Lenten Reflection 2/15

A passenger from the cruise ship Triumph kisses the ground
upon returning to land

Lenten Reflection 2/15

The people who got onto Carnival cruise line's luxury liner "Triumph" did not get the cruise they'd hoped for.  A fire on board knocked out the power system, disrupting food preparation, sanitation systems and even forward movement.  For five days, passengers floated in the Gulf of Mexico while tugs slowly got them to shore and toilets overflowed and food went from lavish buffets to cold sandwiches.  The passengers finally made it onto dry land today and a whole lot of press has been devoted to their "ordeal."

OK, so I'm not going to poo poo the stress this caused.  People did not sign up for what they got.  And clearly it was an unpleasant experience, though not life threatening.  People lost out on having a fun and relaxing vacation - and I bet that for some of them, it'll be a whole year before they get another one.  However, I've got to say that what many call an ordeal might be no worse than what some people in the world live with everyday.  In Kampala, Uganda, for example, only 17% of the people have access to piped water.  And that's EVERY day.

In the reading from Deuteronomy today, it says that when you love God and God's commandments, God will love you, bless you, increase you, bless your family, your crops - and basically you'll never have anything bad happen to you ever again - no sickness or afflictions.  Not only that, all your enemies will be complete toast.

I've got to wonder about this.  I've got to wonder about the entitlement of it.  I've got to wonder about how it makes us God fearing westerners think everything should always go great for us, and when it doesn't, some horrible enemy must be to blame (and darn it, we're going to SUE them for it!)

I've got to wonder.  I've heard stories of crew members on that boat continuing to be supportive and cheerful.  Well, sure, that's their job.  But I also heard about people who made the best of the situation and had a vacation anyway, despite the stress and chaos of the unexpected situation.  I wonder if an attitude of gratitude toward God does - truly - bless us deeply.  I wonder if even sickness and affliction can be born with gratitute and peace if you can get into that God loving space.

And I've got to wonder if most of the time our enemies are not outside us - others inflicting things upon us that we are helpless victims of - but live within us.  I wonder if the attitudes we harbor inside us that make us feel entitled to have things the way we want them and that make us blind to the plight of others and keep us isolated at the center of our own universes could be the enemies that really hold us hostage on a daily basis.

If that kind of enemy were made complete toast, I've got to wonder how the world would look.


Readings for today: Deut. 7:12-16; Titus 2:1-15; John 1:35-42
Readings for Saturday: Deut. 7:17-26; Titus 3:1-15; John 1:43-51
Readings for Sunday: Deut. 8:1-10; 1 Cor. 1:17-31; Mark 2:18-22 
Elsa is reading "The Message" translation this year.

Lenten Reflection 2/14

 

Lenten Reflection - 2/14


 This morning, as I was getting the kids off to school, NPR news was on in the background.  Oscar Pistorius, olympic and paraolympic hero, was reported to have been arrested under suspicion of killing his girlfriend.  My boys looked at each other and they looked at me.  How could I find words for this?  How could an athlete so recently praised as a hero to anyone burdened with limitations (which all of us are, in some way) have fallen so far?

In Lent we are reminded that it doesn't matter how fine your reputation is or how good you are at what you do.  Everyone is broken and therefore prone to sin.  It feels very sad to me to hear that someone I have greatly admired has perhaps been involved in perpetrating domestic violence - a sin I find particularly troubling.  It reminds me once again, as I have been reminded so often lately, that the world is very broken, and that any of us might succumb to our most uncontrollable human weaknesses.

In this morning's reading in Deuteronomy, the Israelites, God's chosen people, are told that "God wasn't attracted to you and didn't choose you because you were big and important - the fact is, there was almost nothing to you. God did it out of sheer love, keeping the promise God made to your ancestors."  (Deut. 7:7,8a)

God can indeed stoop down into our most broken places and free us from slavery to our worst impulses. And "God keeps this covenant of loyal love with those who love God."

Loving our reputations, our possessions, our power, our control, our perceived safety, our own desires or anything else more than loving God and God's good, orderly direction leads to nothing but trouble.  That goes for you, for me, for celebrities, athletes, politicians, kings - Everyone.

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Want to follow along with the daily lectionary readings this Lent?  They can be found HERE. Scroll down to the section that is headed Daily Office and Daily Eucharistic Lectionary to find the readings for each day.

Lenten Reflection 2/13

Our mortality is front and center on Ash Wednesday - the first day of the season of Lent.  As the creaky, dry ashes are rubbed into your forehead, the priest says, "Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return."  This afternoon, about 75 people came to "Ashes to Go" in front of Starbucks.  After Louise and I said a little prayer, applied the ashes and said the words about dust, people would look up, smile, and say thank you.  Thank you?  I just told you that you're going to die and you say thank you?

Old churches were intentionally built with cemeteries right outside their windows to remind the people in the pews of their own deaths every Sunday.  Early monastics would keep all their worldly possessions in their coffins as a reminder of their mortality, and early missionaries would often use their own coffins as their traveling trunks - sometimes even sleeping in them once they arrived at their destination!  There is a certain freedom in living like you're dying - like you've got nothing to lose.  And for the Christian, there is freedom in dying in Christ, for only when we die with him can we be raised into new life.  It's letting go of our own lives to gain them.

I met an Anglican priest from Uganda this morning.  He noted that Ash Wednesday is the one day of the year that you get to visit your own funeral.  And I got to wondering, if I were at my own funeral, what would I like to hear people saying about me?  What kind of love would I hope I'd left behind?  Ash Wednesday is like a wake up call to get moving on making my life into the kind of life that results in the kind of funeral I hope someday to have.  It's also a reminder that I'm already dead in Christ and can therefore trust God in stepping into a whole new life - a whole new me that is more fully in God.

It takes just a small correction of the wheel for a ship's destination to be completely different.  What little corrections can you make in the way you live, love and act in this world to change the outcome of your whole life?  If you can think of even just a little thing you can let go of that will free you from the burden of self, or if you can think of even just a little new practice you can adopt that will mold you more into who you are being called to be - today's the day to start trying these things on.  Lent is a season of practicing being new. 

Waking Up Grateful

I went to the Diocesan Clergy Retreat recently.  Brother Curtis from SSJE was our leader.  I love him.  Each day we were there he looked us each in the eye, and in his gentle, soft voice, thanked us profusely for our work as clergy, encouraged us in our ministries and told us how very loved we are.  How often does someone say such things to you?  I just wanted to bring him home and have him read me a bedtime story every night.

One practice Curtis encouraged us to work on is to thank God at bedtime, not only for the day past, but for our whole lives - in effect - to say thank you and goodnight to God as if we knew it was our last chance to do so - to "pray a completeness," as if our work was over and done.  And then, if by some stroke of good fortune, we find ourselves still alive in the morning, to wake up and receive the new day with gratefulness and joy.

It's a popular thing to do these days to make a gratitude list - writing out at least 10 things that you can honestly say you feel thankful for each morning:

1. I'm grateful for my warm bed
2. I'm grateful for the good breakfast I'm about to have

etc.

The retreat brought the gratitude list idea to a new level for me. I realized that I'm often and easily grateful for those things that are obvious and pleasurable.  Who wouldn't be?  However, there's a gratefulness in me that I don't always tap - a deeper gratefulness that I truly do have inside - which is a kind of buried, dormant gratitude. 

I remember when I was a teenager I broke the toe next to my pinkie toe on my right foot.  The pain of that broken toe disrupted all of my usual activities - from walking to sleeping.  I remember thinking, "Wow - you don't know how important a little toe is until it's not functioning!"  I know that if tomorrow I were gasping for breath, I would realize how much I took my easy breathing today for granted.  I know when the recent hurricane took our power for three days, I realized how much I take unspoiled food, light, and warmth for granted - things I normally have in abundance every day and night.  Curtis' words made me think about how I'd rather notice and really appreciate the gifts I've been given without having to lose them first. 

So I'm working on taking careful notice of the many basic and important things God has given me today.   Through doing this, I've also begun to notice that a real, profound and powerful gratitude is already there inside me to be mined and felt all the time.  And mining this treasure out of my own depths puts me in touch with how much God loves and supports me today - right now!  (Which feels a whole lot better than resenting what I think I should or could have and don't.)

Mining this deep gratitude helps me receive the day "as a gift rather than a given," as Curtis put it, and it also keeps me from worrying so much about what to do with this day, or worrying about what might happen in the course of it.  In the state of gratitude, everything that comes along during the course of a day is also a gift. 

Working on uncovering your deepest gratitude is a wonderful thing to do during Thanksgiving week.  I've found myself far less concerned with making the perfect meal or writing the perfect Thanksgiving sermon this year.  Instead I've been working on unwrapping each hour as a new gift to be savored and have found this gratitude practice to be as satisfying as a Thanksgiving feast.

Connections on the Road

So I'm up in NH on vacation, and I go out of our dirt road and onto the minor highway that leads to the big city of Keene.  There is construction work being done, and I need to stop to allow the traffic going the other way to proceed first.  The man holding the stop sign is eating an apple, and leathery tan after a summer working on hot asphalt.  He watches me approach, and I can tell he is glad that I slow down and stop at a respectable distance, heeding his sign.   I, too, appreciate how he is carefully keeping his eye on the man at the other end of the construction area, who, like him, is also holding a sign.  My flagger makes double sure that the other guy has turned his sign from the side that says "Slow" to the side that says "Stop" and that all the oncoming traffic has come through before turning toward me and switching his sign from "Stop" to "Slow."

As I pass by him, I lift my hand from the steering wheel and nod my head - the classic NH car greeting.  He nods his head and subtley waves back.  A silent thank you and greeting between two strangers on the road.  Later that day, while coming back down our dirt road, I have to pull over to let another driver pass (the road is too narrow for two cars astride) and the other driver and I exchange the same NH car greeting.

"Who was that?" my niece from Boston asks.  "I don't know," I answer.   "Why did you wave to her? she asks.  "I don't know," I say again, "That's just what you do up here in NH."

I drive down the Merritt Parkway these days - or Route 95.  There is no nodding and acknowledging my fellow drivers there - even on the quieter streets of my suburban CT town.  Clearly, by my niece's reaction, they don't do it in Boston, either.  Until finding myself greeting people on the road twice today, I forgot how I used to do it all the time when I lived up here.  And I'd forgotten how people not only notice each other through the windshields, but acknowledge each other's presence - and even express gratitude for the job they're doing on the road or for being courteous on the road.   Where I live now, if I bother to look through the windshield of a neighboring car, I'm more likely to see the driver wrapped up in a phone call or yelling at another driver in frustration or focussing on how they needed to be somewhere 5 minutes ago already.

Of course, I must mention that I was driving my mother's car with NH plates.  I happen to know that  out-of-staters are not often privvy to these insider interactions.  There is a certain tribalism in these behaviors - a kind of "I acknowledge you because you're part of my tribe."  But I'm now enough of a world citizen to feel like anyone on the road is a part of my tribe in some way or another - wherever I'm driving.  As I again experienced the cammaraderie of the NH roads, I felt a pang of loss, and the lack of some of the tiny, weblike and often intangible ties of interpersonal connection that once exsisted in my, and every, community.   People didn't ignore each other.  They noticed each other - and acknowledged each other.  Thanked each other, even.

So rather than just mourn the way things used to be,  I've decided I'm going to bring my old, and yet updated, NH car habits back to CT next week and start smiling at other drivers and raising my hand in greeting and see what happens.  I wonder if others are as hungry for small connections with others within community as I am.   Why don't you join me?