Category Archives: fear
What Does the Lord Require?
. Christians are in a challenging, but potentially grace filled time, no matter how we voted. Let’s look at Jesus , so that we, like the apostles, can respond as whole heartedly to his call to let go of everything and “Come, follow me.” Jesus grew up and did most of his ministry in the Region of Galilee, a crossroads area which Isaiah called the Region of the Nations and Matthew called the region of the Gentiles. In spite of this mixed culture where he grew up, Jesus was a cradle, synagogue going Jew. He totally believed his call was only to God’s chosen, the Jews, whose leadership had become more legalistic and proud, than loving. Yet, from almost the beginning of his public ministry, Jesus heals not only people of foreign religions, but the hated Roman oppressors. Why? It seems to have been just because he is kind. 1st question: ARE WE JESUS KIND? the kind that includes having mercy on those different from us in religion, race, or even, God forbid, politics? Eventually, Jesus, with tears of heartbreak and perhaps feelings of failure, realizes that his own people, the chosen, can not open their hearts and minds to a Messiah whose salvation was not about earthly power, because they do not believe in life after death. 2nd question: DO WE BELIEVE IN LIFE AFTER DEATH? Enough to respond differently to suffering than those that don’t? Any time a group of us older gals have been swapping horror stories about knees, hips, eyes, ears and bladders gone bad, someone always says, “Well, it’s better than the alternative.” REALLY? It better not be. I’ve put all my chips on Jesus! 3rd question: WHAT DOES THE LORD REQUIRE OF US? Micah tells us “to do JUSTICE, to love MERCY, and to walk HUMBLY with your God. JUSTICE, MERCY, HUMILITY… that’s not an easy or common combination. Some of us are stronger on fighting for justice for any group of the powerless, while others of us are merciful one on one to everyone. Often we have trouble relating, because we all lack the third requirement, humility. Humility comes from picking up our own personal cross. That is the cross where we die to our self-righteousness: I am right or I am kind/ our false sense of superiority: I am smarter than those I disagree with or I am kinder than those I disagree with/and our delusion of infallibility: what I believe is the whole truth and nothing but the truth. But these mind sets are what turn believing we are the people of God into the blinding sin of pride. The power of our cross is that it frees us from these blind spots of pride so we can become peacemakers. 4th question: SO, HOW CAN WE DO ALL THAT THE LORD REQUIRES OF US? How can we sacrifice ourselves fighting for justice for the poor or the persecuted without leaving a trail of wounded people we consider obtuse in our wake? Or How can we be kind and open to others, when we are being ridiculed? First, We all admit that we cannot do it on our own. Let yourself feel the frustration of that. We Americans are “just do it” people. But to become peacemakers, we need grace. And grace comes from walking hand in hand with God humbly accepting our dependence. Do you remember walking holding your parent’s hand when you were tiny, of holding your own young child or grandchild’s hand, of walking hand in hand with your boy or girl friend? Do you remember the sheer sweetness of that, the comfort, the safety, the bond, the closeness you felt, and how you could hear them when they leaned over to whisper, “I love you.” That is what it’s like to become close enough to God to have that same safety from losing our way by walking hand in hand. To walk closely to God takes using every means that will help us live in awareness of God’s loving presence, so we can hear God’s voice over our own.
This Life: Appetizers Only
During a Jungian inner journey in my late fifties, I had a very vivid dream. My husband and I were in a dining room on a boat on a river cruise. They brought us a series of small appetizers one at a time, which my husband ate with great pleasure, but I ignored while waiting for the main course. At some point, I realized there would be no main course. I was furious and went searching the boat for another dining room. When I found one, they only brought me an apple, which I threw against the wall in frustration. I went out on the front deck of the boat to see where we were going just as it began to go through a dark tunnel which became so small that I had to hunch down as we went through it. I felt total despair at first, but became hopeful when I saw some light at the end of the tunnel. Since then I have learned to delight in and treasure the small joys of life, while accepting the pain of failures and disappointments that are part and parcel of being an imperfect human being in an imperfect world. I used to live focused on the future with its possibilities, missing both the joys and the grace available in the difficulties of the present. At seventy-nine, I am pretty much running out of future! But since that dream, I have had many experiences, both joyful and heartbreaking that have become grace for me. Life is about spiritual growth from living in awareness and finding meaning in the whole reality of the journey, not ego or worldly gains or idealized scenarios.
Heartbreaks that have brought grace:
The pain of loss filling me with hate, but persistence in prayer freeing me to let go and accept not only loss, but mine and others’ flawed humanity.
Letting go of past ways of experiencing tenderness and intimacy and becoming open to new ways of feeling deeply cherished even in my helplessness and physical pain.
Accepting that one of age’s delights, sharing laughter with the one I love the most, has an expiration date, because it brings on debilitating coughing spasms due to his progressive lung disease, then finding peace instead in quiet moments of just holding one another.
Letting go of the need for understanding, so I can begin to love instead of need.
Sadly recognizing my own vulnerabilities in the generations following me and knowing the pain these will bring them, but beginning to see that God can bring them through to joy as he has me time and time again.
Knowing that life will not get easier, but believing that grace will continue to bring the fruit of love from both heartbreak and joy.
Appetizers on the journey this Christmas season:
The tree full of cardinals outside our windows, children’s laughter, babies’ smiles, hugs from my husband Julian, people being kind and friendly in a crowded grocery store right before Christmas, Americans’ amazing kindness to the handicapped, Christmas decorations, Julian sitting quietly in the dark enjoying his Christmas village, both Leonard Cohen’s Halleluja and Handel’s Messiah, getting to do the sermon from the molehill at our worship service on Christmas day, our son Mike’s photos and delightful descriptions of his students at the Cambodian orphanage for children born HIV positive, our son Chris getting an interesting new job and so many people in Dickson telling me how wonderful he is, my suicidal friend now ministering to others, seeing friends find new hope in the person of Jesus without having to buy into the hang ups of any denomination, Tylenol taking away all my pain for a while, my loyal friend Margie being a constant in my life, my sister-in-law’s mouth-watering fudge cake, my first cup of coffee in the morning, Christmas memories on face book, our son Steve’s humor and willingness to take care of us Aged Parents in bizarre experiences in foreign airports, all of our grandchildren and great grandchildren, grandson Josh and wife Paula and seven year old Eisley’s adventurous spirits, grandsons Jordan and Jake’s caring hearts and courage, Nativity scenes, granddaughter Hadley so happy wearing her Unicorn Onesie at Norman Family Christmas, granddaughter Emma and her BFF talking and laughing non-stop in the back seat while I drove them to the mall, getting freed from my temporary insanity of hating someone by saying a prayer for love and peace each time while writing it on over a hundred Christmas cards, our teen-aged granddaughter Sophie hugging Julian whenever she sees him and laughing and discussing great books with nephew David, the HO HO HO’s – my friends who are not afraid to color outside the lines, my very own fun super drummer boy great-grandson Aaron, our daughter-in-law Molly’s incredible ability to continue to love even those that bring her heartbreak, our daughter Julie’s infectious laughing attacks that we call “Julie moments”, eight year old Bella’s unfettered enthusiasm for life, memories of waking up to a snow covered world, grown granddaughter Carmen’s resilience and lightning quick sense of humor, the delight of making vegetable soup to share with sick friends and the poor, becoming friends with our fascinating and loving cousin Mary Eleanor, my ninety-four year old friend, Barbara’s children coming to see her in shifts from all over America this Christmas season, grown up great grandson Ryan still having good memories of going downtown with me before the stores opened to earn nickels by sounding out words on signs, some people actually responding to my blogs, being able to keep up with my best friend from High School and College on line, getting to know interesting and friendly people in Canada, England, Nigeria, France, New Zealand and other countries across the globe through the internet, my Study Club women friends, who have miraculously bonded across huge differences in religion, politics, age, background, economics and interests.
These are just a few parts of the wonderful collage of my life that bring me seasons of joy in what sometimes momentarily seems like the “cesspool” of life.
Passiondeathresurrection: the Narrow Gate
Our human nature resists the whole concept of suffering. If there is a God worth calling God, why would the innocent and good have to suffer?
If this life is all there is, then there really doesn’t appear to be any reasonable answer to that.
And in my own experience, the more people I let myself care about, never-the-less love, the more I open myself to suffering. How much more would I suffer if I truly loved, or even just cared moderately about all humanity, all animals, perhaps even all creation?
Part of the mystery of suffering is that it seems to be part and parcel of loving. Loving involves being willing to suffer for another and others. Most of us have trouble loving even one person that we choose for a lifetime and sure don’t want to even consider loving people that look or think very differently than we do.
The Jews longed for a Messiah, a Savior, for literally thousands of years. Have you ever wondered why a close friend, a follower who witnessed the miracles, the power, and the kindness of Jesus would betray him to the point of giving him over to suffer and die. What brought Judas to that kind of hatred?
The shattered expectation that the Messiah would save the Jews, God’s chosen people, from suffering. Judas witnessed the reality of the power Jesus had, but more and more he saw Jesus using it to save the enemy. And unlike optimistic Peter, he heard what Jesus was beginning to say about his own coming suffering, even dying, instead of freeing them from the tyranny of Rome , the impoverishment of Roman taxes, the constant threat of their children becoming random victims of a ruler’s whim. Judas wanted a triumphant King, not a suffering servant. Disillusionment turned hope into bitterness and hate.
What kind of love was choosing to die rather than to save God’s chosen people?
We still struggle with that question.
Without the resurrection, surely we would all endorse the survival of the fittest at the expense of the vulnerable. If we believed this life is all there is, would we respond to the call to pick up our cross and follow Jesus? We saw where that led Jesus. It led him through the acceptance of the refining of suffering, the acceptance of humbling helplessness and the crushing feeling of abandonment, even finally through the gate of death itself and only then to resurrection.
The reality is that life is made up of cycles of struggling with suffering until we can accept the deaths of our idols and illusions, the things we cling to out of fear, and only then can we be reborn freer to love each time. Only then do we grow better at loving other imperfect people up close and personal and to care about even the lepers, the hostile, the foreign, the frightening, and the lost.
Life’s natural process includes loss, helplessness, letting go, experiencing the peace of acceptance, then the rebirth of gratitude and humility that leads to love, joy and fruitfulness.
Passion, death, and resurrection should be one process word.
Perspective : Poverty and Affluence
When you’ve lived as long as I have, you’re a walking history book of sorts. I’ve known six generations of my own family, been through five wars involving America, personally experienced both affluent times and scary times of scarcity, lived in big cities and in back woods’ ‘hollers,’ and traveled to fifteen foreign countries, some of them several times. My father’s family were very wealthy until the depression. Then they lost everything. There were nine children. The older ones experienced all the trimmings of affluence, summer homes and homes abroad. The older boys became Vice Presidents of their father’s company and the girls were debutantes. But, the younger ones had to make it on their own. Though as one of the younger ones, my father didn’t get to finish college, he eventually became an editor of a big city newspaper. This didn’t make us rich. I grew up living in apartments. And in my younger years I was frighteningly aware at times that we lived close to the precipice of poverty. But a newspaper editor has a certain amount of status and connections. One senator, who eventually ended up President, in his early political years asked my father to be his press secretary. Speaking and writing English properly were important in my family. My husband’s father on the other hand grew up seriously poor in a large family. His English was not always perfect. He worked from a very young age, put himself through college, and became a very successful lawyer. He knew several American Presidents, even had Jack and Jackie Kennedy to brunch at his home. My husband, as the youngest of five, grew up affluent in a house with twelve fire places, that later became a private school. We ourselves have experienced being reasonably affluent. But through a combination of circumstances and timing, we went through some financially challenging times. Those included an unforgettable night with our whole family out in the snow. My husband was cutting down a tree, while the rest of us passed logs in an assembly line for the wood burning stove, both to keep us warm and keep the pipes from freezing.
There are some things I have learned from the rich variety of my life experiences.
Ancestors do not define us.
Money doesn’t make us virtuous, but poverty doesn’t either.
Neither does knowledge make us wise.
Adversity can, but does not necessarily, strengthen us.
What we mean is more important than how we say it.
Ultimately, what’s inside us will matter much more than our circumstances.
There’s a difference between smart people and intelligent ones, but I need to learn from both. I delight in talented people and am actually most comfortable around people who march to a different drummer than the majority. I have grown to particularly appreciate people who have persevered and become compassionate through seriously hard times.
I am enriched by any kind of beauty whether in nature, art, music, people, or things, but don’t need to own them to experience joy from them.
I have enjoyed having money for extras in life.
However, I am most grateful for the enlightenment that comes from experiencing a taste of the limits and fears that go with poverty, but also discovering the possibilities in the wider world that come with affluence.
And now at this age, there are two characteristics that I value more than anything else: simple kindness and the humility to laugh at ourselves.
Thanksgiving Lallapalooza
We tried, but we couldn’t do it. The first holiday with their parents divorced was not going to be wonderfully happy for four young granddaughters, no matter what their grandparents tried to do. And Uncle Steve, our family’s designated-cheerer-upper, spent five hours in the Atlanta airport on stand-by trying to join us in Nashville. He gave up about one in the afternoon.
The day did have both fun and kind moments. A fun one happened while Julian and Tommy and the two younger girls were taking the boat tour around the main floor of the incredible Opryland Hotel. The two teens and I were waiting near the stream. While I was looking around at the extravaganza of Christmas decorations, I noticed a middle-aged looking man about to come down some steep steps across from us on the other side of the stream. He stopped at the top and looked around. No one was on the steps or nearby and I don’t think he saw us. So suddenly, he just sat on the middle banister and happily slid all the way down. Hadley and I spontaneously applauded, but he had hurried off. I’m thankful for that magical moment.
All four girls and Tommy had their picture taken with Santa. Hadley told Santa all she wanted for Christmas was a job. Bella said that she told Santa she wanted a particular game, but didn’t tell him it cost $75. While the girls were picking out a photo, Santa came all the way over to where I was sitting in a wheelchair to wish me a Happy Thanksgiving and Merry Christmas. I’m thankful for that sweet kindness.
The boaters, old and young, enjoyed the guide’s mix of funny and interesting information and the variety of sights on the boat ride. Bella spotted a pretend alligator in a nook. But by then, they all were hungry. The eating places in the Hotel are pretty expensive and crowded, so the girls used Google to find a Waffle House just across the road. I attempted a veto, but got over ruled. I am not a healthy eater and I love butter, but Waffle House must just pour extra grease over everything right before they serve it. Nobody ate much of their food. But seventeen year old Sophie and twelve year old Emma both had stomach aches, so Tommy took them home. Tommy is an amazing father in his balance of caring, discipline, and having fun with the girls. But I think it was stomach aches from sadness, more than Waffle House food, that sent them home.
Julian and I took nineteen year old Hadley and eight year old Bella back to Opryland. In an inside playground area, Bella rode a train around and around and around in a seriously boring circle, but she got to enthusiastically ring a bell very loudly all the way around the six loops, so she was happy. (The woman running the train, not so much.) We re-named her Bella, Bella, Bell Banger.
We then shopped in a Christmas Crafts and Gifts room. Bella tried on some fun jewelry and liked several bracelets that were just a little too big. I told her she had a twelve dollar budget, but she decided to wait until she had gone all around the rest of the Bazaar to decide. Which is to me an amazing choice of delayed gratification for an eight year old. She said finally that all she wanted was a dollar rock candy lollypop. Hadley didn’t see anything she wanted either. They are both surprisingly careful shoppers. Of course, I spent some money on small, but irresistible, handmade Christmas decorations for two homebound friends. They now mysteriously seem to have found their perfect place in our apartment.
About three o’clock Bella got tired and weepy, so we started back to where we had come in. I began pushing her on the walker I had been using now instead of a wheelchair. Before we got all the way back, my hip and knee began to hurt, so I ousted Bella and Julian took over pushing me along the pebbled concrete walk.
Unfortunately, we hit an unseen bump and the walker and I went over backwards. I did a two point landing, head first, then on my right hip. My head hitting the concrete made a horrible noise. Julian bent over reaching down to me and I thought he was going to try to pick me up and it scared me into screaming “No!” at him.. Poor baby, he was actually just trying to comfort me. People started gathering and the ones who had been close by were telling them what an awful sound my head had made when it hit the concrete. I was in serious pain, very dizzy, and nauseated. I didn’t think I could sit up without falling over. Luckily, a kind male nurse came to our rescue, checking the bruise and bump on the back of my head, asking me my name and other questions to see if I had a serious head injury. When I started to raise my head, he stopped me until we were sure my neck didn’t hurt. Finally, we all agreed for him, his friend, and Julian to lift me to my feet. The nurse apologized and promised he wasn’t trying to grope me, as he struggled to get a firm grip on me. I wanted to assure him that at my age groping wasn’t much of a hazard, but I needed to focus on getting my legs under me. Once on my feet, I was shaky, but able to stand. As Julian helped me make it slowly to the door, I realized that my glasses were missing, but Hadley had already retrieved them from where they had flown off. She is wonderful in an emergency. She went ahead of us opening doors. And while Julian went to get the car, she put her arm around me to keep me steady and then she helped get the walker into the car. Bella was upset for me, so I assured her I was going to be okay and I was just grateful that she hadn’t still been riding on the walker. Once we got into the car, I sat on one of the two ice packs I had brought in my small drink carrier and held the other to the bump on my head. Those ice packs were wonderful serendipities. I took two Tylenol and prayed all the way home for an exhausted and shaken Julian driving in surprisingly heavy traffic. By the time we got home, he was sorer than I was from so much walking and trying to pull me and the walker back up when we were going over. Between Tylenol and ice packs, I never really hurt unbearably and the sizeable bump on my head went down quickly. Next time, I’ll stick with the wheel chair instead of switching to my walker. It’s safer and I receive a lot of kindness, even from Santa, when I’m in it.
I am Thankful for the happy moments today. I am thankful for my family. I am thankful that Bella wasn’t the one hurt. I am thankful that I don’t seem to have any permanent or serious damage, because I hit the hardest part of me, the back of my head, and the most padded part, my backside. Since I have put on weight this year and most of it settled on my backside, I think I was spared a broken hip or damage to the already herniated disc and bone spur in my lower back. Amazing how many unlikely saving graces there are in the hard and scary times.
Day after the Lallapalooza, I am Thankful for: Julian was fully recovered by morning. He slept eleven hours and got up early to clear the living room for setting up the village. Our son Chris came and helped him all day.
I was able to sleep in spite of my bruises. I managed to get the turkey breast and gravy cooked and I had the vegetables already fixed.
I made absolutely no ‘to do’ lists.
I happily started playing Christmas music. I got to enjoy photos on face book of the girls decorating their dad’s apartment for Christmas. My head and backside and bad knee are only slightly sore.
Nausea has been my only strong after effect from my head bashing.
That the nausea helped me stick to my diet all day. It seems to be letting up. I should be able to lead worship service Sunday, even nauseated. Though that conjures up some scary mental pictures, if I don’t eat, all should be well.. And thanks be, no one sits in the front rows anyway. 🙂
Both Sides of Prejudice
When my Mom was growing up in Jackson, Mississippi in the nineteen twenties, her public high school was next to the one Catholic Church and school. She believed that the nuns wore headdresses to cover their horns. Most of the Catholics in Jackson were immigrants from countries in Eastern Europe that she had never heard of. And their languages seemed strange and scary to her, as were any Blacks that she didn’t know. She ended up with a job in New Orleans and married to a Catholic newspaperman, who also happened to be a strong advocate for integration. She was a naturally kind person who cared about people, so she gradually adopted my Dad’s way of thinking. Though she remained Methodist, she was one of the most active mothers in my Catholic school and became great friends with the nun that taught me in first grade. But when my Dad went away in the army in the nineteen forties, Mom and I went to live with her parents back in Jackson. I went to a public grade school near by. As a new and very scared second grader, I experienced everyone in the school gathering in the gym and being separated into groups by religion. I have no idea why. But out of several hundred children, I was the only Catholic. Not a comfortable experience for an eight year old child.
In the mid-nineteen-fifties, my Dad, now a newspaper editor in Houston, Texas, endorsed the first black to run for a position on the school board. The schools were still separate, but the black schools had never had any representation. Late on the night of the election, the entry hall to our apartment was bombed. The bomb was primitive, but strong enough to make sharp pieces of slate and even the confetti packing all stick in the door and walls. Fortunately, I stopped on the way downstairs to answer the door when the bell rang. It was long after midnight and my dad wasn’t home from covering the election yet, so I stopped half way down just as the bomb went off.
In the sixties, now living in my husband’s home town of Nashville, Tennessee, one of my social friends proclaimed furiously and proudly that as a hospital volunteer, she had refused to carry a black baby out to the car that day. She had done this right in front of the parents. I was horrified that a Christian mother with a college degree would be so cruel. So, I decided to volunteer at a black grade school as a tutor for children having trouble reading . As I grew fond of these delightful small children, I began to consider how limited their future would be, even if they learned to read. So, I joined the NAACP and worked in their offices trying to find employment for blacks in the white community. I happened to be working there on the day the Poor People’s March on Washington came through Nashville. Young blacks, who were in the more extreme Black Protest movements, came through the office where I was working that day. They obviously hated whites and made sure I was very aware of that. I went home stricken by my experiences of the extremes of hatred between the races. How could we avoid a bloody race war? But God sent Martin Luther King, Jr. and his message of non-violent protest. Thanks to him and many other brave Christian Blacks, we live in a different world now and my grandchildren have friends of all colors.
In the early seventies, my husband and I and our five children moved to a very rural area of middle Tennessee. One day, as I came into the little neighborhood grocery that had chairs around a potbellied stove, I overheard one of the men sitting there say, “Yep, If someone hadn’t of killed those Kennedys, we’d have a Pope running our country now and those Catholics you think are your friends would be killin’ us in our beds.” No one argued the point.
Don’t assume that because you are a law abiding white middle class American, you will never experience prejudice.
In the eighties, I had to use a wheelchair because there was no medicine yet for a condition that made walking excruciatingly painful for my feet. About that time, one of our sons went to work for an airline that allowed him to take us abroad for only the tax on tickets. So, we began years of traveling with the challenge of me in a wheel chair. America had already become mostly handicapped accessible, so we were not really prepared for the differences in Europe. In many countries the only accessible bathrooms were in a McDonalds’. In the German speaking part of Switzerland, in Vienna, Austria, and in the Czech Republic we met with open hostility. And the hostility was not just from skin heads. In Prague, when trying to get across a road in the rain and onto an awning covered side walk, wide enough for a wheelchair and other people to walk, several middle-aged, middle class looking women standing together chatting, not only wouldn’t move even slightly to let us get out of the rain, but one scowling, turned and literally hissed at me. I cried that night. I considered myself a kind middle class woman of reasonably pleasant appearance. Why would someone hate me without even knowing me. We learned it wasn’t because we were Americans. Now that the communists were gone, the Czechs were welcoming westerners with open arms. But until that year those with any kind of handicap had been kept inside, sometimes in attics.The new President’s wife was just starting a campaign to help them become an accepted part of the society. Shortly after we returned to America, we read that a German family had sued a restaurant in Germany for allowing a handicapped person to be seated where they were visible to others. They claimed that having to see this person while they ate ruined their vacation. The saddest part is that the court agreed and they were awarded $20,000.
Don’t assume if you are a liberal Democrat, that you aren’t prejudiced.
My assumptions about my lack of prejudice were knocked silly when I was substitute teaching a seventh grade English class in my small rural town. I called on a young black man and just stood there speechless with my mouth hanging open when he answered in an upper class British accent using four and five syllable words, that I had actually never spoken, only read. I had been totally unaware of my preconceptions, because of my limited experience.
I realized that I had some prejudice against Germans from WWII and years of movies and books about the Holocaust. Though I knew not all Germans agreed or participated in persecuting the Jews, I had not read of many Germans that risked their own their lives for them, except the Protestant theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, author of the book The Cost of Discipleship. At first, my experiences in Europe reinforced my prejudice. But, when reflecting back on the many experiences of kindness and generosity by Germans, Austrians, and Czech’s while in their countries, I realized I was focusing on a minority because of my long unchallenged prejudice.
We can and will survive our current fears and prejudices, if we commit to working toward a better America for all people, including both whites and blacks, who cannot afford college or have different gifts more suited to vocational education and also for immigrants seeking sanctuary for their children from wars not of their choosing.
Fellow Democrats, Please Lend Me Your Ears.
Fellow democrats, we are sounding like our opponents did before the election. Now, maybe we will understand what feeling unheard and powerless does to people’s sense of decency. Please, let’s don’t go there. It will not help anything. The time to protest is when actual laws that we cannot in good conscience support are proposed. And then protest only in the non-violent tradition of Martin Luther King .
Admit it, we ourselves have been disgusted by attacks on President’s wives in the past. Don’t do it. Complain to face book or at least hide vicious vulgarity on your pages. It simply lowers us to the level of everything that we have been against. Wake up Democrats. Fear creates monsters. We know that. Stop now or we will wake up one morning and have to face that we have become the enemy.
Losing, Letting Go, and Loving
As Christians, because of Jesus, we know that God loves everyone: Jew and Gentile, Christian and non-Christian, the conqueror and the conquered, the faithful spouse and the adulterer, the honest politician and the crooked tax collector, the socially acceptable and the outcast leper, even those controlled by the demons of fear and hate.
We need to remind ourselves that Jesus came down hardest on those that thought that they, themselves, were the righteous ones. Why? Why did he do that? Because every single one of us falls short of the glory of God. And the glory of God is unconditional Love.
We live in anxious times when many feel invisible and powerless. And anger is more bearable than fear. But faith in the Love of God for ALL of us, not in self-righteousness, is the only way the kingdom of God will ever come on earth. It began with God. It was fleshed out in Jesus. It’s up to us now.
We Are Up to this Moment by Anne Lamott
You can probably guess how I feel today, exhausted, in despair, and like hiding from it all. But my Good Dog Lady Bird and I are about to go hiking, and nature will heal us, sustain and renew us–for at least an hour. I’ll take it! Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote, “The world is charged with the grandeur of God,” and the divine electrical field of love and beauty will all but leave my mouth hanging open in awe. I’ve said before that if birdsong were the only pooof that there is another, deeper, wider reality, it would be proof enough for me.
Then I’ll go hang out with some sober women, many of whom have had decades of sobriety and slow jerky-jerky resurrection; some of whom will only have a few weeks. All of them know exactly what the end of the world feels like, and maybe feel it in different form, but for every one of us, the end of the world was where new life began. Hitting bottom was the beginning of everything beautiful and true and full of integrity in our lives. We’ll stick together, get each other lovely cups of tea or bad coffee, eat our body weight in cookies, and get through another hour in gratitude. Someone will be sure to remind us that we thought we were hotshots when we first got sober, but we helped each work our way up to servants. And that is the path of joy.
Then I’ll go see the oldest woman in my galaxy, who is 93, and beginning to show it. I will sit with her and share the Grace of not not spouting platitudes or bumper sticker thoughts. I’ll just listen. I’ll tell her how much I love her. No one can make her laugh like I do. Ram Dass said that ultimately, we are all just walking each other home, and this is what she and and I do together. In two Sundays, she will become the newest member of St. Andrew Presbyterian Church in Marin City. I will go crazy with happiness that day. You can come too!
Then I’ll pick up two short crazy banshees from school, and my house will become monkey island. For three hours, I will be under constant threat of severe Lego injury. We’ll over-eat, because God came by earlier and told me that this was Her will for me: “Strengthen me with raisin cakes, comfort me with apples. And M&M’s.”
Then my son and the man I love will arrive, and I’ll bet you hundreds of thousands of dollars that there will be delicious, nourishing food tonight. Wow. That is just not true for much of the world, so before they get here, I am going to send money to Oxfam, and Tyranny Watch, and Doctors Without Borders, designated for poor Americans. On my honor. This is the Drive Through ATM way to feel hope again, because you are providing it.
Molly Ivins said that freedom fighters don’t always win, but they’re always right. I’m going to write that on the mirror. It is written on my sad old heart. We don’t know what the future holds–we really, really don’t. During the Vietnam War, Zhou Enlai was asked what he thought about about the French Revolution, and after inhaling on his Gauloise said, “Too Soon to Tell.” We think we know what the future holds, but we are a tense and irritable people. However, we DO know who holds the future. So buckle up, practice radical self care, serve the poor, and rest up for what awaits us. We are up to this moment.
Revolution American Style
Growing up in my own family of birth, the worst mortal sin was stupidity. In raising our own somewhat precocious children, if they called each other stupid, my husband would ask the offending child, “Who’s stupid?” And the child had to say six times, “I am stupid.” Frankly, I was never really comfortable with that, because I would rather be beaten that told I was stupid, so I probably would have taken a beating rather than having to say,”I am stupid.” And yes, I have often thought that people, who do not see the world the same way I do, are stupid…….or to be politically correct, mentally challenged. Two things have challenged me on this: One, I was told after extensive testing in a two year program for preparation for ministry that I had two personal areas problematic for ministry. One: I test high enough on IQ tests that I probably always thought I was right in differences of opinions and the reality is that no one is right all the time, no matter how smart they are. Two: I over react defensively and emotionally to people, ie. I was oversensitive.
To be honest, I still struggle with both of these tendencies, but at least now, I struggle with them.
I still consider calling people “stupid” violence. And when, in spite of knowing I could be wrong, I think people are stupid, I try hard to: one, take into consideration that their personalities and life experience may be very different from mine and within those limits their responses may make sense. Ignorance is not stupidity. Stupidity is not curable, but ignorance is. But many people have to learn the hard way, by personal experience, not theory. In many ways, our educational system does not provide learning approaches that are effective for many, maybe even most, people. And our political system is so dependent on having access to huge amounts of money, that they don’t feel represented. Then along came “Jones”, Trump. Someone, who shares their fears that are less scary when expressed as anger, with huge amounts of money and the indifference to the establishment’s opinion that money can buy.
Read Michael Moore’s suggestions of how Democrats should respond to this challenge. It’s an eye opener and a call to change.
