Faith Rules — Not a Bad Idea for Life

A new little book by Ian Markham and Samantha Gottlich came across my desk, and I took the time to read it. Dr. Markham is Dean and President of Virginia Theological Seminary and Samantha Gottlich is a student of the same institution. The book, Faith Rules: An Episcopal Manual[1], is not only an introduction to the Episcopal church, it is an introduction to the basic idea of Christianity. The Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, Michael B. Curry, begins his Foreword, “The truth is that none of us have ever lived before. From the youngest infant to the oldest elder we are novices, kindergarteners, beginners at life.” Faith Rules, designed for those new to the faith and, in particular, new to the Episcopal Church, presents 67 rules for life. They are deceptively simple. In reading them, I am reminded that no matter where we are in life, no matter how experienced or knowledgeable or sophisticated, we haven’t been here before. We are novices. Always novices.

Rules 2 and 6 struck me as jumping right to the heart of the matter. “Walk, linger, and marvel,” Rule 2, reminds that though the world has been here a long time, we matter. More than a simple assent to pausing to smell the roses, Rule 2 is an invitation to stop where you are and experience the mystery of creation and to “risk seeing things differently.” Rule 6, Allow yourself to pray,” is just that. In the pausing and the really seeing, we are connected, if only momentarily, to the transcendent all around us. It is just here, in that connection, that prayer happens. In the silent reaching out, God is both felt and experienced. This is true prayer, and it is the beginning of something. Always novice and master, foolish and wise, we are with God once again for the first time. As Markham and Gottlich note, “Now we are living our lives on multiple levels – both in the immediate moment and the deeper more textured level of the transcendent. Welcome to the world of faith.” (Italics mine)

But faith struggles alone. We struggle alone. Mother Theresa said, “There are thousands, millions of people who die for the lack of bread. There are thousands, millions of human beings who grow weak for a little love because they would like to be recognized, even for just a little.” Rule 15, “Add two years to your life – go to church,” reminds me of the writer of Hebrews’ admonition, “And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds. Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another …” (Hebrews 10:24-25a (NIV)) Here, in the company of like-minded believers and seekers, in their love and encouragement, we meet in community the God we have met in private. And as we receive love, we are invited to give love. Mother Theresa also wrote, “I am a little pencil in the hand of a God who is sending a love letter to the world.” And that is good for us all, receiver and giver — body and soul.  If you are wondering, that is why two billion people go to church on Sunday.

None of these things happen automatically. With regard to church, Markham and Gottlich write, “The weird thing is that you must actually go. You must get up on a Sunday morning, slip into some clothes, and go and stand with others in a congregation. Believing this stuff from a Starbucks or on the golf course or while reading The New York Times in your bathrobe isn’t sufficient.”  The really weird thing is that the same thing holds true for the rest of your spiritual life. Don’t expect to smell the roses when you are stuck behind a Metrobus, enveloped in diesel fumes, or expect to hear the still-small-voice of God over the pounding base in your earbuds. There are rules for faith just as there are rules for the rest of life.

Three of them are very simple, 2,6, and 15, take a moment to linger and marvel at the world, be open to your being in conversation with God (He is trying to get through.), and know that there is a place where others share your longings loneliness loves joys hopes dreams faith. It is called church. Episcopal Baptist Roman-Catholic Methodist Presbyterian Orthodox Pentecostal. There is one near you.

[1] Ian S. Markham and Samantha R. E. Gottlich, Faith Rules: An Episcopal Manual (New York: Morehouse Publishing, 2016).

Read Full Post »

The Smell of Manure and the Glory of Everything

William Alexander Percy’s hymn, “They Cast Their Nets in Galilee,” (Number 661 in the 1982 Episcopal Hymnal) discomfits many.[i] “The peace of God , it is no peace” is troubling because it does not fit our triumphalist image of the Kingdom of God however much it fits our experience. Strife is closed in the very sod of our existence; life is complex and messy. There is a reason the apostolic witness univocally makes perseverance both a hallmark and a cornerstone of the Christian life. Without perseverance, without a commitment to something greater than oneself, life stands always in danger of becoming a sodden walk on a gray day. Paul can say that he has learned to be content in every circumstance (whether reviled, beaten, shipwrecked, or imprisoned) only because he no longer measures his life by an external standard. He has made peace with himself by accepting himself in the love of God.

E.B. White begins the last chapter of Charlotte’s Web, “And so Wilbur came home to his beloved manure pile in the barn cellar.” But Wilbur the pig is anything but resigned to a life of meaningless existence in a dark cellar. He has learned to love and to be loved, and in both the giving and receiving of love, Wilbur has learned to live, to pay attention to the moment, to see beauty where others see only strife closed in the sod.

“Life in the barn was very good – night and day, winter and summer, spring and fall, dull days and bright days. It was the best place to be, thought Wilbur, this warm delicious cellar, with the garrulous geese, the changing seasons, the heat of the sun, the passage of swallows, the nearness of rats, the sameness of sheep, the love of spiders, the smell of manure and the glory of everything.”

Swallows and rats and sheep and spiders and manure. The dreams of neither the rich nor the poor, yet the stuff of real life lived in a messy world. There is no easy acceptance of life, no joy in simple acquiescence. It takes work to see beauty in both the passage of swallows and the smell of manure. Faith may be effortless in good times, but it takes real work to maintain that faith and trust in the face of trial. Yet it is only in the embrace of faith, the experience of persevered faith, that empowers us for all circumstances. He who begins with contentment, may end in despair. But he who begins with the struggle for faith in despair, ends with contentment. A sodden walk on a gray day or the glory of everything?

They cast their nets in Galilee just off the hills of brown; such happy simple fisher folk, before the Lord came down.

Contented peaceful fishermen, before they ever knew the peace of God that filled their hearts brimful, and broke them too.

The peace of God, it is no peace, but strife closed in the sod. Yet let us pray but just one thing – the marvelous peace of God.

 

 

[i] “They Cast Their Nets in Galilee,” William Alexander Percy (1885-1942) Copyright Edward Marks Music Corporation.

 

Read Full Post »

The Folie à Deux of Political Discourse

As the number of candidates dwindles the decibel level rises in every cafe in America. A Presidential election is a passionate affair. Battle lines are drawn, forces marshaled, and fierce defenses made of party and platform – often in tones more suited to a shouting match than a debate. When logic fails to convince, personal attacks, abuse, and contempt quickly follow. Listening to one of these confrontations quickly reveals a cardinal rule of coffee-house political debate: grant no merit to the other candidate’s platform and admit no fault, not the slightest ambiguity, in your candidate’s positions.

In another context, what I have heard loudly proclaimed like Greek tragedy, with echoing chorus, would have the elements of a shared delusion. Only once in fifteen years of clinical pastoral work did I encounter this fascinating psychotic disorder, but it stands out in memory precisely because of the unquestioned statements and unchallenged assumptions of those involved. Critical thinking, present in other aspects of their lives, was placed on hold in the defense of their shared vision of the world – a bizarre one at that. Passionately held beliefs need not be bizarre or even unhealthy. A given belief, no matter how cherished, might not be the only lens through which one can look at the world, and one political solution might not be the only way to solve a problem. It is like photography, where multiple aperture and shutter speed combinations give exactly the same exposure. You can get to the same picture through multiple routes. But not if one view blinds us to all other possibilities.

Jesus’ caution to his disciples is still good advice: “See, I am sending you out like sheep into the midst of wolves; so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.” To be wise as a serpent is to be discerning, to question what we hear, especially those dogmatic assertions that admit no other viewpoint, those propositions presented as universal truths, yet lacking supporting evidence, and those demagogic statements that create false dichotomies and belittle those who dare to differ with us. To be innocent as doves is never to be naïve; it is to be mindful of the impact of our words and to put in the forefront respect for the one who stands before us. There must always be room for acknowledging heartfelt disagreement while preserving relationships. The alternative is rigidity and an unshakeable, Pharisaical certainty that embitters and isolates.

We have a right and even a duty to state our opinions. But Dag Hammarsköld’s aphorism ought to govern our social and political discourse. “Only tell others what is important to them. Only ask them what you need to know. In both cases, that is, limit the conversation to what the speaker possesses. – Argue only in order to reach a conclusion.” Too often we argue to win when consensus is clearly impossible. We argue to dominate. Too often we parrot what others have said about matters about which we have little, if any, personal expertise. If we limited the conversation to what we possess – our own expertise – we would be silent.

“Simply let your ‘Yes’ be ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No,’ ‘No’; anything beyond this comes from the evil one,” is sound advice going far beyond oath-taking and truth-telling. It is a call for tempered speech in all contexts. It is nothing less than a demand to acknowledge our own limitations; to stand by our beliefs while defending others’ right before God to stand by their beliefs. To prayerfully seek wisdom and guidance from the one who has promised to provide it is our only defense against being drawn into the shared delusion, the folie à deux, of social and political discourse.

Read Full Post »

I Am Not a Patient Man

I am not a patient man.

Forty years ago, in the gathering dark of the short-grass prairie, I straddled a barbed-wire fence. The ominous rattling sounds froze time. My gloved hands pressing down the wire, carefully keeping the twisted steel barbs at bay, my ropers firmly planted in boot-high Johnson grass, I strained to listen. There is something disorienting about twilight in the Oklahoma plains. Sounds are here and everywhere. Locusts, grasshoppers, and crickets, previously only background noise, seemed deafening as I sought to pinpoint the one creature in the vast American plains that mattered.

Not far away, on a nearby rise, stood my car, outlined with the peculiar brilliance of a backlit object at sundown – thirty or forty yards away, at most. Between me and it lay a menace, a something to be avoided, a something not to be ignored.

Once heard, the buzzing of a rattlesnake is not forgotten. The impulse to flee is the most common reaction. It is also the most dangerous. Even a big, aggressive rattler, if given space, will move away, seeking cover. Even a small, retiring one will strike if threatened by sudden movement. Sometimes there is nothing to do but wait.

The Apostle James enjoins us to be patient and to bear up under provocation, whether those provocations are due to people or events. This is wise behavior but behavior not easily mastered. Waiting is among the hardest of all human enterprises. How quickly we would see an end to our troubles! God has promised to be with us, to answer our prayers, to intercede for us in this world. But how often our prayers are met with silence; how often our hopes for quick resolution are unmet; how often some evil goes unchecked. It is easy to give up. David faced this situation again and again, sometimes because of his own mistakes, most often because of others’ ambition and greed. It is in the midst of one of these trials that he utters these words:

[13] I am still confident of this:

I will see the goodness of the LORD

in the land of the living.

[14] Wait for the LORD;

be strong and take heart

and wait for the LORD. (Psalms 27:13-14 (NIV))

David expects to receive divine help, not in a future world, but in the world we live in. He is also at a place where action is either impossible or will be ineffectual. All he can do is wait. But David waits in faith. Looking back over his long life, David remembers God’s gracious gifts, God’s powerful interventions in his life. He has learned to expect victory, even victory in defeat. This is indeed the hardest of lessons to learn. “I will see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living” in spite of all evidence to the contrary. I will wait in faith.

Nothing comes harder for me than waiting. But I have learned the necessity of James’ advice. Often there is nothing to be done but to patiently wait, and to continue to trust in God, whether in the midst of our busy city lives or on the Oklahoma plains.

I waited a few minutes after the buzzing had died away, then crossed the fence and headed for the car. Walking slowly at first, senses alert, I looked for signals of danger. Seeing and hearing none, I picked up my pace. In the cooling air, the last glow of sunset lit the horizon, the deep purple sky gave way to the black of night, while above and behind me a million stars shone. Things can change in a single moment, but oh how far away that moment seems until it arrives.

I am not a patient man.

Read Full Post »

Warm Potatoes This Very Night

So many years ago in another world, perhaps the same, yet remembered as another or at least one so very different, I went out on Christmas Eve, shepherding a group of confirmands. It was wind-cold, smelling of snow, a snow still hours away. We loaded our old, donated food truck with hot chocolate and coffee, with sandwiches and chicken soup. Minutes later we entered a world of motels and motor-courts, all of which had seen their best days decades ago. Generations of tourists had given way to the homeless, those fortunate enough to receive county assistance – families of three and four and five in the same room. No Holiday Inns or Comfort Suites, no Radissons or Marriotts, only forgotten people in neglected hotels. They gathered in parking lots, lining up to receive Christmas dinner.

Leaving the church, the children had been laughing and playful, talking of gifts already received and hopes for more to come. Perhaps, just perhaps, they had been a little apprehensive, too; apprehensive about a world only blocks away but as unknown to many of them as the farthest continent. Now they were quiet, respectful, even gentle as at stop after stop they delivered meager meals to mothers and fathers, to children of all ages – to some they recognized from school. They received in return thankyous and quiet blessings and always, “Merry Christmas.”

In Hans Christian Anderson’s “The Candles”, the tallow candle cannot help but be jealous of the wax candle, destined to burn brightly in a silver candle holder, lighting a ball, while he is given, along with a basket of potatoes, to a poor widow. Destined to preside over the most meager of dinners, he remembers nostalgically and somewhat bitterly the bright-faced happiness of the little girl, soon to be dancing gaily in “a big red ribbon.” “’Happiness is a blessed thing to see,’ the tallow candle thought to himself. ‘I mustn’t forget how it looks, for I certainly shant see it again.’” Later, as the poor mother and her children finish their meager meal and go off to bed, the tallow candle thinks of the littlest girl in the family and what she had so joyously said to her brothers and sisters, “Tonight we’re going to have – just think of it – warm potatoes this very night.” The stars shine on the rich and the poor with the same clear and kind light. And as his own light burned out, the tallow candle realized he had learned the greatest of all Christmas lessons. “He remembered the two happy children, one face lighted up by the wax candle, the other shining in the tallow candle’s light. One was as happy as the other. Yes, that is the whole story.”

That, of course, is not the whole story, but it is an important lesson. On that long ago Christmas Eve, the confirmands witnessed in the faces of those they served (most but not all) peace, joy, and gratitude. And for a few hours, privileged children stepped out of the warmth of their homes and traveling only a few blocks shared Christmas with those a world away. The motels are long gone and so are the children. What became of them I don’t know. But I can’t help believing that night changed them. They were quiet as we returned to the church for our Christmas candlelight service. The air was crisp and cold and light snow fell silently on the parking lot as they filed off of the old truck, and there was a new light in their eyes as they passed the church’s sign, “Welcome to Nativity.”

 

Read Full Post »

Time for the Linen Closet

His snoring gives him away. Like a feral cat going to ground, Zamboni is deep in the linen closet. Unlike his wild counterparts, he prefers Fabreze-scented towels and soft linens. Growing older, he sleeps twenty hours a day. Sometimes basking in streams of sunlight in the middle of the library floor, at other times, hidden in what are now predictable haunts. Zamboni is the largest of our three cats, but he is the least sociable, the least courageous. Hiding is his reaction to any change, whether changes to routine, changes to the environment, or changes to people. A house guest can spend a week with us and never catch a glimpse of him.

Few of us can afford the linen closet however tempting it might be to hide from the world. We can accept it or resist it, but unlike a cat in hiding, we are rarely able to ignore change. I have known a score of people in my life who slept twenty hours a day. They are the ones on the subway with fixed stares and the blank-faced ones, motionless and emotionless before their computer monitors. Most of us are like the Daschiell Hammett character in the Maltese Falcon of whom Sam Spade said: “That’s the part of it I always liked. He adjusted himself to beams falling, and then no more of them fell, and he adjusted himself to their not falling.” Accommodation and compromise. Perhaps the compromisers and the blank-faced ones are not that far apart. One acknowledges the changes, the other doesn’t notice. Neither questions.

Understanding each new situation is key to the art of living. How often do we react before we really understand what we are reacting against? The Apostle Paul writes to the Romans: “Welcome those who are weak in the faith, but not for the purpose of quarreling over opinions.” Paul is acutely aware of our shared tendency to defend our position regardless of the cost. He counsels restraint. Can I win this argument? Can I change the situation? Or are we both so entrenched in our positions that no mutual understanding is possible? If so, the only real outcome is resentment. Often, we go to battle before deciding whether or not this is a hill worth dying on.

Again and again in the Gospels, Jesus refuses to be drawn into an argument. His reply to inflammatory and confrontational statements diffuses the situation and leads to a deeper understanding of the real issues. We are not so quick witted as Jesus. David gives us sound advice in the fourth Psalm. “Be angry and sin not. Commune with your own hearts on your own bed and be still.” There is a time for the linen closet. A time for solitude and quiet meditation. It is in quietness and reflection that we will discern the courageous alternative. There is a time to rend and a time to sew; a time to keep silence and a time to speak. Knowing the season makes all the difference.

 

 

 

Read Full Post »

Miserable, Greedy and Sick

We are back to normal – at least our children are. On this cold and icy start to March I went to walk at a local mall on my lunch hour. Very young children, accompanied by parents, were nearly as numerous as the un-shepherded teens. Belatedly, I remembered that most of the local schools were closed. Anxious parents, unaccustomed to entertaining overactive, bored children, wrapped them in coats and boots and mufflers and whisked the whole family off to shop. America at its most American. American Girl and Build-A-Bear Workshop were packed tighter than Verizon Center’s kiosks at half-time. Young teenage girls prowled in groups, swinging shopping bags like pom-poms. America’s sport.

The shopping bags tell the story. The last several years have been unkind to the retail industry. Saturday afternoons saw shopping-center crowds with few purchases in hand. People are buying again. The deep recession has eased to the point that Americans are confident enough to return to the big department-stores with earnest money in hand. There is more than a little room for thanksgiving. The economic downturn hurt. It hurt the poor and the middle-class, and it scared the wealthy.

But there is another not so benign side to the recovery. It can be seen on the faces and in the giddy laughter of teens heading for the dressing rooms, arms wrapped around mountains of clothes – all of them in the latest styles, designed to make a statement about its wearer. Retail sales may be the engine that drives the economy, but it is all too often the engine that drives a shallow culture. In a letter to Adlai Stevenson, John Steinbeck observed: “What a strange species we are. We can stand anything God and Nature can throw at us save only plenty. If I wanted to destroy a nation, I would give it too much, and I would have it on its knees, miserable, greedy and sick.”

Things in themselves have no power, neither power to enhance nor power to corrupt. But the habitual striving for the new and fashionable, everywhere visible in the American marketplace, is symptomatic of a deeper discontent. Disconnected from the life around us, from the natural world we experience only in well-manicured parks; disconnected from the communities we live in, lonely in a crowd of millions; disconnected from ourselves, unable to bear the doubts that come unbidden when we are alone; we run, directionless, seeking only distraction.

Into this world we are called to offer the alternative of the Gospel, as Paul writes to the Corinthian Christians: to know and proclaim Christ crucified. It is a foolish proclamation to those who are “miserable, greedy, and sick,” but to those hungry for meaning, it is a message of hope and promise. All too often, Christians, in despair, retreat inward into their faith-communities, complaining that the world has changed and is no longer receptive to the Gospel message. “We live in a post-Christian age!” is the cry of the defeated.

If we believe with the great creeds of the church that Jesus is the God-Man, risen from the dead, and seated at the right-hand of the Father, there can be no post-Christian era. Furthermore, the materialistic culture of today is neither new nor immune to the call of Christ. Anthony Thiselton writes in his commentary on the Greek text of 1 Corinthians of the Apostle Paul’s struggles with the Greco-Roman culture of his day. He describes the Corinthians as being immersed in “the self-sufficient, self-congratulatory culture of Corinth coupled with an obsession about peer-group prestige, success in competition, their devaluing of tradition and universals, and near contempt for those without standing in some chosen value system.”[Italics in the original]

Thiselton goes on to note that 1Corinthians “stands in a distinctive position of relevance to our own times.” (Again, italics in the original.)The world of the New Testament was not different from our own. The message of hope in Christ, the message of grace and love is as powerful as it always was. The Gospel penetrated to the heart of the ancient world and has never ceased to draw the seekers who feel deeply in their souls that there must be more to life than the “miserable, greedy, and sick” offer. We are not called to change the world, we are called in Corinth and in Washington, in Athens and New York to proclaim Christ and Him Crucified.

Read Full Post »

All the Rest is Commentary

Some years ago, researching transportation law for a contract, I settled in at Georgetown Law Library, yellow pad at the ready, and began reading federal statutes. I awoke an hour later with my forehead resting softly on the pages of a book I don’t remember opening. I determined right then to buy a complete set of the United States Statues at Large; you never know which volume might be needed on a sleepless night. Judging from the traffic in the library, lawyers and law clerks must find the Statutes fascinating, but I can’t see much value in them beyond their soft pages. They just don’t seem to connect with my life

There comes a time in most of our lives when we need a lawyer to help us navigate the complexities of the law, whether it be wills or trusts or powers of attorney. But for most of our days, how many laws does a person need? Jesus answered that question: two. “He said to him, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”

If we are honest with ourselves, most of us have problems determining just how those two commandments apply to our daily lives, much like the problem with those Statutes at Large. In a famous sermon, Harry Emerson Fosdick, pastor of Riverside Church of New York City, suggested six ways to tell right from wrong; that is, what loving God and neighbor might look like if we put them into practice. The first is simply common sense. At a deep level, you and I know the difference between right and wrong. It’s not the same as the dictates of conscience; it’s simply to engage our brains before we act. Secondly, if we apply the principles of sportsmanship, we won’t break the rules or take special privileges because we expect a level playing field and we should be willing to extend that to others. Thirdly, in the deepest level of that place we call “self,” there is in all of us something that is good and noble – something opposed to the careless, vulgar, greedy self. It takes practice to call this higher self into conscious conversation and to follow its leadings. In fourth place is the Facebook test. What if everybody knew what I was doing? How many “likes” would the selfie of my thoughts and motives get? Fosdick cites Bishop Phillips Brooks: keep clear of concealment and the need for concealment, and “do nothing which he might not do out in the middle of Boston Common at noonday.” Fifthly, what would your most admired personality do in a similar situation? Put another way, what would Jesus do? That simple question would stop us in our tracks more often than we care to admit. Lastly, and perhaps most practically, where will this lead? Foresight is not just for the prophet. Some courses of action lead to outcomes impossible to predict but most consequences are clearly visible from the beginning. As Fosdick said, “Every man who picks up one end of a stick picks up the other. Aye! Every man who chooses one end of a road is choosing the other.”

How would my life look if I applied these six, simple principals? I suspect it would look a lot more like someone who loved God and neighbor, and if we believed Jesus, in those two laws are contained all the statutes we could print. All the rest is commentary.

 

Read Full Post »

Dancing to the Music of God

Every Who

Down in Who-ville

Liked Christmas a lot …

But the Grinch,

Who lived just north of Who-ville,

Did NOT!

With a heart two sizes too small, the Grinch is not only unable to join in the Who’s Christmas joy, he is incapable of understanding either the nature of Christmas or the reason for the holiday. He thinks that without the presents and the decorations and the Who-roast-beast there will be no Christmas. But in the end he finds he hasn’t stopped Christmas at all as hand-in-hand the Who’s joyfully sing “Without any presents at all!” Like Dickens’ Ebenezer Scrooge, Dr. Seuss’ Grinch finds that there is something more going on here, and like Charles Dickens, Ted Seuss Geisel has written a classic tale that reminds us that buried beneath the weight of the Christmas industry there is something worth recovering.

Ted Geisel was fifty-three when he wrote How the Grinch Stole Christmas. In the book there is a self-reference that expresses his frustration with what Christmas had become and his own struggle against the commercialization that by 1957 had all but obscured the true meaning of the season.

And the more the Grinch thought of this Who-Christmas-Sing, the more the Grinch thought, “I must stop this whole thing!

“Why, for fifty-three years I’ve put up with it now!

“I MUST stop this Christmas from coming!

… But HOW?”

We cannot stop this whole thing nor can we reverse the tide that has brought us here. The trouble is within us. Writing about the commercialization of Christmas has become hackneyed, and worse yet, misses the point. Our material culture exists because we want it. The mad rush to buy and sell, transforming what was once the second most sacred holiday in Christendom into an orgy of over-consumption, is the symptom of a greater malady. We have lost the ability to value the quiet, the sacred, the eternal that is our true self – the self-that walked with God in the cool of the day. (Gen. 3:8) And like our first parents we are found to be hiding, hiding from God and ourselves, for we dare not be found naked.

Yet it is the naked soul and only the naked soul that experiences true peace. The soul that seeks to shroud itself in robes spun from its own fancy can never be satisfied. This is the song of the world. Hurry! Hustle! Run! Quickly now, you mustn’t fall behind! The true song of the soul is heard in quietness and rest, and as Isaiah says, there is your true salvation. There is the music of the universe to soothe the soul. In Sand and Foam, Kahlil Gibran wrote, “How narrow is the vision that exalts the busyness of the ant above the singing of the grasshopper.” Have we lost the ability to appreciate the music of sheer play for play’s sake? How priceless are our days? Gibran went on to write,

They deem me mad because I will not sell my days for gold;

And I deem them mad because they think my days have a price.

It is wonderful to give and to receive at Christmas, but it is tragic to lose ourselves in that giving and getting. It is only the one whose days have no price that can joyfully join hands in Who-ville and sing, without any presents at all. And that is the message of the angels, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests.” That’s you in your soul’s most nakedness. This season: give with abandonment, receive without restraint, share without measure, and love unconditionally. Such is the love of Jesus, and the meaning of Christmas.

We can continue to live as if our hearts were two sizes too small, but wouldn’t it be better to live our days without a price, dancing to the music of God?

Read Full Post »

Lavender or Pale Yellow, They make the Same Casserole

Broad leaf lettuce, vine ripened tomatoes, and purple sweet potatoes caught my eye. Arranged like an artist’s palette, the tomatoes, lettuce and an assortment of pole beans and radishes framed the sweet potatoes – Stokes Purple. They have been commercially available since 2006, but are not widespread in our super markets. These were huge by any standard, and any two, picked at random, would make a delicious lavender casserole. Such is the greeting you receive when you ascend the few brick steps to Alexandria, Virginia’s Market Square on a Saturday morning. For over 260 years, local farmers, along with artists and artisans and bakers and butchers, have brought their goods for sale in the square. There is an apocryphal story that local farmer George Washington gave the land to the city for just this purpose. When the market was established in 1749, Washington was a magistrate for the local court and a trustee of the city. He was among those who approved and oversaw the construction of the new city hall and courthouse in 1752 and argued for the continuance of Market Square – the place where he sent his own farm products for sale.

The farmers market had fallen on hard times by the 1970s. Fortunately the city’s commitment to maintain the market as a local tradition was strong enough to ensure its survival, even though only a few venders set up their stalls on Saturday mornings for a handful of local residents. The 1980s saw resurging interest in healthy food choices and in locally grown produce. The city responded with new rules for the market intended to bolster its popularity and to ensure that the market tradition would remain strong. Today, the Alexandria Farm Market, held every Saturday morning throughout the year, is the oldest continuous farm market in the country, a delight for residents and tourists alike. There were no purple sweet potatoes in 1749, but I’m sure that their pale-yellow cousins were arranged just as artfully; business is, after all, business.

The outcome could have been different. Reduced popularity and support by local residents could have spelled the end of the market. There are many readily available alternatives. But these alternatives lack two essential elements – history and tradition. Such connections with the past speak to our need for both meaning and stability, assuring us that we are part of something of enduring value. Innovation and modernization ensure that we are not mired in the past, but agents of change need not abandon the core essentials that define organizations and enterprises.

There is a movement within American Christianity to redefine what it means to do church. Groups like “Fresh Expressions” are open to new ways of expressing religious faith in the public square. These non-traditional “churches” experiment with different modes of worship, different worship venues, and different organizational structures, and within both mainstream and evangelical churches there are calls for radical rethinking about all aspects of worship and discipleship. All of this is in the cause of modernization and the perceived need to make church relevant. Much of it is singularly ineffective.

What is missing is a vision of the future that includes a deep and abiding connection with the past, with those who have gone before us in the faith. It is not only possible, it is imperative that we modernize the church. At the same time, it is a terrible mistake to think that we can do so by severing ties with tradition. When Isaac returns from the lands of the Philistines to the land of his father Abraham, the writer of Genesis tells us: “Isaac dug again the wells of water that had been dug in the days of his father Abraham; for the Philistines had stopped them up after the death of Abraham; and he gave them the names that his father had given them.” [Genesis 26:18] It is again time to re-dig the old wells. The traditions of the church – traditions in hymnody, traditions in preaching, and traditions of liturgy – are rich wells that can be dug again in every generation. They bear the names our fathers have given them for a reason. They present the timeless truths of the Christian faith that remain relevant for every generation.

There were no Purple Stokes sweet potatoes on market shelves in 1749, but there were sweet potatoes. Lavender or pale yellow, they make the same casserole.

 

Read Full Post »