pensieve

Letter to Clara

2017-04-28T11:42:00.001-05:00

SPOILER ALERT: if you are the mother, or father, or some other sort of relative of Clara, you may want to just quietly leave here now. Or not, it's up to you. But if you're really into not prematurely viewing time capsules, you should go.

So here's the story. Last November my niece turned one, and her parents invited a few friends and family members to write her a note that would be included in a time capsule, to be opened on her 18th birthday. I obliged, since eventually I will become her favorite aunt and generally do not like to be left out of things anyway. I sealed it up and sent it off and haven't thought about it since then.

Except for today, when cleaning out the files on my computer felt like much more of a priority than the actual work that I am trying to do, and I opened it and read it again. Having mostly already forgotten what I wrote, I found myself reading words that I, myself, really needed to hear. Which makes sense, because I think that's really all anybody writes about anyway. But on the off chance that you, too, might need to read them, I'm posting them here today. Don't tell her mother.

Happy birthday, baby Girl!

Yes. That’s you. Baby Girl. That’s what I call you now, and that’s what I plan to call you your whole life, unless you hate it and make me stop, which I will because I don’t want to be a crazy-obnoxious aunt, just a crazy-cool aunt. Crazy-cool aunts don’t do things like calling you names that you hate.

To the matter at hand: It’s your birthday! You’re eighteen!! Eighteen years. Eighteen years since your little bald head made its way into our lives, after a long, grueling Thanksgiving day while your mother labored in misery and the rest of us were eating, drinking, and merrily checking our phones to see if you had shown up yet. It was exhausting, as you can imagine. I was with our Hinson cousins in Charlotte that Thanksgiving, so the anticipation of your arrival was given the grand-scale attention that it deserved.

And so it’s been eighteen years for me, too, of being Auntie Allison – but as I write this, we’re both only one year in. It’s your first birthday, and you are still mostly bald. You’ve only just started to do things like saying, “Oh, no, no, no!” and feeding the dogs from your plate and racing around the house gleefully with your mother’s underwear on your head. I don’t yet know what other shenanigans you’ve gotten up to in these eighteen years. I don’t know what you’re like, or what you like and don’t like, or what you’re good at. I don’t know how tall you are, or what color your hair is, or if you have any hair. I don’t know what the world we live in is like, or where you live, or even where I live. I don’t know any of these things, but here is what I hope has happened in these eighteen years:

I hope that your one-year-old curiosity has become a part of your personality – that you have never stopped exploring, and tasting, and testing, and asking, and wondering. I hope you’ve asked lots of questions, and learned to ask good ones, but not been afraid of asking stupid ones. I hope you’ve tried things that you’re not sure you’ll like, or that someone else might not like, or that might make you look silly. I hope you haven’t been afraid to make mistakes, or to do something you might not be good at, or to do things that you might fail at. I hope that your curiosity always trumps your fear, or your sense of dignity, or your embarrassment, because that is how you learn about who you are and about the world around you and about all your fellow creatures.

I also hope that you have a sense of humor, because that is what will keep you from being frozen in embarrassment and fear. I hope that the little glimpses of silliness and sassiness that we’ve seen peeking out of your personality are becoming full-blown hilarity. I hope that you don’t take yourself too seriously, and that you laugh easily and often – at your own mistakes, your own stupidity, your own beauty and brilliance and intelligence – and at the cleverness and ridiculousness of others in ways that honor and respect them. You don’t have to be the class clown, or even be funny at all, but I hope that you are learning to see that there is always something to laugh about in our creaturely existence, even in the darkest of times, and that sometimes humor is the only way to tell the truth about the world.

I hope that you haven’t forgotten how to pay attention in the way that a one-year-old pays attention to things like beans and dog hair and gravity – only I hope that you’re now learning to pay attention to yourself, and your own spiritual, emotional, and physical well-being; to pay attention to others, listening to them with patience and respect, honoring their opinions, preferences and needs; and to pay attention to the well-being of all living things, treating them with humility, compassion, and gentleness. I hope that paying attention sparks wonder and amazement and gratitude in you.

And I hope that your curiosity and your sense of humor and your wonder at the world have helped to set you on your way to becoming strong and resilient and bold. I hope that you are learning the freedom to say “yes” to opportunity and “no” to fear and guilt and obligation, and the wisdom to tell which is which. I hope that the only boundaries you accept are those that define kindness and dignity and human decency. I hope you know that your voice matters. And I hope you know that it’s okay if you mess up, because you will mess up – some days, maybe some years, you will get it all horribly wrong, and you will think that you are a mess-up, and all you will want to do is wear sweat pants even though that just makes it worse because now you also feel fat and ugly, but that is how you will learn that your failure can’t stop the sun from coming up and there is always another chance to get it right, and that people love you, and that the good times are something to be grateful for. That is how you become someone who is strong and resilient and bold. That is how you will know who you are, and what you want, and what to say yes and no to.

That’s enough for eighteen years.

In other news, the owl card is to remind you that “owl” was one of your first words. And the pictures are to remind you that this is the year that we gave you the big squashy sea turtle, and the polar bear from Uncle Michael, and the colored magnetic blocks that I’m sure have been your most favoritest gifts from your childhood, and that when you saw a picture of Jack in his lion costume you clenched your fists and shook with delight. It’s also the year that Hillary Clinton was not elected president, and many, many, celebrities died including Harambe the gorilla and Toughie the frog and Prince and David Bowie and Alan Rickman, but you can read about that somewhere else.

Happy Birthday, Baby Girl. I love you.

There's A Difference

2015-08-14T10:29:00.000-05:00

It's been a while since I've been this sad to see a summer go.

Usually by this time, I'm ready for fall. I'm tired of the heat and the dust and the grasshoppers and the flies, and excited about the prospect of cooler mornings and crisp autumn days, bonfires and pumpkins and brilliant red and orange leaves. Usually by now I've had my fun and am a little bit bored, eager to get back to work and to the predictable rhythm of a daily routine. I'm ready for summer to end, even if reluctant to surrender my freedom.

NOT. THIS. YEAR.

Last spring seems like ages ago, but then it also feels like summer hasn't really started. I've had my fun - driven through ten states, seen friends and family, met new babies, visited all (or most of) my favorite haunts - and yet am filled with regret about all the things I haven't done yet and won't be able to do. I've taken breaks, sure, for the most part having a fairly relaxed and leisurely summer, but never once have I even come close to the brink of boredom.

What gives?! I want my old summers back. I want to stand at the edge of May and look out over the horizon of three whole months of freedom. I want to wake up in the morning doing something other than batting away all the "shoulds" and "have to's" that are pummeling their little fists at my head. I want to languish lazily by the pool and read whatever I want, or not. I do not want to learn a language and write a paper and have the reading for next semester overstep its bounds. I want to be ready for school to start again.

But then I realize that I've never had "my old summers." It's not even a thing. Every summer has had work, or moving, or field ed placements, or GREs, or something very stressful. I have never, not once, seen that three-month horizon. So this morning I wonder if maybe it's all in my head. Maybe, just maybe, even if I did have a little too much to do and needed a little more of a break, I could think about all the things that I did get to do instead of thinking about the things that I didn't. Maybe I could remember instead of regretting.

Because the truth is that regret is hardly ever honest. It tells you all these morose little lies about what you ought to have done, and how now you never will ever have another chance to do them, and so obviously your life will be a hollow shell. It tells you there is never enough, never enough time or energy or summer or sleep or anything, and so you should probably grasp desperately for whatever is in your reach right now because that's all you will ever have. It tells you that you lost your chance, that you missed out, that you ruined everything, and now it is all over.

Of course this is not true.

But even if it were - even if there is a little bit of truth in the fact that you can't have this summer again, or that this opportunity was not all it could have been and you can't go back in time and have a do-over, or that you never know for certain whether you will have a tomorrow with everything intact, that is no way to live. There is a difference between corrosive regret and catalyzing resolve. I don't believe that my days should be squandered, but nor do I believe that scarcity is the most fundamental thing about our existence. I believe in the gratuitousness of time, and in grace, and in growth. I believe that if regret has anything to say to us it is that we'll get another chance and next time we can do better - we can be more present, and more intentional, and more grateful. I believe we do not have to cling and grasp, but that maybe we could remember to embrace more often.

Besides, summer coming to an end isn't the end of the world. There might even be something fun to do next weekend.

Nobody Tells You

2015-08-06T23:31:00.001-05:00

They don't tell you, when you are thinking about getting a puppy, what it will really be like.

They tell you there might be some sleepless nights, at first, while he adjusts to sleeping away from his mother. What they don't tell you, is that he will claw at his crate like a crazed hyena for hours on end, that he will wail and howl as though it's the earth's last night, that he will not want to be petted or held or even looked at until he finally falls asleep on the cold kitchen floor, alone. They don't tell you that he might have sinuses that sound like a snoring giant, and that you will lie awake counting his breaths afraid that he'll suffocate in his sleep, or that in a few years that same terrifying sound will lull you to sleep every night.

They tell you that puppies need to chew, and to be sure to keep everything dangerous or valuable out of their reach for a while. What they don't tell you, is that you might get a puppy that only chews tennis balls and never touches anything that doesn't belong to him, even though his jaws can crush bones and splinter sticks, and sometimes he gets very, very, bored. (Except for that one gourd he stole one time. It kind of looked like a tennis ball. Sort of.)

They tell you that your new puppy will be energetic and cuddly and maybe a little naughty, until he grows up. What they don't tell you, is that he will run away from you when you meet him for the first time, and hide behind the boxwood bushes at Panera, and crawl under the seat of the car on the ride home, and not come out from under the couch. They don't tell you that in a few years his favorite place will be wherever you are, and his favorite thing to do will be whatever you are doing, and that after that, he will cry with happiness every time you come home, for as long as you both shall live.

They don't tell you that he will like to hold hands, and have his teeth brushed, and eat raspberries. Or that he will learn to tell you when he's sick, and comfort you when you're sick. Or that if you're lucky, he will never, not once, gratuitously wake you up even though he's been waiting for you to wake up for hours. They don't tell you that he will forgive you immediately for every time you step on him, and drop things on him, and clip his nails too short, and trip over him, or that after all this he will watch you carefully for at least 48 hours after you've fallen on the ice that one winter. No one ever tells you this.

Everyone knows puppies are adorable. What they don't tell you is that they only get better with age.

There's Something about Geese

2015-07-20T11:15:00.000-05:00

"One foggy night I was walking the dogs down the lane and heard the geese, very close overhead, calling, calling, their marvelous strange cry, as they flew by. I think that is what our own best prayer must sound like when we send it up to heaven.

And indeed prayer continues and will continue. Mostly my prayers are almost wordless, just a holding out to God of your names, and then I can call on the Spirit, like the geese."
- Madeleine L'Engle, Miracle on 10th Street and Other Christmas Writings (Shaw Books, 2000).

"Last year I saw three migrating Canada geese flying low over the frozen duck pond where I stood. I heard a heart-stopping blast of speed before I saw them; I felt the flayed air slap at my face. They thundered across the pond, and back, and back again: I swear I have never seen such speed, such single-mindedness, such flailing of wings. They froze the duck pond as they flew; they rang the air; they disappeared. I think of this now, and my brain vibrates to the blurred bastinado of feathered bone. 'Our God shall come,' it says in a psalm of Advent, 'and shall not keep silence; there shall go before him a consuming fire, and a mighty tempest shall be stirred up round about him.' It is the shock I remember. Not only does something come if you wait, but it pours over you like a waterfall, like a tidal wave. You wait in all naturalness without expectation or hope, emptied, translucent, and that which comes rocks and topples you; it will shear, loose, launch, winnow, grind."
- Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (New York: Harper Collins, 1994).

The Struggle is Real

2014-12-03T09:13:00.001-06:00

As these days march on toward deadlines and due dates I've found myself growing unusually anxious about the tasks at hand. I feel demoralized, incapacitated, scattered, distracted, interrupted, confused. The work is too big, and too complex, and everything I can say will be inadequate. I don't have time to follow every lead to qualify every statement, but no longer am I oblivious to those demands - I know excellent work, and I know that there are not enough minutes in the remaining days for me to produce it. I feel stuck in a spiral of self-doubt and confusion, racing the clock but getting nowhere. My body is weary and ragged, fighting a lingering cold with inadequate sleep.

But. These feelings are not the deepest truths about me, or about my situation. I can do what it will take to complete my classes, and that is enough. No one can write three excellent papers in three weeks; doing work that may feel mediocre is, from the perspective of my circumstances, the best work that can be done. I don't know who Sheldon Kopp is, but he once wrote that 'we must learn to give ourselves permission to blunder, to fail, and to make fools of ourselves every day for the rest of our lives,' and this seems true to me. The words that constitute these papers may be provisional, but they are a start. Making a beginning is more than half the battle. And silence is not an option.

But still - why do we do this? I know that I am not the only one waging this war in these ending-days. Who is it for? What is it for?

To be clear: it is not for our professors. They don't need these papers, and if we're being honest, they probably don't want them. They already know more than we'll be able to say, even if we happen to light upon a flash of new insight. Nor do we write to meet some unexpressed, probably contested standard set by the 'academy,' those anonymous evaluators who will never read these papers and whose opinions hold sway only in my imagination. Nor do we write these papers just to get a grade and pass a course. (Well, maybe a little bit. But there are much easier ways to have accomplished that end than the path we have chosen.)

I write to wage war on an intellect that otherwise would grow soft and dull.
I write because in the writing I hear things that were indistinguishable, see things that were imperceptible, and feel things that were intangible.

The work is hard. It is exacting. It demands all, and often threatens to overwhelm.
But it is the work to which I am called - the work, not the product.

Work

2014-07-29T08:32:00.003-05:00

Sometimes it's a challenge for me to remember that after so many thousands of years there is still more to say about these ancient writings that I study. We will never have it all figured out - there are still papers to be written, sermons to be preached, books to be published. It seems inconceivable. A friend of mine suggested that we declare a ten-year moratorium on all new publications just to catch up on all the reading that needs to be done - and maybe then what we say will have some substance.

So when I think of adding my own small voice to the din, I often think, "What in the world do I have to say? Hasn't it already been said? What is left to be done - what could I possibly contribute?"

But this, of course, is to miss the point entirely.

"Any way you cut it, colors and shadows flickered from multiple surfaces. Just enough work had already been done on everything - moths, say, or meteorites - to get you started and interested, but not so much there was nothing left to do. Often I wondered: Was it being born just now, in this century, in this country? And I thought: No, any time could have been like this, if you had the time and weren't sick; you could, especially if you were a boy, learn and do. There was joy in concentration, and the world afforded an inexhaustible wealth of projects to concentrate on. There was joy in effort, and the world resisted effort to just the right degree, and yielded to it at last. People cut Mount Rushmore into faces; they chipped here and there for years. People slowed the spread of yellow fever; they sprayed the Isthmus of Panama puddle by puddle. Effort alone I loved. Some days I would have been happy to push a pole around a threshing floor like an ox, for the pleasure of moving the heavy stone and watching my knees rise in turn."
(Annie Dillard, from An American Childhood.)

The point is to push that stone, push it just for the sheer thrill of feeling its weight and your own back thrown against it.

True Truth

2014-05-20T12:13:00.004-05:00

One of the most influential writers in the development of my theological and ontological thinking has unquestionably been Madeleine L'Engle. I stumbled across Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art before I knew anything about the Wrinkle books, or that loving Madeleine is akin to cutting your teeth on the work of Lewis and Tolkien and Macdonald, almost a trope in certain streams of Christian culture. Not knowing that there were people who had grown up with A Wrinkle in Time like I'd grown up with Narnia, Madeleine was my own discovery, my own whiff of something strange and mysterious wafting into the self-controlled climate of my adolescent spiritual life.

I was just emerging from a strict fundamentalist theological world that my parents had no idea I'd been imbibing so deeply, a world that surrounded me at exactly that stage of spiritual development when rules and standards and monochrome religion seems the only conceivable way to live. I remember one of the first albums that I dared to listen to after those dark ages of only-classical, only-melodic music was Nicole Nordeman's This Mystery - in the album notes Nordeman writes of the influence that Walking on Water had on her development as an artist, and indeed, that album is deeply steeped in Madeleine's world. Being a musician and being intrigued by these strange and yet not altogether threatening new thoughts, I ordered a copy of Walking on Water.

When I think of that first reading, I think of stars in a pitch black sky, of smells of fresh-mown hay and honeysuckle, of fireflies - both because I was reading it over a summer rich with these sensory experiences, and because they became impressions of the kinds of things that Madeleine's worldview evoked in my theological thinking. For me, at that time of life, this was stuff that impressed itself upon me as being more real and true than any language I'd previously had through which to express the deep spirituality of an incarnational life. These were things that I'd felt and knew to be true but had never heard expressed quite like this - mystery, and faithful unorthodoxy, and a willingness to trust the work of the Spirit wherever it appeared. There was both comfort and threat there, bits that I hungrily devoured and bits that I spit out, but ultimately much more than I could chew. And it stuck with me in that strange way that some books or melodies have of looping in and out of your life, nudging more space into your way of thinking and more color into your way of seeing.

So I kept reading Madeleine - I read the novels, the Wrinkle books, the Crosswicks Journals. I moved on to college and to reading lots of other things, things that Madeleine had made space in my thinking for, and always when I was feeling worn or weary or ragged, coming back to these familiar pages has been a Circle of Quiet for me.

I recently learned that the idyllic family life Madeleine creates in the Crosswicks Journals, her series of themed autobiographies, has been hotly contested. It seems that her loving and faithful marriage was not that, and her beloved children often felt neglected and exploited, and her quirky eccentricity was - generously so called. And this has been bothering me for weeks. I had been re-reading Two-Part Invention at night before bed, but from the minute these discordant notes hit my ears I stopped listening to Madeleine. I stopped believing what she said. I began to wonder if those things about her home life weren't really true, how could I trust her anymore? How could I know what was true and what wasn't? How could I believe anything she'd said? I've given a lot of thought to this, and to what it means for me as someone who has been so deeply shaped by her writing.

And I remembered that all of our stories are only told in part, and sometimes there are parts that we ourselves don't understand or can't express. This is why, we're told, we have four 'gospels,' four 'according to's' that together are one Gospel - how can one voice contain the whole shape of a life? I remembered that I, too, often feel like I have more than one self, and it is a daily work to choose the self that gives life instead of the self that brings death. I remember that Dumbledore said, "Just because it's in your head doesn't mean it isn't real, Harry." I remember that Madeleine taught me that just because something isn't true doesn't mean it isn't the truth, and that the truth is too big and bright and awe-ful for us to contain or fully comprehend.

And this helps me see that maybe if the world of Crosswicks, that circle of quiet that I so love, is partly constructed and not purely fact, this doesn't mean it was a lie. I don't think our only option is to see it as a deliberate deception, a manipulation, a fanciful delusion. Maybe if this is what Madeleine could envision for herself, for her family, even when the facts fell short, there is yet something real and true in it. Maybe this was the story she needed to write herself into. Maybe, in a way, it was her way of giving her family the best version of her true self. Maybe it was her way of telling the truth about a less broken and frayed way of being in the world, a vision that is surely more true than the tarnished parts of our lives we know so well.

Just because something isn't true doesn't mean it isn't the truth.

I Have News

2014-05-16T10:24:00.001-05:00

... and I know how you love news.

Now that the application season has come to an end and everyone is (mostly) settled for the coming year, it seems that an official update is in order. What you likely already know is that

I'M STAYING AT DUKE!!

but you may not know how or why. So here is my story. We might as well start at the beginning.

I came to seminary with a sort of vague interest in eventually teaching worship ministry or liturgical studies at an undergraduate level. I wasn't quite sold on the idea but was open to the possibility of doctoral work, and Duke has a fabulous Initiative in Theology and the Arts that was attractive. The first year of courses in the MDiv doesn't have much flexibility beyond the required paradigm, however, so I figured I would find my footing first and explore some courses in music and theology further down the road.

"Further down the road" faded into oblivion during that first semester. The rigor of the program was far more grueling than I had anticipated, and for the first time in my life I thought I may actually fail a class. Forget the idea of doctoral work, I wasn't sure I was going to stick with it long enough to finish an MDiv - I did pass my classes, but over Christmas break I decided I would finish out the year and reevaluate whether or not I would come back for a second year. I was exhausted and lonely and discouraged, and I didn't have a clear enough vision of why I was putting myself through this to be able to see what the point of it all was.

After a rocky start, though, things began to shape up during my second semester. I'd been taking Hebrew, and was starting to see some results - not only could I actually read it, but I was astonished to discover that I was pretty darn good at it (thanks to a brilliant teacher who made me so mad that the only solution I could come up with for getting back at him was to prove that I could do it. Not entirely rational). With the acquisition of this new language, I'd also become totally entranced by the Hebrew Bible and the beauty of its ambiguity. I was learning the ropes of academic writing, how to do research without spending half my time just trying to find the right bookshelf, and had happened upon a church where people made me feel welcome and cared for. I did very well that semester, and started to talk to my professors about potential interests I had in pursuing doctoral work - only not in worship ministry, but Hebrew Bible. Having spent most of my life studying music, it had become more of a chore to me than anything, and here I felt like I was standing on the threshold of a whole new world in biblical studies. I decided that I would take the steps that I needed to in order to be able to apply for doctoral programs, and maybe that process would help me decide whether I really wanted to do it or not.

The next two years were a roller coaster of "Yes!" and "Hell, no!" and "I don't know..." Deciding what I wanted to do became my consuming preoccupation, but I could not come to any sort of clarity. I loved the things that I was learning, but it also felt like a very narrow life - I missed my garden, my dog, the leisure of a more balanced and healthy life. I was thinking seriously about trying to make some sort of future in sustainable agriculture back home, but that had its own set of complications. All the while I was doing all the things to be ready to apply for PhD programs in the fall of my senior year - taking the right classes and languages, getting the right grades, studying for the GRE, researching schools and programs and professors - I wasn't sure I even wanted to be doing this. I trudged on, though, turned everything in just before Christmas break, and then waited.

While waiting, I went home. And decided that I was definitely, absolutely, done. I actually started praying that I wouldn't get into any of the programs that I'd just spent two years and hundreds of dollars applying for, so that I wouldn't have to make any more decisions - I was terrified that I would get an offer, still not want to accept it, and embarrass myself and all the people who had written recommendation letters for me. (This was not a completely irrational fear - I had applied to seminary right out of college, and decided I wasn't ready to go when I had the opportunity. Visions of my past becoming my future were dancing in my head...) I'm not even exaggerating. Every day my friends grew more and more anxious to hear news of their applications, and I grew more and more convinced that I wouldn't hear anything. So when the first email came inviting me to a preview weekend and interview, it took a good 48 hours for my head to stop spinning. "What? This wasn't supposed to happen. Should I go? I don't want to go. I'm not interested. What are they thinking - I'm not a good fit for their program! I don't have time for this. I have to go, right?" I did have to go, of course. They were paying my way, and had gone to all the trouble to read all the things I'd sent to them, and the least I could do was put on my big girl shoes and show up. So I went - I felt like a con artist, but I went.

And somehow, miraculously, in the process of those interviews and meetings and visits, the clarity that I had scrounged around for for so long just - was. I don't know when it happened that I decided I really did want to do this, but one day I just realized that I already knew. I do know when it happened that I decided I wanted to stay at Duke, specifically - it was on a wintry January day when I landed at RDU on the way back from Atlanta. For the first time, this little airport felt like home. I was so happy to be back. Going back to class I saw the campus through new eyes - this was my school, my home, my life, not just somewhere I've been for the past few years. I belonged here. The other places that I'd visited had a lot going for them, but they weren't for me.

So when the call came that I had been accepted to the ThD program at Duke I was delighted and astonished and somehow not surprised. I'd been out for a run, the whole time envisioning my new season of life here in Durham while simultaneously trying not to, and came home to a voice message that my imagination had not actually been deceiving me. I had no rational idea whether I would get in or not - you can never know about these things - but knowing that I wanted to, finally knowing what I wanted, was relief enough. Having the opportunity to do what I wanted seemed inconceivably miraculous.

Being able to say "Yes!" with absolute confidence and certainty that this is the right thing is sheer gift. I worked so hard for so long to find that certainty, and it eluded me until the very last moment when I stopped looking for it. I hadn't realized just how much the uncertainty and anxiety had been weighing on me for the last three years, and it has been an indescribable relief to discover the shape that my next few years will take. I'm excited about what lies ahead, and so grateful to be moving forward not just to be moving forward, but because I am confident that this is where God is leading.

Since the decision to stay at Duke has been official, I've also been realizing just how fond I am of Durham - something I guess you don't let yourself notice when you're not sure whether or not you should get attached to a place. I love that it's a little rough around the edges; that people care about things like where our food comes from and who our neighbors are; that it's a music and foodie and artsy kind of place. (In case you're not convinced yet: http://www.movoto.com/durham-nc/moving-to-durham/). I love my work, not naively, but am so grateful for the luxury of continuing to study things that I care about in the company of people I respect and admire. I love my church, and am excited to finally have the opportunity to put down roots and build relationships there. All in all, I'm feeling pretty humbled to have such a graced life.

I am sad about what this means for the life I left back at home, of course. I haven't forgotten. But I think I'm learning that somehow saying "Yes!" is not quite also a "No" - sometimes maybe it's more like, "Yes, that too!" and who knows how all the parts will come together in God's good future.

So that's my story. Onward, ho!

Hiding & Seeking

2014-02-12T16:45:00.005-06:00

The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field,

which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.

Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls;

on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it.
- Matthew 13.44-46

The kingdom of heaven is like

stumbling upon something you never expected to find, never expected to find here, in this place, never expected that you would find, never in a million years but certainly not now, not when you weren't even looking?! That's what the kingdom of heaven is like.

And the kingdom of heaven is like that thrill of sheer joy and surprise and wonder when the letter comes and you've been accepted, or they've picked you for the job or you will get to adopt the child you've prayed and longed for, or when the pregnancy test is finally positive, or the person you love loves you back, and so without even thinking you say 'yes!' and you pack up everything you own and leave everything you know and you move across the country, you drive to the hospital, you walk down that aisle to a whole new life and you keep saying yes, yes with everything you've got, over and over again - yes!

This is what the kingdom of heaven is like, this surprise, this joy, this abandonment, this humbling and life-changing discovery that you weren't even looking for, that almost seems like it has found you, because you didn't even know what to look for.

And so again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls, in search of that precious and elusive treasure he's willing to give up everything in order to buy. The kingdom is like someone whose whole life is caught up in the search, someone who is known for being always on the hunt, always ready to buy, always ready to go to whatever length is necessary to secure the object of his search. The kingdom of heaven is like a merchant, like a person who is defined by the quest. The kingdom of heaven is like someone who knows how to hunt, knows where to look and how to find and how to by. And the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant who, when he found that one pearl, just one pearl of incredible worth, packed it up and went and sold everything and bought that pearl.

So the kingdom is like a treasure -

the thing unexpected and undeserved, the thing hidden, the thing found.

And the kingdom is like a merchant -

the one who searches, the one who finds, the one who buys.

Did you catch that? Listen again to the way the words go - the kingdom is like a treasure; and the kingdom is like a merchant.

Now, if the gospel writer were in grade school I imagine his teacher would have said, 'No, Matthew, keep your similes consistent - don't you mean to say, The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure, and The kingdom of heaven is like a pearl of great value? Of course. Of course this must be what he meant to say, we agree, must be the gist of the comparison, because of course this is how we've read it and how we learned it in Sunday school and how we've heard it preached in countless sermons. The kingdom of God is like a pearl of great price to be sought, worth everything we have to buy. Of course.

But, of course, that is precisely not what Matthew remembers Jesus has said.

So here we find ourselves with these two terms, these things that are not alike, not in the neat and tidy way we want them to be - and yet somehow they are. Somehow the kingdom is like something that is found, and somehow the kingdom is like someone who finds.

This is strange.

And so I wonder. I wonder what kind of kingdom is both found and finding, is hiding and seeking, is an utterly unexpected discovery and is a shrewd and skilled discoverer.

I wonder - if the kingdom can be like both of this things, then maybe it's roomier than we realized. I wonder if there's room for those of us who don't know what we're looking for, who don't know how to look, who don't imagine that we'll ever find anything. I wonder if there's room for those of us who, when we stumble upon sheer gift and mystery and grace, we try to cover it back up and keep it a secret so we can keep it all to ourselves. I wonder if there's room enough, time enough, for us to do what we need to do to go and sell everything we have and pack it all up and spend it all on this discovery. I wonder if there's room enough for those of us who will struggle with this, will struggle with the going and the selling and the spending. I wonder if there is room enough for us.

And I wonder, too, if maybe once we've stumbled into this kingdom, stumbled upon this treasure, there will be room for us to imagine that we have been found, too. I wonder if there's room enough to imagine that we can only be a part of this kingdom because it is like a merchant, like someone in the business of seeking and finding and buying, someone ready to give up everything for that one pearl. I wonder if there's room for that treasure, that pearl, to be more than one thing, maybe even things that don't make sense, just like this kingdom can be both a treasure and a merchant, can be the one found and the one doing the finding. I wonder if in this kingdom there is room for us to be found and room for us to help with the finding. I wonder if in this kingdom there is room for us to go and sell all we've got because the merchant has already come and sold everything and bought that pearl. I wonder.

The kingdom of heaven is like treasure

hidden in a field, which someone found and hid;

then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.

The kingdom of heave is like a merchant

in search of fine pearls; on finding one pearl of great value,

he went and sold all that he had and bought it.

But then I wonder, too, how someone can not even know there's a treasure in his field. I wonder who would sell that pearl. I wonder if I would be able to recognize that that treasure, that pearl was worth selling everything for. I wonder how many people might have already found it, but couldn't see what it really was. I wonder how many people saw the treasure but thought there was no way they could possibly afford it, or they thought the price was too high. I wonder if the kingdom is not hidden from those who would find it, but hidden to those who cannot recognize its worth. And I wonder how many people had found that treasure already, found it but covered it up until they could come back and then somehow never managed to do it. I wonder if they got distracted, or told themselves it had never really been there, or if they're still planning to come back someday, someday when the timing is better.

I wonder these things, because even though the kingdom of heaven is like things that are unlike, things that don't make sense, there is one thing that is constant. The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure for which the man goes - sells - buys. The kingdom of heaven is like a merchant who went - sold - bought. The thing that holds these two unlike things together is that no matter what the kingdom of heaven is like, no matter whether you are stumbling into it or reaching out from it or being pulled into it, when you have anything at all to do with this startling and surprising and topsy-turvy kingdom the only appropriate response is YES. The only thing to do is to go and to sell everything you've got and buy into it, to go all in, to keep saying yes your whole life long.

There are a lot of people who would think this sounds pretty risky, and I tend to be one of those kinds of people - words like 'go' and 'sell' and 'buy' sound to my ears like code for reckless and profligate and impulsive. And this is a hard thing, because I want to be a part of this kingdom. I don't want to be the one who stupidly sells the field, or doesn't realize that what I've found is treasure, or counts the cost too high. I want to say yes. I want in.

And I don't mean to say that it won't cost everything, or that it isn't worth everything, or that somehow we can get in by being a little more dignified and reasonable than going and selling all we've got and buying in - that's not what I mean at all. It will cost everything. There's no guarantee that you'll come out alive. But I would like to suggest to you that maybe it isn't quite like the blind faith, the reckless leap that leaves us timid folk burrowing into the safety of the shire. This is why: the kingdom of heaven is like a treasure. It's like something everyone wants to find. The kingdom of heaven is like something that you already know really is worth it, really is worth going and selling everything for and buying, because you have already heard about it and now you've seen it with your own eyes and touched it with your own hands (John 1.1) and you know that it's worth so much more than what you have, is so much better than what you'll have to give up. And so even if you have to count the cost, this is no gamble. There is joy in the going and selling and buying.

And the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant, who knows when he's found that incredibly precious pearl. He knows what he is looking for, and he knows when he's found it, because this is what he does. He knows that this one is no risk, because he's seen it and he recognizes it for what it is worth. It's worth everything to him, and so he willingly gives everything for it.

So I imagine that if this strange kingdom is like all of these things, then maybe there is room for both the adventurer and the faint of heart. Maybe there is room for those who are fearless and those who are afraid. Maybe there is room for those who like to blaze a trail and those who need a tour guide. And maybe none of us need to be afraid, because the kingdom of heaven is at the same time like a treasure we weren't even looking for, and a merchant who never stops looking.

Fireflies, II

2014-01-22T18:33:00.001-06:00

To what shall we compare the spirit of God?

Everyone knew the Johnson's yard was the best for spotting fireflies, if there were any to be seen. Some of the kids would dash and flail around the yard trying to catch one - but they usually came up short, seeing as how they were young and thought the bug would still be in the place they'd last seen a light. Every now and then someone would get it into their head to make a study of the places they'd seen a light, charting out the patterns like little firefly astronomers. Except there weren't any patterns. Some kids, the older ones who were more coordinated, they'd catch some, but then all they had were handfuls of brown bugs. I could never understand what the point of all this was. Seemed to me we were right there in the middle of them all the time.

What Do We Hope to Gain?

2014-01-07T08:47:00.002-06:00

XIII

Don't worry and fret about the crops. After you have done all you
can for them, let them stand in the weather on their own.

If the crop of any one year was all, a man would have to cut his
throat every time it hailed.

But the real products of any year's work are the farmer's mind
and the cropland itself.

If he raises a good crop at the cost of belittling himself and
diminishing the ground, he has gained nothing. He will have to
begin over again the next spring, worse off then before.

Let him receive the season's increment into his mind. Let him
work it into the soil.

The finest growth that farmland can produce is a careful farmer.

Make the human race a better head. Make the world a better
piece of ground.

- Wendell Berry, "Prayers and Sayings of the Mad Farmer," in The Mad Farmer Poems (Berkeley: Counterpoint Press, 2008).

The Longest Night

2013-12-21T07:40:00.001-06:00

In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God.
He was in the beginning with God.
All things came into being through him,
and without him not one thing came into being.

What has come into being in him was life,
and the life was the light of all people.
The light shines in the darkness,
and the darkness did not overcome it.

And the Word became flesh and lived among us,
and we have seen his glory,
the glory as of a father's only son,
full of grace and truth.
- John 1.1-5, 14 (NRSV)

Tonight will be the longest night of the year.

On this night that we call the winter solstice, it will be dark for over fourteen hours, far longer than it has been light - it will be dark when we go to bed and dark when we get up the next day. It will be dark when many of us drive home from work or from last minute Christmas shopping, dark when we get home, dark as we walk the dog and fix dinner and sit down to the dinner table.

For most of us, this is not terribly inconvenient - we do, after all, live in the 21st century. Our cars illuminate with the click of a remote, glide down streets dotted with street lamps, and pull into garages with motion-detecting safety lights. The flick of a finger lights up whole rooms, whole houses. We can choose light bulbs with "refreshing arctic light" or "reassuring warm light," sixty watts or a hundred, fluorescent or incandescent. We light candles, hang Christmas lights, warm ourselves by blazing fires. The night may be long, but we have ways of diminishing the darkness.

But this longest night is about something more than this kind of darkness. On this night, this long midwinter night, we are reminded that there is another kind of darkness that we can't so easily manage with the flip of a switch. On this night we recognize that there is a darkness that can work its way into our very souls, that settles around us like a heavy cloak we can't slip out from underneath. On this night we come face to face with the reality that no matter how many candles we light or twinkle lights we hang, the night still stretches on. And so on this night we pause for a moment to take a long hard look into that darkness.

Perhaps your darkness is the empty ache of having lost your mother. Your father. A grandparent, a child, a brother, a sister. A friend. A husband. A wife. Perhaps this loss is like a snuffed out wick in the very depths of your being and you can't imagine your life without that light, their light, especially during what we are told is the "most wonderful time of the year." Maybe your emptiness isn't the loss of what you've had, but of what you've given up hope of ever having - a husband, a wife, a child, a family. A place where you belong and where you feel safe and where you are loved.

Perhaps your darkness is not the ache of loss, but the sting of guilt - guilt over a broken relationship, guilt over having spoken words you can never take back, guilt over a lifetime of choices that have left a trail of disappointment and failure. Maybe this guilt is not about what you have done, but about what you have failed to do - failing to be a gracious husband or a loving wife, failing to be a patient and supportive mother or father, failing to be the son or daughter or brother or sister or student or pastor or teacher or friend you wanted to be. Perhaps it's the guilt of being caught in the spiral of your own selfishness, or ambition, or addiction, or dishonesty. Perhaps it's a guilt that shouldn't even be yours, but that you can't get rid of - guilt for not being good enough, or thin enough, or pretty enough, or smart enough, or successful enough. Guilt for not being grateful enough, or godly enough, or content enough. Guilt for not being happy enough.

Maybe your darkness is the weight of being out of work, of struggling to pay the bills, of straining under a mortgage or credit card debt or student loans. Maybe it's the pressure of the lie that for our holidays to be happy we have to spend, and spend, and spend. Maybe it's feeling like there is no end to the worry and stress about where the next paycheck will come from.

Maybe your darkness is the fear that comes with health problems you can't afford and can't explain, or chronic pain that wears you down day after day and keeps you awake at night. Maybe it's the frustration of a body that can't keep up with the rest of you, that can't do what you need it to, that simply doesn't seem to heal.

Or perhaps your darkness is none of these things, no rhyme or reason you can understand or explain or figure out or fix. Maybe it's all you can do to get out of bed in the morning and make it through the day. Maybe Christmas doesn't seem like such good news to you, because all the shopping and feasting and celebrating and merrymaking only serves to remind you just how little you feel like being merry and bright.

We don't need to be reminded of this darkness. What we need, on this longest of nights, is to know that we do not have to pretend it isn't dark out. What we need is to know that we do not have to hide in the darkness or hide our darkness from God. And what we need is to know that we are not alone in the dark.

This stark acknowledgment of the darkness, ironically enough, is actually the good news of Advent. Before the star led the way to Bethlehem, before the radiant dawn of Christmas morning, before the season of light shone bright and clear, the world had grown very dark. The gift of Advent is letting go of our pretenses, of stopping the charade, of learning the courage to admit that it is not yet Christmas. It is the season of waiting, of longing, of pregnant hope that the night must soon end. In Advent we wait, staring long into the darkness of this year and all the years, feeling the weight of all that that darkness means. In Advent we come face to face with the bleak reality of just how dark it is.

And so this is what John means when he says, "the Light shines in the darkness" - we remember and celebrate Christ's birth during this darkest time of the year not because we believe he was born on December 25th, but because it is during these longest nights, in this darkest time, that we most desperately need the light. But listen to John's words again: "the Light shines in darkness." In darkness. What kind of light shines in the dark? Not the light of the sun, or the blazing, blinding light of day. John says nothing of the darkness disappearing - no, he says, "the light shines IN darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it." The light shines in the darkness. Darkness and light, light in the dark. Light, that interrupts the darkness like the stars in the sky, like that one star so long ago, giving us something to focus on, showing us just enough for the next step.

And so this light shines in the darkness, shines in our darkness, not out in the broad light of day. Why would it? How would we see this light if it were not dark? What if all were light? Would we have missed it? Would we have needed it? "But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son (Gal. 4.4)" - here in the darkness, here in the darkest it has ever been or ever will be, when we have all but given up hope of ever pushing back this darkness, here the Light grows heavy in the darkness of Mary's womb. Here the Light becomes flesh and lives among us, lives here in our darkness. Here in this darkness, in our darkness, the Light shines, and we can see his glory, the glory as of a Father's only Son, full of grace and truth. Here in this darkness we are given light enough to see that we are not alone.

Someone else who knew the darkness well wrote of this same presence long before John ever did - "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil, for thou art with me," he wrote. He had learned that the valley is often deep, and the nights are sometimes long, and that sometimes we have no choice but to keep walking through them. But he knew that in that darkness he was not alone. He had learned that God could be there with him, that God was there with him, even in the dark. He had learned that the Light shines in darkness, and the darkness does not overcome it.

It may be dark for a while yet. But if we are willing to keep our eyes open, to keep looking into the darkness of this longest night, we will soon be able to see the light growing ever brighter. It has been here all along.

We shall walk through the valley in peace
We shall walk through the valley in peace
For Jesus Himself will be our leader
We shall walk through the valley in peace

We will meet our loved ones there
We will meet our loved ones there
For Jesus Himself will be our leader
We shall walk through the valley in peace

There will be no trials there
There will be no trials there
For Jesus Himself will be our leader
We shall walk through the valley in peace
- Traditional African American Spiritual

No More

2013-10-27T21:05:00.000-05:00

Joel 2.21-27

Fear not, O soil, rejoice and be glad; for the Lord has wrought great deeds.
Fear not, O beasts of the field, for the pastures in the wilderness are clothed with grass.
The trees have borne their fruit; fig tree and vine have yielded their strength.
O children of Zion, be glad, rejoice in the Lord your God.
For he has given you the early rain in kindness, now he makes the rain fall as formerly -
the early rain and the late -
and threshing floors shall be piled with grain, and vats shall overflow with new wine and oil.

"I will repay you for the years consumed by swarms and hoppers, by grubs and locusts, the great army I let loose against you. And you will eat your fill and praise the name of the Lord your God who dealt wondrously with you - my people shall be shamed no more. And you shall know that I am in the midst of Israel: that I the Lord am your God and there is no other. And my people shall be shamed no more."
_________________________________________________________________________________

No more auction block for me - no more, no more
No more auction block for me - many thousand gone
No more master's call for me - no more, no more
No more peck o' corn for me - no more, no more
No more drivers' lash for me - no more, no more
No more driver' lash for me - many thousand gone
- "No More Auction Block for Me," Traditional

No more weepin' and a'wailin'
No more weepin' and a'wailin'
No more weepin' and a'wailin'
I'm goin' to live with God
- "Soon-a Will Be Done," Traditional

_________________________________________________________________________________

Dust.

I remember the color of the dust in the air when it rises up into a great murky pink cloud impersonating the rain clouds that never come. I remember the puzzle pieces of dust so hard and dry that it crackles up like a great curling mosaic beneath your feet, insistent in the reminder of how long it's been since there was rain. I remember the taste of the dust gritting between your teeth because it's gotten so gutsy that it won't stay beneath your feet anymore but sidles up around your shoes, through closed doors, into eyes and lungs.

I remember that when it gets this dry, that's when the grasshoppers come. Overnight, it seems, the air is filled with shimmering, whirring wings, tiny munching jaws devouring everything in sight. I remember how they always seem like a plague and how I always wonder what a real plague must have been like.

But then I remember what it smells like when the rain comes. I remember that this is what hope smells like, and how it smells like relief and like joy and like you'll finally get a good night's sleep. I remember that rain doesn't smell like this anywhere else, anywhere that isn't this dirty and this tired and this thirsty. I remember that when the rain comes you know it's over but thank God it's a different kind of end than the one you were afraid might come. This is the end of the dry spell, the end of the dust, the end of the thirst. No more.

Fear not, O soil, rejoice and be glad; for the Lord has wrought great deeds.
Fear not, O beasts of the field, for the pastures in the wilderness are clothed with grass.
O Children of Zion, be glad, rejoice in the Lord your God.
For he has given you the early rain in his kindness.

Now, maybe you don't remember any of this. Maybe your earliest memories are not those of a child growing up in the Arizona desert, or of playing with puzzle pieces of dirt, or of the smell of rain in monsoon season. Maybe when you hear these words promising the merciful rain of God, you don't wonder if it might be as sudden and as gloriously terrifying as a wadi flooding. But there are things that I don't remember, either.

I don't remember what a real drought is like, a drought that isn't a normal part of every growing season but that slowly and silently gnaws away at everything that is needed for day to day life. I don't remember ever being afraid that there might not be anything left.

I don't remember what it was like to see the river run red like blood or the sun go black in broad daylight, or to follow a strange stuttering man out into the wilderness with a pillar of smoke in front and Pharaoh's armies behind.

I don't remember getting sick and tired of manna, or begging for a king like everyone else's, or not wanting to leave Babylon. I don't remember leaping out of the boat, or the twelve baskets that were left over, or falling asleep in the garden that night, or the terror and thrill of not being able to find his body early that morning.

I don't remember what it was like to stand on an auction block and wonder how much I would be worth this time. I don't remember my fingers raw and itching from the never-ending rows of white that never weighed enough, or not being able to straighten up from being bent over for so long, or watching my husband beaten senseless and my child being led away.

I don't remember any of this. Do I?
I'm not so sure.

You see, I wonder if there might be certain kinds of memories that are too heavy and dark, or too expansive and luminous, to belong only to you or me. Maybe there are certain kinds of memories that are so sparkling and colorful that it takes all of us to describe what it looked like. Maybe there are memories so painful and devastating that it takes all of us to hold them up to the light. And I wonder if this is what the prophet Joel is hinting at when he asks, "Has the like of this happened in your days or in the days of your fathers?" Maybe these are the kinds of memories the prophetic voice calls to our minds in telling us to "Tell your children about it, and let your children tell theirs, and their children the next generation" (1.2-3) without ever telling us exactly what "it" is. Maybe there are certain kinds of memories that belong to all of us.

So when the prophet speaks the word of the Lord, he speaks of memories that somehow, in some way, belong to us all. But this is no mere retelling - this is the kind of remembering that holds the things we want to forget up to the light, that turns them inside out, that reshapes them into a lens for seeing God's good future. For the prophet Joel, speaking God's own words, these memories of what has been are what give shape to what will be.

"Fear not," he says, reminding us that there has been so much that we have been afraid of. We've been afraid of the long dry spells. We've been afraid that God won't come through this time - that we won't get the job or the spouse or the children we long for, that our basic needs won't be met, that somehow we've reached the end of God's patience and mercy and generosity. We've been afraid of what tomorrow will bring - of graduating and leaving this safe place without knowing what comes next, of the loneliness of being asked to leave our friends and our family and go somewhere new, of being sent someplace we don't want to go. We've been afraid that this drought will kill us - that we've lost our faith, that our doubt has gone too far, that the rains of the Spirit will never come. We've been afraid that what we have lost is gone forever, afraid that it will never be like that again, afraid that it has cost more than we can afford.

But that's not all. Then the prophet tells us that "the threshing floors shall be piled with grain, and vats shall overflow with new wine and oil, and you will eat your fill," and we remember how hungry we've been. We remember that our appetites haven't always been what they should be, that we've often gone hungry because we've turned away from what would truly satisfy - that instead of feasting on the goodness of the Lord we've binged on things that feed our ambition and our pride and our independence and leave us feeling hungover.

And then when the prophet speaks the word of the Lord that we will be shamed no more, we remember just how ashamed we've been. We remember being ashamed of what we have done, and what we've failed to do. We remember being ashamed of the color of our skin, of the size and shape of our bodies, of not being the best version of ourselves. We remember the shame of what we have done to God, of what we have done to the people we most love and the people we have never met, the shame of what we have become. We remember all this.

These are the memories we don't want to remember, but that we can't forget. And so rather than ignoring them, pushing them further down into our wounds, it is into these memories that God speaks. These are those dissonant notes that the prophetic word nudges us to hear again not as we once sang them, but as God is reworking them into a whole new refrain. And we need these memories, because without remembering the dissonance we cannot know just how good it sounds finally to hear God sing, "no more."

No more fear - "rejoice and be glad, for the Lord has wrought great deeds!" The rains have come, the locusts have gone, the trees have borne their fruit. The Lord has brought us through the wilderness and multiplied the loaves and fishes and walked right out of that tomb. The end has come - the end of more than one dry spell, the end of more than one kind of slavery, the end of more than one kind of death. No more auction block, no more driver's lash, no more master's call. No more!

No more hunger - "you will eat your fill and praise the name of the Lord your God who dealt so wondrously with you." No more empty years or empty spirits, no more longing that gnaws away at us like munching grasshoppers, no more distorted appetites that devour everyone and everything and yet never have enough. No more hoarding or squandering, no more extortion or waste, no more peck o'corn or pint of salt, no more economies of pharoahs or plantations. No more!

No more shame - no more lives stripped barren and bare, no more wondering if God has given up on us, no more weepin' and a'wailin', because we can hear the voice of God singing, "I am in your midst; I am the Lord your God and there is no other, and my people shall be shamed no more." No more!

So be glad, Children of Zion. Be glad and rejoice in the Lord your God, because the song has only just begun.

Amen.

Sign & Signified

2013-10-06T19:34:00.001-05:00

Someone sees a tiny sprout
growing up through cracked concrete
and says that's hope

but someone else says
Hope that is seen is not hope,
for who hopes for what he sees?

Seen and unseen are not the same,
no more than sign
and signified.

So if we hope for
what we do not see -

things too audacious
and absurd to be spoken aloud,
things we do not see unless we close our eyes,

like that tiny sprout creeping out
and growing and spreading and swallowing up
whole fields of concrete
so the soil entombed beneath
can be resurrected -

like that same soil,
once dead,
teeming with warm fragrant life
that anchors the trees
with the leaves that will heal whole nations

or the trees
planted by streams of water
with fruit that doesn't fail
and leaves that don't wither
out of sheer delight -

or seed bearing plants
that can now be fruitful and multiply
and fill every hungry child -
then maybe it wasn't the sprout
that was hope
but just a sign to remind us to

wait for it with patience.

So where do we see hope
if what we can see is not hope?

Through the cracks.

We see that tiny sprout
and we remember that
something is on the other side -
the other side of the concrete
the other side of the night
the other side of the tomb
the other side of despair
the other side of the bars
the other side of losing it all
the other side of barrenness
something is there.

And maybe if hope is not
something we can see,
maybe it isn't
something we can grasp, either,
but something that grasps us.
Maybe hope isn't
something we hold onto, but
something that holds onto us.

Maybe that's why hope lives
in places where it seems like
everything else is dead,
places like
valleys of dry bones and
slave markets and
prisons
because those are the places
where we most need
to be held.

So it seems to me that hope is not
believing in what we have seen,
but the staggering hint that
what we saw was only a beginning,
that there must be more of it on the other side,
that the glimpse we had was just a sign
of something more real than the reality
we see.

Maybe hope
is not the sign
but what the sign says,
reminding us that we're still
on the right track,
that it's still up ahead,
that we must keep going
that of course we're tired
because we're not there
yet.

And this helps me
remember that signs can point
more than one way,
just like the sign
we eat and drink
that teaches us how to hope
by reminding us of what happened.

So if we hope for
what we do not see,
then we wait for it with

patience.

Little Deaths

2013-09-30T13:30:00.000-05:00

What is a little death?

Death is death -
death of dreams,
death of relationships,
death of what might have been.

Death that stretches the long years of waiting out so thin
that they wisp away like silly putty,
making the waiting that once seemed faithful and brave seem
silly.

Death that tarnishes and twists the shiny new
job
marriage
child
church
life
until you wonder why you waited for so long.

Death that without ever saying no
or even just in gnawing silence
never says yes.

Are these little deaths?

But surely these losses of
faith
hope
love
in lives as privileged and sheltered as mine
cannot begin to compare with

the tidal waves of human suffering
sweeping over
a church in Pakistan
a refugee camp in Lebanon
a brothel in New Orleans
a mall in Kenya
a bus in Jerusalem
a concentration camp in Germany
a plantation in the New Canaan,

drenching calendars and maps in
violence
hatred
anger
slavery
rape
war
disease
starvation
oppression
poverty
despair.

Surely not.
But what is a little death?

Is it the
suffering
disappointment
frustration
bitterness
sickness
pain
deceit
betrayal
of living in a not-yet world when
we've seen with our eyes and looked at
and our hands have touched
the already?

Or is it just when the breathing stops?
I wonder.

I wonder if death is death.
I wonder if there is a death in which
faith
hope
love
can live?

I wonder if it's not the littleness or the bigness -
who can say which is which,
or whose is whose -
but the kind of death that makes death death.

Because I remember a death
that was surely more than a little death
but it was life, too,
and so I wonder which is worse,
the kind of death that leaves us breathing or
the kind of death that can't stretch
faith
hope
love
out into worthless wisps.

Were you there when they laid him in the tomb?
Were you there when they laid him in the tomb?
Oh - sometimes it causes me to tremble
tremble
tremble.
Were you there when they laid him in the tomb?

What is a little death?
Death is death.

But I wonder if death
can be practiced
little by little
until what seems like death
becomes the death of death
which surely must be life,
the life of
faith
hope
love
breathing or not
because if there is more than one kind of death
surely there must be more than one
kind of life.

Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.

What is a little death?

Jeremiah 8.18-9.1: Learning a New Language

2013-09-28T08:34:00.000-05:00

Jeremiah 8.18-9.1
Goodson Chapel, Duke Divinity School
26 September 2013

I don't suppose you've ever felt like you've been dealt a lousy hand.

I mean, such a petty thought was certainly far from my mind when I read the lectionary texts for today - destruction, exile, lament, a perplexing parable - what preaching bliss! Who could ask for more.

And I'm certain all of you glowing divinity students wake up each day fully rested, with an overwhelming sense of delight in the work before you - the perfect schedule of classes that inspire and enthrall, a seemingly endless buffet of all you can read, the weekly opportunities to shine forth your astonishing facility for memorizing Hebrew and Greek paradigms. Oh yes. This is the life.

All of us are in perfect health, I'm sure. No pesky colds or chronic migraines, no insomnia or diabetes or high blood pressure, no anxiety or eating disorders or depression, because none of us have ever experienced anything that might lead us to feel sorry for ourselves. Our perfect families are loving and supportive, our incomes are sufficient (if meager), and we are blessed. We have so much to be grateful for.

This is true - we do have much to be grateful for. To begin with, we can be grateful that this morning we find ourselves here in the beauty of this chapel, gathered for worship. We can be profoundly grateful - and I have no doubt that each one of us is - to be students of the things of God in a place as wonderful as this. We all can be grateful for the gift of life and of relationships, with all the challenges of sickness and conflict that they bring. All this is true.

But it is not true that this kind of gratitude means that we must deny that there are also broken places in our lives. It's not true that we must be silent in the face of the very real challenges that each one of us face. If we are to be honest, with God and with one another, we need to learn a way of speech that acknowledges the reality that we carry with us both great gift and great struggle, and that sometimes those are the same things. This kind of speech does not come naturally - it's easier to live in cheerful denial. It's easier still to complain about the hand we've been dealt. So to learn this language, like any language, we need practice, and we need a teacher, and I can think of no better guide than the prophet Jeremiah. Listen again to our text for today:

My joy is gone; grief is upon me; my heart is sick within me.
Behold, the cry of the daughter of my people from length and breadth of the land:

"Is the Lord not in Zion? Is her king not in her?"

Why have they provoked me to anger with their carved images and with their foreign idols?

"The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved."

For the wound of the daughter of my people is my heart wounded;
I mourn, and dismay has taken hold on me.
Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there?
Why then has the health of the daughter of my people not been restored?
Oh that my head were waters, and my eyes a fountain of tears,
that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people!

If anyone has ever had a reason to feel like his circumstances were less than desirable, it was Jeremiah. Jeremiah is called from his comfortable priestly duties to bear God's word to an adulterous and idolatrous people, a word that would "pluck up and break down, destroy and overthrow, build and plant" (1.10). And reluctant Jeremiah, like Moses before him, replies, "What?! I don't know how to speak, for I am only a youth!" I am only a student, a teacher, a song leader. I'm only an intern, a lay person, a woman. I don't know what to say, or how to say it. I don't know how to speak.

But the One who formed the world with speech is not swayed by Jeremiah's reservations. "Don't say that, Jeremiah - I'll tell you what to say. Don't be afraid, for I am with you to deliver you" (1.7-8). So Jeremiah goes, and he begins to learn this strange new speech. With one breath he says, "Sing to the Lord; praise the Lord! For he has delivered the life of the needy from the hand of evildoers!" and with the very next breath he says, "Cursed be the day on which I was born." But he keeps speaking, hard words to a people of even harder hearts, and no one listens but he keeps speaking because he has no choice, because this word is like a fire shut up in his bones. For forty long years Jeremiah listens to the word of the Lord and he speaks, and he listens and he speaks for so long that God's voice and Jeremiah's voice begin to sound the same. Listen again - "My joy is gone; grief is upon me; my heart is sick within me. Why have they provoked me to anger with their carved images and with their foreign idols? For the wound of the daughter of my people is my heart wounded." Whose voice is this? Jeremiah's or God's?

You see, somewhere along the way their voices become almost indistinguishable. Make no mistake, there's nothing particularly glamorous about this: Jeremiah must bear the weight of speaking words that no one want to hear and no one want to speak - words of God's anger and judgment on the people who have turned their backs on God. And yes, Jeremiah complains about this - "I have become a laughingstock all day;" he says, "for whenever I speak, I cry out, I shout, 'Violence and destruction!' for the word of the Lord has become for me a reproach and derision all day long." But in the anguish that speaking these words causes Jeremiah, he begins to understand God's own anguish. He begins to understand that God's anger and God's sorrow are not altogether different. And so when Jeremiah begins to weep, it's not over his own hard luck in being called to be a prophet. It's not in anger at God for what he's been dealt or for what is about to be dealt to his people. It is a voicing of God's perspective of the situation. The language that Jeremiah learns to share with God is the language of lament.

Now. What does Jeremiah's situation have to do with yours, you might be wondering. Maybe it seems a bit presumptuous to liken your call to Jeremiah's. Maybe, like me, you're feeling just a bit sheepish for thinking that your head cold or your workload or your grade on that last quiz were such great burdens to bear. Maybe the congregations you've been called to serve are not quite so wayward as to be at the point of impending doom. But here this text stands open before us, and so I think we should be careful to not dismiss it too quickly. You see, most of us find ourselves here because we have felt some sort of call on our lives to speak faithfully about God. And most of here - maybe each one of us here - bears the weight of things in our lives, unspeakable things, that we must nevertheless choose how to give voice to. And so I think there are at least two things that we might learn from listening carefully to the way that Jeremiah speaks.

Ellen Davis notes that this language of lament that Jeremiah learns offers a faithful alternative to other ways of speech. Through lament Jeremiah learns to speak honestly about the persistence of sin and suffering. So in the first place, Jeremiah's lament is an alternative to the empty language of conventional religion - "Is the Lord not in Zion?" the people ask, "Is her king not in her?" This might not sound to us like such a bad thing to say, to look to God for deliverance. But for Israel, these were nothing more than religious truisms concealing a pathological refusal to acknowledge the reality of their situation. Is it really possible to speak of God's deliverance without fully acknowledging that we need it? How can we speak of hope in God when we have not yet reached the end of ourselves? For us here in a divinity school the temptation to gloss over the realities of our brokenness and pain with religious truisms is no less real. We've all done it, for various reasons - maybe we feel guilty that in our lives of such privilege and joy, we don't always feel grateful. Maybe we're just trying not to complain. Maybe we're attempting to avoid more pain - the pain of embarrassment, of rejection, of honesty. But empty words neither hurt nor heal - Walter Brueggemann concludes that, "Wishful thinking is inadequate religion."

But if empty words are no help, the silence of despair isn't either. So the second thing that Jeremiah's language of lament can teach us is a way faithfully to speak about God. And here is why Jeremiah is a particularly trustworthy teacher: no one faces the tough questions about God more directly or more persistently than those called to bear the word of God to the people of God. "Why does the way of the wicked prosper?" Jeremiah asks of God, "You plant them and they take root; they grow and produce fruit; you are near in their mouth and far from their heart" (12.2). And the reply to Jeremiah's frustration, as we have seen, is God's own lament. "I have forsaken my house; I have abandoned my heritage; I have given the beloved of my soul into the hands of her enemies" (12.8). "You think this is hard for you?" God seems to reply. In learning the language of lament, Jeremiah learns the shocking truth that this is one of the ways that God speaks. Jeremiah learns that honestly voicing the reality of the sin and suffering he sees is a sharing in God's own heart. So what these words of Jeremiah might teach us, too, is that faithful speech addresses our frustration and doubt not about God, but to God. That is the difference between complaint and lament - our speech is most true when it is addressed to the God who shares our suffering.

So listening to Jeremiah's lament may help us learn to speak a language that neither denies our brokenness nor simply complains about it. But in some ways, this is a language that we already know, because this is what we proclaim every time we come to this Table. Here we learn a language that enables us to speak of the greatest sorrow and the greatest joy, and we learn that sometimes we can't speak of one without the other. And here we learn most fully that we need not be afraid to speak, for the God who calls us is with us to deliver us. God will teach us what to say.

Thanks be to God.

Interrupted: Amos 8.1-12

2013-07-19T08:22:00.002-05:00

Amos 8.1-12

This is what my Lord showed me: there was a basket of summer fruit. He said, "What do you see, Amos?" "A basket of summer fruit," I replied. And the Lord said to me,

The end has come upon my people Israel;
I will never again pass over them.
And the songs of the temple shall be howlings on that day,

declares my Lord God,

So many corpses!
In every place -
tossed out -
hush!

Listen to this, you who devour the needy, annihilating the poor of the land, saying, "If only the new moon were over, so that we could sell grain; the Sabbath, so that we could offer wheat for sale, using an ephah that is too small and a shekel that is too big, tilting a dishonest scale and selling the chaff as grain! We will buy the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals."

The Lord swears by the Pride of Jacob,

I will never forget any of their doings.
Shall not the earth shake for this,
and all that dwell on it mourn?
Shall it not all rise like the Nile,
and surge and subside like the Nile of Egypt?
And in that day -
declares my Lord God -
I will make the sun set at noon,
I will darken the earth on a sunny day.
I will turn your festivals into mourning,
and all your songs into dirges.
I will put sackcloth on all loins,
and baldness on every head.
I will make it mourn as for an only child,
and the end of it like the bitter day.

A time is coming -
declares my Lord God -
when I will send a famine upon the land.
Not a hunger for bread or a thirst for water,
but for hearing the words of the Lord.
They shall wander from sea to sea
and from north to east,
back and forth to seek the word of the Lord,
but they will not find it.

I suspect you may be wondering, "Why would anyone in their right mind choose to preach this text?" Corpses being tossed about, darkness at noon, howling and mourning, sackcloth and dirges - surely this is not what people get out of bed to hear in the morning. These are harsh words, words that interrupt and offend everyone who hears them. They get under your skin and will not go away, and there is no use pretending otherwise. Why would anyone want to hear that?

Well, I cannot vouch for whether or not I am indeed in my right mind, but I can tell you that I'm not the only one to have found my imagination interrupted by these words. "Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever flowing stream" (5.24) - these, too, are the words of Amos, though perhaps we hear them in the thundering voice of Martin Luther King Jr. in his speech that shook the imagination of everyone who heard it then and has heard it since. "I have a dream," King said, and that dream woke up an entire nation.

Fifty years later, the word of the Lord as spoken through Amos continues to be about interrupting the imagination. Last week we heard of Jesus' parable of the good Samaritan and reflected on the lawyer's question, "Who is my neighbor?" But listen again to the exchange that takes place: the lawyer asks Jesus, "What shall I do to inherit eternal life?" "What do you think," Jesus asks, "how do you read it?" "V'ahav'ta et Adonai Elohecha, b'chol l'vav'cha u'v'chol naf'shecha u'v'chol m'odecha..." - yes of course, Jesus affirms, do this and you will live. But as the lawyer pauses to formulate his next question, I have a few questions of my own. I wonder why he asks, "Who is my neighbor?" rather than, "How do I love my neighbor?" That would have been my question. Who cares who my neighbor is, I would have wanted to know just what was going to be asked of me before I signed on to this love-of-God-and-neighbor business. "How do I love my neighbor?"

But this is not what the lawyer - the expert in Torah, the holy Scriptures that constituted Israel's law - asks. This question he seems to take for granted.

I think it is no coincidence that our lectionary readings have held Jesus' parable up side by side with a series of readings from the book of Amos. Because you see, how you are to love your neighbor is precisely what Torah - these books we call the Old Testament - is all about. For this expert in the law of Israel, and for Jesus, learning to love God by caring for your neighbor has been at the center of Israel's life almost since their inception, since Moses received the law at Mt. Sinai. The question of "Who is my neighbor?" comes to us a good ways into the story, only after the whole sweeping arch of creation and flood, of exodus and exile, of kings and prophets. The lawyer's question as it comes to us in Luke cannot be fully comprehended without having heard the first two-thirds of the story - because what the gospel does is build upon this foundation to expand the revelation of God through Israel to all people. This is why we need both Luke and Amos, and why they both are included in this book that we turn to as the word of God, for us, the people of God. So this is the question that hovers behind our exploration of Amos: "How do I love my neighbor?"

Amos' words come to Israel at the height of a time of peace and prosperity. The scene is one of ease and security, the wealthy reclining on couches of ivory while indulging themselves with lavish feasts of tender young meat and bountiful bowls of wine. "Surely God has blessed us!" they sing in the sanctuary. Appearances can be deceiving.

They listen with half an ear as Amos begins to speak - and he speaks not to the leaders, not in the palace or the White House, but right here, right out in the middle of things where everyone can hear. "The Lord roars from Zion, and utters his voice from Jerusalem: for the transgressions of Damascus, I will not revoke punishment." That's right, you tell 'em, Amos - "For the transgressions of Gaza, of Tyre, of Edom; of Ammon, of Moab, of Judah..." One by one, Amos works his way around the nations that border Israel, castigating them for the war crimes they have incurred against those less powerful than themselves. Treaty violation, the creation of refugee populations, torturing prisoners, and murdering unborn children - this week's news that there over 6,000 Syrian refugees a day flooding into the Zaatari camp in Jordan reminds us that perhaps Amos' words are not as distant from us as we might like to think. In fact, all of the crimes Amos enumerates are also proscribed by the Geneva Conventions. To those of us whose perspectives are shaped by a global economy governed by international laws, these denunciations seem not only reasonable but redundant, yet no such laws existed in the ancient world. Amos alone dares to convey a global perspective to a tribal civilization, making it shockingly clear that the concerns of Israel's God are not limited to those bound in covenant with God, but with all who violate basic norms of decency. Abraham Heschel observes that in the word Amos speaks, "Justice is more than an idea or a norm. Justice is a divine concern."

And so they listen from their ivory towers, nodding in agreement - "Yes, yes - God is the judge of all the earth! The righteous will be blessed and the wicked punished!" Only those convinced of their own righteousness find comfort in such words.

But Amos is just getting going - if there was ever a divinely orchestrated sting operation, this is it. Their interest is piqued, their ears perked for the endorsement of their prosperity as the mark of God's favor. "Hear this word that the Lord has spoken against you, O people of Israel, against the whole family that I brought up out of the land of Egypt" (3.1). What?! This can't be right. Surely there must be some mistake - "You only have I known of all the families of the earth," - yes, yes, that's more like it - "Therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities." This is divine election being turned on its head. If the surrounding nations will be held accountable for violating basic norms of decency, how much more will the people God has set apart and chosen to bring blessing to all nations be held accountable for ignoring their covenant with God. "Because you have rejected the law of the Lord and have not kept his statutes; because you sell the righteous for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals; because you trample the head of the poor into the dust of the earth, and turn aside the way of the afflicted" - the concerns of justice that Amos speaks stem not primarily from a failure of religious observance, but from serious economic problems.

Let's be very clear about this: it was not for lack of fulfilling their religious duties that the people had failed. They brought their morning sacrifices every day, their tithes every three days, even their thanksgiving and freewill offerings. They kept the Sabbath and fasted for Lent. They showed up for church every Sunday, for Bible study on Wednesday, for Christmas and Easter. They tithed and taught Sunday school and sang in the choir. This is what what they loved to do, and boy could they do it well. Appearances can be deceiving.

But God's vision is different. Something else was seriously amiss. Amos' words come as a shocking interruption to all this religious activity, thundering what no one ever wants to hear: "The prosperity and comfort you enjoy is not the mark of God's favor, but the very thing that now marks you for God's judgment. You have secured your wealth not by the blessing of God but by exploiting the poor, by manipulating your business practices for the greatest profit, by trafficking the poor and needy until the price of human life is no more than a pair of sandals. No," Amos says, "your wealth is not the mark of God's blessing, but the mark of the poverty of your love for God."

Prophetic speech interrupts business as usual. It interrupts the notion that security can be built on wealth, that comfort can be bought and sold. It interrupts the illusion that acquiring all that we can is our privilege and patriotic responsibility and demands that we ask just how much it will cost. And interruption that unmasks appearances - appearances of blessing and favor and security - is never welcome. "Go away, seer," Amos is told, "that's not what we wanted to see."

Yet somehow Amos' words were remembered and preserved as something we ought to take a good, long, look at. Like all prophetic speech, these words invite reading and rereading, meditation and contemplation, within every generation. Within every generation we forget how to treat one another with basic norms of decency - we forget that today a child will be born in a refugee camp, and another child will not be born at all. Within every generation we grow so comfortable enjoying what we believe are God's covenant blessings that we forget the demands that this same covenant makes upon us. Within every generation there are wars and war crimes, economic oppression and exploitation, violence and injustice done to one another on the basis of race, class, religion, gender, or for no other reason than simply because our anger and our pain is so great that we don't know what else to do with it. In every generation there is a need for justice to roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.

But if prophetic speech interrupts our slumber, it does so in order to awaken us to hope. "Seek good, and not evil, that you may live; and so the Lord, the God of hosts, will be with you. Hate evil, love good, and establish justice in the gate; it may be that the Lord, the God of hosts, will be gracious to the remnant of Joseph" (5.14-15). There are at least three words of hope that Amos invites us to imagine on the other side of our shattered illusions.

First, the word of hope is that God does not forget the exploitation and oppression of the poor and needy (8.7). This means that God is on the side of the powerless, the side of those who have no hope of ever helping themselves, and that is good news - unless, of course, that is not the side you are on. But what about when the lines have grown a bit too fuzzy to make out? We may enjoy the privileges of relative wealth and comfort, but of course I haven't bought anyone for the price of a pair of sandals - have I? When was the last time you sold chaff instead of grain? The truth is that the reality of our day-to-day lives, of my life and yours, is that it is all too easy - perhaps the easiest it has ever been - to be largely unaware of the true cost of our comfort. Do we know whose hands made the clothes we are wearing, and whether they were paid a living wage? Do we know who grew the coffee we drank this morning, whose fields our strawberries came from, and just how much it cost for them to arrive on the grocery store shelf for $1.79? What about the cost to non-human life - in the imagery that Amos' words convey, the earth itself shakes and heaves, "surging and subsiding like the Nile of Egypt," as if in mourning because of us. I wonder if we know how much it costs for us to enjoy summer fruit in the dead of winter, or a car in every garage and a chicken in every pot?

Perhaps we do not know. But in the biblical imagination, ignorance is no safeguard (cf. Genesis 20). We are all complicit - by virtue of our birth into the wealthiest nation in the history of the world, in this particular moment in time. By virtue of the education most of us received for free, putting us in the elite 6% of the world's population. For many of us, simply by virtue of the color of our skin. We are all complicit. God does not forget the oppression and exploitation of the poor and needy.

But the second word of hope is that what begins as a message of doom ends on a vision of future restoration and reparation; of settledness and fruitfulness. This is the pattern of prophetic speech. If you have turned the page to the very end of the very last chapter you have seen this vision in full bloom, but those seeds are planted here in chapter 8. Listen again: "A time is coming - declares my Lord God - when I will send a famine upon the land. Not a hunger for bread or a thirst for water, but for hearing the words of the Lord. They shall wander from sea to sea and from north to east, back and forth to seek the word of the Lord, but they will not find it." When I first read these verses I thought it was the saddest thing I had ever heard - and I am not exaggerating. What could possibly be worse than a famine of the word of the Lord, to seek the word of the Lord when it cannot be found? But there are a series of subtle reversals happening throughout this chapter that have led me to see something very different.

It begins as reversals of all the wrong sort. "Never again will I pass over my people Israel," the Lord says, drawing our imaginations back to that first Passover that defined the enslaved Hebrews as set apart for God's deliverance. Never again. "The songs of the temple shall become howlings, your festivals become mourning and all your songs dirges. The sun will set at noon and the sun will go dark" - these are not the right sorts of reversals. But there is one final reversal that slips in almost without our noticing - "Listen to this, you who devour the needy: a time is coming when you will hunger for the word of the Lord." The disordered appetites of hunger for economic gain will become a hunger for the word of the Lord. Perhaps, then, we might read this kind of famine not as the crowning moment of ultimate devastation but as carrying within it the seeds of the right kind of reversal. Perhaps this kind of famine is actually a mercy, because this kind of hunger is the sign of a rightly ordered appetite, a mark of movement from sickness to health. What begins as a message of doom ends with a vision of restoration.

Finally, the word of hope is that "there is always the possibility of mercy on the basis of God's pervading affection, where compassion prevails over justice" (Heschel). Even within the message of doom is God's own lament - five times God has taken desperate measures to get their attention, to wake them up, and five times God has been ignored. "You did not return to me" (4.6-13), becomes God's refrain. And so God interrupts Amos' sheepherding with the charge to convey a word that no one wants to hear. Yet even then, right in the middle of this word, Amos pleads with God to relent - not by making excuses, not on the basis of their innocence, not with clever justifications and promises to do better next time, but simply because they are so small. "O Lord God, please forgive!" Amos pleads, "How can Jacob stand? He is so small!" And God relents. Twice God relents. Compassion prevails over justice.

So the prophetic word comes not as an irrevocable prediction, but as a warning that interrupts and reorients, forging the possibility to imagine that even God's anger may be interrupted. "Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream - in that day, I will restore the fortunes of my people Israel," declares the Lord, "and they shall rebuild the ruined cities and inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards and drink their wine, and they shall make gardens and eat their fruit. I will plant them on their land, and they shall never again be uprooted out of the land that I have given them," says the Lord your God. There is always the possibility of mercy.

Thanks be to God.

Remember the Lord Your God

2013-07-12T07:58:00.001-05:00

(From a sermon preached by Karl Barth at the Prison of Basel, 29th December 1957.)

You shall remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you power.

Deuteronomy 8.18

"You might ask me now whether and how we can remember the Lord. Two answers to these questions by way of conclusion.

Remembering the Lord, like all good things, must be begun, repeated and practised. You ask me how to begin, how to repeat, how to practise this remembrance? In reply I point to the Christian community, even as it exists in this house. I was once asked here in a discussion what the 'Church' really was. I might now give the plainest answer.

The Church is our common attempt to remember our God.

We remember the Lord when we preach and hear the sermon. We remember the Lord when, as we did at Christmas, we celebrate the Lord's Supper, where it becomes tangible, so to speak, that it is he who feeds and nourishes us and gives us strength. We remember the Lord when we sing (with understanding!) the hymns of our hymnals and when we read the Bible, as indeed we may and we must do, perhaps the 90th Psalm beginning with these words: 'Lord, thou has been our dwelling place in all generations.' Or the 103rd Psalm: 'Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits!' Or the wonderful 23rd Psalm: 'The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want!' But I would have to quote the whole Bible which tells me on each page that 'it is he who gives you power!' Have you seriously tried all these things? And will you then seriously say: 'I cannot remember the Lord, my God?"

However - and this is my second answer - even in worship, even during the sermon, even with hymnal and Bible in hand, it does not happen at will that we are able to remember the Lord. Nothing will come of it unless he himself gives us power to remember him. Over and above all we might contribute ourselves, we must pray that he grants us this power. We certainly may pray for it. And with great confidence I assure you that you may not only believe, you may also know that this is true - the Lord our God has never failed anyone who prayed for power and strength to remember him. Amen."

Quiet

2013-07-07T21:42:00.000-05:00

I think it started on Tuesday morning. That is, first thing.

I had arrived back in Oriental on the Saturday before Memorial Day, so there was nothing much to do over the long weekend but get settled in and reacquaint myself with this little village. Tuesday morning, I was told, my hosts were hosting a breakfast in their home to which I was invited. It's something like an accountability group of seven-ish people who meet each Tuesday morning to share how they have been aware of God's presence over the week, and how they will cultivate that awareness in the week to come. There was french toast, so of course I ambled down the hall to oblige.

Of the two hours we spent together, approximately thirty minutes of it was spent reflecting on spiritual matters. The other hour and a half was, well, "fellowship." Loosely. Loose enough to include the one-upping, fishing stories, and general good-ol-boy banter and buffoonery of the several clergymen - yes, clergy, and yes, men - who are a part of the group. At the end of those two hours I made a bee-line back down the hall, closed the door, sat on the floor, and felt for all the world that I had put in twelve hours of manual labor. I was exhausted. I was done. Done for the day, done for the summer. Done.

It turned out I was not the only one marginally annoyed by the lack of structure or spirituality of that meeting, but that had little to do with my personal frustration. What concerned me was the stark contrast that those two hours brought into relief between these men, the pastors, and me, the pastoral intern. Not the contrast of generation, denomination, gender, or anything else - but of personality. These were men who love to talk. These were men who couldn't wait to tell their own stories, and who always had another one to tell. These are men who are the social hubs of every social event I have been to, and they love it. They wear it well, so well, in fact, that they compete for it.

I have made a few observations over the past two summers I've spent in the rural parish, and met the majority of the clergy - men and women, past and present - still living in this county. So although I know these are grossly sweeping generalizations, I think there is probably a modicum of truth to the fact that it seems to me that the gregarious, extroverted, socially-connective pastor is what is expected in these communities. The pastor is usually the only staff person in the church, and is expected to be the hub of almost everything - everyone's births, marriages, illnesses, deaths, and everything in between. The pastor is expected to be the CEO, the theologian, the liturgist, the scholar, the counselor, and the neighbor. The pastor is expected to visit, to make phone calls, to know everyone's name and their mother's name and who their cousins are. The pastor is expected to stand at the back of the church after the sermon and shake every single hand that goes by, looking them in the eye and calling them by name. The pastor is expected to be visible, available, and above all, affable. This is the pastoral world of sweet tea and banana cream pudding, of Mitford and Mayberry. This is the pastoral world of the south.

Now, I have never been of the persuasion that this is what I might like to do with my one wild and precious life. I have never felt called to pastoral or ordained ministry of any stripe (why I am, then, a seminarian is another story). This is not the cultural or ecclesial context from which I come, having been forged on the other side of the country and of denominationalism. I am here because I have to be, but also because I am convinced that everyone knows something I do not, and to be here is an immeasurable gift. So the culture shock of the contrast between the Pastoral Personality* and my own social and spiritual gifts is not particularly devastating for me. But this is my second summer here, my second summer of being consistently, implicitly, and persistently urged to aspire to the rural parish, and it turns out that the culture shock never ceases to be shocking. This is, or was, as that Tuesday morning reminded me, going to be the second summer of pushing down an uncomfortable question that I had managed to keep satisfactorily squished all last summer but that I had found to be waiting patiently for me upon my return. This is the question:

"What is the place for the introvert in ministry?"

and,

"If there is no place for the introvert in the ministry model of the rural parish, is it a faulty model?"

These questions largely revolved around, 1) My own discomfort and aversion to this pastoral model, and 2) My conviction that the church is the body of Christ, and as such must contain a place for every personality and every gift. And that does not mean that the place for extroverts is the pastorate and the place for introverts is cleaning the kitchen.

I suppose these questions may also be related to my prolonged struggle to figure out what I am going to do with my one wild and precious life. The problem seems to be that many of the options involve working with, being around, or generally interacting with people. By "problem," I do not mean that I do not like people or cannot get along with them. I do like people. I, like all humans, need other people. The problem is that being around them is usually awkward and always exhausting. I could do anything - anything - that involved being around people an hour or two a day, or a work week of three or four days a week. But most other things, what I've always assumed are "normal" things, find me drained of all physical, emotional, and spiritual energy at the end of the day, and drained in a way that takes more than a mere evening to recuperate from. This is the problem.

The persistence with which this question addressed me on Tuesday morning may also have had something to do with the fact that a few days before my arrival I had re-read the results of an in-depth personality test I had taken a couple of years ago, and had amusedly noted that it made me sound as if I am borderline autistic. Which had me wondering if introversion is so culturally unacceptable as to be suspected of being a disorder.

So anyway. After a couple of days of my own ponderings, I decided this was an excellent excuse to buy books - "for my internship." I started here, with Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain. I devoured every word. It is well-researched, engaging, and generally a fascinating read, but more than that it has helped me begin to see more clearly many aspects of my personality and the way I relate to people and experience life that I hadn't before recognized as related to my introversion. For example, did you know there is a spectrum of introversion/extroversion? Of course you did. It makes perfect sense, of course, but the thought had never occurred to me. Did you also know that there is a spectrum of sensitivity to external stimuli that both introverts and extroverts can experience? Again, it seems like common sense, but I hadn't connected the dots. Turns out, I'm at the far end of both spectrums. Perfect. It also turns out that introversion and inversely, extroversion, are related to distinctly different ways that the brain functions in processing information. It's simply the way we work. Most fascinating, I thought, was Cain's assessment of how extroversion came to be the American cultural ideal.

The book is, in my opinion, overly concerned with helping introverts find their place in the business and professional world, but I guess that's what most people are interested in. Nonetheless, if you are even slightly curious about the topic I highly recommend reading it. If you are an introvert, it will help you feel less like there's something wrong with you, and if you are an extrovert it will make you feel bad. Not really. But maybe.

Next I turned to a more explicitly ministry-related and Christian perspective with Introverts in the Church: Finding Your Place in an Extroverted Culture by Adam S. McHugh. I have to say that after reading Quiet, it was slightly disappointing (sorry, Adam). It was less substantive than I had hoped, and at times it seemed as though McHugh was implicitly trying to help the introvert fit the extrovert ideal, even while explicitly denouncing this necessity. One thing I did find hugely helpful, however, was McHugh's piercing perception of the guilt that many introverts within the church internalize about finding it difficult to be around people when such a high value is placed on community and relationality as part of Christian discipleship. This is so, so true. So true, in fact, that I would have denied that I feel guilty about my introversion if I had thought of it myself, but hearing someone else gently name and expose the extrovert ideal within the church for the damage that it does helped me realize how much of that guilt I have unknowingly either already worked through or still harbor about the "deficiencies" of my personality in relation to my spiritual growth. The pastoral wisdom with which McHugh discerns and speaks to this in itself makes the book worth buying (or borrowing from me) and reading.

So, like the true introvert I am, it will take me a while to process all of this, and try it out as I go about experiencing life. For now, I have a few observations about introversion and church life.

1) It is not necessary to be the social hub of a community in order to be a pastor (duh). In fact, limiting the pastoral role to those of the more gregarious persuasion is just that - a limitation. There is a wealth of other kinds of gifts, spiritual and social, that the introvert may offer to a community of faith, as its pastor, beginning with the gift of listening.

2) "Afflicting the comfortable and comforting the afflicted" may also pertain to the introverts and extroverts in your congregation. Turns out they are roughly 50/50 - so why do we feel so much pressure to cater to the extroverts (besides the fact that they are noisier)? Slow down. It's okay to think before you speak. Do not - I repeat, do not - allow the passing of the peace to turn into a boisterous greeting time, but don't abandon it, either. Allow for both structure and spontaneity. Cultivate space for silence, for reflection, for things like confession and meditation that the wisdom of our tradition has handed down to us and which we have only recently begun to ignore in our cultural frenzy to fill every sound bite. It is a wondrous thing to observe silence in the company of others, carefully guarding it on behalf of one another.

3) Remember that it is abnormal for every part of a body to try to be all parts at once. This means that no one person ought to feel pressured to exercise all gifts, but also that all gifts must be present somewhere within the body for it to be healthy. Help everyone in the community find his or her own gift, or gifts, and remember that it is Christ who is our head, not the pastor. There is a place for us all.

So what is the place for the introvert? I don't know. Because it isn't "the" place - the question is, "What is my place?" Knowing who I am and who I am becoming is the first step to answering that question, and, oddly, the land of sweet tea** and banana cream pudding is helping me to do that.

* I am aware that the term "Pastoral Personality" is frequently used to denote the charismatic leaders within the prosperity gospel movement. I do not intend to imply any such connotation, but have recklessly pirated the term for my own use.

** An amusing anecdote: on a stiflingly hot afternoon of running errands, last week I stopped at McDonald's for a medium UNsweet tea. They gave me a large sweet tea, which I had suspected they might and tasted before driving away. I took it back, only to be given another sweet tea in return. Who knows how long this might have gone on. Hopeless.

Cricket Goes to the Orient

2013-06-04T19:54:00.000-05:00

Someone asked my roommate, "So where in Asia is Allison spending the summer?" "Not that far east," she answered. "She's taking her bike."

Although it was not I who committed the verbal transgression of referring to something pertaining to Asia as "Oriental," I suppose it's an understandable and common mental connection. So common that there was an entire conversation at breakfast the other day surrounding the question, "Why isn't there an Oriental restaurant here?" "Because there are no Orientals," the over-60s agreed. Appalling.

But I digress.

This is Cricket.

Remember her? Although my designs to become a bicycle commuter when I moved to Durham didn't exactly materialize, living in a village of approximately three square miles has given us the opportunity to rekindle our relationship. We go everywhere together. And I now know that she chirps - sometimes her brakes if it's muggy out, sometimes her bell when we go over a bump - so I've dubbed her Cricket.

The first time I took her out I ran into Julia Tingle, whom I have never seen without her bike and accompanying helmet hair. "Did you bring a bike this summer?" she asked. "Yep, it's over there." "Oh, you've even got a basket!" she cooed, if it can be said that Julia Tingle ever coos, but then - "Leave that lock at home. You won't need it here."

Everyone knows that the bike with the red wheels belongs to the summer intern at the Methodist Church, and if you were struck with the fancy to take it for yourself you would therefore be sadly unable to use it. I haven't needed my lock.

Nor can I go anywhere unannounced.

Writing About God

2013-06-03T10:34:00.000-05:00

"Descriptions of God are speculation, imagination, projection, fantasy, philosophical proposition or pure poetry. Some are banal. Some are hate-filled. Some are so sublime they move us to tears. Some lead us to insights about ourselves. Some transport us beyond our parochial perceptions to act on behalf of others. Notions of God represent our greatest hopes or fears about the power that lies far beyond us or both beyond and within us.

Great writing about God is great art, as 'true' as great literature, music, painting, and dance are 'true,' addressing something deep within us, something that truly matters."
- Margaret Wenig

Four Hundred Fifty to One: I Kings 18.20-39

2013-05-29T21:08:00.000-05:00

[There is a severe drought in Israel, brought on by the idolatry of Ahab - the wickedest of Israel's kings. The Lord has sent Elijah to meet with the king, promising to then send rain - at this meeting, Elijah calls for all Israel to be assembled at Mount Carmel, along with the prophets of Baal and Asherah, Jezebel's gods]

So Ahab sent orders to all the Israelites and gathered the prophets at Mount Carmel. Elijah approached all the people and said, "How long will you keep hopping between two opinions? If the Lord is God, follow Him; and if Baal, follow him!" But the people answered him not a word.

Then Elijah said to the people, "I am the only prophet of the Lord left, while the prophets of Baal are four hundred and fifty men. Let two young bulls be given to us. Let them choose one bull, cut it up, and lay it on the wood, but let them not apply fire; I will prepare the other bull, and lay it on the wood, and will not apply fire. You will then invoke your god by name, and I will invoke the Lord by name; and let us agree: the god who responds with fire, that one is God." And all the people answered, "Very good!"

Elijah said to the prophets of Baal, "Choose one bull and prepare it first, for you are the majority; invoke your god by name, but apply no fire." They took the bull that was given them; they prepared it, and invoked Baal by name from morning until noon, shouting, "O Baal, answer us!" But there was no sound and none responded, so they performed a hopping dance about the altar that had been set up. When noon came, Elijah mocked them, saying, "Shout louder! After all, he is a god. But he may be in conversation, he may be detained, or he may be on a journey, or perhaps he is asleep and will wake up." So they shouted louder, and gashed themselves with knives and spears, according to their practice, until the blood streamed over them. When noon passed, they kept raving until the hour of presenting the meal offering. Still there was no sound, and none who responded or heeded.

Then Elijah said to all the people, "Come closer to me"; and all the people came closer to him. He repaired the damaged altar of the Lord. Then Elijah took twelve stones (corresponding to the number of the tribes of the sons of Jacob - to whom the word of the Lord had come: "Israel shall be your name"), and with the stones he built an altar in the name of the Lord. Around the altar he made a trench large enough to require two seahs of seed if it were to be sown. He laid out the wood, and he cut up the bull and laid it on the wood. And he said, "Fill four jars with water and pour it over the burnt offering and the wood." Then he said, "Do it a second time"; and they did it a second time. "Do it a third time," he said; and they did it a third time. The water ran down around the altar, and even the trench was filled with water.

When the time to present the meal offering came, the prophet Elijah came forward and said, "O Lord, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel! Let it be known today that You are God in Israel and that I am Your servant, and that I have done all these things at Your bidding. Answer me, O Lord, answer me, that this people may know that You, O Lord, are God; for You have turned their hearts back again."

Then fire from the Lord descended and consumed the burnt offering: the wood, the stones, and the earth, and it licked up the water that was in the trench. When they saw this, all the people flung themselves on their faces and cried out: "Adonai - he is God; Adonai - HE is God!"

Four hundred fifty to one. I'm not the sharpest tack in the box when it comes to statistics, but even I know that for the prophet, those are not good odds. "I am the only prophet of the Lord left!" Elijah says, seemingly unaware that this might be a turn-off - "How long will you keep hopping between two opinions? If the Lord is God follow him; and if Baal, follow him!"

Four hundred fifty to one. Can you really blame them for having nothing to say?

But Elijah is right to ask, "How long?" It has been a long time - a very long time - that Israel has been hopping back and forth between faithfulness to the God of Israel and flirtation with the false gods of their neighbors. It has been so long that Israel is no longer one kingdom, a nation united in covenant with the God who has brought them up out of Egypt. All this hopping about has led to a physical, tangible breakup of the nation into north and south, kingdoms called "Israel" and "Judah," kingdoms which in their division make plainly visible the fracture that runs right through the hearts of the people. "Who is it gonna be," Elijah cries, echoing the words of Joshua before him, "YHWH or these other gods? Who is it gonna be?"

They had nothing to say. Four hundred fifty to one.

So Elijah sets to work. "Bring us two bulls," he says, and you know what happens next. There is going to be a contest, right there in the dry heat of Mount Carmel, a contest that will help these silent Israelites with the decision that they can't seem to make on their own. "Let us agree," Elijah says, "the god who responds with fire, that one is God." Who can turn down an offer like that? Who hasn't longed for a sign from God when the odds are four hundred fifty to one? "It will be so obvious we won't even have to decide," they seem to say, forgetting that this is not the first time God has made it so obvious to them. Their memory of the God of their fathers - the God of Abraham and Isaac, the God of Israel - has grown too short to extend past their own lives, too short to remember they were once slaves in Egypt, to remember the manna in the wilderness, to remember the covenant they made with YHWH at Sinai and their own promise to love and to obey this God. They do not remember, but finally they have found something to say: "Prove it to us!" they agree.

The priests of Baal - all four hundred fifty of them - get first pick, as if Elijah is indifferent to the odds against him. They take the bull, prepare the offering, and begin to pray. "O Baal, answer us!" they shout. There is a tense silence, made heavy by the growing heat of the sun and the weight of the decision to be made. They wait - the entire nation of Israel, the four hundred and fifty priests of Baal, the one prophet, waiting - but they hear nothing. So the priests cry out again, again and again, all morning long, "hopping about" and mutilating themselves in their anxiety to be heard and to prove the authenticity of their god, Elijah goading them on as the spectacle of pathetic impotence that they are. "Go on, shout louder!" he says, "Maybe he's taking a nap!"

"But still there was no sound, and none who responded or heeded," our text tells us.

So Elijah calls the people in closer, making sure they can see what happens and putting them to work. Taking twelve stones - one for each of the tribes of Israel, those tribes that had been scattered and divided and knocked down - he rebuilds the altar so that it stands once again: whole, unified, strong. It can bear the weight of the offering, which he prepares and places upon it. And then, as if he still doesn't realize the odds are against him, he calls for water: "Fill four jars with water and pour it over the burnt offering and the wood." Incredulously, they do it. It is so hot, and there is so little water, but they do it. Again he says, "Do it a second time." Four more precious jars - but they do it. "Do it a third time!" he says, and they do it. Water, precious water, drenching the altar, filling the trench. He is satisfied. It is time.

"Oh Lord, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel! Let it be known today that You are God in Israel and that I am Your servant, and that I have done all these things at Your bidding. Answer me, O Lord, answer me, that this people may know that You, O Lord, are God; for You have turned their hearts back again."

And instantly, it seems, the fire comes! There is no hopping about, no pleading and wailing, no cutting and mutilating - just fire. Fire that consumes the offering and keeps on burning, burning the wood, burning the twelve stones, burning the earth itself, burning even the water in the trench. There could be no doubt. "Who's it gonna be?" the words of Elijah seem to reverberate in the silence of this heat that is burning away all indecision, and the people now, finally, can answer him - "YHWH - he is God! YHWH - HE is God!"

Four hundred fifty to one. They didn't have a chance.

Now, it may seem as though this mountaintop contest from our ancient history is a long way off from where we find ourselves. We do not live in a divided kingdom - do we? We do not face the temptation to flirt with the false gods of our neighbors - do we? Nor do we struggle to know that YHWH alone is God, and to make that known in our lives and in our love - do we? I wonder.

I wonder if this story is included in this Book we hold so dear because it is a story about you and me - a story about our silence when a decision is called for, a story about our forgetfulness, a story about our betrayal.

I wonder if sometimes it seems that the odds against what is right and true and good are too great for us to imagine that even still, after all this time of hopping back and forth, when so much is divided and broken, the good will still come out the winner. I wonder if we've quietly decided to hedge our bets, just in case. Just in case it's not true. Just in case it doesn't work out. Just in case.

I wonder if our memories of grace and deliverance are any better than the memories of the Israelites - in his letter to our brothers and sisters in Galatia, and to us, the Apostle Paul writes, "I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel!" a gospel that confuses and perverts and enslaves. I wonder if we ask for signs and call for contests because we, too, continue to forget who always wins.

Lessons

2013-05-17T13:00:00.001-05:00

I took the exam that ended my second year of seminary a little over two weeks ago. Since then, I've been distractedly reflecting on what I've learned in the past year. This is what I've come up with:

1. If you're going to be anywhere for more than three days, take your tea kettle.
2. Also take your corkscrew.

That's all I can think of for now.

Of Power, Heroes, and Being Chosen: II Kings 5.1-14

2013-04-06T11:33:00.000-05:00

Naaman.
Commander of the army of the king of Aram,
he was important to his lord and high in his favor, for through him YHWH had granted victory to Aram.

But the man, this great warrior, was a leper.

Once, when the Arameans were out raiding, they carried off a young girl from the land of Israel, and she became an attendant to Naaman's wife. She said to her mistress, "I wish Master could come before the prophet in Samaria; he would cure him of his leprosy!" Naaman went and told his lord - "Such and such said the girl from the land of Israel..." and the king said, "Go, go! I'll send a letter to the king of Israel."

So he set out, taking with him ten talents of silver, six thousand shekels of gold, and ten changes of clothing. He brought the letter to the king of Israel, which said, "Now when this letter reaches you, know that I have sent Naaman my servant to you, that you may cure him of his leprosy." When the king of Israel read the letter, he rent his clothes and cried, "Am I God, to deal death or give life, that this fellow writes to me to cure a man of leprosy? See for yourselves - he is seeking a pretext against me!"

When Elisha, the man of God, heard that the king of Israel had rent his clothes, he sent a message to the king: "Why have you rent your clothes? Let him come to me, and he will learn that there is a prophet in Israel."

So Naaman came with his horses and chariots and halted at the door of Elisha's house. Elisha sent a messenger to say to him, "Go and bathe seven times in the Jordan, and your flesh shall be restored and you shall be clean." But Naaman was angered and walked away. "I thought," he said, "he would come out, yes, come out to me, and stand and call on the name of YHWH his God, and would wave his hand toward the spot and would cure the leper. Are not the Amanah and the Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? I could bathe in them and 'be clean'!" And he stalked off in a rage.

But his servants came forward and spoke to him. "My father," they said, "it is a great thing the prophet has spoken to you - will you not do it? Has he actually said to you, 'Bathe, and be clean'?!"

So he went down and immersed himself in the Jordan seven times, as the man of God had told him, and his flesh became again like a little child's and he was clean.

Naaman, commander of the army of the king of Aram - Naaman the mighty, Naaman the valiant, Naaman the favorite. This is a story about Naaman - a story about a hero plagued by a pesky problem, but a hero healed and made whole, a captain cleansed.

Or is it?

Our story is about power, the power of the true God, a God whose reach extends past the pomp and premonitions of kings through a humble prophet, ignoring the best efforts of the "powerful" to secure what cannot be bought, and bringing Naaman the mighty down into the waters of the Jordan. It's a story about what real power is, holding the powerlessness of this great man up to the light of the power of the man of God, so that "he will learn that there is a prophet in Israel."

Isn't it?

Our story is about the way that YHWH has chosen to extend that healing reach, extending it through a particular place and a particular people, extending it to all the nations of the earth but through Israel, through the meagre Jordan and not the glittering glories of Damascus. It's a story about being chosen and being used, but a story about how no border can contain this mighty and mysterious God - who is the God of Israel.

It could be. And it often is.

As a matter of fact, those were the stories I was listening to around the dining room table that night, but there was something else I kept hearing coming from the kitchen. I couldn't quite make it all out - the whispers were broken up by the sounds of running water, people going in and out, dishes clattering around as a meal was being prepared and served. The door swings open and I hear a fragment - "I just mentioned that I'd heard of a man who..." - it swings shut.

"Would you excuse me for a moment?" I say, "Something has come to my attention." As I leave the table where those familiar stories are being recounted, the fragments of whispers become more clear. I listen in for a while, piecing it together to realize it is the same story, after all, but not in a way I've ever heard it told. This story as it is told tonight, IS a story about heroes - but heroes whose names somehow weren't all that important. It is a story about power - but the kind of power that has little interest in armies and wealth and reputation. And it is a story about being chosen - being chosen for a particular kind of service in a particular time and place.

First I hear one of the servant girls' voice, plain but clear. She sounds compassionate, but matter-of-fact:

I was in the mistress's chambers, setting out her clothes for the day. It had been another restless night - the mistress was worried about the master, worried about his sleeplessness and silence. Worried that his condition was worse than he let on, and that it would be too late before he finally sought help. I couldn't help but feel sorry for them - I knew it wasn't my place, but I couldn't keep quiet about it any longer: "If he would only go to Samaria," I whispered, "the prophet there could cure him." I was horrified when she told the master what I had said, but he just shrugged and sauntered off - "Israel! Pssh." I hoped she would forget about it, but a few days later she "casually" brought it up in earshot of the king - "What's that she says, Naaman? Is there something you need?" The master is, after all, the king's favorite. "Oh, it's nothing, really - this Israelite girl said such and such, but..." "Go, go!" the king interrupted him, "I'll send a letter to the king of Israel to be expecting you." (I guess he didn't hear the part about the prophet. I hear it kind of turned into a bungling mess when Naaman showed up at the palace with his chariots and horses - turns out the king wasn't the one to go to for help.)

The next voice is one I don't recognize - he must have come with one of the guests.

It was the strangest thing - the master was in his study when all of the sudden he says, "Would you go down and greet our guest? Tell him, when he asks to see me, "Go and bathe seven times in the Jordan - your flesh will be restored, and you will be clean." "Guests?" I asked, "I didn't hear a..." "Just go," he replied, still not looking up from his desk, "They'll be impatient." Sure enough, when I got out to the courtyard there was a foreign commander waiting at the outer gate, horses and chariots and all! I don't know why he was just waiting there. I gave him the master's message, but I'm sorry to say I didn't think it would do much good - he was mad. Mad that I had been sent to talk to him, muttering something about this sorry river of ours and how insulting it all was. They didn't stay for long.

Finally, the footmen chime in - they are quiet and unassuming, but their voices convey the kind of chutzpah that is born of care and concern:

It just seemed like he hadn't really even heard what the man had said. He was all in a tizzy, muttering things about "Pointless Israelite rituals," and how the prophet hadn't even shown him the courtesy of an audience but was just playing games to humiliate him. We were making plans to head back home, but then we remembered that it was the king who had sent us on this trip in the first place. We had to do what we could. "Father," someone said, "What can it hurt? If it's just a joke we'll go home and no one will know, but if it's not... this is no small thing the prophet has promised! Did he actually say, 'Bathe and be clean'?! Will you just try it?" I don't think we convinced him of anything - as a matter of fact, I'm pretty sure he stomped off down to the river just to prove us wrong. But do you know what? It really happened! We watched him go down once, twice, three times, over and over again until his skin was just as clean and clear as a baby's! He didn't say a word the entire trip home.

I couldn't go back to the dining room that night - there was too much to think about, too many ideas swirling in my head after hearing this side of the story that I'd never known about. Why hadn't I known? It's the same story we've been listening to all this time, the same beginning and ending with the same characters in between. It's still Naaman's story, the kings' story, the prophet's story. It's still the story of Aram and Israel.

But what I heard that night was also a story of those who serve, those who go unnoticed, and those who are not named.

You see, the story I heard that night, woven through and undergirding all the others, is the story of a God who speaks through voices that will not clamor to be heard. I don't know why it had to be so, but it wasn't Naaman's valor or reputation that sent him on his journey to Samaria. It wasn't his own quest for healing or his tenacious faith - as a matter of fact, I'm not even sure he cared about being healed. It was the compassionate voice of an unnamed servant girl, a girl who had been wrested from her home and family to serve in a strange place - this particular place at this particular time. It took her compassion for her captor and her memory of a different kind of reputation for Naaman the hero to be healed.

It also took a messenger. It took a willing and able body to carry the message of the prophet out the door to a man who couldn't bring himself to knock on it. It took a voice that was willing to speak a word that didn't make sense, that made him look ridiculous, that was hardly even heard. It was heard, though - not just then, not by the person it was directed to, but when the time was right it was heard. It took a messenger for the mighty Naaman to be healed.

And it took traveling companions, those whose job it was to be there. It takes attendants who will listen for the word of the Lord on behalf of those who don't want to hear, and who will hold that word until it is time to speak it again. It takes servants who will go with Naaman down to the river - that "silly little river" - and watch him come back up out of healing waters of new birth, like a baby that's just been born.

That's what it takes. That's the kind of hero, the kind of power, and the kind of choosing that this story is about.

From Mr. Berry

2013-03-23T19:26:00.000-05:00

Whatever is foreseen in joy
Must be lived out from day to day.
Vision held open in the dark
By our ten thousand days of work.
Harvest will fill the barn; for that
The hand must ache, the face must sweat.

And yet no leaf or grain is filled
By work of ours; the field is tilled
And left to grace. That we may reap,
Great work is done while we're asleep.

When we work well, a Sabbath mood
Rests on our day, and finds it good.

--- Wendell Berry, Sabbaths (San Francisco: North Point, 1987), 19.