Pixie Dust

Reflections on Isaiah 11:6, Matthew 17:20-21 & Romans 8:28

“… and a little child shall lead them.”

On Tuesday nights youth gather in the basement of my church, in an area we call THE CAVE.  They come to share a meal and to hangout, maybe do homework or play pool or even study the bible. This week some youth came with whole families in tow.  There are many families throughout New Jersey and New York who are still without power as a result Hurricane Sandy.  Tuesday was day eight of no power, no lights, no heat, no technology, for some no water.  Temperatures inside those homes were registering in the 40s.  It was getting old as well as cold. The church was warm though.  Its power had been restored on Friday (day 4).  So our Tuesday night gathering was a chance to warm up, charge phones and iPods and share a meal … in the light!

While many of us were eating manicotti and swapping lights-out stories, seven-year-old Lila was gathering pixie dust.  She had found a handful of old Halloween confetti on the floor of a small storage closet.  She carefully scooped it up without attracting any attention and began quietly handing it out to those seated around the kitchen bar.  When she got to me, she tapped me on the arm and unfurled her hand, inviting me to take a look.  I saw Halloween confetti, but Lila saw pixie dust, magic pixie dust.

She invited me to make a wish, but not at the bar.  I had to sit in a magic chair that she had positioned under a recessed light.  I was not familiar with pixie dust etiquette, so Lila explained that I needed to sit in the magic chair, while she sprinkled the dust on the top of my head.  My job was to silently make a wish.  So I did.  When my wish was made, I shook my head and let the pixie dust fly, then I went back to the bar to finish my dinner.

Lila invited a couple of others to make wishes and it was no mystery what those silent wishes were.  Everyone was wishing for power.  Not magic power or financial power or even political power (it was election night), we were all wishing for electrical power, for life to return to some sense of normal.

“For truly I tell you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there’, and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you.”

Life in the Cave went right back to normal.  Making wishes to satisfy the exuberance of a seven-year-old was fun and cute, but came without expectation or any renewed sense of hope.   We all returned quickly to conversations about generators, gasoline and electric companies and Lila moved on easily too, ditching the pixie dust for a princess puzzle.  But then the cell phones began to ring; first one call, then another.  Power had returned for Michele at her home and then Kira got the call and Kyle.  There was an instant change in mood in the room and all eyes began to turn to Lila.  Silent wishes were revealed, all having been granted via a handful of confetti and the faith of a child.  Call it coincidence or luck or serendipity, whatever your want, but the circumstance and the timing were pretty wonderful.  The only one who was unmoved, who was not surprised, was Lila.  With the nonchalance of certainty, she simply responded to our amazement with the matter-of-fact reasoning of faith; “I told you it was magic.”

Pixie dust and mustards seeds aren’t magic and Halloween confetti can’t turn on the lights, but faith can move mountains.  And faith, it appears isn’t surprised when the mountains move.  Faith expects God to act.  Faith trusts that our hopes and our wishes matter of God.  Faith knows that with God all things are possible.  Faith also frees us to let go, once the wish is made, allowing us to move on to other matters, other puzzles, knowing that our prayers are resting in God’s merciful hands and while all might not be resolved quickly or even exactly as per our request, the assurance that God works all things together for the good is enough.  Faith is the light that makes living in the dark possible.

“We know that all things work together for the good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.”

   *Please know that this in no way seeks to make light (no pun intended) of those who lost so much more than power as a result of Hurricane Sandy.  There is no magic pixie dust that can bring loved ones back or repair a home that has been swept way by the ocean.  But faith tells us that life does not end with death and the story, our stories are not yet fully written.  God has more to do and we are never without hope that better is on its way.  My prayer for all those who are still suffering is that God will bring good out of loss and frustration … maybe by way of a miracle or a stranger or by the power of community.  May this storm bring out the best in those whose hope is in the Lord.  Amen.   

  

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!