It occurs to me…

So Moses comes upon a burning bush that is not consumed by fire, then has a conversation with God – I mean a real conversation.  At the conclusion of the conversation he gets some orders from God.  It has been all good to that point.  But from this point forward, through the rest of Exodus, Moses becomes the most reluctant of Biblical characters.  It is almost as if his remainder of Exodus, at least the Moses role, was written by Mel Brooks to be used 2000 years later in a farcical movie.

“Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” (Exodus 3:11)  God replies: “I will be with you,” (3:12) but that is not good enough.

What if they ask me who sent me?  (3:13)

Tell them it is Me, and if that doesn’t work I’ll “stretch out my hand and strike the Egyptians with the wonders that I will perform among them.”  (3:20)

“What if they do not believe or listen to me….”  (4:1)

Oh, okay, take along that staff, and when you throw it on the ground it will become a snake, like that.  And if that doesn’t work, try they “now you see it, now you don’t” leprous hand trick.  (4:6-7)  At this point, even God is in on the shtick – “If they do not believe you or pay attention to the first miraculous sign, they may believe the second.   But if they do not believe those two signs or listen to you…” (4:8) then try the Nile water into blood” bit.

Running out of options, and seeing there this is going, Moses them focuses directly on his inadequacies (apparently realizing, finally, God has none): “I have never been eloquent….”  (3:10)

(Cue the slap on the forehead and the “Oy vey!”)  Okay, if you must, take your brother, Aaron, with you – but don’t forget the staff.

I could, of course, go on, just as Exodus does.  Through the trips to Pharaoh, through the doubting, through the whining, through the plagues of blood, frogs, gnats, flies, livestock, boils, hail, locusts, darkness, Moses is still playing the doubting, reluctant hero.  I mean, look what Thomas got for one single act of doubt – and Moses makes a career of it.

But of course, am I any better?

“If we believe in Jesus, it is not what we gain, but what he pours through us that counts.  It is not that God makes us beautifully rounded grapes, but that He squeezes the sweetness out of us.”  Oswald Chambers – My Utmost for His Highest

This caught my eye today because of the “rounded grape” reference.  I was in the store recently, in the produce section looking for some green grapes.  The only problem was that the ones that had available were oddly shaped.  They were not the “rounded grapes” Chambers writes of.  Rather, they had a very odd, oblong shape, a shape difficult to describe because I can’t think of anything quite like it.  The best I can do is to say that it was as if someone took each round grape and elongated it so that it looked something like a peanut.  Being the only grapes available, reluctantly because they did not meet my idea of a grape, I bought some, took them home, washed them, and stuck them in the refrigerator.  When I got around to eating them, they tasted just fine – like  grapes, but really good grapes.

As Chambers notes: “It is not that God makes us beautifully rounded grapes….”  No, we come in all shapes, sizes, and colors.  But really, those distinctions don’t matter.  Let’s face it, it was just plain silly for me to judge a grape by its shape.  Same with people.  Which brings to mind the Bo Diddley tune that has little bearing on this, but is a great listen:

You can’t judge an apple by looking at a tree,
You can’t judge honey by looking at the bee,
You can’t judge a daughter by looking at the mother,
You can’t judge a book by looking at the cover.

Oh can’t you see,
Oh you misjudge me,
I look like a farmer,
But I’m a lover,
You can’t judge a book by looking at the cover.

“And he was angry, and would not go in….”  Luke 15:28

Listening to Garrison Keillor read the story of the Prodigal Son this morning, these words jumped out at me – “And he was angry, and would not go in….”  We know the context.  The younger brother, the prodigal, has returned home after “wasting his substance with riotous living (v. 13), and the brother returns from a day in the field to find that, at the father’s urging, a party is underway to celebrate the prodigal’s return.

I think the best way to describe the older brother’s mindset and reaction is with a word I am partial to – “snit.”  My on-line dictionary defines “snit” as “a fit of irritation; a sulk,” and that is a fine definition, but it ignores the complexity and maturing of the “snit.”  What starts out as crying, with a few years, turns into “I’ll take my toys and go home.”  A few more years down the road brings the sulk, and before you know it your “snit” had progressed into (a personal favorite) “I’ll just do it myself.”  Indeed, “snit” is a multi-faceted word, one that takes on many forms and can be defined in many ways, but I often think that one would do just as well defining the word by replacing the “n” with an “h,” as in “being a ___.  In any event, and no matter how one choses to define it, “snit” is a word I am intimately familiar with, and the older son is certainly in one when the father (after, in my mind’s eye, rolling his eyes and sighing) walks out to intreat the older brother to join the party.

The snit removes the older son from the festivities and places a wall between him and them.  How can one eat, drink, and be merry when one refuses to eat, drink, or be merry?  Sadly, we don’t know how the story ends.  When we leave the story, the father has given it his best shot.  “Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine.  It was meet that we should make merry, and be glad; for this thy brother was dead, and is alive again; was lost, and is found.”  Yes, that verse puts a lump in my throat each time I read it, or Keillor does, but it is easy to underestimate the power of the snit, and its ability to prompt irrational action.  This is true (so I’ve heard) because ultimately, the snit takes all the power to change the situation away from God and others and puts it into the snit-for-brains mind in which the snit (some might call it “pride”) is its own reward.  Ultimately, we are left with questions, not answers.  Does the older brother join the festivities?  Do I?

“This is the day that the Lord has made.  Let us rejoice and be glad in it.  Psalm 118:24.

Listening to a podcast this morning of an interview of David Steindl-Rast, a Benedictine monk.  He noted the passage, and then gave his take on it, which I like even better:

“This is a wonderful day.  I have never seen this one before.”

That seems like a good way to start the day after my birthday – or, for that matter, any day.

I find myself reading once again C. S. Lewis’ discussion on forgiveness in The Weight of Glory.  It is masterful writing that takes the tough nut of forgiveness and cracks it open to reveal it simply, understandably.  But what jumped off the page at me today was this tidbit from that discussion – “we are all too easily satisfied with ourselves.”

I let that soak in a bit and then came to think of it as truth, but then positioned near its  bookend (not from Lewis, but me) that “we are all too easily dissatisfied with ourselves.”  It occurs to me that these are the bookends between which I am to compose a life.  THAT, I don’t know as truth, but I’ll mull on it a bit.

Reading today from Anne Lamott – 12 Truths I Learned From Life and Writing, I paused at this: “everyone is screwed up, broken, clingy, and scared, even the people who seem to have it most together…, so try not to compare your insides to other people’s outsides.”  This seems to dovetail so well with that quote I so like (which no one seems to know who to attribute it to): “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.”

It occurs to me that the latter quote is merely the second shoe dropping after the first quote/shoe.  What separates us is not our brokenness, our clingy-ness, our scaredness, not the fact that we are fighting battles – no, we all experience that.  What separates us is that we have different abilities and use varying resources to disguise those things going on inside us.  That is, our rooms are of similar content, but our walls vary.

“Everyone who got where he is had to begin where he was.”  Robert Louis Stevenson

I guess this is akin to another quote I like – “The best place to begin is where you are.”

I find it easy to get caught up in lamenting where I am and how I got there, or even lamenting where the world (as I perceive it) is and how in the hell it got to be that way.  These lamentations occur at the expense of accepting reality and working to change the situation.  Which somehow brings me to a quote I recently saw on a card.  I liked it so much I had to buy the card – though I can’t think of anyone to send it to other than myself.

“Things happen for a reason.  Sometimes the reason is that you made a bad decision.”

Onward.

From The Guest House – Rumi (translated by Coleman Banks):

“Welcome and entertain them all

Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,

Who violently sweep your house empty of its furniture,

Still treat each guest honorably.

He may be cleaning you out

for some new delight.”

It really makes no sense when you think of it, does it?  I have this long-established practice of naming, judging, putting labels on, characterizing these “guests,” these thoughts, these events, these things, these emotions that enter my life.  And, I do so most often before they actually create some effect or impact on my life.  Some I see coming and lock the doors to keep them out, others I allow in warily, still others I welcome at the front door.  Those I keep out, I pat myself on the back for doing so, assured of how things would have turned out had I let them in.  Those I allow in have some effect, and I name, judge, label, and characterize them “in real time,” predisposed, I guess, to label favorably since it was I who let them in.  Yet I do so knowing, if I am honest with myself, that I can’t predict the future (well, I predict it regularly, but not with any sense of reliability).  No, I can’t really know the potential impact of those guests turned away, nor the future impact of those allowed in.  Thus, the exhortation – “treat each guest honorably.”

“Go placidly amid the noise and haste…”  Max Ehrmann – Desiderata

Picking up on yesterday’s thought – There is much swirling around us lately with the recent events in Charlottesville and the related fallout.  What caught my eye and tugged at my heart today is a photo taken by Stephen Lam and published in the New York Times.  The photo is of a woman in a rally in Oakland, California, surrounded by others, holding a simple white poster board with this scrawled across the poster: “I CAN’T BELIEVE I AM STILL PROTESTING NAZIS.”

This single shot displays the power of a photo.  It conveys, at a glance (though it deserves more than a glance) those feelings and emotions inside me and rushes them to the surface to the point that I have palpable reactions – a wince, a gasp, a rush of emotion.  The photo both speaks for me, and listens to me in my frustration, anger, pain, impatience – in whatever emotions I have related to the craziness of recent events.

A picture is or can be worth a thousand words, yes, but more importantly, in this case, it plainly serves to state those thousand words for us.  So whatever, your politics, indeed, politics aside, forget the article below it, just go look at the picture and envision yourself standing nest to the woman holding the sign, or better yet, holding it yourself.  She nailed it with the poster –

“I CAN’T BELIEVE I AM STILL PROTESTING NAZIS.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/18/opinion/the-test-of-nazism-that-trump-failed.html?mcubz=0