A Resolution for Every New Year

Sooner or later we admit that we cannot do it all, that whatever our contribution, the story is much larger and longer than our own, and we are all in the gift of older stories that we are only now joining. Whatever our success, we are all looked after by other eyes, and we are only preparing ourselves for an invitation to something larger.
- David Whyte, Crossing the Unknown Sea: Work as a Pilgrimage of Identity

One of my Facebook friends posted this in mid-December 2012. I think it is a tremendously powerful and truthful statement. It is enhanced in meaning when I add these other powerful and truthful words:

“To walk alone is possible, but the good walker knows that the trip is life and it requires companions.” - Dom Helder Camara

“It's a gift to joyfully recognize and accept our own smallness and ordinariness. Then you are free with nothing to live up to, nothing to prove, and nothing to protect.” - Richard Rohr

“If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each [one's] life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.” - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Oh, that we would each and all of us claim and live these truths as we journey through the coming year – yea, as we journey through the rest of our lives! This will be my perennial New Year's resolution.

Put some muscle on your prayers!

“We do not think ourselves into new ways of living, we live ourselves into new ways of thinking.” - Richard Rohr

“The price of inaction is far greater than the cost of making a mistake.” - Meister Eckhart

A tragedy occurred yesterday and I am overwhelmed by two things: a compulsion to say something and an inability to put my thoughts on paper.

Twenty children and eight adults were killed yesterday (December 13, 2012) in a shooting spree at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut. Barely 24 hours later, there is still no answer to “Why?” By way of a feeble response, many have already said, “Things have got to change!”

In a curious piece of statistical information on Facebook yesterday, it was noted that over 10,000 handgun killings have occurred in the United States in 2012. Far and away exceedingly more than in any other jurisdiction listed in the data. Both of these pieces of information are an extremely sad commentary on the societal illness of Canada's nearest neighbour.

It is long past time for things to change. The protection, education, and upbringing of our children IS far more important than anyone's “right” to bear arms. The primary right is for children to have healthy, meaningful lives. We all must stop just talking about this and be tremendously intentional about living this truth. NOW!!

How we do this, I am not sure but we must NOT let any timidity or uncertainty keep us from trying, from taking steps, from moving forward, from risking mistakes on the road to productive action. This is NOT something about which we can satisfy ourselves in just praying or lighting a virtual candle on Facebook.  Neither is action enough!

Put some muscles on those prayers. Hug a kid. Call another person out for any kind of bullying. Say those words that too often sit silently on your lips when you know someone has acted or spoken inappropriately, falsely – especially to or toward a child. Don't be silent. Speak up! Don't stand still. Stand up!

Un "Unanticipated" Blessing of Social Media

“Everywhere I go – Sri Lanka...Jordan...Washington, D.C. – I find people with a similar story. When thousands of people discover that their story is also someone else's story, they have the chance to write a new story together.”                                             - Eboo Patel

One of the upsides of Facebook may be this very truth as enunciated by Eboo Patel. You come to see yourself and others in each other's journey/story. It is amazing how many times my response to something I see posted on Facebook is, “Wow! Me too!” It is a small world.

Now, before you say it, let me admit that what I read on Facebook is posted by those whom I have chosen to designate as my “friends.” Therefore, we are bound to have things in common. Yet, wherever these various “friends” are on my friend continuum – lifelong friend through significant aquaintance to one of many I know through the United Church of Canada, I am still impressed by the points at which our stories significantly intersect.

But then there is this one thing that impresses me even more: These various “friends” share posts about others they know and many they do not know – all unknown to me – but there is still unexpected intersections in “our” stories. I am moved by the stories of strangers at a very deep place in my being. We are curiously connected!

Maybe this is an unanticipated “blessing” of social media; it will teach us how we are all truly sisters and brothers. It may help us to understand that despite the various physical, cultural, linguistic, and social differences that span our world, my heart and your heart and her heart and his heart all beat the same, feel the same, touch the same, bleed the same, make us uniquely one. No matter where we live on this planet, at the very core of our being, we are one. Thanks be!

P.S. If you have not heard of Eboo Patel before, Google him. Amazing person!

Irreversible Change for the Church

“Once social change begins it cannot be reversed. You cannot uneducate the person who has learned to read. You cannot humiliate the person who feels pride. You cannot oppress the people who are not afraid anymore.”

                                                                     - Cesar Chavez

So what are the similar sentiments when it comes to structural or philosophical change? What needs to occur in order for structural and philosophical change to be irreversible – in and for the church?

Please understand, I do NOT want the church gone totally. I think there are many benefits that accrue and can accrue to us and to society generally due to the presence of the church – the organization, the people, not the buildings. I think many of those benefits are not being as adequately realized as they could be today because our focus is too much on tradition and buildings and what has been rather than on what could be – what God intends.

In many specific locales, loss of numbers resulting in loss of dollars has resulted in dramatic change for specific churches. New mission has been discovered. New zeal has been unleashed. But this is not yet the broad stroke of the church's presence in our world today. Many, too many, still cling tenaciously to what has been, what they know instead of opening up to the possibility of something different, new, better.

What I find overwhelmingly frustrating is that many people in these “standing still” situations openly acknowledge that the church must change or perish. They are even prepared to allow as how they too (their church) must change or perish. But they confess that they are not ready. Let somebody else do it. We are comfortable here. This is “home” for us and we can not see nor are we prepared to see any other.

I can acknowledge that there is truth in this dilemma on both sides of change. I am prepared to allow that this is not easy. What I am not prepared to do is let selfish individuals keep the church from opening up to others who are looking. Not sure what to do yet other than to keep beating this drum. God has a new purpose for God's church. We need to step aside from our clinging to what we think is important and let God's new purpose unfold in God's way. What an exciting thing to witness and embrace!...as is the accomplishment of pride and freedom and learning for people who embrace it in new ways as a result of societal change.

Becoming My Self

“What is saving my life right now is becoming more fully human, trusting that there is no way to God apart from real life in the real world.”       

                                       - Barbara Brown Taylor in An Altar in The World

More and more human beings are come to appreciate, I think, what Barbara Brown Taylor is advocating here. The main objective of our lives on this earth is to be ourselves, to become ourselves. Of course, that journey takes a lifetime and we begin in a position of not knowing – not knowing who we are, who we are meant to be, where we are going, what we want to do with our lives, who we will share our lives with, and how do you do all of this anyway? Becoming ourselves not knowing all this stuff, makes the work hard and complicated and we are mostly inclined to give up.

Mind you, we are in some ways encouraged to give up. Why can't you be like the other girls or guys? Why can't you be like your older sister/brother? Whoa, you certainly didn't get any of that from my side of the family? Or (in disgust), you are so like your father. And, sometimes (in encouragement), you do that so well; you remind me of your mother when she was your age.

And then there is the whole school process which continues to be largely based on regurgitation. Very little encouragement to think for yourself. Offer your own insights; suggest your own answers; make your own mistakes; be your own imaginative, creative self. Is it any wonder that parents look at their tiny tots after a few days or weeks or months of school and bemoan the “older, wizened persons” they have become! Glad that they are learning but despairing over the naivete, simplicity, naturalness of life they seem to have to give up.

Then we get to be adults and wonder where the spontaneity and creativity have gone. Realize that we don't want to be nor do we have to be like everybody else. Come to appreciate that the grass isn't always greener on the other side.

This growing up and becoming ourselves – and allowing all others to do the same - is not easy. But it is, I truly believe, what our earthly sojourn is supposed to be about.

Never Found God In Church?

“Tell the truth, have you ever found God in Church? I never did. I just found a bunch of folks hoping for [God] to show. Any God I ever felt in Church I brought in with me. And I think all the other folks did too. They came to Church to share God, not find God.” - Alice Walker, author of The Colour Purple

St. Augustine wrote something to the effect that our hearts are restless until they find their rest in God. Augustine might have affirmed Alice Walker's sentiments in the previous quotation.

King David of old was the first to be pointedly told that God does not need man- kind to build a house for God to live in. God does not reside in buildings; God lives in the hearts of people – kind, generous, compassionate, loving, living, caring people. If God ever is in church it is because the worshippers present have brought in the Holy Presence which dwells in their compassionate lives.

Could it be that if we took more seriously the fact that God does not reside in any of our buildings that it might be more readily possible for us to let our buildings go when we need to do so? I think the change that God is endeavouring to accomplish in the church is being held up by our attachments not just to the physical buildings but to the mistaken belief that somehow or other the building is the church because it is “God's home.” NOT!!

Another very unfortunate corollary of this way of thinking is that we do not readily recognize God in one another. It is easy to do so for those who think and act like us but others who may have different ways of thinking, new ideas to promote are not as warmly regarded. This is not the way of Christ! This is not the way it is supposed to be in God's family!

In churches I served fellow Christians argued – really argued – over carpet colour, whether or not to get new choir gowns, burning a Christ candle, getting the new hymnbook, passing the peace, who should organize a community potluck supper. And I mean they argued, they stopped talking to one another, in some situations people left. How could anyone think that God might reside in a building that housed these people? How could anyone even be persuaded that God – that is, God's Spirit – could even reside in those individuals who were party to such disagreements? Somewhere in the first letter of John (in the Christian scriptures) we find something that goes like this: “God is love. If you do not love your brother or sister you cannot love God.” Don't just think about this; do it!

Dialogue: The Change Encounter

“I'm not in the business of converting anybody. Dialogue is not about bringing people around to your side of things. It's about offering them something, and if they don't like it, fine. Dialogue is about being prepared to be changed by the encounter.” - Karen Armstrong

Karen Armstrong, she of A History of God (published in 1993) and a Charter for Compassion, says something very important in that last sentence above. It is something that I think few people appreciate and even fewer believe. The validity of my contention was upheld in a short chat stream I read recently on Facebook.

Several of my ministry colleagues were bemoaning their experience of younger colleagues who seem to be getting increasingly conservative in their religious thinking and practice. What struck me quite unexpectedly was that the conclusion of many conversations between these folks comes when the seemingly more conservative participants assert that others in the dialogue, who do not agree with 'them', just aren't Christian. Not so!!

It seems to me that in many of these conversations there is at least one party who has come to the dialogue with no expectation of learning anything, of being changed. The sole expectation seems to be to teach the other, to convert them. Perhaps, on some occasions, both parties to the dialogue come with that perspective. The world all around us – all around them and you and me – that world is shouting that openness to learning and change is mandatory – for all of us. To not be open to the possibility is to totally miss the boat! Let me share this very practical, personal example:

Here I am, currently, in Florida at the very exact same place I was last winter for three months. This year, the stay is planned for four months. Same community, same weather, same visitors, same neighbours, nothing has changed. Not so!! The neighbours – who also happen to be the landlord – are in the process of moving to a different home in this community. She is about 75, he is in his early 80s and for the past two months they have been refurbishing a 3-bedroom home into which they are starting to move. They have done a great deal of the work themselves. We do not know who will be living in the other side of our duplex after these folks move out.

The duplex, the community may indeed be similar but it is not the same. And I am certainly not the same. I come to this sojourn in Florida a whole year older, still in the process of recuperating from significant surgery, therefore several pounds lighter, and with a notably different agenda than I had last year. I still plan to do a lot of reading, walking, and bicycling but I also plan to be very intentional about getting better acquainted with this community, meeting people, attending theatre, art, social functions. I am and will be different.

So, any dialogue I participate in over the coming four months will be impacted by a different me and a different situation. I have changed. My world in changing. I had better be open to change in the other – and they in me. I believe I am. I wasn't always as open as I am now. There is hope – for all of us! I believe the best I can do, and would urge others similarly, is to come to dialogue in that hope. And when the conversation is over – however it may conclude, move on!