Playground’s Parable

Hazleton News 1 Parks have been closed throughout the pandemic but have been in disrepair long before

As a child, there’s nothing like time at the playground.  It’s a place for imagination to flow as you fly free on the swings, daringly climb to the top of the monkey bars, and see who can get the other to fall first on the teeter totter by abruptly jumping ship, followed up with belly laughs!  I still walk near that park practically daily and am simply mindful of the memories, laughs, and even tears from falling atop the bars only to climb back up, renewed and ready to go, a sense of resiliency learned at a young age.

In our day, parents never knew much of what we were doing on the playground, or so we thought.  We went unsupervised, not because we had bad parents, there just wasn’t a need for supervision.  It was ingrained in us, growing up in a small town, there was always someone watching, someone who would take care or relay the message if need be.  There was a lived reality and belief where we looked out for one another and we weren’t the center of the world; there were others sharing this space with us.  Of course, there are negative connotations as we can assess it from an adult perspective, as if someone was ready to pounce on us if there was an issue, but I suppose as a child it’s a healthy fear to have, always knowing there was a line not to cross.

At times it still feels like I live on this proverbial playground.  It appears, at times, like we’ve gone amuck and the adults have left us to ourselves, not even wanting to supervise, as if orphans in an unknown world.  Now, though, we don’t know where the lines are and no one seems to care whether we’re hurting ourselves or each other, it’s practically each man and woman for him or her-self.  It’s as we like to say, the “inmates are running the asylum.”  It’s no longer about flying free, without a care in the world, swinging back and forth, but rather pushing each other off, mid-air, to see who we can hurt the most.  It isn’t about the fun of climbing the bars, but rather stepping on one another to assume the place of power to lord it over others, all while the park begins to fade and turn into shambles, as if the memories of a war had faded but the scars remain and are always reminding us what we have lost without a sense of moving forward.

The silence, as you walk through, may be the one redeeming quality.  As the children in charge continue to fight with one another, competing, lording, and most especially, simply surviving, it’s in the silence where you begin to cry at the reality, letting go of a world which once was and yet with some fear of what unfolds before the eyes.  Is it me who’s crazy?  Why do I want to remain disengaged from it all?  Why don’t I see the point in what they’re fighting over and trying too hard to hold onto?  It seems rather pointless.  All this while the world around seemingly speeds up its deterioration.  Is it our own inability to accept reality?  Is it our desire to hold onto memories with the fear of losing all that mattered?  I don’t know.

It seems, the one place where as kids we were able to escape, the playground, has been all but shattered.  Rust covers the bars, swings empty, police tape closing it off as if criminal to play and imagine in a time when kids need it the most, overgrown grass, dilapidated basketball courts, often used as a roller-skating rink back in the day.  Now, the wonder seems all but lost.  There seems to be a lost sense of the other, the looking out for one another, while the world burns around us.  Will there ever be a day when we recognize the other as ourselves?  Will there ever be a day, again, when it’s not all about me, my wants, my rights, and to recognize we’re given one chance at this life and there’s more than just me, a day when we help the other climb rather than step on them to get ahead of them in order to get my way?

Everything and everyone has become so transactional.  If someone doesn’t support my view or vision, we toss them.  Heck, there’s always someone else out there who’s willing to sell their soul to get ahead!  Isn’t that the way it works if you want to play the game?  We’ve lost the sense of just playing the game to play with an addiction to winning.  We’ve sacrificed what’s good and right for a gold star and a win to try to feed my own emptiness, only leaving me more depleted.  Heck, we’ve even tried to soften the blow of a sliding board as we can somehow avoid getting hurt.  We’ll go to the furthest ends to avoid the pain of loss and hurt.  The irony and paradox, it only hurts more.

It’s good to imagine in the face of reality.  It’s good to imagine not what the playground used to be but what it can be.  Heck, just a little care and concern would go a long way, a recognition there are still children who need a place to play and use their own imaginations!  Like us, as kids, they too need a place to escape into the world of imagination and dreams, not the seemingly, and all-too-real games, of a pad or gaming device!  If anything, this deadens the imagination.  A place, rather, which is illumined in the evening, where we don’t have to fear our own darkness but even play with our shadows.  How about a place which screams with excitement for their arrival, de-stimulating their minds in order to explore the vastness of their own inner life?  Better yet, a place where they can run free, risk the sting of a bee, falling flat in the mud, and get back up, a true lesson in resiliency.  Resiliency will get them further in life than winning anyway.

We need, now more than ever, a world which dreams for tomorrow.  We’ve settled for rusty monkey bars, overgrown grass, buckled courts, all while being distracted by the supposed adults and elders of society bickering with one another, consumed in their own pain, and failing to see the helpless child, screaming out, just wanting to feel safe and secure to dream and imagine a life as doctor, pilot, president, firefighter, dancer, teacher, etc.  Who wants any of that when all you see being mirrored back is anger, resentment, and a lack of care and concern for your own well-being and caring more about themselves, some unwilling to let go of failed expectations.

I don’t know, maybe we’d all be a little better off if we spent time in a park, feeling free, giving perspective, and using our imaginations for a better world for our children and ourselves.  Don’t they deserve better than we’re offering, and for that matter, modeling?  There’s nothing like the sense of freedom and flying, swinging back and forth, wind in the hair, without a care in the world knowing, all will be well.  I don’t know, maybe it’s me, but we can offer so much more.  Simply stepping into the shoes of a child for a time will enliven the spirit, not to command them to be “mini-me’s” but to be who they are, children, and us, young at heart.

Wholly Reconciled

Genesis 2: 18-24; Mark 10: 2-16

Here’s the secret.  It is about divorce and it isn’t, or at least not the way we’ve come to expect.  Regardless, though, it’s a tough message today, especially in a time where if statistics are true, nearly 50% of all marriages end in divorce.  It’s a sad reality that we live with and through.  But if you look closely, the Pharisees and Jesus seem to be talking past one another and speaking of different issues, at least on the surface.  Maybe Jesus is also aware that divorce, like some many other things are merely symptoms of deeper problems that we miss or fail to see.  Yet, Jesus gives clues by his very response to the Pharisees to their question that they pose in order to trip him up.  In the end, Jesus, yet again, exposes them for who they are and the part of themselves that they consistently fail to see.

You see, there are also hints in the readings themselves.  If it was about the Mosaic law in which they question Jesus, then we would have had that as our first reading from the Hebrew Scriptures, but we don’t.  Mark takes us back to the Book of Genesis and so does the Church in the formation of the cycle of readings.  So it’s about divorce, and yet it’s not.  When Jesus responds he tells the Pharisees that the law is there because of the hardness of their hearts.  He doesn’t cast out the law or demonize it in anyway, but rather exposes it for what it lacks, a heart, just like the Pharisees.  He proceeds to then return us to the basics, to the Book of Genesis, male and female God created them, in God’s image and likeness.  A hardened heart and a creation account sets us up for totally missing the point on where the real divorce and separation lies.

You see, male and female God created me.  Male and female God created each of you.  We’ve already been created whole and yet over our lives become fragmented and separated.  There has certainly been enough done on human development that tells us that men have feminine souls and women have masculine souls.  Yet, no matter how much we are told that, our binary way of thinking and acting in this worlds moves us towards separation but it also moves us towards the lie that first leads man to fall in the creation accounts.  The lie is that someone or something out there is going to complete me, is going to make me whole, and so I go searching everywhere else but the interior journey.  It’s what continues to cause war, division, and certainly separation and divorce in all aspects of our lives.  We have certainly seen that play out in the political scene the past few weeks, that when we become separated and divorced from ourselves, it becomes solely about power and nothing else.  It’s why we continue to have immature leaders in the Church and immature leaders in civil government because we are terrible with dealing with how we ourselves have become separated.  It’s all indicative to just how separated and divorced we are, most typically between head and heart.

But that’s the issue with Jesus and the Pharisees and even the disciples in today’s gospel.  It’s why the second part of the gospel is so important when the disciples try to keep the children from coming to him.  It’s always the most vulnerable that are most impacted.  Again, we have seen that play out in our politics.  We try to destroy the most vulnerable in order to satisfy our own sense of power.  It has shown us just how little interior work is done by some of our leaders where they totally disregard the other.  Just like the Pharisees, it points to their own separateness and divorce.  From the very beginning, God made us whole.  The rest of our lives is spent trying to bring the pieces back together and it’s hard work.  Yet, if we don’t learn to reconcile our own masculine and feminine, male and female God created them, we will continue to fall prey to war, violence, division, and this sense of being separate.  When we fail to reconcile all of it within ourselves, we can never move to a place of equality, despite the way in which we were created wholly by God.  Jesus moves to level the playing field and the men that felt they dominated and held the power wanted nothing of it.  They couldn’t see, just as we can’t, our own blindness.

The more we separate from ourselves, from each other, from God’s creation, we can pretty much guarantee that we have separated ourselves from God.  When we do that, we don’t even open ourselves to experiencing God in a fuller way.  God becomes simply about power and justice yet missing mercy and forgiveness.  God becomes about anger and vengeance yet missing loving and compassion.  When we can’t bring them together within ourselves, that we can be both just and merciful and all the rest, then we fail to see that about God as well.  It’s because of the hardness of your hearts and when the heart is hardened, the vulnerable become the target.  Ironically, and paradoxically, that’s precisely where we will find God on our journey.  It’s about divorce and yet it’s not, but really about learning to reconcile our own complexity rather than blaming.

Divorce is a tough subject but it is not limited to those who have literally experienced divorce in their lives.  It’s a reality that plagues all of us from the first time we began separating and becoming fragmented in our lives.  The first time when we learned as children that we had no value for one reason or another, thinking that life was about power and strength but never coupled with mercy and love.  It’s the divorce that plagues all of our hearts and has spilled over on the world stage of politics and Church life.  We have seen it with our eyes.  Yet, people praise it and gather with their tribes.  All it does is show how bankrupt it all is and how little we do to teach people what really matters.  It’s easy to get hung up on divorce and all the rest, but when we’re honest with ourselves, it impacts all of our lives.  Like the gospel reminds us, it is only Christ that pulls it back together, the complexity of our lives.  We’ve seen enough divorce in so many different capacities.  It’s time to reconcile beginning first with myself and yourself.  It’s because of the hardness of our hearts.  It’s time to create the space in our own hearts and lives to begin to reconcile these realities of our lives that have become so splintered and so much about power, leading to deeper divorce and separation.  It’s time for reconciliation.

Heart’s Unfolding Mystery

Exodus 20: 1-17; I Cor 1: 22-25; John 2: 13-25

The Cleansing of the Temple that we hear this weekend is not unique to John’s Gospel.  We hear it in all the gospels so there is some historical accuracy to the account, but the other evangelists place it near the end of the story upon Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem.  We’ll hear that on Palm Sunday from Mark’s Gospel.  John, though, changes it up and places it near the beginning as the gospel opens with the first of three celebrations of Passover.  It’s also rather crazily placed between the Miracle at Cana, the water into wine, just prior to it, and then follows with a rather intimate dialogue with Nicodemus just following this event and so it’s smack in between these stories.  After this great celebration and the sign at Cana it’s as if things get turned upside down.

It’s placement almost seems as if to throw people off.  As they begin to understand who this Jesus is in John’s Gospel, he seems to move which knocks everyone off kilter, almost appearing as if he’s creating these conflicts or certainly this tension where things seem to happen and change occurs.  You know, at first glance there really is nothing wrong with what’s going on at the feast of Passover at the Temple.  It was customary for people to sacrifice animals and so to be sold in that vicinity was common and so Jesus seems to overreact to it all when he shows up in Jerusalem for the feast.  As he makes this move it seems to begin to cast doubt and almost chaos into the lives and hearts of the people he encounters.  But maybe that’s his point all along.

Like any people, but in particular those he encounters today, we gradually become comfortable with what is and we begin to lose sight of the deeper realities that we’re being invited into.  It’s what creates this misunderstanding in this passage and beyond in John’s Gospel.  We become blind and deaf to things, where we can no longer see nor hear beyond the surface of our own hearts.  Gradually it becomes a market place, as the writers note, but in that gradual process of becoming they in turn lose sight of the bigger picture and the deeper reality.  Rather than becoming more like God and participating in that mystery, they become participants in this sham of a market place while their own gods are created.  Christ entering the scene turns it upside down, literally and figuratively, to make them aware of what they have become and invite them to become something more, this deeper lived reality that can only come through Christ.  He will enter into dialogue with them, push them, and be on the move.  Of course, in all he encounters it requires a willingness and an openness on the part of the one encountered to change, to deepen, to see and hear with the heart.

It’s the message Paul conveys over and over again but in particular to the community at Corinth that we hear today.  He reminds us that Jews demand signs and Gentiles wisdom but in the end what they really look for is proof in their own ways.  They want to cling to what they know and to be able to hold onto something rather than enter more deeply into this mystery of faith.  It is, as Paul reminds us, the paradox of the Cross.  It’s the lived reality, as with John, to not become comfortable, because just like the encounters with Christ in that Gospel, God has a way of throwing us off kilter and remind us who’s really in charge of this life and all we can do is enter more deeply into the mystery as it unfolds within and beyond us.

The Ten Commandments, as we know them, come from the passage from Exodus today.  However, what we hear this weekend is much more poetic than what we become accustomed to as kids growing up and the ten rules we’re expected to follow and somehow all is right with God.  But just like the people John introduces us to, we often, over time, lose sight of the deeper meaning and purpose for what we do and are brought back in order to enter into dialogue once again.  This is not to simply remind ourselves of the rules, like the ten commandments, but to enter into relationship with the unfolding mystery that lies within them, their deeper meaning, that the writer tries to convey.  How easily we become blinded by our own lives and our own agendas that we to get stuck which is just another way of casting shadow on sin.

As we continue this Lenten journey and now enter into the Gospel of John, we’re invited into the experience of the cleansing of the Temple and allow ourselves to get knocked off kilter.  We too become comfortable and blinded in our own lives where we can no longer see nor hear the deeper meaning and mystery.  It may lead us into conflicted hearts or even the experience of tension, but as the gospel reminds us, that’s exactly where God works best because it shows an openness on our part to change and to deepen.  We pray for that grace today, in our own misunderstandings as we hear in the gospel, our own comforts, our own blindness, may be torn from under us in order that we may fall freely into this unfolding mystery of the Christ.  It’s what we truly desire and it’s the fullness of life that God continues to promise.

Belonging

Leviticus 13: 1-2; 44-46; ICor 10: 31–11: 1; Mark 1: 40-45

I was listening to a podcast this week with Brené Brown.  If you don’t know her, she in some ways rose to fame with a TED Talk she had done a few years ago on vulnerability and has since written many books.  The episode I was listening to, she happened to be speaking about “belonging”.  Belonging, according to her, demands us to be who we are, our most authentic selves even if the group expects something else from us.  She would say that the deepest pain that we can experience is a loneliness that comes with not feeling like we belong, even within our own family and community.  The paradox, as she puts it, is that feeling of loneliness actually is fed when we try to live up to the expectations of the community rather than being our authentic selves, sacrificing our truest selves for the sake of a false sense of belonging.

This sense of belonging and not belonging strikes a cord many times in Scripture, especially in the healing stories of the lepers that we hear today.  Their separation, even more so, has nothing to do with their own choosing.  The community, the law, the authorities, and certainly the fears force the leper to be separated and not belonging to the community.  They are inflicted with the rejection of the community simply because their disability is seen with the naked eye.  It’s all based on this sense of being unclean and somehow they are going to pollute the community.  Yet, here comes Jesus.  His approach seems rather radical for the community and the leaders because he sees the leper for who he really is.  He’s going to step out of the comfort of the illusion of being clean to encounter the human person in their suffering and pain and their sense of separation that feeds into that lived reality.

We’ll hear many stories like it throughout the gospel and probably scratch our heads and why this is so much of a problem for the community and leaders of the time.  What happens when the leper returns to the community?  The leper simply shows back up like nothing ever happened and reintegrates into the community.  Or so we would think.  And we think that the leper even cares about such things anymore.  The healing that takes place with the leper has implications on the community and their way of thinking and their judgment of this fellow human being.  The judgment of the community upon the leper now becomes challenged and is also revealed in the healing of this guy.  Their own shortcoming and what they have deemed important is revealed along with the healing.  They will be left with a choice as the story goes on to whether believe in Jesus or continue to surrender themselves to the law, the prescriptions, the expectations, and most especially their fear and judgment.  That’s the rub that these healings invoke within the community.  We can be grateful for the healing, but we all know that the pain runs deeper and can the person stand as they really are, owning that sense of belonging now in the face of this newfound uncertainty.

As the story unfolds and we move into the Lenten Season, we’ll see that the community will move to this false sense of belonging, giving into the fear of the political and religious figures, around the common enemy in Jesus.  There will be an unwillingness to encounter these characters in the healing stories in their own humanity because meeting people in their own suffering reveals our own sense of worth, and lack there of at times.  It reveals our own insecurities on life.  It reveals our own fears and judgments that we have towards others who may be different, even when it’s not their own choice.  It reveals, at the heart of it, just how difficult it is for us to change in the face of it and to see what’s most important for and in our lives.  Their sense of belonging, the lepers and all the rest we encounter and who have been pushed to the margins for one reason or another, has nothing to do with us.  Brown will go onto say that it’s a matter of the heart.  It’s a matter of accepting ourselves as we are, belonging to ourselves, and ultimately belonging to the Christ.

Paul tells us in today’s second reading about imitating Christ as he has and that imitation comes in the form of going out and meeting the other as they are, as a human person.  Most of what divides us is of our own making and choosing.  The implications of our own sin not only impacts us but the life of the community.  We imitate the Christ when we show compassion, when we allow ourselves to be vulnerable, when we meet suffering head on in our lives and in the other.  Paul understood that when he seeks the benefit of the many and not his own.  He understood his own insecurities and judgments but wasn’t going to allow his own thinking to prevent him from imitating Christ in that way.  If anything, Paul teaches us that our own sense of belonging comes first with an acceptance of our belonging in and with Christ.

The greatest paradox, more than anything, is these healings not only reveal the far reach that God has in trying to heal one who has been separated, rejected, unloved in going “outside the camp” as we hear in Leviticus.  When we recognize that our own sense of belonging has bearing on it, the demand of the Gospel is to do the same.  It’s much easier to give into the expectations of the community and the fear associated with not fitting in, being rejected, but the fullness of life and the restoration of that life can only come when we belong in and with Christ.  The implications of our own choices should weigh on our hearts.  As a community, a country, a world, we need to see the other as we are, as human persons, who are often hurting and suffering in less obvious ways that the leper and in need of that human contact that binds us as one.  When we feel we can’t, more often than not it’s our own fears, the expectations we’ve created, the laws and prescripts that have been decided on by the group, that prevents us from taking that step as Jesus does today out into the world so that what we do here really matters.  When we find our sense of belonging in Christ, we recognize that there is only one choice in who belongs and who doesn’t and it isn’t even ours to make.  When we see each other as human persons rather than our judgment then we all belong.

Our Separated Humanity

I found today extremely sad.  Yes, to the point of tears sad.  When I turned on the news this morning and heard of the shooting in Las Vegas and then saw some of the footage, I simply found myself in tears.  I was in disbelief, as if something like this just shouldn’t be happening.  And yet it was.  Again.  Not that I was the least bit surprised because I wasn’t.  Violence is the way of life here in Baltimore and other metropolitan areas but also around the globe, but for whatever reason it just struck me today, as if caught off guard.

I happened to catch a former FBI agent speaking on the broadcast, long before much was known about the shooter, other than the fact that he was a male, age 64.  My immediate thought was questioning how someone could reach that age and still harboring so much that he’s willing to take the lives of so many people so callously.  But the expert when on to speak about where he shot them from, the 32^nd floor of the Mandalay Bay, and the significance of the place of power, atop the people, paradoxically, though, magnifying the powerlessness.  I hadn’t thought of that as he tries to get into the mind of this guy.  More than 1200 feet separated himself from the crowd below, amplifying the casualty as bullets reigned down.

More times I can count I have written on this blog about the God problem we have, and I do still believe that to be true.  We find ourselves clinging to so many false gods that have taken the place of God, of mystery, that we find ourselves wandering aimlessly in a darkened world and country.  It’s all true if we could be aware enough in our lives to begin to see that we too are a part of the problem, not just the other that we have demonized.  Thinking about this guy, though, I began to think, as much as we have a God problem, possibly even more striking is the human problem that exists in this land.

There he was, some 32 floors off the ground and entirely separated from humanity below.  Unable to see the trauma being inflicted.  Unable to see the tears nor hear the screams that we’ve had to listen to repetitively through the media.  Now, granted, these are all signs of someone who was experiencing severe psychological problems in his life, seeming to be entirely separated from humanity.  However, the slow process of attaching ourselves to our gods has a similar impact on our own lives.

Think about it.  The more the demand for certainty in our lives and the attachment to the illusion of “being right”, the less capable we have become of empathizing and sympathizing with our fellow brothers and sisters and a whole lot less space for God.  It becomes entirely about having the winning argument, as I’m sure we will witness one again when it comes to the use of guns in our society, and less about the impact so much of what we are doing has upon humanity.  The problem is that we cling so tightly to our certainty that our own eyes become clouded from seeing the tears and pain of the other nor hearing the scream and cry for help as pain reigns down and is reigned down by my own inability to love and to walk this journey with the other.

I can never fully put myself in the place of another human being.  Their story is their story just as mine is mine.  I have suffered greatly in my own life, gradually learning to release the hold of certainty in my own life and through process, trust in faith, in the unseen, in the unknown, making space not only for God but for the other and their story and to hold it as treasure.  We have put ourselves in so many losing situations.  We cling to our symbols, to our institutions, our belongings, our own lives, as if that’s all that matters.  As if that’s all that matters and we can’t care about anything else.  We have a human problem and a God problem who ever so mightily is trying to break through our own lives and to free us from ourselves.  Ourselves.  We cling so tightly and before you know it, we too find ourselves separated from humanity, the humanity of the other and our own, unable to stand with, kneel beside, listen with love, see with care, all because of this distance we have put between ourselves, creating a tension, that, although painful, hopefully leads one day to a new day, a new beginning, a re-creation of our humanity.

It’s a sad day.  It’s been sad days, weeks, months, years, of being torn apart by so much that just doesn’t matter and yet we cling.  We cling to our ideology.  We cling to our certainty.  We cling to a flag.  We cling to a nation that was.  We cling to our guns.  We cling to our rights.  We cling.  It’s what we humans often do best, cling.  Somehow thinking we can’t live without any of it.  Somehow thinking that it’s eternal and never-changing.  We cling to our false gods that over time divide, leaving a gaping hole of pain in the soul of me, you, and a nation, that can only be filled with a God who’s love surpasses all and fulfills all, a God so often unseen and yet so present, gently opening our eyes and hearts to the other and their story.  A story you don’t know.  A story we mustn’t judge.  A story that is unfolding.  A story we must learn to care about in order to understand and in order to close the gap of our own humanity.  It’s the story of the Christ. 

It’s was an extremely sad day but a day in which we are once again invited to enter into the mystery of our own lives, feel the pain of the other, and together we learn to find true freedom from what binds and hurts our hearts and souls as a nation because in the end the story is the same.  It’s a sad day when we can no longer weep for all humanity who suffers because of our inability to put ourselves in their place beyond our symbols and institutions.  The more I am freed of my own gods of judgment, condemnation, and fear, I find myself trusting in all I can trust in, a God who doesn’t reign bullets nor insults down upon humanity but rather love, understanding, and forgiveness. 

Mending What Divides

Well, it’s over. It’s the day we have waited for, seemingly for years now. If there’s one thing we can agree on, the election cycle of 2016 was taxing emotionally and physically at times. There were days when I just couldn’t look at Facebook because I knew it would suck any life I had out of me. I’ve tried to stay out of the fray except with those I knew I could have meaningful conversations with about politics and this race between Trump and Clinton, or at times, just want to joke about it. What was once a nice forum to connect with friends became a living nightmare at times over the past months. Some of the struggle was I couldn’t quite understand how people could be so certain about so much that they would see and hear and then here I am struggling with who I would vote for, even up to the moment I picked up the pen in the polling place and felt the magnitude of it all. I used to be that person, certain about what to do. Maybe it’s my own lived experience, but things just seem more grey than black and white and I’ve been awakened to my own hypocrisy more often than I care to admit through the process.
Now here I sit reflecting on what I, since Brexit months ago, knew would always be possible, whether I liked it or not or whether anyone else did either. It’s a process that needed to unfold. There’s some reality in knowing that there’s going to be negativity in the days and months leading up to an election, just as their was in Britain, but what I have often found most disheartening is the amount of negativity that persists afterwards. Just look at it. Go to Facebook or Twitter and you won’t have to search far to find it. The irony, or the paradox in it all, is as much as Trump has been bashed for hurtful words, and don’t get me wrong, they are hurtful to many people and cannot be a part of such a position as President of the Free World, my negative reaction or your negative reaction, should only make you pause and say, you know what, I’m not much different than him. It might just weigh on my heart differently than his or others.
What we often fail to miss is that the more we move the charge towards inclusivity others can begin to feel excluded. The message of Trump was not simply about going after Clinton, as some may think, it was a resonation and capitalizing on a very human reality of feeling excluded, taken advantage of, lied to, and hurt by a system. She just happened to be the sacrificial, iconic figure of it all. Some may begin to feel as if thing are out of control and they no longer matter. At the same time, some will feel as if they know better and can make decisions for others, often failing to remember the forgotten and the outcast. Before you know it, suspicion begins to grow, uncertainty, and trust wanes like never before. I find a new way to judge and exclude.
I may not be a deplorable, as has been said, but there’s a chance I may be a part of the infamous 47% or I may have become part of the elite without even knowing it, while trying to include, through my judgment, ever so quietly often begin excluding others. It’s hard, in the midst of such intensity, to separate ourselves from our own ego that gets wrapped up in the need to win and to be right. But when only one wins others lose rather than recognizing that to truly win, we all most lose and give up something as we seek a common path together. More often than not, it is my need to win and be right. I know even for myself, the way I begin to separate is only listen to people that agree with me or say what I say, inflating an ego rather than expanding ones heart.
The only way we will find this path is to recognize and accept that the other is not much different than myself. They may have different struggles, think differently, act differently, vote differently, say things I might not, but really they could say the same thing about me. The more we separate ourselves from each other the more fear takes over and grows and the ego, both my own and the collective begins to take hold and I begin to think that somehow I am better than the other, above them. If you ask me, the two that lost last night were the political parties of this country, Republican and Democrat; and quite frankly, they needed to lose and they need to break down and once again connect with the common person. When a cry is ignored or written off, people will go to extreme to be heard. The Parties have become more about the salvation of the party than about the people that they have tried to sway into believing that they held the truth in its entirety, while at the same time demonizing the other and excluding them. That’s the craziness of it all because it happens on both sides, in their own unique ways. We just become blind to our own team’s weakness and shadow.
It’s hard to include everyone and remember everyone when we enter into these presidential elections these days. It’s easy to write-off all who were a part of the losing team. It’s easy to gloat when we win. It’s almost instinctual for us as human beings. But as a man who has really wrestled with this election, it’s time more for this, reflecting and delving a little deeper into my own self, and quite frankly, as a country, asking God to break through the ego at the moment and recognize our own hurt, just as we did in the days following 9/11. It’s the only way we move forward as a country and as humans. There is a deep hurt that runs through the blood of many at the moment, and if you don’t feel it now then you probably did just a few days ago. Redemption doesn’t come through winning. It comes through healing.
That is where we find common ground, in our own hurt and in our own need for healing and stop convincing ourselves that our truest power comes from winning and from beyond ourselves, but rather lies deep within. It’s the way we separate ourselves from the ego of these Institutions that have taken hold of our lives and convince us we are nothing without them. It’s a hard path and journey to manage because pain and suffering seems to stand in the way and we want to avoid it, when life calls us to go forth through it. When we give ourselves that space in our lives, to be as we are, we will also give it to the other and only then will the divide begin to decrease and a common path begin to show itself once again.

Uncertain Certainty

2 Macc 7: 1-2, 9-14; Luke 20: 27-38

As we enter into this month of November, our focus in the liturgical year begins to shift to what lies beyond us. We remember all of our loved ones that have died and that sometimes weigh on us. The whole month has a different feel to it than the rest of the year as the liturgical year begins to draw to a close.

Death is one of those strange things that we must deal with in our lives. Many have sat in this very church when a loved one dies and feels as if time ceases. We tell ourselves things in order to bring comfort in the face of death. It’s as if a new clock begins to tick after we die, an eternal clock, which only leads to further separation. It becomes something we anticipate rather than allow ourselves to experience in this moment. There is, rather a continuity and a continuation of time. The very last line of the gospel today reminds us that for God all are alive. That means us here who are living and breathing but also those that have died and continue to live in the eternal time that we share. It’s a challenge for us to define our lives by the eternal rather than trying to define the eternal by our earthly ways.

That’s the challenge Jesus faces with the Sadducees in today’s gospel. You know, for all the tension that often exists between Jesus and the Pharisees, this is the one time that they are all on the same page. They all believe in the resurrection. The Sadducees, on the other hand, do not which creates this interaction today that we hear on what seems to be a rather ridiculous story about marriage. The Sadducees would be what we call religious philosophers. You know they look for answers to such questions. But with such answers they want certainty, and to know; they want black and white. They want to try to define what we call heaven on their terms rather than allowing themselves to be comfortable with uncertainty, the unknown.

They’re a lot like us. It is the stuff we tell ourselves because it somehow brings comfort in our grief. We want to know that all who have gone before us are somehow ok and safe. It’s in those moments that we start to separate ourselves from death and define the unknown in our own terms. We start to separate ourselves from the other half of the mystery that we are. It sounds morbid to us at times but we are all dying and the more we allow ourselves to learn to die and practice dying, the less we have to fear it and the more at ease we are with the unknown and with uncertainty. The Sadducees want to know and want answers. If we can’t see it then we’ll define it ourselves rather than embracing what we don’t know. It’s us trying to give comfort to ourselves by defining the eternal rather than allowing the eternal to define us.

We then have this story of the Maccabean Martyrs in the first reading today. It’s worth a read but not for the faint of heart. The king was a vicious guy. But like the Sadducees, operates from a different place than the brothers and their mother. But like the gospel, it’s not just about them refusing to eat pork. That would be rather ridiculous as well. These were men who lived their lives in a very different way. They were truly faithful in its truest sense. They had no fear of death but at the same time, they weren’t willing to allow the king to define their lives. They lived from a place where they no longer had to fear death and the unknown. They were certain not about what they could see but rather what was unseen and unknown. To be people of faith we must learn to embrace the fullness of the mystery. When we cut ourselves off from death, the unknown, we ultimately cut ourselves off from the eternal and we start to define it for ourselves, in certain terms rather than in its fullness.

It is what we try to do each week here at this Table. It is about making the invisible, visible. About what making what is unknown, known before our very eyes. We have often lost that in making this into something we simply are obligated to do rather than not only recognizing that it is who we are but is also who we are becoming. It’s about allowing the eternal to define us rather than us defining the eternal through our earthly means. It may give us certainty in our own minds, but it closes us off and cuts us off from a more fuller life by embracing the mystery in its fullness, life and death. We believe in a God who is for all who are alive, both living and breathing at this moment and all who no longer physically present. That should ease our anxiety that we create for ourselves about dying and the eternal and it no longer has to be something that we simply experience after we die and yet then as well.

This is who we are. We are a people that desires certainty and knowing and yet we never will. We are a people that want to feel comfort for all who have gone before us, but never will in the way that we think. Time does not cease to exist but carries on and everyone with us. When we learn to embrace this very mystery of life and death, the paradox is, we learn to live more fully. Why would we not want that for ourselves and our loved ones?

A Salmon’s Journey

Now I already know what you’re thinking in regards to salmon. There’s probably one fact that everyone knows about them and that’s that they swim upstream. Big deal. But if that’s all you know, you probably don’t know much about what it is so many eat. And by the way, I don’t ever recommend visiting a salmon hatchery before you go to a salmon bake! If you don’t believe me just try it.

So alright, they swim upstream. Actually, it’s rather fascinating to watch them in the streams trying to do this, as if they were holding onto something with dear life. It looks somewhat abnormal and tiring in a way. It seems to explain why bear are such a predator to them being that it looks like you can just stick your hand in and grab one…although I’m sure it’s not that easy. There’s also the fact that they lay their eggs at the time when they are swimming upstream. Once they are born and ready to head out to salt water they will spend anywhere from one to five years out in the ocean waters, swimming thousands of miles, before returning where their lives began. It’s a rather fascinating story that they return to where life began, to the beginning. Whether they know it or not, though, it’s also the beginning of the end of their lives. When they return, if they are lucky enough to return, to the stream where their lives began and eggs are deposited and fertilized, it marks the end of their lives. It truly is the beginning of the end of the salmon’s life. As soon as they give life in this way they can die, and we saw several simply floating, dead, but also become dinner for so many.

It’s a rather fascinating story and of course can teach us about our own lives as well. I would hope when I come closer to the anticipated end of my own life that I still wouldn’t be fighting to swim upstream. It seems like a lot of work from one end of the spectrum. When we’re young it still feels that way sometimes. We’re still trying to give birth to something new in life, trying to recreate ourselves and redefine who we are. All of which can be a lot of work. It feels quite often as if we are swimming against the tide while at the same time trying to swim with it, adapting, adjusting to new environments, trying, so often, to feel free! Yet, that feeling of swimming upstream can lead to new adventures and opportunities as we grow up and almost seems necessary.

However, as we age, the swim upstream seems to change with us, or should as we grow older. We no longer should feel the need to fight the current so much and learn to accept so much of what comes flying by us, whether upstream or downstream for that matter. We no longer have to take things so seriously. As the salmon age and return home, a journey which probably seems long and arduous, they begin to lose their silvery color. In many ways they become more beautiful and probably even more noticeable in the water, maybe as a sign of the journey that they have made over their short life span. There’s always that part of us that wants to make a difference, wants to give life in a generative way, and as we grow in wisdom, we begin to learn that it’s not so much about swimming upstream or fighting the current, but rather about letting go.

Maybe deep down all those salmon out there today know what it means to make the journey home, to where it all began. What began on the bottom of the creek always is calling them back to their true home and their truest place. It is there that they not only encounter and give life, but in such paradox, where they also face death. In a short span they model the extremes of our own lives. Where we so often avoid and fear death. They learn to embrace it and are called to that place that when new life forms death is inevitable. Maybe it’s not so much the salmon that know all this but we sure do from our own journey’s in life. The more we hang on the more we seem to cling to death, get stuck, become jaded towards life, when in the simplicity of letting go, yet there is nothing simple about it, new life forms and the cycle begins again and for us humans on this journey of moving up and down stream in our lives, mystery deepens and continues to call us home as well, to the home not only in the depths of our being but so far beyond and so much mystery that we can never completely see or understand the journey home.

Glacial Sanctuary

This is the first post I’ve been able to do since boarding the cruise. The blessing and curse of this experience, and certainly cruising up here in Alaska, is there’s been very little phone connection and even less internet connection! There’s a gift in being able to disconnect in that way and reconnect with the world around you. Even as I type this, I’m looking out into Glacier National Park, chunks of ice floating around me and the sunshine beckoning so many different shades of blue, among others, all around me.

Before we arrived in Glacier, we listened to one of the Park Rangers here explain what it is we were going to see and experience, but he also pointed out his own experience and moving from Virginia to Alaska with his family and living without any regrets. He mentioned that people come for a variety of reasons, but once here something begins to happen. There truly is that disconnecting from the wide world and reconnecting with a world that is so often beyond words and often only experienced. Even typing this I know I want to say something but I know fully I can never express what it is I have experienced here in Glacier.

There are also a wide range of animals that migrate here each year, none other than the hump back whales. You would think, why on earth would they migrate from the stark beauty of Hawaii and travel thousands of miles to glacier country in Alaska. But like many of us, this too has become sanctuary for them. It is the place they come to be fed. It is the place they come to give birth to their young. The glaciers provide a safe haven for them to come, not only for that place of sanctuary, where birth can take place, but also the sustenance that they need for the continued journey. As crazy as that sounds, there is even a species of bird that flies from Antarctica to glacier country in the summer for the same reason only to prepare them for the journey that is to come as the weather begins to change here and ever so slightly, nightfall begins to return to the land of the midnight sun.

It’s quite the spectacle of not only learn about but also witness with my own eyes and heart. As I step out on deck right now, sailing down Glacier Bay, all I can hear is the sound of the sea gulls, the gentle flow of the water below, and from time to time, the crashing of pieces of glacier into the chilly waters. That alone is a spectacle to witness in this sanctuary as the thunderous roar awakes you from a nap, a sanctuary of my own, of sorts.

There’s been nothing quite like it in my experience, what it is I have seen up here in Alaska. Beyond vacation and a bucket list trip, I am amazed of the never-ending places I have called home in that sense, that brings you back to your core as a person, to a personal sanctuary that connects you in ways that you sometime lose in the day to day life. From the hustle and bustle of city life, work, relationships, and all that comes with it, it’s easy to lose sight of what’s available to us and what has been made available to us not only by a God that creates in such a way and allows us to participate in this great wonder, but also the many people and generations that have gone before that have made these lands a priority for what they are, a place of sustenance and sanctuary for so much wildlife but also for everyone that has been given the opportunity to step foot on land and ice over the years, and now myself included among them.

Like life, it can all be so fickle. As beautiful as it is cruising by right now, I also know the weather in this sanctuary can change in an instance. With great, high peaks around us, weather has a tendency to get caught up, raining down clouds, fog, and even some wet snow these days. Yet, despite it all, we keep returning and they keep returning to a place that is so much more than a vacation destination. For those of us who do sometimes get caught up in the rat race of life, myself included, it’s easy to lose sight, even when you try to make mystery a priority in life.

With each passing day it seems as if we move ourselves further away from what’s most important, and I have made note throughout this trip that we’ve been lucky enough to miss both political conventions, and we seem to have such short-term memory when it comes to this great mystery and what we’re called to in life. But in these moments, and the opportunity to share it in these words, coming to what is sanctuary for so many living beings, provides the space to disconnect in order to reconnect to the sanctuary that provides the eternal sustenance we desire in life. If it works for whales and birds traveling halfway around the globe to come to this place, then why not for us. The paradox of it all, we should’t even have to leave the confines of our own home and yet we do and so we did to come to this glacial sanctuary that offers warmth and care to so many.

Food for the Journey

1Kings 19: 4-8; John 6: 41-51

It’s hard not to feel for Elijah in today’s first reading. It was just a few months ago that we heard the next portion of this reading when he gets to the cave and looks for God in the fire, and earthquake, only to find God in the whisper of the wind, blowing within his heart and soul. But we go to feel for him. We know what it’s like on this journey. His back is up against the wall. Life isn’t nearly what he had expected it to be or wanted it to be. He’s feeling alone and abandoned. All in the name of God who somehow put him in this position! He has nowhere to turn. Queen Jezebel pretty much has a warrant out for his head. He’s exposed and taken out the false gods and prophets, exposing them for what they really were. You just got to feel for him. We all know what that’s like in life when we’re at our wits end. We’d all want to run and hide as he does today. That’s where we pick up the reading today. He even would prefer death! Ironically, that’s what he will experience, but even that will come in a different form than he prays and thinks of at this moment of despair!

In his moment of despair, though, we hear today that an angel appears to him to offer him food. Understandably, he’s not all that interested in eating anything or listening to anyone associated with God, considering so much disappointment in his life right now surrounds that place. But the angel encourages him to eat for the journey; you’re going to need to eat in order to continue the journey. Most notably, though, is that the journey is not to return yet to what he has left behind or to his original call as a prophet. He wasn’t quite ready to return to that place. The food for the journey moves him further and further out into the desert. Elijah must first embark an another journey, deeper into this great place of emptiness in his life, forty days and forty nights, into the depths of the desert, physically, and into his very soul. Elijah must be emptied of all else that he has fed himself with…the despair, the heartache, the expectations, the sadness, before he can return and face his true identity. That little bit of food under the broom tree is enough to take you on your way to these deeper parts. Elijah must make the journey from all that he thought and held onto to the depths of his being to find what will truly nourish. Heck, he’ll be able to confront most anything because not even death can stand in the way once he finds that place!

Desert is a common theme in Scripture. We know Jesus begins his public life in the same way. Before he can go out to both Jew and Gentile, Jesus must go into the depths of his being in the midst of the desert. He must confront his own temptations and the strong pull to be something other than we are and he is. In this squabble with the scribes and pharisees, he comes from that place and tries to lead them to it as well, the place that will endure forever. But like Elijah, they think they have it all figured out. They think they have him figured out in a derogatory way recognizing him only as the son of Joseph. That’s true to a point but he’s more than that and so are we. The scribes and pharisees fear the desert more than anything for it feels like losing control, which is what they thrive on. They like things neatly boxed, fitted together, all the answers and life figured out in their own way. But that’s simply the god they’ve created for themselves and works for them. It’s not the God who feeds eternally, inviting us into that second journey of life as it was with Elijah, calling us to something more, paradoxically, in our very emptiness we find the life of the world.

Now we may find ourselves in the midst of the desert of our lives at this very moment. Maybe we’re right where Elijah is, questioning how all of this can be, bemoaning what life is throwing at us, but that’s the place where we are most vulnerable and the place that God can speak and feed us with the true bread. This isn’t just something that we receive nor is it something that we need to have all figured out. If we think we do, it’s most likely more a theological construct where we get to determine who eats and who doesn’t, but the journey of the desert is one that takes us somewhere deeper into our souls that needs to be nourished and at the same time nourishes us for the journey. In the process and in the journey we find what it is we have always looked for, the true bread from heaven, God, and most likely not in the way we wanted or expected, but God nonetheless. To live our true vocation we must allow ourselves into the journey, and face death like Jesus and Elijah, into the desert of our lives, in order to go back, and yet forward, and be who we always were called to be and to the place that will give us life eternally, both now and forever.