Friday, September 28, 2012

In Search of Eden


Reflections on Genesis 2:8-25, and Acts 2:44-47, 6:1


And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east; and there he put the man whom he had formed.”

Photo by k_myers@flickr.com
When I was in college and things got tough, I would take a walk … a walk off campus.  I attended a small liberal arts college in a sleepy, little, western Pennsylvania town.  One side of the campus rubbed shoulders with main street, while the other side transitioned easily into a quaint, tree-lined neighborhood.  When I missed home, when I was overwhelmed by academic pressure, when the drama of campus life seemed too much, I always chose to walk the tree-lined streets.  I was attracted to the picket fences and manicured lawns, the front porches and bicycles in the driveway.  I was attracted to what life could be, but wasn’t yet for me.  When I was at odds with my own life, when I felt lost, confused, and out of place, I went in search of home. 

Then the Lord said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make for him a helper as his partner.” … And the man and his wife were both naked, and were not ashamed.

I was in my late teens and early twenties in college.  I was in my late twenties and heading for thirty when I attended seminary.  I was still single.  I had yet to establish myself.  I was still working toward a career, still discerning a call, rather than living one out.  I had returned to dormitory life and there were times then too, when I felt at odds with myself.  Not so much lost or even confused, but impatient, as if life hadn’t truly begun for me yet.  In those moments of frustration and disappointment, I would go for a walk.  And just like my college days, my feet didn’t turn toward town, but headed east, in search of tree-lined streets, with well-worn homes and toys in the front yard.  I went as one on the outside looking in.  Looking for what had continued to elude me, in search of a sense of home.  I was looking for some idealized place where I could be my bathrobe and slippers self, my true self, not the self my professors expected or I assumed the church would demand.  I was looking for connection, vulnerability, trust, partnership and a common call.  I was looking for home.  I was looking for Eden.    

All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need.  Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God …

I have long since passed through my thirties and my forties and have recently welcomed fifty.  I am well into my career and trying each day to live within my call.  Still, occasionally I feel at odds with my life.  There are still goals and dreams I have yet to reach and I am at times very impatient.  But I live on a tree-lined street, in a quaint New Jersey town, in a neighborhood with bicycles in the driveways and manicured lawns.  I share my home with a family that I love dearly, who sees me at my best, but just as often at my worst. And still on occasion, I feel lost and confused.  There are bills to be paid and decisions to be made and demands on me and my time and attention that I often fail to fulfill.  Perfect is always just two steps beyond my reach.  It is home, but it isn’t Eden.  It is reality not fantasy.   

Now during those days, when the disciples were increasing in number, the Hellenists complained against the Hebrews because their widows were being neglected …

Those first believers, who gathered together sharing everything in common; life, faith and mission, must have felt that they had rediscovered Eden, a perfect world of connection, vulnerability, trust and a common call.  A world that looked at first well manicured and protected by a picket fence of God’s design.  But soon reality came to call.  Those who had so freely shared all they had with one another began to questions whether they and their people were receiving their fair share.  There was complaining and grumbling and finger pointing.  It was still home, but it was no longer Eden.  Or was it?

We will never know how the Eden of Genesis would have faired if Adam and Eve hadn’t gotten themselves thrown out.  Would it have remained all sweetness and light forever?  An unbreakable connection, rooted in mutual vulnerability and secured in total trust, the perfect partnership sharing a divine call.  Maybe fifty years have jaded me, but I don’t think so.  I think that they would have found something to quarrel about, demands made and demands ignored.  Eventually there would be complaining and grumbling and finger pointing, because we are human and that is how we roll … even in Eden. 

Home isn’t perfect and it isn’t a place.  It doesn’t require tree-lined streets and front porches or even 2.5 kids and a dog.  Home is a community of people, family in one sense or another, who share a common faith, a common commitment to love in the face of difficulty from without and even more so from within.  Home is the place where we can grumble and complain and point fingers, trusting that at the end of the day we will still be loved, forgiven and valued. 

I had a home in college and one in seminary too, I just didn’t always recognize it for what it was.  And at fifty I have stopped looking for the fantasy, because the reality of home is by far better still. 

Friday, September 21, 2012

A Wide Welcome


Reflections on Emily Dickinson and Matthew 7:1 

A great hope fell
You heard no noise
The ruin was within.
                                 Emily Dickinson

Mae was born in Scotland to a single mother almost 100 year ago. Because of the circumstances of her birth, she was deemed beyond the God’s good graces, born from sin and without hope. She was denied the sacrament of baptism in the Church of Scotland. Her mother, in response to her perceived misfortune, left Mae to be raised by her grandparents. For many years, Mae thought her grandparents were her birth parents. Her mother eventually fell in love again and married this time. She raised a new family, one that never included Mae. Mae never met her biological father, never had a genuine, mother-daughter relationship with her birth-mother and never joined a church, even in her adult life, because she was too ashamed to admit that she had never been baptized as a child. The truth of her birth and its consequences haunted Mae her entire life. She was 86 years old before she revealed this shame to her own daughter and granddaughter.

Judge tenderly of me.
                                 Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson was baptized. The famed nineteenth century poet was raised within the framework of New England Congregationalism at a time when faith was being challenged and stretched by the likes of Darwin. With her family, she attended church regularly and participated in daily, family, devotional gatherings as a child. She was a student of the bible. She was spiritual, but she was not narrow.  She was intelligent, but not rote. At the age of 16, Emily entered the Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, a prestigious academic institution. She studied a broad range of subjects from science to Latin, algebra to philosophy. She excelled academically, but it was her moral and religious constitution that was called into question when the school’s principal, Mary Lyon, came to the conclusion that Emily was a no hoper.  Emily refused to profess her faith publically at a school revival. According to principal Lyon, there were three types of student at Mount Holyoke. There were those who professed their faith publically and narrowly, those who hoped to one day profess publically and those, like Emily, who had no hope of making a public and dogmatic profession. Whose to say for sure what the consequence of such a label was for a young Miss Dickinson, but as an adult, Emily never chose to formally join a church. 

“Judge not, that ye may not be judged.”
                                           Matthew 7:1 (KJV)

We need not look back to the time of Jesus, or nineteenth century New England or even early twentieth century Scotland to find the human finger of judgment scarring the hearts of its victims. We know all too well its destructive power, the way human judgment seeks so narrowly to define who is in and who is out. And when our judgments presume to speak on behalf of God, the damage extends both ways. Our victims are prone to losing hope in God’s unqualified love and we, as a consequence of our own bad behavior, lose all hope of seeing the image of God, the beauty of the divine, in every human heart. The finger that we point, points back to us. The good news is that God is not defined nor limited by our human judgments. Grace and welcome extend in all directions and reach us in ways untold.

Baptize before without a choice,
But this time consciously, of grace
                                                                                 from Love’s Baptism by Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson found the divine apart from the church, grace found her in the beauty of the world seen outside her window. And what of Mae? She died at the age of 92 having never felt the welcome of a Christian congregation. Still, she was by all accounts a woman of deep faith. Her family sought to give her in death what she was denied in life, an official Christian welcome. They wanted for Mae a Christian burial, officiated by a Presbyterian pastor. I was that pastor. As we gathered at her graveside for prayers and words of comfort, a gentle rain began to fall covering her casket with streaks of holy tears.  All gathered understood that this was a baptism of welcome, an extension of divine healing, a lifelong shame dissolved and grace upon grace extended.  

What the church gets wrong, what humans twist and mangle, God heals and sets to right.  No human being can restrict God's wide welcome.  Thanks be to God!

Friday, September 14, 2012

Half Truths


Reflections on John 16:7-13

“Nevertheless, I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you.” And when he comes, he will prove the world wrong …”

Four-year-old, Amanda asked her mom how babies got inside their mother’s tummy.  Amanda’s mom told her a half-truth or maybe even a quarter-truth.  She said that it was miracle, a special gift from God and left it at that.  That worked just fine for little Amanda.  It was just enough truth to make her feel loved and special and connected to God … all good things and of course, absolutely true.  It was also just enough truth to ease the uncertainly of welcoming a new baby brother or sister in a couple of months.  If it is God who is giving her a baby brother or sister, well then it must be a good thing, she thought to herself.

Eventually, Amanda would need more truth.  She would ask her mother that very same question, worded differently of course, at ages six, seven and ten.  At age six she asked because her mom was pregnant again, at seven because her best friend’s dog was about to give birth and at ten because she was picking up some conflicting information from the older girls at the school bus stop.  Each time the topic came up, Amanda’s mom doled out a little more of the truth.  

Michael too found himself in the business of doling out the truth.  As a family physician, he was often in the position of calming the panic of internet self-diagnosticians and sounding the warning alarm for those who thought it could never happen to them.  He found himself, on a patient-to-patient basis, deciding with every appointment how much truth to tell.  It is a fine line between inspiring healthier living and stirring up unhealthy anxiety.  Most of his patients can’t handle the truth, at least not the whole truth.  

Life is series of unfolding truths.  The whole truth never comes all at once.  It is always just beyond our grasp.  It is too big.  We cannot take it all in.  We can’t handle it.  It slips through our fingers like water.  We cannot contain it, nor can we harness it.  We cannot manipulate it or own it, because it doesn’t belong to us.  It is beyond us and yet from time to time we bump into fragments of truth that satisfy us for a time.  Like the tale of the blind man who encounters an elephant bit by bit, our experiences expose bits of truth, quarter truths and half truths. As we age and grow, as life knocks us around a bit, as our vision expands along with our questions, more truth lies waiting to be mined. 

“I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.  When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth…”

Photo by Jaime Owens
Jesus was preparing the disciples for his departure … for his death.  He had shared so much with them in the time they traveled together.  So many miracles, so many memorable moments, so many bits of truth, but there was still so much to say, so much to do, so much to experience and yet their time together was about to come to an end.  Change was in the air.  A storm was brewing.  Things would not be the same, but not even death could stop truth from coming. Truth telling would not end with a Galilean Jesus.  The truth would continue to unfold.  It would continue to find them just as it continues to find us.  Jesus had more truth to tell.  And even now God has more truth to tell and it is the Holy Spirit who guides us to it, shines the light on it and stirs within us a hunger for it, if we will just pay attention.  

People grow and societies grow.  Experiences and experiments, getting it right and getting it wrong, all carry within them treasured truths to be mined and embraced or rejected and ignored.  No one has it all right and I venture to guess no one has it all wrong.  Those, who in their arrogance, believe they have it all, the whole truth, revel in their ignorance.  While those, who in humility, discover that the more they know, the more they don't know,  grow closer to the whole truth with every question they ask.  For God is in the business of doling out the truth, bits at a time.

  


Friday, September 7, 2012

Why?


Reflections on Matthew 5:4

“Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.”

There has been a lot of death of late in my circle of friends, family and acquaintances.  Some unexpected, some welcomed, and a few drawn out.  Regardless of the circumstances, the result has been the same … shock, an overwhelming sense of loss, anger and a confrontation with the mystery of life and death.  The grieving process seems a lot like a tornado.  Whether it comes with or without warning, the damage is the same.  It tears things up.  It rearranges things.  It sets things down in new places.  Its effects can be felt for a very long time and as we are engaged in cleaning up the mess, we ask again and again, “Why?” 

“Why?” is an unsatisfying question, because we know, before we even ask that it has no final or complete answer.  It is and will remain, on this side of death anyway, a true mystery.  Not that that stops us from asking.  It is the perpetual frustration of our own human limitations.  We want, we need, things to make sense and so often the circumstances of death just don’t make sense.  Death reminds us that we don’t know all we think we know.  It exposes our plans and our dreams for the future for what they really are … wishful thinking.  Death reminds us that there are some things that we just can’t control or manipulate. What comfort is there in that?

***************

In my blog entitled Passing Through, I told a story about Lisa, who lost her husband in a kayaking accident.  She was left to wrestle with the whys of that tragic loss while parenting two very young daughters.  When the shock of that loss was still very fresh, Lisa received a letter from Roy, one of the pastors of her church.  He was vacationing when the accident happened, but word reached him quickly and he responded as follows:

Dear Lisa,

It is early in the morning here on the pond, very quiet – save for the loons cooing more than usual.  The fog hasn’t lifted yet, so I can’t see the other shore – even though I know it is there!  It is an old and hackneyed analogy, I know, but this view of nature seems to mirror what’s going on in many of our hearts.

Last night I received an email from Ilse talking of Brian’s death.  In an instant, a fog-like veil closed over the future, and all those future type questions you both partially answered are urgent and alive again:  Why?  What now?  How?  What about the kids?  All of us are asking these questions which are so especially yours to answer.

We know that Brian has the answers, that he rests in the promises of God and no more sees through a mirror darkly.

But for you, and for all of us who love and care about you, there is still the fog – and you know and we all know we just need to stand together and wait – knowing that this grey stuff will clear away (as it has here, now) and we shall see that God, who has been standing and waiting with us, will make of all this heartache a good and new and even joyous thing.

Roy
 
Words of comfort in the wake of loss, not answers, but hope.  A reminder that what we see only in a mirror dimly, God sees clearly.  What we can’t know, God does know.   That there are promises, steeped in the goodness of God, that we can’t control or manipulate or fully understand, but can find comfort in, because the one who promises loves us so very much.  These are promises that are bigger than our losses, that are not limited to our length of days, promises that extend beyond the grave.  

***************

Roy passed away this summer.   It was unexpected, not his death, but the cancer that claimed him.  Family and friends, those Roy loved and those Roy ministered to, where left shaking their heads and looking for answers in the fog.  When the word of Roy’s death reached Lisa, she found that letter, written almost ten years ago, and delivered it to his wife.  Comforting words from Roy’s own hand, delivered from one widow to another.  She also sent me a copy.  Roy’s words were read at his memorial service … one last sermon of sorts, delivered from the bank of an invisible shore.   

Blessed are those who mourn.  Blessed are those who in the face of loss weather the storm and fear not the fog, for they will find comfort, not in answers, but in promises.  Promises extended from God, through the pages of scripture, interpreted by friends and strangers and even pastors, in moments of compassion and sympathy.  Blessed are those who rest in those promises and trust that God indeed is not absent, but near and will make of all this heartache a good and new and even joyous thing.”


Dedicated in gratitude for the life and ministry of the Rev. Dr. Emyrus Royden Weeks. 
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Whispers in the Wind by Linda E. Owens is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.