From Romans 14:22-23, The Message Translation
"I think Christianity has created a great problem in the Western world by repeatedly presenting itself, not as a way of seeing all things, but as one competing ideology among many. Instead of leading us to see God in new and surprising places, it too often has led us to confine God inside OUR place. Simeon Weil, the brilliant French resistor, said that the “tragedy of Christianity is that it came to see itself as replacing other religions instead of adding something to all of them.”
- From Richard Rohr in Everything Belongs
(talk given at the Harrisonburg UU October 14, 2007)
Religion... the final frontier....
This is a part of the voyage we will take today
in the UU @ Dale Enterprise.
Our 25 minute mission:
to seek truth, to explore new thoughts,
to try to understand civilization...
... to boldly go where few souls have ever gone before!
:)
Is Religion the final frontier? I certainly think it’s A frontier, and one that humanity must explore and learn to navigate in a peaceful and constructive way before going much farther.
And if religion itself is a frontier, then Unitarian Universalists are indeed the pioneers. Because you not only tolerate plurality... you not only invite it... you cultivate it!
And if this world cannot learn plurality- how to live together in the tension of togetherness—then, quite simply, we are doomed.
The world has gotten incredibly small. Different cultures and different communities, ones otherwise alien to one another, now routinely rub shoulders, often encountering each other edges, and most of those edges these days involve what we call "religion"
The challenge before humanity, I think, is a space race of sorts - a race to learn to live together in the same space before we kill each other. This is increasingly important, because humanity's advancement in the ways and means (and motivation) to kill one another has outstripped our ability to make peace with one another. Not only have we developed the devices to destroy ourselves and the planet we inhabit many times over, but these things are now becoming increasingly accessible. At the same time, we are being increasingly divided by religion, locally, nationally, and globally. The burning irony is that these divisions are sapping humanity’s resources and are distracting us from the very purpose of religion in the first place.
Let’s take a look at the word -- RELIGION
Words are tools, and like tools, they can be used for many different purposes. A claw hammer can be used to build things, or it can be used to take things apart. The purpose and intent comes through the hand that wields it.
Words are like tools, and indeed there is some power in understanding their origin-- the original root meanings they carry with them as a result of how they were put together.
RELIGION
Joseph Campbell, a writer and mythology professor whose works I admire, explains it like this: The word comes from the Latin… ligare- to connect. That’s also where we get the word "ligament", something that connects bone to bone. "Re-ligare", meaning to re-connect. There. That’s simple. I can work with that. Re-connect.
What is it that we wish to reconnect with?
I think that answer is as diverse as we are; whether it is to reconnect with the Spirit of Creation, or Creation itself which surrounds us, or to reconnect with other people around us, or to reconnect with our own self and the world and wisdom within, or all of the above. I think a good question to ask at this point is this:
What is it that you seek to reconnect with?
Where are your connections, and in that context of your connections,
what does your religion look like?
What is it that you seek to form a relationship with?
Knowledge? Truth? The Source? Your community?
These are essential questions to ask ourselves, and if we approach the word "religion" as simply a desire to make those reconnections, then we I think we begin to experience religion a little differently.
This longing for some sort of “reconnection” with something other than one’s self is exactly what I mean whenever you hear me talk about "religion". This reconnection is beautiful, because it also implies that everything was all once connected – and, I believe, still is. It's just a matter of uncovering and discovering those connections-- our commonalities, the places where we can fit together.
One of the things that UU and MCC share in common is our reach for plurality and connection. Admittedly, we in MCC do it more ecumenically. That is, within the branches of the Christian church, gathering together under one roof Catholics, Baptists, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Methodists, Pentecostals, Episcopalians, on and on….
It’s a lot harder than it looks.
There is a whole lot of disagreement among these groups. I mean, that’s why they split apart in the first place... over issues of baptism and communion (what it is and how to do it)…. even how and when to worship. When all of these denominations began coming together under one roof in MCC, there were frequently cries of “Wait, you’re not doing it right!”. Or when approaching some of the more sticky wickets of Salvation, Atonement, Grace, and so on…. there were frequently cries of “But you’re not believing it right!!"
Rumi, the Sufi poet, said,
“Out beyond right-doing and wrong-doing, there lies a field.
I’ll meet you there.
That’s kind of what we do.
MCC is a field where we can begin getting these groups back together, reconnecting them. Asking all the many denominations to look at what they can add to each other, rather than what they can replace or displace in each other. We approach some of the more difficult questions (and face it, most questions which surface in this context are difficult questions) simply by acknowledging that there is no necessity or imperative for a universal corporate answer.
Or even an answer, period.
Sometimes there is great beauty in simply living with the questions.
Individuals have great freedom in their belief systems. But with that freedom comes the responsibility of not imposing it on any other. And THAT makes us VERY different from any other Christian denomination. People are sometimes surprised when they learn that I am not going to tell them what to believe. But with that sense of surprise often comes the gentle awareness that they, too, should not decide what particular belief is right for another.
Church-wise, in general, when people first come to MCC, they want exactly what used to have, only a lot Gayer -- with a lot more Gay people. But we’re pretty clear- this is not your old time religion. This is something very different.
Several of our churches have become affiliated with a movement known as Progressive Christianity. It is a movement that came from another movement, one known as the emerging church. It emerged in the late 1990’s, and began to look at Christianity in some very new ways- ways that were, in fact, very old. It some ways it involved a deconstruction of Christianity, and a careful examination of the context in which it emerged.
It’s all about relationship and reconnecting.
I have brought folks seeking to use your facility to your services on Sunday mornings because I want them to meet you, to know your community, because I think it is important to support the communities who support us. We join together as allies against oppression. Because….
It’s all about relationship.
Humanity’s liberation from oppression is as integrally connected as a string of separate dominoes, all lined up, motionless, apart from one another, untouching, unchanging, waiting for that one touch, that one connection, the tip of a finger to release their potential, as they suddenly touch each other, and fold against each other, as they pass the moment of connection along, until every single domino is touching each other in a long unbroken connected string.
The liberation of humanity will need all of us, working together, and re-connecting.
There is a saying attributed to aboriginal activists in Australia:
“If you have come to help me then you are wasting your time, but if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.”
We are all inter-connected. Like the pieces of a puzzle… individually, perhaps, it’s hard to get the picture, but as we begin to gather, to come together, to share our images of divinity, then we also come to see a much larger truth. A bigger picture begins to form among us.
It's not about replacement,
it's about relationship -- how we fit together
Because true liberation does not simply free the captive, it frees the guard as well.
In his book, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Paulo Freire writes of south American plantation workers who don’t wish to be free from the plantation system that has enslaved them, they simply want to become a plantation owner themselves, enslaving others.
That is not freedom. That is the preservation of the system. Just as the poor do not wish to be free from the monetary system whose extremes have imprisoned them in poverty, but rather, they wish and dream of simply being on the other extreme. The slave all too often does not want freedom from the system that has enslaved them, but rather simply to rise up and hold the chains of another, to enslave another. Oppression and oppressive systems will continue until the oppressor experiences liberation from the system. The oppressor AND the oppressed. We are so interconnected, that one cannot be truly freed without the other being freed as well.
I met a couple, the man an atheist and the woman religious, who wanted to marry. The man did not want a religious ceremony, the woman did, and as a compromise, they looked for a minister who would join them in a ceremony “without God”. I was happy to do this. Why?
I don’t need to impose my views on any other. I don’t need to mention the Spirit. (although sometimes I do) I don’t need to say a blessing over food. (although sometimes I do) . God goes with me wherever I go. I experience the Spirit as near to me as my own breath -- and I don’t need to constantly tell people I am breathing in order for me to breath. Carl Jung had an ancient Latin saying engraved over his doorway AND on his tomb: Vocatus atque non vocatus, Deus aderit. My Latin is kind of rusty, and it also comes with a southern accent, so I will translate:
Called or uncalled, God/Divinity is present.
It is honoring my vocation to serve people in these wonderful and sacred life cycle moments, and such diversity as this wonderful couple co-existing in the tension of their spiritual differences fascinated me. It is sacred to me. It is holy. It is diversity.
It is what we see in the world around us. Turn over any rock and look at all of the wonders that crawl and live together beneath it. Look at the universe- black holes and great suns. For me, diversity is one of the fingerprints of the Creator, the Great Maker. And different people living together and holding in tension their differences to me speaks of a harmony that is sacred. Whole and holy. A beloved unity.
And unity is not uniformity.
Uniformity is not a Divine attribute. Something as simple and as beautiful as snowflakes tell us this. No, uniformity is a human creation. The kind of order that lines people up in little rows and puts them all in uniforms. That kind of order is not Divine. Uniformity is a human creation. The need for us to be alike. But that need, perversely, is ultimately a divisive need, because it eventually and invariably establishes "Us and Them." thinking. And then, the Us who are more US among US than the other Us, who are actually more like THEM. And wait, you are a little different from US, so you must be more THEM. And who among US is the most US among US? And THEM over there is deciding the very same things among THEM.
Who is more like THEM among THEM?
This same urge for uniformity was vocalized in a question a woman asked me last year, “When did Jesus become a Christian?”. I contained my amazement and impulse to smile, because the woman was sincere in her question. [Note to clergy- try hard not to smile at sincere questions.]
I tried to explain to her that Jesus was a Jew- an observant Jew who practiced and observed the traditions of Judism. He was born a Jew, and he was buried in the manner of a Jew.
I wanted to go on… and tell her His name was not even Jesus, that it would have been pronounced, Yesheua, and he could not be more different from her than Moshe (Moses), Mahatma Ghandi, Budda, or Muhammed. But I restrained myself, because for her to think of Jesus as a Jew (just like her next door neighbors who worship on a Saturday and who don't celebrate Christmas) was just WAY too much for her mind to contain.
She wanted Jesus to be a Christian, just like her.
This month I was shopping in the bookstore of the Virginia Theological Seminary – and I "God shop" everywhere, by the way. The folks in the store at the Fairfax Jewish Community Center know me, as do the ladies at the Pascal Lamb, a conservative Catholic bookstore, as do the folks at Terra Christa, a new age earth spirituality store. And I encounter Divinity in all of those places.
Anyway, in the book store at the Virginia Theological Seminary, I actually heard someone describing a professor with the phrase: “He’s a real Christian Christian”. Think about that one.
He’s a very US one of US.
And at that moment, as I looked around at all of the Episcopal branded tee-shirts, sweatshirts, patches, decals… and remembered similar ones in the Methodist stores, in the Presbyterian stores, in the Lutheran stores... it occurred to me that the spirit I was seeing in those things was SO much more like the team spirit for the Dallas Cowboys than an expression affinity for the Spirit of Creation and Divinity.
It is at such moments of clarity when I must reflect deeply, because I occasionally get very frustrated with religion. Sometimes people believe clergy have all the answers. Not true. I can only speak for myself, but what I have are A LOT of questions. In fact, i think that is what some of the most sincerely faithful folks have – QUESTIONS.
I am going to close with some words from Rainer Maria Rilke:
"Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language."
Whenever I get frustrated, and I ache in my heart at the way this religion stuff is taking people apart- is tearing the world apart –I have to stop and remember….
What it’s all about for me:
And for me, it’s all about relationship.
And I can live with that.
And someday
so may we all.
“A Letter to a Young Activist”
by Trappist monk Thomas Merton
Do not depend on the hope of results. When you are doing the sort of work you have taken on, essentially an apostolic work, you may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself. And there too a great deal has to be gone through as gradually you struggle less and less for an idea and more and more for specific people. The range tends to narrow down, but it gets much more real. In the end, it is the reality of personal relationships that saves everything…
…The big results are not in your hands or mine, but they suddenly happen, and we can share in them; but there is no point in building our lives on this personal satisfaction, which may be denied us and which after all is not that important.
The next step in the process is for you to see that your own thinking about what you are doing is crucially important. You are probably striving to build yourself an identity in your work, out of your work and your witness. You are using it, so to speak, to protect yourself against nothingness, annihilation. That is not the right use of your work. All the good that you will do will come not from you but from the fact that you have allowed yourself, in the obedience of faith, to be used by God’s love. Think of this more and gradually you will be free from the need to prove yourself, and you can be more open to the power that will work through you without your knowing it.
The great thing after all is to live, not to pour out your life in the service of a myth: and we turn the best things into myths. If you can get free from the domination of causes and just serve Christ’s truth, you will be able to do more and will be less crushed by the inevitable disappointments. Because I see nothing whatever in sight but much disappointment, frustration and confusion….
The real hope, then is not in something we think we can do but in God who is making but in God who is making something good out of it in some way we cannot see. If we can do God’s will, we will be helping in this process. But we will not necessarily know all about it before hand…
Enough of this…it is at least a gesture….I will keep you in my prayers.
All the best, in Christ,
Tom
Learn More about
Thomas Merton
The Gospel lectionary scripture for today tells of the healing of the woman with the bent back (Luke 13:10-17). What makes the related story even more engaging is that a religious leader of the time expresses annoyance to the gathering crowd that the healing occurred on the Sabbath. Now, such a sentiment may sound absurd to us today (and it certainly sounded absurd to Jesus then), but within the world of the religious leader, it made sense. The religious laws, permissions, and prohibitions based upon the Sabbath had grown quite lengthy and complicated. Yet, the original spirit of the Sabbath remained simple and the same: it was a day of rest, a day to keep Holy, and, as Isaiah put it, a day to refrain from serving one's own interests and pursuing one's own affairs.
]]>How often do we "forget ourselves"?
Forget who we are?
Forget what we are about?
Forget what we claim to stand for?
How often do we forget God's love
and God's desire for us to rise to our true self?
Take some time today to remember yourself.
Take some time today to remember who you are.
WAG MORE, BARK LESS
~John Wesley
]]>And if I have prophecy and know all mysteries and all knowledge,
and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains,
but have not love, I am nothing.
Love is long suffering,
love is kind,
it is not jealous,
love does not boast,
it is not inflated.
It is not discourteous,
it is not selfish,
it is not irritable,
it does not enumerate the evil.
It does not rejoice over the wrong, but rejoices in the truth
It covers all things,
it has faith for all things,
it hopes in all things,
it endures in all things.
Love never falls in ruins;
but whether prophecies, they will be abolished; or
tongues, they will cease; or
knowledge, it will be superseded.
For we know in part and we prophecy in part.
But when the perfect comes, the imperfect will be superseded.
When I was an infant,
I spoke as an infant,
I reckoned as an infant;
when I became [an adult],
I abolished the things of the infant.
For now we see through a mirror in an enigma, but then face to face. Now I
know in part, but then I shall know as also I was fully known.
But now remains
faith, hope, love,
these three;
but the greatest of these is love.
1 Corinthians 13:1-13
]]>
God comes to us from unexpected places, and in unexpected ways.
A burning bush, an infant, a rush of wind...
How Divinity speaks to us and connects with us
is of vital importance to many.
This Sunday at 4pm we will continue our Spring Session class
on Religion, Theology, God, The Bible, Jesus, Christianity.....
and just generally.... "What's It All About?"
We will talk about and share some of the ways God speaks to us still,
in the words of others, from the world around us,
and through the still small voice within.
If we have time,
we will also begin to take a look at some of the early church symbols,
and the symbols of other faith traditions,
examining what they mean,
and looking at what they say to us.
This class is open to all who wish to attend -- all are welcome.
This is a journey, and the journey begins Sunday.
Hope to see you there. :)
Shalom,
Emma
]]>
This Sunday at 4pm we will begin a Spring Session class
on Religion, Theology, God, The Bible, Jesus, Christianity.....
and just generally.... "What's It All About?"
Or... (with a smile and nod to Douglas Adams):
"Life, The Universe, and Everything".
This class is open to all who wish to attend -- all are welcome.
This is a journey, and the journey begins Sunday at 4 pm
at the Harrisonburg Unitarian Universalist Meeting House.
We'll also be discussing plans for a church picnic.
Your input is welcome.
Hope to see you there. :)
Shalom,
Emma
]]>
Why? It seems like such a simple question,
and yet it is one as complex and as old
as tragedy, accident, pain, and misfortune.
When violent things happen to people whom we consider to be good and innocent, our world is suddenly tossed into turmoil. We find ourselves struggling to make sense of moments and events that really defy explanation. In our struggle for reason, we may thrash about, seeking someone to blame, someone to hurt (to cause pain to in the name of pain), someone to punish. Lacking a credible target, or "enemy" to defile and/or vilify, we may even create one as needed, or make one of ourselves, pouring the salt of guilt over our own woundedness, perhaps in some strange way, allowing us to be numbered among the innocent victims.
At these intersections of innocence and violence, our internal systems of fairness and justice are challenged. We are suddenly confronted with the very real possibility, as evidenced by events right before our eyes, that the world in which we live may indeed be horribly unfair, may not make logical sense, and, in fact, may quite likely be badly broken.
This is a stunning realization.
]]>This certainly appears to be the case. Newspapers and the world wide web seem to be awash with excited and earnest explanations from the faithful regarding the existence and whereabouts of God during such times of turmoil. They range from the sacred to the profane.
Theodicy, by the way, is essentially the human attempt to explain (and/or excuse) God's presence in the face of the evil that surrounds us. When things are going good, there is really no need or desire to address this issue. Our theology (our view of God) works for us. God is in God's heaven and all is right with the world-- at least, within the reasonable and surveyable proximity of our world as we measure it.
It is important to note here that not all people measure the world in the same way. For some, the boundaries may include only similar or related people, in a gerrymandering fashion, within a given town, or the state of Virginia, or a nation, or a religion. Other people, however, may try to measure a much larger world, perhaps a world largely as it is, and one which, at any given point, contains a staggering amount of injustice, unfathomably so, unimaginably so... mind numbingly so.
But regardless of how we measure our world, when a part of it is suddenly destroyed at intersections of innocence and violence, then we are called to a very different place, a place where our current theology may not work very well. If we suddenly find ourselves stumbling about, feeling around for what we think are the "right" words in the midnight of our own ignorance, and doing extensive amounts of religious calculus and Bible math simply to fill the void of our own unknowing, then it's quite possible one's theology has broken along with one's world.
Standing at the intersection of innocence and violence, at such deeply painful and confusing moments, we can close our eyes, and continue to look for old ways to shape the existing world around our given viewpoint of God, or we can begin to open our eyes, and our selves, and seek new ways to experience the movement of God within our world. It is at such moments when we feel most vulnerable that we are also most exposed to the transforming grace of God.
Sunday at 4 pm
at the Harrisonburg Unitarian Universalist Meeting House
the conversation continues.
I hope to see you there. :)
Shalom,
Emma
]]>Out there, somewhere, perhaps even now as you're reading this, rolls a bus
of courageous Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgendered, and just
generally Queer, kids. They are the SoulForce Riders [Equality
Riders], and their route takes them into many of the very places where
people may want least to openly encounter them-- largely conservative
evangelical colleges. Sometimes they are allowed on campus. But
sometimes, as they visit, the people of the college keep themselves
hidden away, behind closed doors. Occasionally, police will even
block the entrance to a campus to forcibly keep the SoulForce Riders
out.
Ages ago, a group of disciples huddled behind doors closed and locked
as well. They were afraid. Afraid for their life. Afraid that what
happened to Jesus might happen to them. Afraid of what
people might think of them, afraid of what people might say.
But it was behind those doors, closed and locked,
that the risen Christ came, stood among them,
and reached out to them with a message of peace.
Now Jesus was the LAST person the disciples expected to encounter that
day, much like a bus full of openly Queer folk rolling onto a conservative
college campus. But the risen Christ cannot be kept out.
In many ways, the GLBT community is one of the wounds in the body of
Christ, and on the Sunday after Easter, as we reflect on John
20:19-31... and as we reflect on fear... we also remember the brave
riders, and the people with courage enough to reach out in the face of
their own doubt, and touch the wounds in the body of Christ.
Sunday at 4 pm
at the Harrisonburg Unitarian Universalist Meeting House
the conversation continues.
I hope to see you there. :)
Shalom,
Emma
]]>All too often we expect all the answers from our faith tradition. Yet while it has
been recorded that Jesus was asked 183 questions in the Gospels, he only answered three of these directly.
Jesus was great at asking questions, and the questions he asked were
good questions- questions that invariably led people to places where
transformation was possible. In his book, "The Questions of Jesus",
John Dear, a Jesuit Priest, says, "Jesus leads us into liminal, and
therefore transformative space, much more than taking us into any
moral high ground of immediate certitude or ego superiority. He
subverts up front the cultural or theological assumptions that we are
eventually going to have to face anyway. He leaves us betwixt and
between, where God and grace can get at us, and where we are not at
all in control."
Our journey to Easter has been through questions, and so it's fitting
that on Easter Day we conclude with the question a "gardener" asked
Mary in the garden outside of the tomb:
"Who Are You Looking For?"
Who are YOU looking for?
Who is YOUR Jesus?
Sunday at 4 pm
at the Harrisonburg Unitarian Universalist Meeting House
the conversation continues.
I hope to see you there. :)
Shalom,
Emma
]]>In 1967, a movie opened in theatres about a customary ritual, a young
woman bringing her fiance home for dinner to meet her parents. It was
entitled, "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?". What made this movie
particularly interesting, and even socially groundbreaking, was that
the young woman in question was white, and the young man was African
American. The young woman's parents prided themselves on being
progressive, but suddenly they were about to have the very principals
they professed tested in the relationships of their own family. They
knew who was coming to dinner- their daughter's fiance -but he was not
who they expected.
All social issues aside, in 1967, interracial marriage was illegal in
16 states. And yes, Virginia was among them. But things were about
to change, and Virginia was about to play a significant role in the
striking down of the laws barring interracial marriage.
In 1958, Richard Loving, who was white, had married Mildred Jeter, who
was African American, in the District of Columbia (DC), where such a
marriage was legal. Not long after, they moved back to their home
state of Virginia. It did not take long for a grand jury to issue an
indictment charging the couple with violating Virginia's ban on
interracial marriage. They were arrested, they plead guilty, and they
were sentenced to one year in jail. The judge, however, suspended the
sentence on the condition that the Lovings leave the state of
Virginia, and not return for a period of 25 years. In his ruling he
stated that:
"Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red,
and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the
interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such
marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not
intend for the races to mix."
The Lovings moved back to DC. However, in 1963 they filed a motion in
Virginia, one which went, with much struggle and labor, all the way to
the United States Supreme Court. The case was finally heard by the
Supreme Court, and the ruling issued on June 12, 1967. It began the
process of striking down the laws prohibiting interracial marriage in
the entire nation. The name of the landmark case-- "Loving v. Virginia".
Sometimes history speaks to us louder than words.
Jesus was heading into Jerusalem for the feast of Passover- a festive
and ritual dinner celebrating the liberation of the Hebrews from
Egypt, and one meant to be shared with family, friends, and
occasionally, in acts of hospitality, complete strangers in need of a
table to celebrate the meal.
The entry of Jesus into Jerusalem was celebrated with welcome, palm branches, and shouts of "Hosanna!". They knew who Jesus was- they knew who was coming to dinner -but he was not who they expected.
So .... who is coming to dinner?
Who is welcome at the table?
Who shuffles the relationship place settings, challenges the laws,
and strains against the accepted (and expected) conventions?
Diversity.
And isn't "diversity" all about the unexpected?
Luke 19:28-38
http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=42653337
Second Reading
From Father Richard Rohr, in
Where The Gospel Leads Us: Christianity and Homosexuality
God is clearly more comfortable with diversity than we are, and God’s final goal and objectives are much simpler. God and the entire cosmos itself are about two things: differentiation and communion. Physicists seem to know this better than theologians and clergy.
If this were cheap liberalism, I would be merely arguing for personal rights, economic justice, or sexual freedom. If this were mere ideology, I would need to line up my credible arguments and proofs. I have very few. I, like many of you, am only a disciple of the poor man from Nazareth. He has made me content with mystery. He has made me less afraid of chaos. He has told me that control is not my task. He, like the cosmos itself, is about two things : diversity and communion. The whole creation cannot be lying.
]]>That saying is tacked above my desk at work, written on a large strip
of paper, like the heart of a huge fortune cookie, the print and paper
weathered and worn by time and touch. How many times have i fingered
that strip? Too many. I picked it up over 4 years ago at my ministry
intensive in Dallas, Texas-- a week-long intensive immersion
experience designed to better prepare people for a lifetime of
ministry.
It was waiting for my fingertips in a large bowl of other folded
paper strips, all containing various quotes from Parker Palmer,
poised on the edge of a large labyrinth. As i walked the labyrinth,
thinking on that saying, it began to open and unfold in my mind.
While many may have discarded their saying afterward, as if they were
finished with them, i kept mine. I wasn't sure that i would ever be
finished with it.
It used to be kept in my purse, in a drawer, in a pocket, never far
from my fingertips, but generally hidden from my view, and thus, my
thoughts. I mean, really, who wants to keep being reminded that they
have weaknesses?
Me.
]]>In continuing with our series of Lenten questions, it is a difficult topic to ponder, but all the best ones are. And... in a strange Moebius twist of logic.... weaknesses are no sign of weakness. Superheros have them. Even Moses had them. And as an exhausted Jesus carried the very cross upon which he would be crucified and die, someone else was seized to carry the cross for him for a time (Simon from Cyrene, Luke 23:26). This likely happened because Jesus was too weak to carry on and carry the cross himself,
and they wanted him alive when he was finally nailed to the wood.
So.... with Jesus as teacher... weakness is a part of our very Humanity,
it is a part of the very burden and blessing of being Human.
Weakness.
I know it's a difficult topic, but we all have them.
And perhaps it matters less that we have them,
and more how we perceive them.
And maybe it matters even more the things we do with them
rather than than the things we do in spite of them.
What are your weaknesses?
Exodus 4:1-16
http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=41827773
Second Reading
~from Len Hjalmarson, in “[Covenant, Community, and the Weakness of God]”, from precipiece magazine.
The mystery is that it's in our weakness that we discover grace. And it's in our weakness that community is born. When we need others, we allow them in. Community is never formed from our strengths. As Jim Wallis put it,
"The ability of people to move to a new place tomorrow depends on the love and acceptance they feel today…. The only thing greater than our awareness of each other's [shortcomings] is the awareness of God's love for us and God's desire to see us healed and made whole. The principal lesson of community is... that God breaks in at the weak places."
]]>