It occurs to me…

Is it just me or is there a lot of anxiety in the air?  Four lines came to mind this morning:

From Max Ehermann’s Desiderata:  “Do not distress yourself with imaginings.”

From Matthew 6:34:  “Therefore, do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself.”

From Bobby McFerrin: “Don’t worry.  Be happy.”

From Baz Luhman’s Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen): “Don’t worry about the future; or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubblegum.”

I’ll get some Double Bubble on the way to work this morning.

This practical advice today from Max Ehrman’s Desiderata:

“Exercise caution in your business affairs; for the world is full of trickery.  But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals; and everywhere life is full of heroism.”

I wrote recently about the concept of “disordered affections.”  It occurs to me that “heroism” is a reordering of affections to put someone/something in front of me.  So yes, rushing into a burning building is heroism, but so is smiling at the “Will Work for Food” guy on the corner, regardless of whether or not you hand him a dollar.  So is donating money I could spend on myself, or spending time working for this or that good cause.   So is showing up.  So is listening when I want to speak.  So is staying when I want to leave….

Indeed, life IS “full of heroism” – really full.

In reading Oswald Chambers I am often dragged reluctantly back to my days in Catholic school with the nuns – like they dragged us around (only when they were pissed at us) by the collars (if we were lucky) or the hair or ears.  The message, to a young boy, seemed to always be about suffering, about Jesus on the cross.  Today is an example as Chambers entitles today’s reading “Partakers Of His Sufferings” and writes:

“In the history of the Christian Church the tendency has been to evade being identified with the sufferings of Jesus Christ; men have sought to procure the carrying out of God’s order by a short cut of their own.  God’s way is always the way of suffering, the way of the ‘long, long trail.’”

It is easy to see how the perception is that Christianity needs a new marketing strategy.

But seriously, I’ve now had more than a few decades of reflection and see Chambers has a point (the nuns likely did too, but their methodology remains questionable).  But to Chambers’ point – I am guilty as charged.  Who wants to spend time at the foot of the cross?  (The question is, of course, rhetorical, as the only company Jesus had there were two thieves who had no choice and Roman Centurions who had to be there.)  I would rather take the short cut directly to the post-resurrection Jesus, or at least to the pre-resurrection Jesus that strolled the holy land dispensing knowledge and performing miracles. It occurs to me that all that means is that I want God, but on my terms.  But in all this I am reminded of a sermon my friend Sid Gervais once gave where he noted that people fussed at him because they believed he preached too much about the cross and not enough about redemption.  (Sid, I am paraphrasing; forgive me.)  His response was direct and to the point – we have to preach about crucifixion, about the cross, otherwise, redemption has no meaning.

Sid is right, of course, as is Chambers.  Still, I’ll likely keep looking for shortcuts.  I suspect God knows and even expects that.  I am not the first, and won’t be the last.  So He’ll sow ample grace in my path while He redirects me back to His.

From Oswald Chambers My Utmost for His Highest today:

“Is He going to help Himself to us, or are we taken up with our conception of what we are going to be?”

It occurs to me that the simpler the question, the more complicated the answer.  But saying that, I recognize the source of the complication.

Today brings one of my favorite sections in Oswald Chambers’ My Utmost for His Highest.  Chambers writes: “My personal life may be crowded with small petty incidents, altogether unnoticeable and mean: but if I obey Jesus Christ in the haphazard circumstances, they become pinholes through which I see the face of God.”

It is easy to try and focus on some grand scheme I have worked out in my head, schemes and plans full of me, and to insist that everything play out as I have planned it.  God, of course, gets a good chuckle out of that.  For what I am called to do is “obey God in the haphazard circumstances” laid in front of me.  I am called to not rant about the person at work who frustrates me, but listen a bit longer to hear what they are saying.    I am called to listen to those whose culture, upbringing, ideas and views are different than mine.  I am called, sometimes, to just sit back and observe, not to step up and deal with.   If I do that, those “haphazard circumstances” can “become pinholes through which I see the face of God.”  It occurs to me that I can see a lot through those pinholes.

 

I am not quite sure how I grew up Catholic and went to a Catholic school for eight years and never heard of the Ignatian concept of “disordered affections.”  Well, on second thought, I likely just wasn’t paying attention.

The concept is, as I understand it (forgive me, St. Ignatius), that sin is not so much identifying two piles of clearly good and clearly bad, and then playing in the “bad” pile, but not ordering things correctly.  Recently, I heard David Brooks give this simple example:  A friend tells me something in confidence, and I share it later at a dinner party.  I have put my desire to be popular with my dinner guests over my friendship – disordered affection.

Doing some research I found this definition: “Disordered attachments are those things (objects, experiences, activities, even other people) who become the focus of our desires and, consequently our time on this earth, rather than seeking the will and companionship of God.”

As Scooby Doo would say – “Ruh Roh.”  I can see this is going to take some time and thought.

Connecting the Dots

I ran across this quote the other day – “God writes straight with crooked lines.” The source seems to be in dispute.  Most generally it is referred to as a “Portuguese Proverb,” but is often attributed to St. Augustine, sometimes St. Francis.  Whatever the source, it is a good quote, and seems a better way to say “I don’t know,” “No one really knows,” or, the favorite of Catholic priests in my youth, “It’s a divine mystery.”  It is also much shorter than by singing some lines from Farther Along.  As I think of it, it speaks to a faith that somehow, the “crooked lines” make something, somehow make sense.

In this saying I am reminded of the “connect the dots” sheets of my childhood (do those still exist?).  When I looked at the dots the ultimate object was not discernable.  Even seeing the dots and numbers, I could not conjure up in my mind the image that would reveal itself if I picked up a pencil and connected the dots.  In some sense, it took faith to start and to keep connecting the dots, faith to believe that somehow doing so would create something (other than a jumble of dots, lines, and numbers).

It occurs to me that God works that way in our lives.  The dots, lines, and numbers, the events and stops along the way in our lives, don’t always make sense as they unfold.   Still, somehow, if one keeps at it and follows the guidance, from one dot to the next, somehow (“It’s a divine mystery”) it all works out.  Boy, that is a long way to go to define “faith.”

Photo taken in Galveston on Monday.  The colors are organic, no Photoshop here, other than to add the text.

This from an On Being Krysta Tippett interview of Mary Karr I listened to recently:

“The problem with being judgmental (says one of the most judgmental people on the planet) is that the very voice you use to criticize everyone else is the exact same voice you use to criticize yourself.”

I don’t know that there’s much to say about that other than to acknowledge it as the truth – though it occurs to me that my self-critical “voice” has a tone that is just a little edgier, a bit more mean-spirited, than the one that criticizes everyone else.  Still, neither is pleasant to hear.

The story of the sick woman in Mark 5:24-34 has long intrigued me, if for no other reason because Sam Cooke and the Soul Stirrers put it to music in Touch the Hem of His Garment.  The story is easy to lose as it is only ten verses of a miracle that is buried amongst the unfolding story of a larger miracle (Mark 5:21-43).  Jesus is literally on his way to raise a young girl from the dead when this event occurs.  The woman, destitute because of her ongoing illness, is certain that she will be healed “if I may but touch his clothes.”  She does and she is.

But the interesting part of the story to me is the aftermath.  The woman is part of “a large crowd [that] followed and pressed around” Jesus, yet as the woman touches Jesus’ garment, he recognizes it.  The New International Version notes Jesus “realized that power had gone out from him” whereas in the King James version it talks of “virtue” leaving him.  “Power” or “virtue,” the lesson here to me is what Jesus tells the woman – “[Y]our faith has healed you.  Go in peace and be freed from your suffering.”

Okay, all that to get to a single point.  Jesus doesn’t say “I have healed you” or “God has healed you.”  Instead he credits the woman and her faith with the healing.