebook, playing games. Maybe she should get offher butt and get a job.. They showed five pets in the footage, too, maybe she should get rid of her pets and she'll have money for her health expenses.")
It's also of note the character assassination types of comments are frequently aimed at women, and the attacks involve people's personal habits, assumed sexual behavior, and laziness. My overall impression of these people is that they are angry, bitter people who seem to take a great deal of delight in discounting the woes of others. One wonders why they spend so much time trolling the station's website. They seem to fancy themselves as the Bill O'Reillys or Glenn Becks of Kirksville. At best, they annoy me. On my worst days, I really itch to tell them off.
But in short, they are quick to condemn and seem unable to commend.
I do not, however, feel compelled to respond to them, despite the fact once in a while these semi-anonymous posters have said truly ugly things about people I know in the stories.
That's something that has changed in 20 years. (Wow! It's hard to believe I have been on the internet for a little over 20 years!) Twenty years ago, when I was at an age where I thought the whole world deserved to hear my opinion on a matter, I would have behaved like the self-proclaimed internet pundit I envisioned myself to be, and would have let them have it with both barrels. I would have crawled into the gutter to fight them, and I often would have won, but also delivered MY nastiest, and most vitriolic side to be memorialized in the cobwebs of the internet for perpetuity.
I don't know why I let the commenters bother me. But at times, they do, especially when the story involves an arrest, or it involves a story of someone down on their luck. They seem particularly interested in pointing out that "God helps those who help themselves," and even throw the "WWJD" card on the table. There's no doubt; I'm bigoted against bigots. (As my retired pathologist friend MJ used to say about himself, "I'm an anti-bigot bigot.")
In the language of our text, I'm prone to condemning the condemners.
So rather than condemn, and be no better than the condemners, I have struggled with learning to commend instead. This isn't easy.
One of the ways I try to do it is simply ponder some of the things they put out there, in their judgment. Take when they throw the WWJD card. I most recently saw that when they were attacking a story about a woman drawing disability, on home oxygen who had her electricity cut off. Mostly, they attacked her for being fat, for being lazy, for having a wood stove and saying she could cook a meal perfectly fine on that, for saying she had "no place to go" but having grown children, and for being a smoker. Her being on disability was attacked. They dragged her grown children into it, claiming they learned how to suck on the teat of the government like their mother. They called her a scam artist, and attacked the local news station for giving her air time. It was just really nasty.
As I thought about the story, I realized I didn't really care about those things. You know, I didn't even know this woman. Maybe she's not a scammer, maybe she is. Yeah, she does things I don't approve of. But even if she were all the things her attackers claimed she was, I actually had compassion for her. What an awful life it must be to have to live like that, even if it is of one's own making to some degree. There's nothing I covet about her situation. But I remembered how, in my own days of living in the "working poor" income group, how easy it WAS to covet another's situation that somehow seemed "better" than mine, even when the reality of it was that it was not better.
If she was not the things her accusers piled onto, then she has been treated even more shabbily by the attackers. It was easy to have compassion for that.
Either way, I had compassion for someone who for whatever reason, was probably lost her dignity at this point.
Several people seemed to want to preach from the Gospel of "Supply Side Jesus" too here. Well, let's think about that one a minute. What WOULD Jesus do?
The more I thought about that one, the more I laughed...because I think Jesus would have healed her. I think he would have healed her from her chronic illnesses and told her "Go, and sin no more."
I got to laughing, because I was pretty sure the first people who would have been upset about that would have been those very same people throwing the WWJD card on the table.
Jesus had a habit of that, you know--that whole "healing people that the world thought was "undeserving" of such grace," thing. Those complainers would have railed to high heaven about it, in fact!
There's a lesson in that.
In that lesson, I need to learn to commend mean-spirited vitriolic people to God.
Now, that doesn't mean I shouldn't defend myself with the truth if I were ever the target of their spewings. But it does mean I don't need to whip out my verbal coach gun and shoot from the hip at them. I need to trust that God cares for all of us on God's time frame. Even people like that.
Yep. Even mean people are commended to God. Because they are, it also means I am, even when I am at my worst.
2 Corinthians 3:1-18
Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Surely we do not need, as some do, letters of recommendation to you or from you, do we? You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, to be known and read by all; and you show that you are a letter of Christ, prepared by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts. Such is the confidence that we have through Christ toward God. Not that we are competent of ourselves to claim anything as coming from us; our competence is from God,who has made us competent to be ministers of a new covenant, not of letter but of spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. Now if the ministry of death, chiseled in letters on stone tablets, came in glory so that the people of Israel could not gaze at Moses’ face because of the glory of his face, a glory now set aside, how much more will the ministry of the Spirit come in glory? For if there was glory in the ministry of condemnation, much more does the ministry of justification abound in glory! Indeed, what once had glory has lost its glory because of the greater glory; for if what was set aside came through glory, much more has the permanent come in glory!
Since, then, we have such a hope, we act with great boldness, not like Moses, who put a veil over his face to keep the people of Israel from gazing at the end of the glory that was being set aside. But their minds were hardened. Indeed, to this very day, when they hear the reading of the old covenant, that same veil is still there, since only in Christ is it set aside. Indeed, to this very day whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their minds; but when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit.
I did something I never thought I'd ever do--I tossed "my trophy." Non-coincidentally, the text above from 2 Corinthians was the Daily Office text the day after I tossed it. I had to burst out laughing when I read it.
I've felt uncomfortable--VERY uncomfortable--for several months now--that I felt unable to have the ability to reciprocate what has been done for me this last year and a half.
One of the most wonderful things that has come into my life in the past few years has been this wonderful reality that springs from my connections via blogging and Facebook. I have used a significant portion of my vacation time meeting up and visiting with "Facebook friends I know, but never met." Some of the folks I have met through this route have worshiped with me at Trinity-Kirksville, and met up with various folks in my parish community. It has been a wonderful opening and sharing part of my life. I have often stayed in these people's homes.
But then I come home to MY home, and this depressing reality sets in.
I would be mortified to let them into MY house.
Now, I do want to assure you it's not anything like "Hoarders," but the clutter is enough that it stops me from wanting to open my heart and my home in the way other people's hearts and homes have been opened to me. I've had a desire to change that for several months now. But it felt so blasted uncomfortable to talk about, that I felt I had no one to talk about it to, except God. Over time, it morphed into being able to talk about it to my spiritual director, and a small trusted handful of others in my circle.
But the first thing I had to come to grips with was, "Why am I so blasted uncomfortable about this?"
It took some old, old, forgotten memories to be unearthed. Most of them had to do with growing up in an alcoholic family. One of the things we learn in that situation is to work very very hard at creating this veneer that we are just like all the other families. Part of that involves closing off the home. I was taught at a very early age that I was not to just "show up with friends," because we had to make concerted efforts to hide all the "evidence." Sometimes the "evidence" was all the empty beer bottles in the house and the trash. Sometimes the "evidence" was the alcoholic. As a result, I was taught to lie and cover to keep people out of the house--even to those I loved the most.
All my adult life, I've been sorta "funny" about my house, even though there has been nothing of any great consequence to hide. Now, part of that is because I am, despite my gregarious, friendly external nature, a very VERY private person. I tend to use my gregarious side as a smokescreen to hide the very private side. I do need some degree of my home being a sanctuary and a cloister. It's how I recharge. But the warm, loving, and giving side of me has always felt "constricted" in my ability to share my home even in the most minor of ways.
Another thing that has kept me feeling very private about these things is that I really do have some sort of "home decor autism." It felt too intrusive to hand power over to many of my female friends to help me decorate it, if I made changes. Too many women, I'm afraid, would seize the opportunity to create an interior THEY want, with MY money. It took a long time for me to figure out, literally, who I could trust to help with this, to understand MY needs. What I envision for myself is a rather lean, mean, almost Spartan decor--but with warmth and light that allows people to use their own spiritual imaginations in my home. Simple, but with light and life.
So where does this "trophy" come in?
The trophy in the photo above was given to me when I graduated from medical school. Several of my friends put it together, and there are several things on it that illustrate some funny stories from my life. My favorite is the little truck on it, running over a cow (Yes, I did once hit a cow with my truck.) I've always found room for that trophy despite the fact it is about five feet tall!
But where I think I'm going with my house, there's just no room for the trophy any more.
I thought about all the little details on that trophy. That's another place where I tend to hoard rather than share. One of my favorite things to do for other people is remember the fun and obscure details of their lives, and show my love by showing love for the details. I have the ability to remember an obscure story they've told me, and do silly things like buy a card or present later on that calls that story to memory. I've come to learn it's part of how others grow to love me! Yet I hardly ever share similar stories of MY life. I make excuses that it's not "interesting" or "important." My stories sometimes feel "inferior" because my life is a rather solitary one. My stories seem too "me focused" around people who have children and grandchildren. I say to myself, "Oh, they don't want to hear them."
But it's another place where I've been great at SHOWING love but not RECEIVING love. Again, this growing part of me senses the "constriction" from the imbalance of it. There are just so many stories from my life I've never bothered to tell.
But I've come to realize my "trophy" has become an albatross, as have many things in my house. Surrounding myself with things of little value but high sentiment have insulated me from LETTING me be loved despite my ability to love being in pretty good shape.
So, as I start to re-configure what I want my house to be--a reflection of the best parts of me, rather than a fortress that people are forced to peer over the walls and then having me feel all intrusive that they are peering over a wall of MY making, a lot of stuff is going in the dumpster.
Most of it has been rather easy except for the time factor. Some of it is hard. The trophy was so hard, I realized its disposal had to be "ceremonial."
So I took it out in the yard, and I took pictures of all the things on it. Then I stood out in my yard and said, "Almighty God, thank you for the first 31 years of my life that this trophy represents and for friends who recall the silly wonderful things in it. I don't think I'll need a trophy for the next 31 years because I am learning, through my relationship with you, that I am YOUR trophy, and that's trophy enough for me. I commend this, and all the parts of my life that go with it, to your keeping. I ask this in the name of your son Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns forever and ever. Amen."
Then I made the sign of the cross on the trophy, and on me, and then I hurled it in the dumpster.
I cried pretty hard after that.
But the next day, I saw the Daily Office reading at the top of this post, and laughed. There's nothing new under the sun!
Paul is telling the church in Corinth that they don't need external forms of commendation, that they are competent, smart, loving people in the body of Christ. They don't need trophies. God is calling us to be in RELATION with each other just as we are called to be in relation with God. It's not about being "good" to get brownie points from God as much as it is cultivating the habits that make us in good relations with one another.
How many times are we engaged in the ministry of the condemnation of our own lives rather than the ministry of commendation of God? How many times do we achieve and over-achieve to create trophies to hide our feelings of self-condemnation? How many times do we disallow others to commend us for being a part of the Body of Christ? How many times do we self-condemn what God commends in us?
When we focus on the law, the only outcome is we will realize we fall short. When we focus on our hearts, we discover the possibilities are endless, and that we are all God's trophies. Oddly enough, it starts by letting others treat us as if we are God's trophies. Doing that requires tossing the trophies of our egos.
In short, we are called to commend, not condemn--not just others, but ourselves. Only in that do we create holy spaces in which we are free to live and move and have our being (to borrow from the petition often used in Morning Prayer.) It has the possibility of transforming our homes as well as our lives!
(Photo from Martin Young's photostream)
1 Samuel 17:37-40
David said, “The Lord, who saved me from the paw of the lion and from the paw of the bear, will save me from the hand of this Philistine.” So Saul said to David, “Go, and may the Lord be with you!” Saul clothed David with his armor; he put a bronze helmet on his head and clothed him with a coat of mail. David strapped Saul’s sword over the armor, and he tried in vain to walk, for he was not used to them. Then David said to Saul, “I cannot walk with these; for I am not used to them.” So David removed them. Then he took his staff in his hand, and chose five smooth stones from the wadi, and put them in his shepherd’s bag, in the pouch; his sling was in his hand, and he drew near to the Philistine.
My online EfM class used this story for our Theological Reflection this week. Although the full text we used included the slaying of the Philistine, what our group seemed to focus on was the "prelude" story to all this, the text quoted above.
Perhaps it is because all of us in our EfM class are, in one way or another, at times, burdened by a growing spirituality that occasionally seems to have to "do battle" with an "inner Philistine"--the "us" we became resigned to that makes up our past or present difficulties and grief. Sometimes I think "all we came to accept" in our lives is a giant oppressor, and our own growing spiritualites are like the youthful David, full of promise, but fighting against the odds.
But much of the class really glommed onto the business of Saul's generous offer of all his armor--yet David came to realize it didn't "fit," and would actually harm his chances of defeating the Philistine. He trusted in what God and he had worked out to that point. He went with what he knew deep down inside was the best way to approach it. As we say around here, "he danced with the girl who brung him."
So when it came time to actually face the Philistine, that part of the story was almost anticlimactic. David had confidence and a serenity that was beyond focusing on "outcome."
I think everyone in my EfM class--myself included--is searching for that assurance that our relationship with God is beyond worrying about "outcomes."
How many times, as we think back to the things we have faced in life that were against the odds, was there a Saul in our lives? How many times was there someone out there who was absolutely sure about what we needed for this showdown, but the more we tried it on, the more we saw how ill-fitting it was, and how it was not bad advice, but merely advice that would not work for us?
Those situations are hard ones. I am absolutely convinced in our story above that Saul was well-meaning. I am positive he was trying to be a good friend to David. But I also always wonder, when David said "Thanks--but no thanks" to Saul's offer, as David walked off with his sling and five stones, if Saul wasn't thinking, "He's crazy. He's gonna get killed. Man, I wish he had listened to me."
If we continue on in the subsequent chapters of 1 Samuel, we discover that the relationship between Saul and David deteriorates over time. It gets really messy.
I know the Sauls in my life didn't always take it well. I also know I didn't say, "Thanks but no thanks," in the most gracious of ways sometimes. It has been the minority of times that the Sauls told me at a later date, "You know, you were more right about that than I was, and I'm okay with that."
More often, it estranged the relationship. If I succeeded, it more frequently somehow made that person resentful. If I continued to wallow in my battle, or if I failed, it created various forms of "I told you so" messages, or continued, more pointed forms of advice--some of it unsolicited.
Likewise, when have I been Saul in this story? One of the problems I constantly battle is that my quick mind sees things very readily at times--often before the other person even realizes it--and my ego suddenly feels compelled to point out "what the problem is." After all, I get paid good money to put names on diseases in my job. But I have never quite learned when to shut up outside the job there. Learning to keep quiet until other people "get it" on their own, and simply be a presence for them, is one of my most ragged growing edges.
The story of Saul and David is both a story about "hearing and following God's call to us despite the odds," and a story about "giving others room to do the same." It's about not being jealous when someone succeeds and we had the "wrong advice," and it's about recognizing when we go against the advice of those close to us, we still have to do what's right, even when the potential for estrangement is there. We can only control how WE feel about the situation. We can't control how others feel.
This broken world creates the potential for many battles, and even as peaceful people we have to face them now and then. But we need to face them in the way God calls us to face them--not in borrowed armor that makes us uncomfortable.
"See, I am near, says the Lord; see, I make all things new..." --Taizé song
You know, cleaning out desks should come with a warning label: "Emptying contents may simultaneously cause laughter and tears."
Now that I have been a laptop user for about three years, I came to the realization that "the computer desk" is pretty much obsolete. There's probably a better use of space for this corner of my house. Oh, I still need a stand for the router and the printer, and maybe a little desk of some sort for dumping the bills, but really, two big desks are simply too much.
So, I decided to spend the bulk of my Saturday cleaning out both desks in preparation of getting rid of them.
That desk on the left has a story. My grandfather bought that at a "guv'mint auction" when I was 16 years old and I had just gotten my novice ham radio license. It was painted um...er...a..."lovely" shade of Army Mint Green--you know, the color most National Guard armory and VA hospital walls are...
He and I stripped it and refinished it. There's still some of the original green paint on the sides of the drawers. (Ok, we got a little lazy.) It has some seriously wonderful memories with it, but it's ergonomically awkward, and heavy as lead. The shelves are home made--I made them in my friend Bill B.'s garage, when I was a resident doc. Bill liked to do amateur woodwork, and I was his "shop class pupil" for the project.
The corner desk is one I bought in 2000, when I first moved back to Kirksville, and was the first true "computer friendly" desk I ever had. Nothing sentimental there--it was a Wal-Mart special.
I think the big shocker, as I started cleaning out the two desks, was that there was six boxes of crap I dumped out of those desks, and five boxes of stuff I kept! The old Army desk had things in it that literally, were put there 35 years ago. Things I can't believe I kept--old Valentine's Day cards from romances long kaput, funeral bulletins, owner's manuals from things I pitched 25 years ago. It took me several hours to go through all the drawers. I found myself literally bursting into tears one minute, and laughing the next. Within the drawers were love and grief, humor and sorrow, all mixed together and stacked upon each other like fossils within sedimentary rock. In an old cigar box were faces frozen in time--7th graders I taught in 1981 who are now 43 years old, now 30something year old cousins as babies, older folks close to me who have been residing at the cemetery for many years now.
Of course, there were also the long forgotten odd things that, as I found them, I wasted no time tossing in the dumpster, thinking, "Oh, God, I don't even want to think about what someone would think, finding this, if I dropped dead and they were cleaning out my estate." Some things in there were not exactly supportive of the legacy I'd like to leave!
Do I know what I plan to do with that corner? No, not really.
But I know I need to clear out what's there, before I can even begin to dream of the possibilities.
I wonder if my obsession with the "computer corner" is simply a physical sign of a spiritual state for me--or maybe it is another manifestation of how my life rhythms tend to mimic the liturgical calendar--we are speeding headfirst towards Lent, a time of reflection, repentance, and preparation for renewal--or maybe it is a little of both.
But I do know this much--before we can make all things new, we must first examine the old, and, much like how observant Jews clear the house of chomitz (leavened bread) just prior to Passover, we have to fearlessly examine every nook and cranny for the things that need to be tossed.
That's what I've always liked about the tradition of getting rid of the chomitz. The families I've known over the years that do that, get downright OCD about it. No doubt, they want to smack the family matriarch upside the head for her being so obsessive about it. But when it's done, it's satisfying.
Furthermore, getting rid of chomitz has a holiness to it. It's a good lesson for getting rid of our physical, spiritual and emotional chomitz. When we de-clutter our lives, we don't have to just "go on a tear" and start dumping stuff in haste. We can treat is like a holy moment. We can lovingly toss it in the dumpster with thanksgiving in our hearts and on our lips for those portions of our life story. We can be grateful that we are fortunate enough to own enough stuff to hoard.
But in short, we can simultaneously place these things on the altar while we're putting them in the dumpster. It's not an either/or proposition. These things we hoarded aren't necessarily "bad," they have simply served their time in faithful service.
I'm reminded of a story of a man who lived in the period of American westward expansion. He moved to the mountains, and had very few possessions in the beginning. He spent much of his time following trails and exploring, unencumbered by possessions other than what he needed to survive. But over the years, he accumulated a lot of "stuff."
When the time came for him to strike out and move, in search of more adventure, he had so many possessions he had to put them in a Conestoga wagon. The wagon could not traverse the mountains because of its size (particularly its width) and its weight. So he had to take a desert road. His beloved mountains merely became something in the distance that he could only look at, but not touch or feel or experience. The desert became his reality.
Yes, God can make all things new. But we might have to clear out the chomitz first.
