Wayside Pulpit

Authentic Giving

Today I bought some gifts for the "angels" on my parish Angel Tree. An Angel Tree, most often, is an actual tree that has ornaments that list items for needy families. You take an ornament, buy the items and place them under the tree. The parish then gets these gifts to those who needed them.

Yet I wondered as I was standing in line to buy a winter coat why church communities only do this at Christmas. Why not March? August? or even monthly. What is it about Christmas that moves a parish to give gifts to those who need them.

If I were a less cynical soul, I could say it was the over abundance of the spirit of giving that motivated people to give gifts to strangers. Yet, how many of us are actually filled with a spirit of giving? I think it is more that we are saddled with the obligation of giving. Yet, I do not think it is this obligatory need to buy for others that motivates us to take an angel from an Angel Tree.

I think we take those angels because we feel guilty. We feel guilty not because we have more than enough, but because we cannot seem to find the strength to stand up and bring down the system of obligatory giving. We have been tamed to believe that at Christmas we must give to be loved and to be loving. Yet, we also know, deep down inside, that this belief is a lie. If we did not know, we would not buy gifts for strangers; strangers that we cannot love and who cannot give us love in return.

Angel trees allow us to give for no other reason than giving. We know this and hope that even one act of authentic giving can somehow compensate for our weakness in the face of a capitalist machine that has figured out how to commodify love.

The Advent of Nothing

I have been told they expected a king, someone like David I suppose. Yet, I am not so sure I believe what I have been told. Who knows what they expected, or even IF they expected anything.

What if they expected nothing? It would mean that individuals were doing what individuals have done throughout history; they were running around trying to live lives, put food on the table and procreate. No one even thought to wait for Jesus. If so, Jesus was unanticipated and unexpected--a messiah only in retrospect. Such a possibility of unexpecting turns Advent from a time of expectation of the known, desired and needed into a time of waiting for nothing at all.

Expectation is a lot like Disneyland; a place that both exists and does not. We believe in a dream and only when we visit in the heat of summer with screaming kids do we realize that the dream exists only in our heads. This realization can pull us one of two ways: either, we see the dream for the farce it is and embrace reality on its own terms, or we hold onto the dream, scream at the summer and hate the kids thinking they are what keeps us from the reality of the dream.

Expectation binds us to a vision of a nonexistent reality. An Advent that looks toward Jesus in the manger binds us to just that: Jesus in the manger. Maybe you want to be fastened tightly to your expectations, but how might your life be untied if you expected nothing this Advent?

Not to stand alone

I will miss Mass today; I do not feel sad about it, or guilty about it, more that I have missed out on something special. It is a kind of jealously for those that were able to go. I think it was better that I stayed home and worked on next weeks presentation, but I do wonder if I could just have managed the same productivity this afternoon.

It is that draw toward Mass that drew me towards Catholicism. Though, I have to say, there is not much difference from Catholicism and Mass (at least in my mind). When I was attending protestant churches there was little that actually drew me towards a Sunday service. Even when I was preaching or involved in the liturgical process (as minimal at this is in most protestant churches), I was never drawn toward Eucharist.

I think that was that draws one toward the Eucharist cannot really be explained but only experienced. This is why progressive non-Catholics are so mystified about why anyone would actually want to be Catholic. Yet, even for those of us who ignore many aspects of Catholic moral teaching, despise much of the arrangement of the church hierarchy, and are frustrated by the silence and lack of accountability regarding clergy sexual abuse, we are still drawn to the Eucharist.

The Eucharist is magical. One of its most magical properties is that it does not matter how creepy, old, conservative, misogynistic the priest who consecrates the bread and wine. The Eucharist stands, not alone, but really with the community in which it is embraced

Becoming Catholic

I will join
at your table
because God has called
me to supper with injustice, patriarchy, and misogyny,
all the while being fed
the food of love.

So, anoint me to initiate me,
join us together--
put yourself between my lips
hear my voice whisper in your ear
and feel our consummation.

Your own oil moves
me deeply inside
your body surrenders to mine
and I am surrounded
with all that is you.

And in our joining
the change confirmed
will alter the table
and we will never
taste the same again.

Every Friday is a Good Day

It is the end of the fifth day. Jesus moves away from his disciples into a small clearing in the forest. The trees of Gethsemane surround him; the fading sun turning their twisted trunks into mythical monsters. He is afraid. He puts himself on the ground and crosses his legs—a foot on each thigh. His hands rest near his stomach—left cradled in right. With eyes slightly closed and cast down he sees the shadows of remaining sun travel across the ground. His breath is shallow. In and out it quickly moves; his diaphragm collapsing and expanding in a rhythmic pace. He watches. He pays attention. He slides into the conscious compassionate awareness that he knows so well. The space holds him. His heart opens and all is okay with the world.

The sounds come from the distance—horses, men, and the clinking of swords. Torchlight moves through the trees, and step by human step it replaces the looming darkness. He puts his palms together and moves them toward his chest—thumbs touching his heart. Jesus bows forward and then rights himself just as the light covers his head. He takes in one breath, feels it move through his body and he says,

“We are here to end suffering.
If ending suffering is more important than anything, we will end suffering.
If ending suffering is not more important than anything, we will not end suffering.
If I am suffering, it is because I am choosing something over ending suffering.
We are not here to create and cling to beliefs.
We are here to pay attention.
We are here to use everything in our experience to see how we cause ourselves to suffer; so we can drop that and end suffering”(1)

Undiscovered Value

Recently, John Stuart over at Heaven’s Highway, featured The Wayside Pulpit in his glimpse into the world of progressive Christians bloggers. It was a quite a hoot to see the Wayside up there with such awesome sites such as, Street Prophets and Faith in Public Life.

John made an insightful comment about the spiritual loneliness that progressives seem to encounter in their journeys of faith. This is the loneliness that often comes from living a faith that is built on questioning, discovery – unknowingness. Not all those who find themselves living under the progressive label relate to this sense of chronic uncertainty, but I know many upon many that do.

What I find fascinating is that faith without certainty is often seen as something to be grieved. Those who have a faith that gives them that rock-foundation will often look at my faith with pity, the underlying, but unsaid thought being, “If you only knew what I knew then your life would be so much better.” I still feel some resentment when I get these kind of patronizing glances, but I’m learning, gradually, to let it go.

Why do we assume that faith is supposed to answer our questions, provide us with certainty and fill us with comfort? Why do we not instead believe that faith is meant to challenge, make us question and fill us with uneasiness about ourselves and the societies in which we live?

For me, there is a grief that comes with a faith that doesn’t explain it all. I am forced to face the rawness of life in all its bloody complexity. This standing as witness is hard, it is challenging, it is often lonely, it sometimes makes me want to run away.

But the truth of the matter is, there is a captivating beauty to be found in the unknown. It is a beauty revealed to all of those who stand staunchly in the midst of shifting sand regardless of the fear that may call them to bedrock. Only those whose bones have been touched by this beauty can understand why the loneliness, the uncertainty, the grief and the sickening spiritual upheavals are more than worth the price of admission.

Honestly God

Today at the hospital I was reading a prayer book that someone had left in the chaplain’s office. It had a prayer based on a verse from Isaiah. I can’t recall the verse, but the idea was that god can be trusted for the future because god has always been there in the past.

I read the verse a couple of times and realized that this has not be my experience. I have never felt that god has been there for me. I can look back over my life and list situation after situation from which I was not saved, healed or given comfort. In fact, I cannot recall a time when I felt that god’s presence was with me during a really nasty stretch of life. I know all about the footprints poem, where god is said to carry us, but I have not felt carried. I have walked through so much in my life and I have done so basically alone.

This lament of, “Why have you forsaken me?” is timeless. It is only in this timelessness that I find any comfort whatsoever. I can read all sorts of things from scripture to medieval poetry confirming that god has left many of us feeling completely abandoned.

My response to the Isaiah reading today was first to cry and then ask god why, “Why in fact have you never been there for me?” I didn’t get an answer, but then, I didn’t expect one either. However, in the asking, somehow the loneliness that permeates all the days of life was lifted just a tiny bit.

What Weighs Me Down

I was talking to a friend today and had a flash of realization. I really believe that the thinner I am, the smaller the number on the scale, the more loveable and competent I am. The inverse then is, if I weigh more or feel heavier then surely no one loves me and I am as worthless as a rock in a field.

I suppose I am not alone in this belief; the belief that weight and body shape define whether or not I have worth as a human. Still, I feel pretty alone and stuck in my head on this issue. The social conditioning about body image and weight has been so powerful in my life that I cannot imagine how it is not true. I know that it is simply a belief, but I cannot believe it is only a belief. It is as true as true gets.

My friend that I shared this with said, “Well, you can let that one go.” I immediately became defensive. It is so easy for someone on the outside to take a really thick socio-spiritual issue of someone else and just cast it away like an unwanted fish. If it were so easy to let go, trust me, I’d let it go. So much of the dissatisfaction of my life is rooted in the social conditioning I have in my head related to perceptions of my body, my weight and my beauty.

I don’t know how to let this go. Just like I really don’t know how to let go of many of my deeply held beliefs. I’ve seen a few evaporate into the nothingness that created them, but for the most part I’m still holding on pretty tight.

If I think about the two religions that touch me the most, Christianity and Zen, both are fundamentally about letting go of socially conditioned beliefs. This knowing about letting go is an open window; the knowledge that I can move beyond what society has programmed me to be. Yet, even with the window, I don’t know how to get the ideas that hold me to fly from the room.

As Mourning Doves

A number of days ago I found a baby dove in my front yard. I watched it for a number of hours, wanting to see if its parents were taking care of it. The bird was not quite a fledging, meaning that it left the nest a bit too soon. It was still covered in its downy infantile feathers. It just sat huddled in the sun.

The same day I found the dove I also had a visit with a patient whose leg had just been amputated. When we talked about it she told me, “I just can’t believe the leg is never going to come back. That is the hardest.” My visit with her was followed by another in which the patient is slowly dying from an infection that can’t seem to be stopped. He and I talked at length about his wish to die; the suffering is just too great.

As I watched the dove I thought of Matthew 6:26,“Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?” There was no food for the bird in my yard. Just as god did not save the leg or ease the suffering of the patients in the hospital.

I ended up bringing the bird in for the night. I fixed up a box, made a nest and decided that I was providing hospice care for the evening. The dove was small, barely moving and making no sounds. I had no assumptions that the bird would make it through the night. When I woke in the morning I opened the box and it was still breathing. I called a vet and figured out how to feed it.

Life is just plain awful sometimes – and god doesn’t always fix it. Yet, still, life takes care of itself. In this process of life, of god, some legs are saved, while some infections can’t be cured. Just as some birds die before they fly. The truth is, on a flat semantic level, god does not feed all the birds. However, if god is bigger than semantics, food is always being had.

Eden

I am a theoliterary Christian. I find spiritual meaning in the stories of the bible regardless of their questionable historical validity. However, I’ve never been much of a buyer-in of the Garden of Eden story. I guess I’ve never found anything in the story that has reached and grabbed my spiritual sensibilities.

There are many difficulties I have with the story. The main being that I don’t need a creation myth; science has given me more than enough ideas to chew on when it comes to how the universe began and how humanity populated the world. Also, the traditional Eden interpretation of humanity falling from grace is so imbedded between the lines, I’ve not been able to read the text a different way. Well, at least until yesterday.

In the story God says, “Of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.” The day we made the choice to live in a morally compartmentalized world is the day we died. Once society became based on right and wrong we lost the ability to live at center, to live embraced by god. Having to be a right way, compared to a wrong way, is why we are socialized. It is why we are molded to be what society says, rather than to be what we are.

What keeps us from God is all the junk we’ve been fed about how we should be. That junk is what was hung on the tree in the Garden of Eden. That junk is what humanity ate. God knew that once we created a knowledge of right and wrong there was no going back. We would be stuck in the cycle of trying to be a certain way, failing, beating ourselves up for it and then trying again. In this process we never find out who we are. We never find out who god is. Rather, we spin around and around hiding from ourselves and from the divine behind the sewed fig leaves of, “should,” “ought,” “don’t” and “can’t”

We never fell from grace, we fell into social conditioning.