Last days

My model for how to live, and how to die, is my grandfather, Alan Keith-Lucas. In his 86th and last year, he drove himself to a conference of Christian social workers and gave a challenging and inspiring talk. When he died, he had books on some of the newest issues in his field on his desk, waiting for his review. He was active and curious to the end.

This year we're reading our way through Luke, which is the one Gospel that stops to explain what Jesus was doing in between his grand entrance to Jerusalem and his arrest five days later. According to Luke, Jesus teaches daily in the temple, and becomes angry at the moneychangers who work there, earning an income as they help pilgrims make their offerings. Their services are necessary for the workings of the temple, which was an authentic and vital ritual center for the Jewish people. But Jesus wants the temple to be something more. Like other Jewish sects of his time, his followers want to create a small, intensive community that helps people change their lives. He calls for a "house of prayer", a place that meets the people's hunger for a deeper connection with God.

Jesus does not just go to Jerusalem to die. He comes to the city, the political and cultural center of his people's life, to teach and to try to make a change. Even in his last days, he is really living, using every moment to make a difference in the world.

Today's special

In the Mother Goose and Grimm comic strip for March 29, a waitress asks, "Have you heard today's special?" The boxer dog Ralph replies, "Of course today's special. Every day's special if you approach life with the right attitude."

In the middle of my workday, I started wondering what to call this day. Sunday was Palm Sunday, and Thursday will be Maundy Thursday, so today is...? We are between feasts, in a short lull of almost-ordinary time. The liturgical calendar calls it "Tuesday in Holy Week," which is too much of a mouthful. I settled on "Holy Tuesday."

I need my Tuesdays to be made holy. My typical Tuesday is a day of too many little tasks and too much commuting (none of it pleasant in today's driving rain). I seem to be forever between jobs and places, not settled in one place long enough to enjoy it.

I want to see God's presence not just in each part of my life, but also in the times in between, the little moments of waiting or traveling that are so easy to overlook. This, too, is the day that God has made. We will rejoice and be glad in it.

The choice

One of the most interesting discussions I have had about the Bible was with a group of teens. We read together the story of Judas in Marked, Steve Ross' retelling of the Gospel of Mark as a graphic novel. I asked them: What is the turning point in this story? When does Judas cross over the point of no return? Some thought that, as soon Judas thought about turning Jesus in, he had left the circle of the disciples. His heart had turned, and the love was gone forever. Others insisted that he could have turned back right up to the very end, even at the moment he kissed Jesus in the garden, and made things right again. Then someone asked: was it really wrong for Judas to betray Jesus if that is what God planned for him to do?

The story of Jesus' death and rebirth is so powerful, so central to our faith, that we begin to think that it was all inevitable. Whatever happened was what had to happen.

This way of thinking confuses our judgment. We begin to rationalize away Judas' moral failure, in the same that we convince ourselves that so many great and small injustices are just how the world works, just the way things were meant to be. We lose sight of the reality that Judas made a free choice, and a wrong one.

God was strong enough to create compassion and new life in Jesus despite everything Judas and the others did. God is strong enough to keep creating life despite all the destructive choices we make. But it is up to us whether we will join God in creating goodness or place more obstacles in God's way. We have to choose for ourselves.

On a hill far away

I just started reading Thomas Hardy's novel Jude the Obscure. In the opening scene, young Jude's schoolmaster is leaving town to pursue his dream of attending university and being ordained. When Jude stops to help with the moving, he notices that the current rector of their village has not come to see the teacher off, but has gone away for the day because he hates the sight of change. The other students are standing far off as well, like "certain historic disciples," not wanting to seem to enthusiastic about their teacher.

When Jesus entered Jerusalem, he was surrounded by a curious and adoring crowd. The crowd follows him again on Good Friday, scorning him as he endures trial and execution. Then, when he has died, they want no more of this teacher and return home. Even his friends "stood at a distance, watching these things." (Luke 23:49).

Holy Week is a busy time at the church. There is much to do as we celebrate the high drama and deep symbolism of these great feasts. My prayer as we enter this special time is that we will not let the work of doing church distract us from what Jesus is teaching us. Let us not stand at a distance, watching these things, but come right up to sit at the feet of the master.

Stop. Look. Listen.

I heard an interview with Daniel Menaker, who wrote the book "A Good Talk" about the art of having a conversation. He said that many animals can hear, but humans are unique in our ability to listen. Good conversationalists know how to invite people to speak, not to provide some necessary bit of information, but simply to share whatever they want from their own experiences. In a good talk, we hear a story we've never heard before. We learn something new.

For me, the practice of keeping Lent is about learning to listen. Each day is punctuated by the question: What is God speaking to my heart?

Here is a listening prayer I love. It's from the Terma Collective:

May my feet rest firmly on the ground. May my head touch the sky.
May I see clearly. May I have the capacity to listen.
May I be free to touch. May my words be true. May my heart and mind be open.
May my hands be empty to fill the need.May my arms be open to others.
May my gifts be revealed to me, so I may return that which has been given,
completing the great circle.

Mary's baby boy

When I hear of a death, I so often find myself thinking "This was somebody's baby." The passing of a life reminds me of the joy and protective love someone felt when this child entered the world.

Now, a few days before we commemorate Christ's Passion, I find my imagination turning back to his nativity. Every year, the weeks between Christmas and Easter seem shorter. We welcome the baby Jesus, and then before we know it this child is a grown man setting out to meet his fate in Jerusalem.

Easter connects Jesus' life and death to forces far greater than any one man. He brings rebirth in springtime, just as the natural world is teeming with new life. He conquers death, restores God's vision for human history and makes all creation new. His actions reverberate through the cosmos. And yet, he is not a legend or image. He is a man. Just a man, so recently a baby boy in his parents' arms.

More than fair

Since members of our parish read William Young's The Shack together, many parts of that surprising and sometimes frustrating book have stayed with me. One that stand's out is Young's explanation of rights and relationships. His Creator figure tells us that we humans insist on protecting our rights because we don't know how to get what we need any other way. We're so bad at relationships that we need the structure of rights to keep us from hurting each other. If we really learned how to share in God's love, all those rules would fall away.

Even here in Massachusetts, home to a driving culture that borders on insanity, I notice that drivers do not always take the right of way. We have the rules to keep us safe, the many regulations that tell us who gets to drive on and who has to yield the way. But if heavy traffic or a tricky intersection keeps a person waiting a long time, eventually someone else stops and signals for them to go ahead. Just this morning, three people relinquished the right of way in order to help me, a total stranger, get where I needed to go.

Our relationships thrive when we are willing to be more than fair, to give up what is rightfully ours for the sake of our neighbors.

Peace and the sword

The ancient hymn goes, "The strife is over, the battle done, the victory of life is won." There is a long tradition in our faith of seeing Jesus as a warrior locked in battle with sin and death. On Easter morning he emerges victorious, winning the war for the side of grace and life.

There is good reason to be cautious about this image. Over the centuries, many people have wrapped it around their own self-interest and their own hatreds, justifying terrible violence by claiming they fight on the side of Christ.

At the same time, I'm not ready to throw it out entirely. Every time I encounter suffering, I become more convinced that evil is a real and powerful force in our world. People struggle constantly to turn away from choices that cause pain and turn towards God's healing. When I feel unable to help, I find strength in the image of Jesus the peaceful warrior, facing down the forces of evil with courage and love. I want him to teach me to stay centered in the midst of chaos, skillfully turning aside every attempt to break the human spirit.

A little gift

While we were out shopping today, it turned out there were all sorts of restrictions on the coupon I wanted to use. The cashier helpfully explained what to do, but it still took a while to check out. My son played patiently at my feet while we got it sorted out. As we headed out the door, a clerk caught up to us. My boy's eyes widened as he noticed the big rainbow superball in her outstretched hand. "She gave me a present!" he cried.

The cashier's face grew tense as she managed the store's rules, but the floor clerk who was allowed to give toys to children did her work with a beaming smile. For her book Nickel and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich took low-paying jobs to see whether people can really survive on our minimum wage. When she worked in a chain restaurant, she noticed that the waitresses rebelled against their highly regulated company by adding little extras to the food - a pat of butter, a swirl of whipped cream. These little acts of generosity allowed them to feel like the customers' friends rather than like faceless cogs in a food-serving machine. They needed to have something to give in order to feel truly human.

One of the most basic things we know about God is that God is generous, constantly pouring out unexpected beauty, power and love. Made in God's image, we all have this spirit of generosity imprinted in our hearts. To be fully ourselves, we need to find some way to give.

Sweet expectation

Waiting can be so delicious. When we're hoping for something wonderful - a birth, a wedding, a new home, an adventure - we're full to the brim with the excitement of it.

It's easy to let the waiting of Lent turn into dread. We know we have a journey to take with Jesus. Palm Sunday and Good Friday are coming, and we will be called to bear witness to the the grief and outrage of the Passion story. The messages of sin and mortality weigh upon us. Sometimes in our faith journey that's where we need to be, walking the hard roads with Jesus so we can remember that he walks the hard parts of our lives with us.

This year, I'm finding that the waiting is sweeter. As I mark each day of this forty-day journey, I feel that much closer to the promise of Easter. Jesus is rising! Soon!

A new day

We caught a little bit of the Simpsons the other night. After seeing an ad for a ballet school on TV, Marge turns to Lisa and asks cheerfully, "Did I ever show you my Box of Shattered Dreams? It's upstairs in my Closet of Disappointments."

From the cross, with his dying breath, Jesus says, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." He says this not just for the soldiers or the jeering crowd. He says it for us. He teaches us that his story is not about the people who hurt him and the way his vision of peace was shattered. His story moves forward, accepting what has passed and creating something new.

If one of the kids has a hard day, a preschool teacher we know makes a point of saying goodbye carefully when it's time to go home. She gets down low, looks in the child's eyes, and says, "Today is all done. We'll try again tomorrow." They leave whatever has happened behind and finish the day with a hug or a high-five. Sometimes I think of her as I go to bed, hoping to completely let go of this day and try it all again tomorrow.

Ups and downs

The sun came out this week and suddenly everyone has more energy. We think of ourselves as constants, but it's amazing how little it takes to alter our outlook on life. I notice the effect of being early or late by just a few minutes, losing or gaining a few dollars, hearing one positive or negative remark. Psychologists have discovered that it only takes a few subtle cues to make us more anxious or more confident.

We are so changeable, and we have a habit of confusing our emotions with God's. We feel open and energized one day, and so we believe that God is a positive force in our lives. We feel tired and irritable another day, so we decide that God is distant and judgmental.

This is why we need the discipline of regular worship and prayer. If we come to God over and over, in our good moods and our bad ones, we can begin to see past our own ups and downs. We can start to experience the true constancy of God, whose love is patient and abiding. As we swoop up and down the roller coaster of life, God forms the track underneath, never letting us go.

Unexpected teachers

There is a wonderful moment that comes sometimes during the process of preparing for a funeral. I ask the family to tell me about the person who has died, and they usually start out by telling me her best qualities. And someone in the circle will pause, and smile, and say, "Well, she was certainly her own person..." and proceed to tell me some outlandish or maddening thing she liked to do. Then the deceased person suddenly feels alive again, like her spirit is right there in the room with us.

We are each blessed with a few people in our lives who are very much themselves, with unique personalities that delight us and drive us crazy. In my experience, these are some of our best teachers.

God's greatest desire, I believe, is for each of us to be whole. We were imprinted in creation with the glorious image of God, but each of our personalities can only express a small part of who God is. We encounter new aspects of God in each other, in the gifts that challenge or complement our own. If we let them, the people who are most different from us are the ones who can help our spirits stretch and open to whole new ways of knowing God.

Beyond knowing

Human beings are so wonderfully mysterious. We can love someone dearly and still have no idea what's going on inside their heads. Perhaps when we learn to love God, who is truly beyond all understanding, it can help us to accept the other things we do not know.

Quite by accident, I came across this lovely poem by the 14th-century Sufi poet Hafiz:

I have a thousand brilliant lies for the question: How are you?

I have a thousand brilliant lies for the question: What is God?

If you think that the Truth can be known from words,
If you think that the Sun and the Ocean
Can pass through that tiny opening called the mouth,

O someone should start laughing!
Someone should start wildly Laughing –Now!

The law of agreement

To get to the laughs, you have to go along with the joke. When improv comedians perform together, it doesn't work if one performer attempts to control the story and force it to produce his or her own punchlines. In his book Blink, Malcolm Gladwell gives an example from a rehearsal of the comedy group Mother. A woman says to her partner, "We need to amputate your leg!" He replies, "You can't do that. I'm very attached to it!" She gave him an opening, but he closed it. He gets in a mildly funny joke, and then the scene comes screeching to a halt. They try it again, and this time he accepts her invitation into the story. She says, "We need to amputate your leg!" He replies, "Well, I think you'd better go ahead and take both of them!" The exchange isn't especially comic by itself, but it gets them moving into new and ever more ridiculous scenarios until they find some very funny material.

In our relationships with other humans, we are constantly negotiating. We have limited time and energy, resources and talent. So as we grow up and get to know people, we learn when to say yes and when to say no. We only accept a few invitations.

Our relationship with God is different. Here we dance with an entirely unlimited partner, an infinite beloved with literally all the time and energy in the world. When God invites us into something new - or we invite God deeper into our lives - the answer is always Yes.

Start at the very beginning

The song from the Sound of Music goes, "Let's start at the very beginning, a very good place to start. When you read you begin with ABC. When you sing you begin with do-re-mi."

No matter where I go in my faith, I keep coming back to the same place. It doesn't matter what questions I ask or what doubts I raise, what stories I read or what prayers I say. It all comes down to the simple experience of being loved and safe, the way a small child feels as a gentle hand rubs her back to help her fall asleep.

After a long and distinguished career, the theologian Karl Barth gave one of his last lectures at the University of Chicago. When he invited questions, the president of the seminary asked, "Of all the theological insights you have ever had, which do you consider to be the greatest of them all?" Barth paused for a moment with his eyes closed and then said: "Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so!"

Play your own game

In an early episode of the show Joan of Arcadia, God encourages Joan to try playing chess. At the same time, Joan lets herself get caught up in the social scene of her high school, the game that determines who's in and who's out. She comes to realize that the only way to win either game is to resist the temptation to react to other people and just follow her own path.

There is a lot of advice out there about how to connect to God. Some of it assumes that everyone loves to read Scripture, or craves silence, or finds clarity in fasting, or feels at home in traditional worship. The reality is that there is no one practice that will suit everyone. Sometimes we have to ignore others' advice (even the ideas of your blogging priest) and seek our own path towards God.

We are halfway through Lent. Maybe you started a practice for this season and it's not doing a lot for you. Maybe you didn't choose anything at first, but there's something you'd like to try for the next 20 days. Give yourself permission to engage this time in your own way. All that matters is you, your God, and the love that is growing between you.

Calming the water

I spent a lovely morning at a workshop led by Brother Geoffrey Tristram from the Society of Saint John the Evangelist, the Episcopal monastery in Cambridge. Geoffrey shared with us a meditation he uses to center himself at the end of the day:

Imagine that your soul is a bowl full of water. As you've traveled through the day, the water has been stirred up. It's moved back and forth as you've been pushed and pulled in different directions. Maybe some has spilled out in anger or sorrow. Let the water stop its churning. Let the ripples become smaller and smaller, until they come to rest. Let the water be still.
Now your soul is a smooth surface, ready to reflect the true image of God.

The weight of the world

Is it really true that God never gives us a burden that we cannot bear? I know many people find great comfort in this statement. It makes me uneasy. I keep thinking of people who really are crushed by this world. Some are burdened by grave injustices, the blind or cruel choices of others. Others face diseases or forces of nature too great for them to conquer. Did God give them these burdens? Could a good God have some mysterious reason to desire their pain?

These are the hardest questions of our faith, and I will not pretend to have any easy answers. The best I can do is to say that if one person is too laden down, it may be because he or she was never supposed to carry that load alone. We are not called to be so self-centered that we ignore another person's struggle, or so proud that we refuse to share our own. The weight of the world is light if we all shoulder it together.

1 potato, 2 potato, 3 potato, 4

“Dad, why are you holding that potato?” I asked. He was rooting through the refrigerator drawers and the kitchen cabinets, doing it all with one hand. He looked down at the large russet potato that was occupying his other hand and answered, “Because I’m looking for an onion.” He wanted to make home fries, and it never occurred to him to put down the potato while he looked for the other ingredients.

I am clearly my father’s daughter. As soon as I begin one task, I notice another that needs doing and pick up the thing I need for that job. Before I know it I have too many things to carry – a toy that needs to go upstairs, a note reminding me to make a call, a dishtowel headed for the hamper, a pair of pliers to fix a broken drawer. There is nowhere to put the next thing I see.

It can be the same way with my care for people. I collect concerns about the many people I come across, so that sometimes my heart feels too full to add even one more prayer.

Jesus invites us to lay our burdens down, to give him all the anxieties we feel for neighbors and strangers, family and friends. We release our love and our fear into him, knowing his heart is big enough to hold it all. Now our hands and hearts are open, ready for the next need we encounter.

Stepping lightly

In this rare warm spell, it has been nice to see grass again, even the brown and withered lawns just waking up from their sleep under the snow.

In Psalm 103, we read:
As for mortals, their days are like grass;
they flourish like a flower of the field:
for the wind passes over it, and it is gone,
and its place knows it no more.

No one knows how long we will have on this earth, but we can be certain that it will end, and probably before we have done all the things that we desire. We must trust that we are not the only ones who can accomplish our dreams, and that others will take up their part in the unfolding work of God's salvation. We can only do our own small part, and the rest will be theirs to discover.

We will not be here, so we must protect the gifts of creation for the next generation. As Anglican theologian Kwok Pui-Lan encourages us: Tread as lightly on this earth as you would step on your mother's back.

I wasn't thinking

After an especially spectacular performance of three-year-old behavior, my son sat down in my lap to have a little talk. In a solemn voice he declared, "I wasn't thinking."

Of course he wasn't. Preschoolers have almost no impulse control. I am struck, though, by how often we adults have to make the same admission. It's so easy to slip into auto-pilot, or to forge ahead with our plans without considering the consequences.

In our service for the Reconciliation of a Penitent, we pray for forgiveness not just for the things we have done and the things we have left undone, but also for the mistakes we don't even remember. We acknowledge that we have gone through life without really thinking.

Prayer can create a space between our impulses and our actions. When we stop to take a breath and notice the presence of God, we receive greater power to choose consciously what we will do next. Then we act not out of habit or greed or fear, but out of hope for God's kingdom.

Whatever you have to do

A wise friend of mine once told me, "Do whatever you have to do to stay centered." He meant that we should take the time we need to care for our spirits, even if it means most of our to-do lists get left undone. We give more to the world when we do a few things peacefully and with love than when we hurry to get everything done and end up anxious and easily irritated.

I only sometimes manage to take my friend's advice. But when I do, I notice the difference right away. The world teaches us that success is getting things done, and that it's OK to be whoever we have to be to get the job done. Faith teaches us to find meaning not in what we do but in who we are: beloved children made in the image of God. God does not call us to complete a set of tasks, no matter how worthy those accomplishments might be. God calls us simply to be who we were created to be, sharing our unique spirits with the world.

Clean indeed

In Psalm 51, we pray: "Purge me from my sin, and I shall be pure; wash me, and I will be clean indeeed."

My mind resists the idea of being washed of my sins. I don't like the implication that we go through life tarnished or dirty. But perhaps this is a time to listen to body, my which often understands spiritual matters long before my busy brain catches up.

Even when I'm not particularly grimy, water almost always feels good. A splash on the face to wake up, toes dabbling in the ocean, a plunge into the pool, a laughing dash through the sprinklers, a warm shower or soak to unwind...there are so many ways for us to feel fresh and new.

Maybe I could stop debating whether or not I really need cleansing and just enjoy the gift of God's purifying grace.

All who hunger

Have you ever felt lost? All of us have moments when the path is unclear and we have no idea where to make the next turn.

The story of the Exodus always puts things in perspective for me. I may feel confused for a few days or weeks, but I certainly haven't spent forty years searching for my home. Also, the Israelites are such real human beings. They grumble, they make mistakes, they run after false solutions, they whine about all the good food they left back in Egypt. If we ever need a guidebook for our own wanderings, it's all in here.

When the people had gone as far as they could on their own, God did not abandon them to starve on the burning sands. God sent them manna, giving them each day exactly as much as they needed. They could not ration or hoard their food, but had to depend utterly on God to feed them.

Can we trust that, whatever we need on our journey, God will provide it? In the words of Sylvia Dunstan's hymn, "All who hunger, gather gladly, holy manna is our bread. Come from wilderness and wandering, here in truth we shall be fed."

I promise...

Our neighbors at Holy Trinity United Methodist Church have written a covenant of relationship for their community. They make four promises: to treat one another as children of God, to remember that they are all imperfect human beings, to give feedback with kindness, and to turn any painful experiences into opportunities to build a healthier community.

Jesus speaks of the kingdom of God as a wedding feast. In this sacred marriage, we make our vows to God - and to one another, to all our partners in the beloved community.

Reading the Holy Trinity statement today, I started wondering how I would live if I truly kept these promises to every child of God.

A strange gift

In her poem "The Uses of Sorrow", Mary Oliver writes:

Someone I loved once gave me
a box full of darkness.

It took me years to understand
that this, too, was a gift.

When we are hurt, we need plenty of time to truly feel our anger and our grief.

Then, after we have emptied ourselves out of all that pain, sometimes we find space for something new to come in. We are able to see not just what we have endured, but what we have learned.

God does not send us suffering to teach us a lesson. God does give us the ability to take all our experiences, the good and the bad alike, and use them to create a meaningful life. By the grace of God, we are able to find the blessing beyond the curse.