Traveling light.

Traveling light.

I moved today and I am amazed at how much stuff I have. It brought to mind the utter difference between the faith of the disciples and my own faith. I am attached to my things in a way that interferes with God’s will in my life. I get attached to stuff in a strangely intimate way.

I drag a British officer’s campaign desk up and down the Eastern Seaboard because I imagine myself writing my first bestseller on it. I have a red Western shirt I got in the Barney’s warehouse sale that looks good on me man! I’m not giving that up. It means something to me, I will probably be wearing it when I meet the woman of my dreams. Right?

How much of my own self gets tied up in stuff? How much of me gets caught up in gunning for the corner office, upgrading to a West Village garden apartment, or flashing an I-Phone? How much is left over to dedicate to God’s will? How many times have you heard (or said) something like this, “I’d love to do mission work, but I gotta work two jobs to make the mortgage and pay down the plastic…”

Then Jesus called the twelve together and gave them power and authority over all demons and to cure diseases, and he sent them out to proclaim the kingdom of God and to heal. He said to them, "Take nothing for your journey, no staff, nor bag, nor bread, nor money-- not even an extra tunic. Whatever house you enter, stay there, and leave from there. Wherever they do not welcome you, as you are leaving that town shake the dust off your feet as a testimony against them." They departed and went through the villages, bringing the good news and curing diseases everywhere. (Luke 9:1-6)

It is challenging to be faithful in our culture of materialism and the currency based economy. Satisfaction comes not so much in our work, but in the purchasing of products. Buy! Buy! Buy! Feel good about yourself, buy American.

The faith that Jesus taught his followers was in many ways a radical departure from the co-opted faith of the religious leaders of his day. But it was at the same time so deeply true to the tradition as he understood it. It was radical faith. We don’t have the honor/shame system in place quite as strongly as the scholars tell us it was in Galilee 2000 years ago. But we do have our own system to push us to be good consumers and good workers.

How can we become part of that heavenly system which encourages us to be good believers and builders of the kingdom? How do we become the Body of Christ? It seems that faith in God which rejects the decadence of our consumer culture is once again an act of rebellion. Not the faith that tells us how to vote, and who to fight wars with (I mean come on who really falls for that crap?). I am talking of the faith which sends us out with nothing - to win everything - for a God we cannot see - but believe in with all we have.

Go out! Go in faith! Leave your stuff at home. Depend radically upon God and your neighbor. Bring healing and good news!

O.K. But can I keep the shirt?

What is Wisdom?

What is wisdom?

Knowledge tempered by love. I like that definition and I do not know where I got it, so I can’t give credit. How about experience softened by love? That works too. Perhaps both together work as an amorphous definition. Anyway I am feeling a bit wistful today because I am packing up my things and making a move. Forgive me for being sentimental.

It is very easy for me to use the past as a blunt instrument with which to punish myself. I look at mistakes I have made and curse myself for choosing one way; when, if I had the perspective gained from choosing that way, I would have chosen differently. I tried to make that sentence hard to read because it feeds on itself. There is an inherent paradox. I need to make the mistakes I make so I can learn the lessons I need to learn. I can’t re-choose the past, it is gone. I can only look at today and the choices in front of me now and ask God to choose with me.

Wisdom is God’s loving action in the world. It is my experience or my knowledge informed by God’s love. In Job we read:

Truly, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom; and to depart from evil is understanding. (Job 28:28)

The turn from my will to God’s will is to enter into Wisdom. Surrendering to a proper sense of awe and wonder at God’s glory is fear of the Lord. It demands a response. When that response falls short we are ensured of forgiveness.

So I can just ‘get over myself.’

Who am I to judge?

Here are some words to one of my favorite songs by Townes Van Zandt To Live is to Fly:

Days up and down they come

like rain on a conga drum.

Forget most, remember some,

but don’t turn none away.

Everything is not enough;

nothin’ is too much to bear.

Where you been is good and gone,

all you keep is the getting’ there.

There is some wisdom in that.

God Bless the crooked-walkers...

God Bless the crooked-walkers…

Why can’t people walk in a straight line? Is it so hard to walk straight? Little miss pretty in your clickity-clacks and your Prada bag, stop wandering all over the sidewalk like it is your own private catwalk! Hey tourists from Ohio, some of us have somewhere to go, could you stop looking up and get outta my way!!!

I realize just how blessed and how entitled I am when I associate my persecutors with people who happen to cross my path on the sidewalk. But this came to mind as I was reflecting on this passage attributed to Jesus in the famous Sermon on the Mount:

“But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.” (Matt. 5:44-45)

Pray for my enemy? Come on! I want to curse them and revel in how much I hate them! I mean, it feels good to judge someone and to feel superior to them. You are wrong and I am better than you! When somebody does me wrong, I love that feeling of power I get while I am feeling a little (or a lot) superior to them.

But if God blesses them with light and life, who am I to deny that? Does that mean I have to pray for them? I guess I could, but “God bless them” sounds a lot more like a curse than a blessing when I am in that mood.

Come on, don't criticize me! I am a well ordered pedestrian commuter. I know the rules of the road and I follow them. I walk in a straight line, I dodge little old ladies. I can bob and weave my way through a crowd of conventioneers just out of the subway. I step aside when someone faster closes in behind me and I let them by. Man, I am a righteous walker. I do the straight and narrow.

But God help me when those crooked walkers try to cramp my rhythm, and slow my stride. Unaware pedestrians are a serious hazard. Hey crooked walkers, you are corroding America! I don’t want to pray for them, I want to curse them. Man, there is some Cain in me.

Wait a minute, wasn’t Cain the unrighteous one?

Damn.

Hey crooked walkers, will you pray for me?

More on Forgiveness

Forgiveness is hard. I can’t do it on my own. As a matter of fact, the illusion that I can set myself free is powerful and our culture vigorously defends it. But as a Christian I know that only Christ can set me free from the burden of unforgiveness, because without God’s mercy, I have no hope of being merciful. So I must approach God with my need and prayer is how I do that.

Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. (Heb. 4:16).

How much energy and commerce center around our desire to be self-sufficient? Entire industries revolve around our desire for personal power. How many books are sold as having the solution, yet leaving the reader seeking more, looking for deeper answers? Even Christianity recognizes that God is bringing us into fulfillment, but it is ongoing. We look to the Resurrection as the first fruits of this process of divinization. We are being restored to the divine image and we play a role in this process as active participants in God’s grace and mercy in the world. We must become God’s mercy by inviting God to live and work in us by recognizing our need and by actually being merciful.

The self-seeking self may only be set free from the search by finding truth in Christ. Freedom is found in the truth of who we are and of who God is which is the Gospel message. In Christ we find in faith that we are understood in mercy by a God who is no longer a stranger to human want and misery, but a God who lived and died as one of us.

Thomas Merton points out in Love and Living that this discovery that we are “mercifully understood” gives us a spirit of mercy which allows us to understand others with mercy. Merton, a Trappist monk who wrote prolifically in the 50’s and 60’s, says, “The weakness and defenselessness in our hearts, which make us pitiless to others, are then dispelled not by power but by trust in the divine mercy, which is given us when we no longer seek to defend our defenselessness, and are ready to accept our own boundless need in a merciful exchange with others whose poverty is as great as our own!”

Chasing the illusion of self salvation only weds us to the illusion of power which is the sin of pride. By looking to God’s own life on earth and by looking to the message of the Gospel, which includes an act of forgiveness on the cross, we may glimpse what it means to be human. In this humility we might even find the grace to let go of our judgments and forgive. In an act of mercy we become radically vulnerable, because we recognize our own frailty and neediness as human beings and in this recognition we glimpse something of God’s glory.

So in order to forgive we must approach the throne so that God’s mercy may be lived in us. This is what I try to do:

1. Recognize and confess the need to forgive.

2. Ask God for the willingness to forgive.

3. Make the decision to forgive and release your claims on the person you are forgiving.

Sometimes the burden lifts immediately, sometimes it takes a while.

4. When you fall into the old patterns of judgment and resentment, remind yourself that you made a decision to forgive and ask God to take the feelings from you.

I say this, “God you handle these feelings toward “so and so” because I can’t”

It also helps to pray for the person I am trying to forgive.

5. Allow God’s mercy to fill your heart and turn your experience into wisdom.

You don’t have to forgive and forget.

*** Sometimes we have trauma and deep emotional pain which requires the guidance of a professional. This works wonders if used in concert with a faith practice. Ask your minister or priest or friends in your community if they have had good experience with mental health practitioners. Christ can work with professionals. Find someone who works for you. It is well worth it. ***

Forgiveness is Selfish

Forgiveness is Selfish

Wait a minute? How can forgiveness be selfish? Aren’t I releasing my claim on someone when I forgive them? Aren’t I the one who gives something up? Forgiveness is self-less. Right?

Wrong. Well, not really wrong, but not the whole picture either.

I recently had a rather powerful experience surrounding an ‘act’ of forgiveness. it really was a decision to forgive, spoken out loud in an atmosphere which was spiritually and emotionally charged. I was surrounded by men who would hold me accountable to this decision, so I don’t really have the luxury of waffling. But here is the kicker…this act had nothing to do with the person I chose to forgive. This decision was for me. I was the one carrying the burden of resentment. I was the one being ‘punished’ for the trespass.

“For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you; but if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive you.” (Matt. 6:14-15).

It has been said that carrying a resentment is like taking poison and expecting the other person to die. But like a drug, that poison can be addicting. Anger is an energy which gives the illusion of power. It is usually a dishonest emotion- it is a hiding place, a cover-up. Underneath anger is often sadness, hurt, or fear. In the moment of a transgression or injury anger provides us with the means to get out of the threatening situation by fighting or running. The real trouble, for me, starts when I hold onto the anger so that I can avoid those deeper feelings which I judge as weakness. I mean, who really likes to feel vulnerable?

The problem is that as time wears on and I return to the anger again and again to avoid those deeper feelings of hurt and sadness, I imprison myself in the past. Every moment I spend now, with the potential for joy and connection, is mortgaged to the anger and the hurt of the past. I cannot be fully present to anything in the present because so much of my life is tied up in the past. I begin to feel a loneliness and an anxiety which pollute every relationship and taint every possible moment of joy. Eventually, I invest so much emotional energy in maintaining the resentment that it seems that I am lost.

Forgiveness is the door to freedom. Forgiveness is the decision to let go of that claim on the trespasser. It seems like it is done for them, but it is our self which is set free. But there is a catch.

Forgiveness takes courage because it opens the door to those emotions which were held at bay by the anger. For me it opened the floodgates of sadness. I am not comfortable feeling sadness, and I hold it back with the energy of anger. I see sadness as a threat to my very identity, so it takes a lot of courage for me to feel my sadness. I have a lot of work to do. I am blessed with a group of men with whom I can do this work. If you desire the freedom and release of forgiveness, do yourself a favor. Find a loving community and/or a competent professional with whom to do the work.

There is of course a turn to my original statement about forgiveness being selfish. Once we make the courageous decision to forgive and face whatever emotional baggage we have been carrying, we become available to serve others. We become more able to love. The act of forgiveness helps to get the self out of the way so that we can live a more self-less life. When our emotional integrity returns our strength and power can be used for something more than reliving the past and holding our pain at bay. Our healing can become healing for others. In Christ we are a new creation- whole, loved and forgiven.

Everything happens for a reason? Come on!

“And all manner of thing shall be well.” --Julian of Norwich

If there is one quasi-religious spiritual slogan I despise, it is everything happens for a reason. “Nothing happens in God’s universe by accident.” Try telling someone who just lost a child to a drunk driver that everything happens for a reason. Try consoling a husband who lost both his wife and newborn child in delivery with “God has a plan.” If it were me, I may not be able to resist the impulse to punch you. I am sorry, but there is a beauty in randomness and there is also danger. Accidents happen, evil happens and there is no easy explanation. It cannot be dismissed with a platitude.

However, in the face of evil, in the face of darkness and tragedy we can find meaning. Perhaps (or likely) we will not find it, not immediately. Pain and grief are the natural response to tragic events. There is a radical vulnerability to being human and sadness is correlative to joy. As much as we may want the supposed comfort of invulnerability, to be invulnerable is to be alone. To love is to be in relationship.

There is a risky-ness and a cost to love. To love is to participate in God’s own life. It is a gift of Godself to us. There is cost to love that even God experienced. True love is a giving away of self which is so radical as to entail death. Jesus Christ showed us God’s willingness to love in the face of darkness and persecution and pain when he freely chose to die on Golgotha. God atoned humanity. God entered into human living and lauging, and suffering by living a human life. God and humanity are at-one-d . Jesus was and is God’s love incarnate- God’s love made flesh.

There is so much more to the Incarnation than anything that we could ever say about it. Honestly I am certain that I do not understand the crucifixion. It doesn’t make sense. Couldn’t God come up with a better way to expiate the sin of the human race? Is there a more peaceful way to show the depth of God’s love? It is mystery, in that I could never exhaust the meaning in it no matter how much I knew, or how much I said. I am left to love, to enter into that life. How utterly frightening!

In the 14^th century in Norwich lived a woman who entered into that life in a profound (mystical) way. She left behind one of the most subversive texts written in English, yet one which is utterly orthodox in its faith: a radical orthodoxy, if you will. She wrote Revelations of Divine Love or simply the Showings. She experienced visions of God so profound, she spent 20 years praying and reflecting on them. In one the Lord spoke to her and said, “And you will see yourself that every kind of thing will be well.” She goes on to say about this, “It is God’s will that we should know in general that all will be well., but it is not God’s will that we should know it now except as it applies to us for the present, and that is the teaching of Holy Church.”

So it all will be well in the end, but it is not all well now. And sometimes the reason for things appears to be entirely inadequate, unless we work with others to give it reason, to find meaning or perhaps assign meaning. Respond in a new way to the same old sad stories. I love the way T.S. Eliot wove this writing into his masterpiece poem Little Gidding, the fourth poem of Four Quartets. He ends it this way:

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.

Through the unknown, unremembered gate

When the last of earth left to discover

Is that which was the beginning;

At the source of the longest river

The voice of the hidden waterfall

And the children in the apple-tree

Not known, because not looked for

But heard, half-heard, in the stillness

Between two waves of the sea.

Quick now, here, now, always—

A condition of complete simplicity

(Costing not less than everything)

And all shall be well and

All manner of thing shall be well

When the tongues of flame are in-folded

Into the crowned knot of fire

And the fire and the rose are one.

And that is good news…