Pray to God

“Pray to God, but continue to row to shore.” – Russian proverb

I like this little saying. It reminds me that my life is a participation in the life of God. One of the ways that God is helping me to shore is by working with me through my arms. However, this proverb seems to assume that of these two – praying and rowing – it is the rowing that I am more likely to forget.

Personally, I’m pretty good at remembering to row. I like the feeling of it. I exert a force; I see myself move. And I think that I am doing it. I learn to trust in myself. This image of rowing our own little boats to shore is deeply engrained in the American identity of the self-made person. To have faith in oneself is part of our national ethic.

I’ve been rowing real hard this week. With the launch of Kairos – a new Sunday morning program for youth – there is much work to be done. The shore looks far off yet. Will we be there by Sunday? And if so, will there be any place to sit? (The new chairs are on back order.)

A parent and I were chatting at a basketball game this week. We were talking about Kairos, where we are now and what work remains to be done. She offered to help in all kinds of wonderful ways. She would talk to her friends, serve as a mentor, think of guest speakers, and encourage her son to sign up. And then, perhaps noticing a slightly frantic look in my eye, she offered one more thing: to pray to God.

Pray to God. Oh yeah, right. I was rowing alone again, wasn’t I? Anxiety will do that. I was trying to get to the shore by rowing harder and faster. Of course, what on earth would be the point of getting to the shore only to realize that God wasn’t in the boat? “For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life?” (Mark 8:36)

We are not alone in the boat. Others travel with us. As the Body of Christ, we remind one another to seek a healthy balance of rowing and praying, which might sometimes require a rearranging of that Russian proverb.

Row to shore, but continue to pray to God. 

Sharing Life

I'm celebrating my 31^st birthday today. Connected to that, I received a check in the mail yesterday from my grandma. My birthday gift this year is slightly larger than it was last year.

It's part of a trend. Every few years, she increases her gifts by a modest amount. If the trend holds, my brother Jamie will receive a check for the same amount when he turns 28 in March.

That sort of thing used to make me so mad.

“He should have to wait three more years,” I would have thought. “I didn't get that much money when I was his age. It's not fair.”

I counted and compared all manner of things in this way.

Bedtimes.

Weekly allowances.

Grams of sugar per serving in breakfast cereal.

For most of my childhood, our mother wouldn't buy anything sweeter than 6 grams of sugar per serving. When she finally softened a little and started bringing home Cinnamon Life, we both got to eat it right away. That didn't make any sense to me. According to my math, Jamie had another three years, two months, and five days of regular old Life Cereal for breakfast.

My enjoyment of Cinnamon Life was decreased because my brother got to have it too. And illegitimately. Unfairly. Three years early.

I, on the other hand, deserved the Cinnamon Life. After all, I'd waited till the ripe old age of twelve. Just like you're supposed to.

It would be pain-causing enough if I were merely obsessed with getting things. What makes this being human all the more difficult is that it's not just the getting things that I like. It's also the feeling that I deserve what I'm getting – money, stuff, praise – and the fact that, hopefully, the people who don't deserve such things – like my younger brother – don't get them.

Here we are on Epiphany. Twelve days after Christmas. The Wise Men have arrived, bearing their gifts from afar. Today we celebrate the late comers who nearly turn Jesus' life over to Herod.

We don't hear any more about the shepherds, but I wonder where they are and what they're thinking. Perhaps they're still nearby. The glow from the Angels' visit has dimmed somewhat by now. The good news of great joy is still pretty good, but not quite as new, and the shepherds have returned to work keeping their flocks. Their Christmas vacation is over.

Are there hearts still brimming with love and charity? And, if not, what do they think at the sight of the Wise Men?

Who invited them?

Where are they from?

Are they wearing capes?

Do they get Jesus too?

Because we were here first.

If sharing cereal with family is hard, how hard might it be to share God with strangers?

And if the shepherds were still hanging around, what might the Wise Men have said to one another on seeing them there?

Balthazar, are you sure the star has stopped completely?? 
Maybe it's just slowed down a little bit. 
This can't be the place, can it?

Even if the shepherds and Wise Men thought or said such things, as human beings might well have, there is great hope here for us. After all, the Wise Men make this great, holy pilgrimage not to a temple or shrine, but to a home, to a bedside. They find God not in stone, but in flesh.

Growing up I understood going to church to be a good thing, and fighting with my brother to be a bad thing. Now I see that I’ve probably learned as much about God’s love from having a brother as I have from going to church. Through all the silly fights about things like cereal, and a few more serious ones, we are best friends. God’s love resides with us in all of our humanity. It is to this – God with us – that the Wise Men pay homage.

Epiphany

Epiphany –
How God's Light Reaches All the Wise Men
Even the Foolish Ones

My best friend, Brian, and I are somewhere
in the Black Hills of South Dakota
in the woods, on foot, looking for our tent.
It’s long after sunset.
It’s just begun to rain.
And we are lost.

It’s a different kind of lost 
than I’ve ever been before,
lost without any bearing.
The night is moonless, and the path a distant memory.
The darkness swallows all but the nearest trees.

The tent is wherever Brian pitched it
while I was warming the beans for dinner.
He says he tied a piece of navy fabric to an evergreen
to mark the spot.
He also says that it’s right near a rock.
If only we can find the rock and the tree we’ll surely find
the screaming orange tent with silver reflectors on every side.

I’m dressed for the effortless stroll to the tent 
I thought this would be,
wearing flip flops and shorts, 
cradling an increasingly wet sleeping bag.
At this point, I'd happily sleep in the car 
if we could find our way back.

But we are lost –

Not only to where we are going, 
but from where we have come.
Lost.
So I stand in the dark and rain, 
doing the only thing I can,
getting mad,
and mocking him in my head.

A piece of navy fabric? 
A nearby rock?
Really? 
Really?

People die from better ideas than this
and get Darwin awards for improving the human genome.

This isn't some weekend camping trip.
I quit my job for this,
spent months planning and preparing,
planning and re-planning
and perfecting my plans.
A piece of navy fabric?!

Underneath my anger I do wonder
what will happen to us.
No, it’s not so cold, 
but how cold is cold enough to kill
when combined with wet and exposed skin?

I contemplate this question more
out of spite
than true concern.
If we die 
that’ll show Brian 
how dumb he is.

This is where I am –

Not merely lost in the woods,
but in the dark and cold of my own mind,
when I look up
in exasperation and defeat
and see through the canopy above me

Stars,
so many stars
that I shudder,
the way I would were it sunlight
falling on my skin after a swim.

Suddenly it's almost warm
and the rain – falling from a clear sky –
a blessing, not a curse,
and I find myself
so glad to be here,
wherever here is,
where everywhere I look is
so much more than eye can see,

And the improbability of being here
whispers against my neck hairs
of the greater improbability
of being here at all.

Mary and Joey?

This week my cousin, Eleanor, posted an absolute gem of a conversation to Facebook. The characters are Joey, her husband, and Nate, their four-and-a-half-year-old son.

Nate: Why were they talking about Joseph at pageant rehearsal?

Joey: Because Joseph was Jesus’s father.

Nate: YOU ARE?!?

Nate found this revelation surprising, but apparently believable, somewhere within the realm of possibility. For most of us, that realm of possibility shrinks as we grow up. Possibility becomes largely defined by the things we’ve learned and experienced. 

There are plenty of reasons why my cousin-in-law, Joey, couldn’t possibly be the father of Jesus. For starters, he goes by “Joey,” and that just doesn’t sound right for the father of Jesus. Mary and Joey?? No way. He was Joseph. Silly Nate.

After I had laughed long and hard over it, “liked it,” commented on it, and laughed about it some more, I was struck by the wisdom of Nate’s ignorance. The great mysteries of Christmas – the Virgin birth, the Incarnation – do not favor the advanced cognitive abilities of the adult brain.

The developing brain of the young child has the advantage on us here. Jesus really tries to tell us this. He comes to us as a baby. He says things like, “Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.” (Mark 10:15)

We often forget Jesus’ message for the same reason that we need to remember it – it doesn’t make the most sense to our big adult brains. Fortunately, we have the little Nates of the world here to remind us.

Pointing

There is a Zen Buddhist saying, "Don't mistake the finger pointing at the moon for the moon."

John the Baptist is pointing so hard at Jesus.

"I am not the Messiah." It's not me.

"I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandal." I'm just a pointing finger.

"I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, 'Make straight the way of the Lord.'" Stop looking at me. Look towards him.

"Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!" There he is! He's the One. Follow him.

In the Daily Office reading assigned from the Gospel of John (3:22-30), we see that John has had some success with his pointing. Many of his disciples have abandoned him and are now following Christ. John -- ecstatic -- cries, "My joy has been fulfilled." But his remaining followers are upset. They complain that "all are going to [Jesus]."

The success of John's ministry is measured by numbers. His most faithful disciples see failure in the diminishing numbers. John sees success. After all, his ministry is one of pointing, of teaching his disciples how to see and where to go. It is a testimony to his work that many recognize Christ and leave John's fold.

To those who remain with him, John pointedly reminds, "You yourselves are my witnesses that I said 'I am not the Messiah,'" and "He must increase, but I must decrease." It's still not me.

As so often happens with great teachers, preachers, and leaders, some followers fall in love with the message, while others fall in love with the messenger.

As I prepare yet again for the coming of Christ, this Gospel raises a troubling question. Which kind of follower am I?

John is pointing so hard. Will I see? Will I go?

Surprise

“Surprise!”

My brother, Jamie, and I shouted from the bench where we had been sitting, waiting for our mother to notice us there. She sat at a sidewalk table, six feet away, where she had come to meet a friend for coffee.

It was the day of her 60^th birthday. Jamie had flown in from New Mexico, where he was living, and I’d flown in from California, where my road trip of the American West had taken me. No one but our father – who’d orchestrated it all – expected to see us sitting on a bench in Northampton, Massachusetts.

“Surprise!” 

She turned toward us. Incomprehension turned to shock which morphed into terror. I’d never in my life seen a look anything like it. She was so surprised, she was scared. Reality unraveled in front of her. She would later explain that in that moment life became a dream. What she saw made no sense in the waking world. For one half second I truly thought that we’d caused her a heart attack.

The surprise was so great because our presence was not merely unexpected; it was impossible.

The news of Christmas is this kind of a surprise. Bearing the news to Mary, the Angel must assure her that “nothing will be impossible with God.” And in separate visitations to Mary, to Joseph, and to the shepherds, the message is the same: “Do not be afraid.”

Fear is not an emotion that I generally associate with Christmas, nor is surprise. There is a comfort in the sameness of Christmas from year to year – the same songs on the radio, same movies on the TV, same ornaments on the tree, same foods on the dinner table, same bodies around the table, and the same story told yet another time. 

The layers of tradition are so thick it can be difficult to remember how surprising the story itself is. And the more we try to capture that surprise – through retelling – the more familiar the story becomes. Part of Advent’s challenge is to listen again with new ears. 

Stay awake. Pay attention. Be open to surprise.

Hammers and Hearts

On Thursday, November 15 – two and a half weeks after Hurricane Sandy hit – a group of six young adults from St. Stephen's drove from Richmond to New York City to participate in the relief effort. We drove an SUV and a minivan, full of supplies donated by parishioners.

We spent our two days of Hurricane Sandy relief work in Brooklyn. The days were so different from each other. The work of gutting a flood-destroyed basement – pulling up carpet, tearing down drywall, shoveling mud – was so immediately satisfying. It was hard work physically, but the task was obvious. Step 1: put hammer in hand. Step 2: put hammer through wall. Step 3: repeat step 2.

At the end of the day, the results were strikingly visible. What remained of the basement were a bare concrete floor and a skeleton of studs. Outside, a bank of black trash bags – four feet high and running the length of the property – lined the curb and spilled onto the sidewalk. The family could finally hire an electrician, a plumber and an HVAC specialist, and begin the rebuilding. We’d done good work. It was, in Abigail Whorley’s words, “what we are called to do as neighbors.”

The other day was spent doing “what we are called to do as Christians” (again, Abigail’s words). There were no hammers. We came face-to-face and hands-to-hands with people. It wasn’t easy, wanting to help, not quite knowing what to do. Here we are. Now what?

In Coney Island, one block from the water, we brought warm food to a building of subsidized apartments for seniors. Most were first generation immigrants from Russia; a few had come from Latin America. We walked dark, prison-like hallways, pushing a cart. The doors were closed with more locks than I’d seen outside of a locksmith. In the cart, a white Styrofoam box kept the packages of lasagna warm. They looked and smelled like airplane dinners.

On the 14^th floor, we stood for a long while outside the first door, just looking at it, wondering who’d be on the other side, almost afraid to knock. In retrospect, it was the closest I’ve ever come to understanding the mission of the disciples as Jesus gave it to them: “Take nothing for your journey, no staff, nor bag, nor bread, nor money – not even an extra tunic.” (Luke 9:3)

Abigail knocked. Though we had many things with us, including extra layers, I felt naked, as if I had absolutely nothing but the eyes in my face. I could almost feel them being probed and questioned by a stranger through the peephole. I wanted a hammer and a soft wall. Was it a coincidence that Jesus put down a hammer to take up his ministry?

Sometimes the door was opened to us. We were greeted by our long-lost Russian great aunt who hugged us, pinched our cheeks, and told us how beautiful we were. We were greeted by a coughing woman who took two lasagnas – one for herself and one for “her friend” – and closed the door quickly. We were greeted by many people who were so hungry to talk to us and who were happy to take some lasagna too.

Sometimes we heard footsteps but the door remained closed. Jesus tells his disciples to prepare for this, to not take it personally, and to not be deterred by it: “Wherever they do not welcome you, as you are leaving that town shake the dust off your feet.” (Luke 9: 5) Leave it behind and move on. Keep your heart open.

Finally, in another apartment building, we distributed the supplies that we’d brought from Richmond – toilet paper, personal care items, sponges, and cleaning agents. I fought through my rusty Spanish to understand a woman ask if we had anything fun for her grandkids. We did. Thanks to our 4^th/5^th grade Sunday school class, we had Ziploc bags packed with games, crayons, and toys. The woman laughed with joy and told her friend to bring one to her grandkids too. The toy bags ended up being the most popular thing, surpassing even potable water, at least in terms of excitement generated.

Toys. It was a poignant lesson that our call was not to save lives – none were in imminent danger anyhow – but to give and receive God’s love as freely as possible, in material and nonmaterial ways, for the benefit of all. And it was in showing up that we learned why we’d been called to show up.