Neither Idiots Nor Allies

 

1 Corinthians 8:1-13

The bible has difficult people in it. Some of them knew they were difficult people. Like Paul. He had enough self-awareness to realize he could be a lot for some folks. And he still is.  
Others recognized difficulty in other people, but maybe not so much in themselves.  What’s lovely about them is that we benefit from them being challenging people. If they were easy, they wouldn’t have needed so many letters written to them. 
 
We have two very full letters written by Paul to the Corinthians.  This is not because they were Paul’s favorite.  They were difficult for Paul.  The church in Corinth was small and super diverse – a cross-section of the super diverse, very stratified city. Even though when they came together as church, they were equal, out there in daily life, they were not. Often the elitism and posturing of the world leaked into the church. The Corinthians understood power; they lived and breathed in an economy of influence and clout everyday. 

Corinth was basically Vegas as an international port city. It was cosmopolitan, vibrant, worldly, hedonistic, and accustomed to glamor and glitz. Despite his eloquent, authoritative letters, Paul was not glamor and glitz. He didn’t wine and dine the influencers, invest a big budget into his tours, and he wasn’t much of a showman. When Paul first arrived in Corinth the church there was pumped up, ready to welcome Taylor Swift. Instead they got Greta Thunberg. So he wasn’t really their favorite either. But they learned he would tell it like it is.
 
We could get bogged down in the whole meat offered to idols question they’d asked Paul, but suffice it to say, it was this thing this time, but could be anything, every time.  This time it was a debate about whether to eat meat sold in the market that had been used in pagan ceremonies, sacrificed in temples to pagan gods.  Paul couldn’t care less about this. Of course you are free to eat whatever you want, he answers. We are not bound to the belief that these so-called gods have any power at all. God’s not threatened by those idols. So whether you eat or don’t eat is your own decision and of no real consequence. But, Paul wants them to hear: you ARE bound to each other. So this thing that technically doesn’t matter, actually matters a great deal.
 
Of course you’re free from false constraints, you can eat what you want, but in Christ you have been bound to other people, as the place where Christ is made known to you. No longer bound to earn and prove, posture and rank, measure and compare, accumulate and hoard, you are part of a different economy now. Real freedom means you are free for a life of connection, mutuality and sacrifice, free for wholeness and generosity, free to see yourself and all others as loved unconditionally by God and unbreakably belonging to each other, no matter what. 
 
This means you don’t have to ask me dumb questions like this meat thing to test out whether you are doing it right and especially whether someone else is doing it wrong. Instead, you ask yourself, How do my words or actions impact my neighbor?  You look at each other not as either idiots or allies but as beloved siblings, to whom you are accountable, with and for whom you exist. In fact, what you do or say to them, you are actually doing or saying that to Jesus himself. 
 
Even if you are right and they are wrong, so what? If you use that knowledge to harm them in any way, to knock them down a peg, to humiliate them or lord it over them, to educate them ‘for their own good,’ you become wrong.  Knowledge puffs up, Paul says, but love builds up.  
 
So instead of mocking those who are scandalized, maybe be curious about why it matters to them. What is their story? What has been their experience of pagan worship before coming to Christ that makes this practice so uncomfortable or abhorrent?  And, Paul says, if food is a stumbling block to my sister or brother, may I never eat meat again!  Because we belong to each other –that is how we belong to God. Not by carefully following certain rules, and not by gleefully throwing them off, and definitely not by throwing either of those choices in each other’s faces.
 
This is the same long letter where just a few chapters later is the famous “love chapter” that gets read at just about every wedding because it so clearly explains the radical nature of love. I encourage you to read it again sometime today, but not with the backdrop of a romantic couple gazing doe-eyed toward their future, instead with the backdrop of difficult people, desperate to be right.  Paul is writing it to these dear people that require him to summon enormous amounts of patience, and bring his clearest explaining voice, when he says:

You guys, I could be the most eloquent and impressive person, the smartest and most knowledgeable, the most gifted, the wisest or the most powerful, with the strongest faith of anyone. But if I don’t have love, I have nothing. 
Love is kind and gentle and patient and slow to anger; it’s not jealous or arrogant or rude. It bears all things and hopes all things. And in the end, all those other things, being right or wise or gifted or dedicated– that all disappears, and we will finally see everything all clearly. But the one thing that endures despite and through and beyond all the rest of it, forever, is love. 

This is the reality that claims us. So don’t you dare use someone’s weakness against them. Don’t you dare use the freedom of Christ to shackle another person.  Don’t you dare elevate principles or ideals above the humanity of the one in front of you.  Especially if they are a difficult person for you. Especially if you are sure they are wrong in their beliefs and you’d love with every fiber of your being to correct them and show them the true way.  Then especially you need to step back. And look into their face for the invitation from God to love them.  Ask the Holy Spirit to show you how to uphold them as a child of God to whom you belong. 
 
The pull of rightness, comparison and correction is strong.  Insecurity is pumped into our airwaves and our bloodstreams at every turn. The need to earn and prove, the constant insisting that it’s all a battle: right against wrong, good against evil, worthy against irrelevant, smart against stupid, woke against ignorant, moral against sinful, demands we secure our place and judge the place of others. That message is hard to resist.  But the answer isn’t to just work really hard not to think this way.  That can become it’s own battleground for self-judgment and comparison. 
 
Instead, we honestly call it sin and gratefully turn to confession, which is to say, we name the impossibility within and between us, that seems to divide us from God and others, and we tell God how caught we feel. Then we let God’s forgiveness and grace return us to the relationship that holds us.  
 
It is not me, Paul says, but Christ who lives in me. 

As soon as I feel myself either pulled into the battle, or pulled into the battle of resisting the battle, I am invited once again to surrender to God my weakness and invite God’s strength to work in and through me. This is faith: I believe, help my unbelief. I want to love but I can’t. God, help me to love. 
 
God doesn’t need us to stand up for God, or right, or truth. God’s not threatened by our idols. God calls us to seek God and see each other. To watch for how, through love, God is already bringing truth and goodness and hope into the world, and be ready for the invitations to join in. But we don’t join because we have so much insight, or power, or because we know the right way. We join because in Christ we’re bound to each other and love calls us to God through, not apart from, one another. God who came in alongside us made us for coming alongside each other. 
 
And when the Holy Spirit moves in someone’s life and they begin to feel the nudge toward greater freedom, the prompting to make some change, the itch for some confession of their own, the people they will reach out to for help and guidance are not the ones who arrogantly shut them down, who told them how wrong they were, who flaunted their own freedom and knowledge in their face. It will be those who loved and claimed them, who upheld their dignity with respect and kindness. Those who loved them. 
 
We are all difficult people. 

People are difficult. 

Being a person is difficult. 

There’s no way to get it right and do it best. That whole idea is false. What’s real is that we belong God no matter what. And we belong to each other no matter what. In Christ we have been set free for a life of real connection to God and others. 

May we live into that freedom. 

Amen.



REFLECTION & PRAYER EXERCISE 

This is from Mark Yaconelli's The Gift of Hard Things: Finding Grace in Unexpected Places, chapter entitled "Idiots: The Gift of Difficult People":

Mark writes: My wife believes that there would be more kindness in the world if everyone pinned their baby picture to the front of their shirt. It would be difficult to disregard or demonize others if you had an image that reminded you of their humanity - reminded you of their soft, innocent beginning.

Action:

Find a place and time you can sit in quiet reflection. After a few moments, bring to mind a person in your life who repulses, irritates or angers you. Using your imagination, picture this person as if he or she were a small child. What do you think this person's hopes were when he or she was little?  What fears do you imagine this person carried as a child? What experiences can you imagine the person experienced that shaped him or her int other person he or she is today?

Take a few minutes to simply gaze on this person without judgment.
It might help to write down what you notice.
After you finish the reflection, see if there is a new invitation for how you might interact with this person based on what you experienced in your reflection.

End by lifting up your thoughts and experience to God.

What God Makes of Us

(A homily before an annual congregational meeting)

Psalm 62:5-12

For my birthday in November I was given sourdough starter from Patisserie Margo, in Edina. It is a 35-year-old sourdough starter that originated in France, (which feels really, really old, until I think about the jar in the fridge of one of our members, with a sourdough starter that is over 100 years old).  

 

It’s been interesting to learn how to use this starter, when and how to feed it, how to bake with it. It is completely unlike cooking with yeast. I have to listen to it, watch it, pay attention to it, because it will tell me when it’s ready to be used by how bubbly and stretchy it gets – like the inside of a roasted marshmallow.  And then I can’t plan how long the dough will take to rise; it rises at its own pace, affected by the temperature and humidity around it. So sometimes bowls of dough sleep overnight in my daughter's closet - the coldest spot in the house.  

 

And when I need to get rid of some starter so I can feed and use it again, I feel some pressure to dispose of it ethically. I am not going to just toss it – it’s a living thing with a long history!  So I put it into things- corn bread, muffins, pancakes, crepes.  Now my skeptical kids ask two pre-screening questions of my baked goods, “Is it gluten free? Did you put sourdough in it?”

 

This thing isn’t just flour and water; it’s history, and time, and chemical reaction, and story; it’s living potential in a jar.

 

But also, it’s just flour and water.  

Which makes the whole think kind of mysterious and magical.  

 

I am not sure what percentage of what’s in my jar is actually part of the flour and water that came over from France 35 years ago, and yet this starter is that starter.  

 

I love imagining that along with the tiny amount in the cardboard container that was given to me is 35 years worth of breads, croissants and rolls spilling out of that bakery, and countless other tiny cardboard containers sent into other kitchens like mine, filling the world with delicious baked goods for decades before and after me. 

 

And if, because it’s so old and precious, I had tried to just hang onto and save that little bit of sourdough in the cardboard container, it would have eventually died, because it stays alive by being used.  In fact, I didn’t get it home fast enough--by the time it reached my kitchen it was already bubbling and spilling out of the container ready to be used. 

 

In April this congregation will turn 99 years old.  It began seven years before that even, in 1915, as a bible study under a tree on the same spot where our building sits now. 

 

And who knows what percentage or flavor of an original congregation remains 99 years later, and yet this congregation is that congregation.

 

A congregation is a living, breathing entity. It expands and contracts, people come and go, babies are born, people die, the building changes, the ways of sharing in God’s mission changes, and all along it is fed, tended and cared for by God.

 

We exist to be used by God to spill life and hope, love and healing into the world.  That is what keeps a congregation alive.  In countless ways, over decades, this congregation has been mixed and made into all sorts of lovely things that feed the world with life. 

 

Ordinary flour and water kind of lives began this thing way back when, and ordinary flour and water lives continue to be what God adds in and stirs up into this miraculous, mysterious mix that makes up Lake Nokomis Presbyterian Church.  

 

We are history, and time, and chemical reaction and story; we are living potential that God uses to remind each other and the world of our belonging to God and all others in Christ Jesus. 

 

This was maybe as unusual a year as LNPC has ever had.  Maybe.  A lot happened we had no control over, and yet, God sustained us and used us.  And we discovered that even though a warm kitchen is where we believe dough belongs, sometimes what it needs the chilly closet. And that no matter where we are, or how we come together, God’s ministry is alive in us and moves through us.  

 

This is God’s congregation, not ours. God’s ministry started long before this little congregation, and God’s ministry will continue through us and long after us.  We don’t sustain ourselves, we simply love and seek God, and allow God to feed us and use us, again and again, and when we do, God will do marvelous things.  

 

"God alone is our rock and our salvation, our fortress; we shall not be shaken."  And so, today as we seek to listen to each other and to God, as we look back at this year and continue, as always, to discern our way forward, above all else, may we heed the words of the Psalmist who tells us, “Trust in God at all times O people, pour out your hearts before him…” and “The power belongs to God, and steadfast love is yours, O Lord.” 

I wonder what God will make of us next.

 

Amen.

Holding you through it

Psalm 139

Are you feeling foggy or disjointed? Having trouble concentrating or a terrible time sleeping? Are you irritable and edgy, or weepy and jittery? Perhaps you feel poised for disaster, ready for the other shoe to drop, but it already has, and now it feels like maybe pieces of the house are falling off too, so you’re guarded and alert and afraid a lot of the time?
If so, you may be living in January 2021.
 
Ten months ago we thought we all were making a temporary sacrifice, a momentary tweak, then we were told to hunker through the summer like it was a long winter, and then summer ended and fall ended and winter came. And here we are, still in a global pandemic.  
 
And now, nearly a quarter of a million people in our country testing positive every day and one person is dying approximately every 21 seconds, and a new, far more contagious variant ripping across the world, is actually THE BACKDROP to the seismic upheaval, political turmoil, bubbling violence, overt racism, rampant, damaging conspiracy theories dividing us in unfathomable ways, our democracy battered and bruised as national guard surrounding capital buildings with fencing and razor wire and occupy the Capitol in preparation for a transition in government that may be less that peaceful, so much drama that a president’s impeachment—for the second time—registers as relatively minor news.  
 
Oh Lord, we’d love a prescription to end our fatigue and anxiety!  But there is actually nothing wrong with us.  How we feel right now is just how human beings should feel in circumstances like these. 
 
Perspective helps. 

Last week we glimpsed who God is and what God is up to with the Magi visiting the baby Jesus and thwarting King Herod’s plans stamp out his supposed rival. By pulling way back to the cosmos, to see the God whose plan of salvation and hope for the whole world unfolds all over the place all the time, in the stars themselves and the small stories on the margins of things, even while the supposedly big stories are boiling right in front of us – we put ourselves, and this whole world, back in context. This is God’s story, we said. Oh yeah, remember? The world belongs to God. Be still and know this.
 
This week, we get reoriented again, but this time by zooming way in close, between a human heart and the Divine.  Psalm 139 comes to us not as a remedy, treatment or lesson, not as answers or advice, but as a very intimate conversation between a person and God. 
 
Oh, God – you know me completely! The parts of me I want known – which feels like a gift, but also the parts of me I wish I could hide, none of me is hidden from you. And there is nowhere I can go that you are not there, holding me, pursuing me, never giving up on me. Before the words are even on my lips, you know what I will say completely.  And even so, you love me. You made me and delight in me – I can hardly take that in, it’s so overwhelming and inconceivable.
 
And there is a part of this Psalm that I bet really jumped out at you when Lisa read it; it wasn’t actually meant to be included in the lectionary reading for today, because 99% of the time we skip this part.  It wrecks the vibe, so we censor it out.  But I loved hearing this part today, because I feel it resonate in my body. 
 
God, I wish you’d kill the wicked! 
Those bad and terrible people who are against you, who undermine your ways, 
with violence and evil—I wish they were destroyed! 
Oh God, I hate them! I hate them so much! They are my enemies!
 
Anger makes us uncomfortable. When we feel angry, as many of us do right now, we try to channel it, or stuff it down, or explain it away. But anger is our inner being saying, “This is not right.” This is not right! It’s energy in our bodies announcing that things are not as they it should be!  So we need to listen to our anger, to let it say what it needs to say. 
 
But instead, whenever the church reads the Psalm about God knowing us completely and how we can’t hide anything from God, we skip over the part where the Psalmist tells God how angry he is!  
Adorable! 
 
God will never, ever let you go, will never turn away from you, will never give up on you or stop loving you, and already knows and sees the whole of you anyway. What if you came with the courage of the Psalmist, and let God know what you are really thinking and feeling right now?  All of it, with no holding back? No checking to see if it's the right way to think or feel, just telling God?  
 
When the Psalmist unleashes his anger to God, he’s not theologically solid.  He talks to God like God needs defending, like God’s way is somehow at risk by the actions of humans, like God’s agenda of hope and redemption could be derailed were it not for his righteous rage, I hate those who hate you, God!  
 
Nevertheless, our predecessors in the faith left this part in here, even though hatred gets us nowhere, and God doesn’t need defending, and God’s way is happening no matter what.  This part is important because we get to say anything to God. We need to be able to say anything to God.  Our bible has this in it because in this relationship with God, we are supposed to not hold back.  This is the place where you get to say the unsuitable things and acknowledge all the difficult feelings and vent in ridiculous superlatives. This is where you even get to be wrong. God wants us to be angry with God instead of apart from God.
 
I imagine our Psalmist like a storming, tantruming child, ranting about bad people and the injustices they do while Mother God looks right into his face with tenderness and compassion, taking it all in.  When the Psalmist is spent, and all the fury has leaked out, mama opens her arms. And having been seen and heard and unconditionally received, the Psalmist crawls into her lap and curl’s up against God’s shoulder.  And he rests there.  

And then, there, in the safety of God’s love that will never waver, the shift happens, and inside his heart the space opens up to ask, most vulnerably of all, with absolute trust – Will you search me God? Look at my heart, please, see if there is any wickedness in me. Help me live in your way of love that cannot, will not end.
 
It’s ok to not be doing ok right now. It’s normal to be overwhelmed or exhausted. To be afraid or worried, edgy or weepy.  To feel scattered and not up to the task – any task. And it’s ok to feel angry.

This is a moment to remember our humanity, our limitedness, and the fragility of the structures we build up to sustain and hold us.  Underneath, and around, and through, and despite, and in the midst of all of it, God is holding us. That’s true about the whole big picture, but it’s also true about each and every one of us. God knows you completely. You cannot be lost; you will not be abandoned, there is space in God’s heart for all the things you are feeling.  
 
I am going to drop some sabbath wisdom on us today: It’s ok to stop. Breathe. It’s ok to turn your attention to the basics.  Breath. Food. Water. Sleep. Movement. One friend this week said he realized he doesn’t have energy right now for anything, so he figured out his top three things, family and two areas of work, and he’s paring back. He is taking a three month break from every other commitment and expectation.  And when he’s told people this – on the committees he is on and the leadership roles he is in, while some people may be frustrated, many people are saying, I feel like I am barely hanging on too. Or, I was wondering if I should quit this committee, maybe I could take a 3-month break too.
 
Maybe we remember again that insight about living in a different culture, covid culture, and how exhausting it is to be navigating this all the time, and how it’s wise to only plan to do three things in a day.
 
We know that in scripture when God tells us to Be still, it’s not in the gentle moments of bubbling brooks and floating clouds and introspection and groundedness, but in the tumult and the fury, when the Israelites are trapped at the edge of the Red Sea and the entire Egyptian army is bearing down on them weapons drawn, and they’re facing sure and certain death, Be still! God says, I will fight for you! 

 
And in Psalm 46, where the earth shakes and mountains crumble into the heart of the sea, Be still and know that I am God.  When the nations are in an uproar and kingdoms totter, God’s voice raises and the earth melts.  
This God is with us. The God who leads in the pillar of fire and parts the crashing Red Sea and guides the star-gazing Magi to the toddler savior on his mother’s lap in the house that nobody else is paying attention to at the moment – everywhere, always, right here, right now, this God is our refuge and strength.

 
The tumult is here. Now is a good time to Be Still.  

Be gentle with your heart and let it speak freely to the One who knows you completely and loves you unendingly. And since God knows all of it anyway, don’t hold anything back.  Tell it all to God.  Let God hear and receive whatever you have inside.  And find rest in the arms of the one who is already holding you close.
 
Amen
 

Perspective

Matthew 2:1-12

Isaiah 60:1-3

 

The story of Epiphany unfolds in a simple home on a simple street, where an ordinary-seeming family opens their door to astonishing strangers from afar, who unexpectedly kneel before a mother with a child on her lap, and then give strange gifts and tell strange stories in a strange language, with charades and hand gestures, of a long journey led by a mysterious star, the very heavens pointing them to this precise place, revealing to them that the God of the cosmos has come into this life with us, for us all, and is indeed embodied in this drooling toddler sitting before them.  And the mother and father, who - along with her formerly childless aunt and uncle, and a few local sheepherders – have carried this secret knowledge for a couple of years by themselves, are suddenly reminded of the scope of things by those from afar whose presence in their living room declares in no uncertain terms that the whole universe is in on this thing, that in their beloved child God is actually here, and his very existence in her arms has changed life for every person who has ever or will ever live. 

 

That’s Epiphany, celebrated by millions of people for two thousand years. But we tend to miss that at the time, the real story was just an odd little scene on the margins of another story that was far more visible, and it’s impact seemed far more real and pressing to far more people. 

 

The other story is of a so-called king, notably insecure and obsessed with his reputation, name locked away in his fortress, raging in fear, causing all in the land to be terrified and worried about what he might do, because he’s fixated on this perceived threat to his power and authority – a baby, he’s told by these foreigners, who has been born specifically to claim what has been his title, “The King of the Jews.”  So he uses manipulation and flattery to try to coerce these scholars from another land to do his bidding - as though they are under his jurisdiction or influence – so that he can stamp out a potential usurper by any means necessary.

 

Oh, Herod.  Poor, frightened, tormented Herod.  This story is so much bigger than you. It’s so much longer, deeper, stronger and more significant.  God is doing this thing.  God has come, God is here among us. And there is nothing you or anybody else can do about it.

 

No matter how it looks on the surface at any given moment, the heartbeat underneath is love.  And this project – of a whole world indivisibly connected to God and each other, of all nature in harmony, and all people in family, with God as the true sovereign, who rules in disconcerting vulnerability and incontestable strength – like it or not, that is happening.  

 

And it can never be thwarted. Not by ego-maniacal leaders, or their misguided and vengeful followers, not by the wisdom of the sages, or the coercion of earthly power, not by the tragic dysfunction of broken systems or the excellent functioning of perfect ones, not by widespread illness or concentrated madness, or brutal violence or tragic suffering, not by anything human beings can forget or demand, or screw up or succeed at.  Nothing we can do, or not do, can stop what God is already doing. It is unstoppable. 

 

And yes, we do a whole lot to muck it up –accidentally or on purpose.  We can act like we are divided, we can kill, and blame, and shut down, and overlook each other. We can contaminate the earth and wipe out whole species; we can ravage our own hearts and minds and go numb or afraid – and fear can make us do terrible, heartless things. But no matter what, God is doing this. It can happen through us or it can happen in spite of us, but God’s project of redemption and wholeness is under way, and it will not stop until all that remains is love. 

This is the message of Epiphany.

 

Today’s scripture tells us about some, one especially, who missed God. Who lived in the way of fear, obsessed with their own security and power – and ultimately lost it anyway because death is real, triumph is short-lived, and permanent success is an illusion.  

 

And it tells us about those who welcomed God in. Who set down everything and went on a long journey to lay themselves down at the feet of the divine with ecstatic joy.  They let epiphany shape them, each moment, taking it in, noticing, listening, sharing, and then getting up and going home by another way, because ultimately our security comes from trusting our lives to the Great I Am, who directs the whole universe in true wisdom.  

 

And even when this King over all - who starts out his time here submitting himself completely into the arms and care of those made in his image - grows up to be killed by these he has come in to love and save, even that does not stop the project, it only cements it deeper and opens it wider.  The light shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot overcome it. Not ever.

 

Epiphany illuminates our choice: We can look at what is right in front of us at any given moment, and we can live in fear. We can believe that the powers that rattle their sabers are the real powers, and that the terrible damage they can do – and they can do terrible damage – can break us, or make the world go off course. 

 

But like those who followed the star we are called to lift our eyes to a further horizon.  The whole world is in on this conspiracy. It’s unfolding in the margins, in ordinary homes and ordinary lives on every continent at every moment, God is coming in. And the earth itself bears witness - every blade of grass, and creeping insect; every daily sunrise and blazing planet, light years away testifies. 

We are people of this infinite vista, this vast, cosmic perspective, not bound to look only to the situations in front of us like Herods, captive in fear to events and circumstances by which we stand or fall, driven to go after our enemies or hide in fortresses of false security. 

 

We belong to the bigger story; we are subjects of the Alpha and Omega, beginning and end, eternal and omnipotent.  And this King has come; and now there is nothing, not anything, that can separate us from the love of God.  God’s redemption is under way already and forever.  

 

So we are called to hang onto the ancient and cosmic promise and not to cower at bullies or venerate false power, to be guided by the deeper, eternal force of love, instead of the shallow whims of panic, the rise and fall of drama and dread, addicted to the non-stop fluctuations of worry, frenzy and regret. 

 

This means we live our lives paying attention to dreams, and finding solidarity with people we think of as other, and bearing gifts for the unsuspecting, and gladly laying down our lives as a gift of gratitude to the God who comes in, and by the Spirit we are made willing to be redirected and sent home another way.

 

In the tides of history, there is, as Ecclesiastes says, nothing new under the sun.  Nations rise and fall. Great leaders come and go, fools rise up and disappear, fear dominates and wars rage, babies are born and gardens are tended and beloveds die and are buried, their graves are covered with new fallen snow, and the sun melts the snow and spring comes again, and love, love, love, happens, in between, in all the nooks and crannies, weaving us together and weaving us into the story that cannot be derailed.  God’s story.  There is never anything so bad that it can alter the origin or the outcome – it all comes from God and to God it all returns.

 

And in the in between time, God comes to share it.  The hidden, humble king, a baby savior, who saves us from all the darkness within and without. The One who brings together strangers to surrender in joy to the love and hope embodied in their midst. 

 

Nothing can stop love and forgiveness, nothing can hinder hope and healing – not the most terrible thing we can imagine or face can stop God from acting.  The world belongs to God.

 

So, Arise, shine; for your light has come. 

Amen. 

 

 

 

 

 

I will start here

Devotion 1-7-20

I can't concentrate today.

I woke up at 3 am from a vivid dream and lay still, letting the warmth of the dream surround me, softly inching back into it.  I was nearly there when just the faintest memory of last night's national drama stuck its toe in.

Suddenly I felt like a door in the middle of my chest was kicked wide open to the fullness of the events of yesterday - a president instigating insurrection, death, mayhem, what has been building, what may be coming, COVID raging, people dying, vaccine shortages, the Democrats winning Georgia, (Merrick Garland for AG), my kids' online school issues, my to-do list, all of it - and I felt it crash over me like a wave of frigid air.

My heart started racing, my body felt completely awake and tense.  My defenses - that had protected me throughout the day, allowing me to take it all in stride with rational thought - were down, and I was helpless to hold back the tide of reality smothering me in the middle of the night.

Gradually, I fought my way back to calm, then to sleep, and eventaully surrendered again to dreams. But I woke this morning pondering the experience.

I am having a hard time with levity these days. I've been told this by those who are close to me (24/7). I am tense and focused. Apparently, nearly all the time. I realized this vacation week as I have tried to relax, that it's true.  I don't ever let down my guard. In these 10 months I have lived alert, braced, protecting my soft core from whatever blow is coming next.

I don't want to live this way. But I am not sure how to stop.  

We are in a strange and difficult and important time as a nation.  This week is revealing the deep and serious consequences of constant lies and deception, and the great importance and also fragility of democracy, and perhaps renewing our collective commitment to upholding it. 

I didn't know anyone personally who was part of the insurrectionist mob yesterday.  But I could have. I have cousins who would have liked to be there, friends from childhood who were undoubtedly cheering on the mob. My own dear grandmother, while not condoning violence, may have been glad to see someone standing up against what she absolutely believes to be a fraudulent, stolen election, because her leaders and trusted media voices have told her that over and over and over again.

It does no good to deepen the cavern between "us" and "them" - to dismiss and give up on one another.  But it's hard to feel so many things.  Holding it all is more complicated than I often have energy for, and defaulting to judgment and labels is an easy out. So is consuming endless recounting and analysis - keeping my mind full of noise and distraction - as though this is me doing something productive and helpful.

I won't take the easy way.  

I think (once again!) I need to grieve.  

I long for something different than what is. 

I will not put my head down and busy myself to avoid feeling this longing.  

Today I am having trouble concentrating. 
So I will start here.
I will notice this and I will be gentle with myself.

I believe I have some work to do in these coming months, letting down my guard, so I can live more available to laughter and joy and connection with my loved ones instead of vigilant, braced and buffered. 

I want to snap my finger and change this, but it doesn't work that way.  I think the only way of beginning is to notice and be gentle with myself.  To recognize what I am feeling and make space for it.  To receive myself the way I would my beloved child, with empathy and listening, good food, rest and exercise, and enforcing some limits and boundaries - keeping sabbath by shutting it all off and putting it all down on purpose regularly, even when I fight against that and think I don't need or want it.  

I know what is true.  I know the belonging that holds us all together; each person a beloved child of God.  I know this is God's world, and in all things, no matter how awful they may be, nevertheless, despite and always, God is working for the good.  And I see the ways fear has dominated us in different and damaging ways: Those who are terrified of what may be because they are believing lies. Those who are terrified of what may be because they are seeing the truth.  

What if, what if, what if... 
EVEN IF.

When the fear rises up, I will notice it and be gentle.
When the anger longs for the simplicity of hatred, I will reach deeper and be curious.  
I won't be afraid.
I will be sad. I will be hopeful. I will be tired. I will be patient. I will be impatient. I will be frustrated. I will be glad.  I will be generous. I will be weak. I will be brave.
I will be all the things instead of nothing. 
I will be present.  I will be alive. 

Today I can't concentrate.

I will start here.

____________________

What are you feeling now?  What are you needing?
Where are you being invited to be curious?  
How might you be gentle with yourself today?  
Are there some WHAT IF's that you may need to name, and let God's EVEN IF respond to?

PRAYER

God, being human is really hard.  
Help me to keep doing it
and not flee my humanity.

God, belonging to each other is really hard.
Help me to keep doing it
and not flee our connectedness.

Today I feel...
Today I think I need...
Here are some of the broken places within and between us...
Here are some of the things that feel hopeless...  
Here is my anger:
Here is my sadness:
Here is my fear:

God, our country is struggling right now
with our humanity and our belonging.

Please come into it all - as you do - with your healing and your life. 

Help me watch for it and help be part of it.

Help our leaders to lead. Help us all to love.
Thank you for the ways hope is born,
and for those who feed and tend and grow hope.
Restore our hope. 

Renew us in our humanity. 

Reconnect us in our belonging.
Amen.