WE DO NOT HAVE A CLUE

Sometimes the most foolish words we can utter are, "I know exactly how you feel?" when we really do not have a clue what that person feels. I have always wondered why, at least when my mother was having children, almost all the OB-GYNs were men, males who did not have a clue what mothers were going through except from a textbook understanding. (I know, very few women could get into medical school back then. But you know what I mean.) Or even more personally, when as a new and celibate priest I was giving marriage instructions, I had not the foggiest notion about married love. I didn’t have a clue.

And yet, even when we know we do not have the foggiest understanding what someone else may be going through at the moment, we still think we understand; we still believe we know how they feel. That is bad enough. What is worse is when we make judgments about how they feel ("You should not feel that way") or we make judgments about their present state ("You can change if you really want to").

Men do that with women, and maybe vice versa; the well-off do it with the poor; those blessed with superior intelligence (but usually with less common sense) do it with those less blessed intellectually. The list is endless but the misunderstandings remain across the board. The point is that it does not matter if we do or do not understand how another person feels, why another person is suffering so, why what has happened has happened. All that is really irrelevant.

When Jesus encountered people, he never patronized them by saying that he knew how they felt. He never condemned them for being poor or sick or perhaps even being a drone on society. Jesus always accepted people as they were and ministered to them as they were. He never made as a condition of his help a demand that they change. He hoped they would if they could. But he never condemned or judged.

Even those who were self-professed screw-ups Jesus loved because he knew what we all sometimes seem to forget: that no one is perfect. There may be degrees of imperfection. But differences in degree make no difference. We are all screw-ups, all dysfunctional, to one degree or another. We are all in the same boat.

And Jesus died for all of us because Jesus loves each one of us equally. Of course, I suspect, in his humanity, he might have loved the less-blessed more than the more-blessed. The less-blessed knew the straits they were in and knew that sometimes there was nothing they could do about it. They knew they needed God's help. The more-blessed, however, tended to think they were either the cause of their own blessings or that they deserved them.

It really does not matter that we do not have a clue about what another feels or what is going on in another person's life. What matters is that we care and that we, without judgment, do all we can to minister to the person in that person's time of need, just as others have ministered to us, without judgment, in our time of need.

YOU KNOW WHERE YOU STAND

It usually doesn’t take a rocket scientist or even a five-year-old to help you understand just where you stand in someone else’s life, let alone your own. For example: for the past several years I have been supplying on Sundays at a church in Ohio (whose name and location will not be given to protect the guilty). Arlena usually accompanies me. But on the Sundays she plays hooky, as she calls it, when I enter the parish hall carrying my vestments and Arlena is not to be seen, I am greeted by, “Where’s your wife?” and not by, “It’s good to see you!”

Then on the Sundays she is with me, while I am vesting and preparing for the service, she is talking with those gathered in the hall sharing a pre-Eucharist cup of coffee and conversation. On the way home after church, she asks what I learned. My usual response is, “nothing”. Then she proceeds to tell me what she learned about what is going on everyone else’s lives. And I thought I was the one who should be in on the news! Then to really put icing on the cake, a holiday card came in the mail from one of the parishioners addressed to “Mr. and Mrs. Arlena Pugliese”. I know where I stand.

But I am not alone. The other day our youngest daughter, Tracy, went to her son Carter’s pre-school to pick him up early. He wasn’t ready to go home but she insisted. When he asked her why he had to leave, she said, “Because I’m he boss!” To which Carter replied, “No you’re not. Dad’s the boss.” Tracy knows how I feel.

Humility is great for the soul and we all need a good dose of it on occasion. Thankfully, most of the time when we get hit over the head with it, we can simply smile knowing that there was no intent to harm or hurt. It is what it is. The people in that little church simply love my wife and I know they love me too. It’s mutual which is why we love being with them when they need my priestly services and Arlena’s loving ear. And my guess is that Carter was just giving his mom a silly shot in the ribs with his response.

Sometimes, of course, we need a real shot in the ribs, one that hurts, because we need to be taken down a peg. Our pride has gotten in the way, separated us from others, whether we realized it or not or even intended it to be that way. But someone or something had to or we would have done even more damage to our relationship with another or others. The sad part is that sometimes that jab in the ribs came too late. The damage was done and the break was not reparable.

It’s easy to get a big head. Our egos love to be assuaged and the more often the better. There is nothing wrong with being complimented for a job well done or an action that is truly loving and unselfish. But all that needs to be kept in perspective, that being that the gifts others in appreciate in us have been given to us to be used in love and service for them and not simply a boost to our pride. It’s always good to be reminded on occasion by people who love us just where we stand.

ENVY

In his own wonderful way with words and in his own singular way of looking at reality, Frederick Buechner defines envy as "...the consuming desire to have everybody else as unsuccessful as you are." (Wishful Thinking). That certainly gets it to its lowest common denominator. The dictionary defines it as "a sense of discontentment or jealousy about or desire for another's advantages, possessions, etc." (Random House). Maybe that is looking at it from the highest common denominator.

Envy is either wanting to bring everyone, or at least someone else, down to our level, whatever that level is at the moment, or to raise ourselves up to someone else's level. Either way of looking at it, it is true. If we are all on the same level, the same playing field, as it were, then there would be no reason to be envious of what someone else has or who someone else is. It would also make for a dull and boring life. Still, we would then be able to do away with one of the seven deadly sins.

But that's impossible. Because we are all different, because we all have different talents, gifts, abilities, there will always be the opportunity for us to compare what we don't have to what someone else has, and vice-versa. That is why someone else has described envy as "the great barrier to thanksgiving." Envy forces us to look first at how others are blessed rather than to look first at how we are blessed. And because envy is almost so strong it becomes so difficult for us to turn away from the other and turn towards ourselves. It isn’t listed as one of the seven deadly sins for no reason!

Envy is all that we think it is and probably a whole lot more. It is even worse, or so it seems, because envy will not go away. Psychiatrist Robert Coles says that we cannot will it away nor can we employ some psychological trick to make it seem like it has gone away. He says: "...if envy brings the pain of knowing what we lack, envy can also lead us to reflection. Envious, we find ourselves asking the most important psychological questions: who we really are, and what we really want out of life. Envy can be part of our redemption."

Thus, while envy can be a great barrier to thanksgiving because we can be so wrapped up in what we don’t have and another has, it is also and can be and should be the first step on the way towards thanksgiving, which is a prior step on the road to redemption. So often we all tend to take the blessings we have been given for granted. When we do that, we also tend to be less than reflectively thankful for them. It often seems that it is only when we begin to compare blessings and discover, so we believe, that another is even more blessed, and that envy rears its head.

The onset of envy should be, or at least can be, the signal light that makes us stop dead in our tracks and say, reflect, “Yes, he is really blessed. But so am I. He may have this that I do not possess, but I have this blessing that he does not seem to possess.” And then we can, should, continue, “Thank you, Lord.” Then we are on the road to redemption, as Coles states. Even sin, as deadly as it can be if we do not allow it to consume us, can be redemptive, thanks be to God.

FROM THE MOUTHS OF BABES AND THE ELDERLY

Two scenes: First. We were driving Carter home from a morning visit to hi pre-school. Nena and Pap (us) were specifically invited because it was the morning when Carter’s class could visit the library and buy books. (The people who run the school are no dummies. Grandparents can go overboard spoiling their grandchildren and we were no exception. I call that “parents revenge. But I digress.) On the way home Arlena asked Carter, for her and for me, what he learned in class. His immediate response: “You were there. You should know.” Well, Duh!

Second: Arlena had just finished making her Mom’s bed (one of the chores we do whenever we visit) and said to her, “Mom, I couldn’t find a matching pair of pillow cases for the bed.” Her Mom’s reply: “I’m not going to have a nervous breakdown over it.” Well, Double Duh!

Sometimes we ask the dumbest questions or say the dumbest things. As Carter so wisely said, why did we ask him what he learned when we were sitting there in the classroom taking it all in? We already knew the answer to the question. But we asked anyway and it seems we often do it all too often. Of course, Carter’s answer, even though it was an elbow in the ribs response, was better than the answer we would often get from his mother and her sisters when we asked them what they had learned in class that day. “Nothing!” was what we heard.

And if we thought Nanny would be upset because her pillow cases didn’t match: well, if she did, if anyone who had something kind done for them did, then we have a problem here. We don’t with Nanny because she can never be thankful enough, which she continues to tell us week in and week out – as if she had to! Obviously she has the same problem as we do here.

Maybe we all do in both instances. Sometimes we ask some very dumb questions because we already know the answer but we ask anyway for who knows what reason, but ask we do. Maybe it’s an insecurity on our part that simply needs reassurance about whatever it is we are asking. Maybe.

And sometimes we think we haven’t done enough when we have already done more than enough, although there are times when even what we have done is not enough because what needs to be done is beyond our capabilities. In life we do what we can the best we can and that is all we can ask of ourselves or all others can ask of us.

Carter’s and Nanny’s responses simply remind me that sometimes I forget that others know we care just by being who we are and by what we do without our needing any thanks or reassurance. And when the shoe is on the other foot, it’s the same. We won’t have a nervous breakdown because we already know what is known.

THE TEMPLE OF THE LORD

A few weeks ago during the Eucharist I was struck by two verses (5 & 6) in Psalm 27: “One thing I asked of the Lord; one thing I seek; that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life; to behold the fair beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple.” What made me stop for a moment was the thought that it is so easy to miss the point of those verses, as I have over the years; so very easy.

If you ae like me, when I read the word temple, I automatically think of a house of worship: the Jewish temple or local synagogue for those for whom the Psalms were part of their worshipping or a church for those of us who also incorporate the Psalms as part of our liturgy. In other words: a building. But that is not what the Psalm says. I mean, who wants to spend all one’s days living in a church?!

The temple of the Lord that the Psalmist speaks about is this very world where, as one of the prayers has it, “we live and move and have or being.” We are to find God in this temple we call our world. But we only find God if we are looking for God, if we realize God is everywhere, in everything and in everyone. And if you are like me, that realization is not always front and enter in my daily living.

Other than that truth, the deeper problem is that because we do not see God in everyone or everything or everywhere, and because we do not make God’s presence in and through or own lives visible to others, God’s work, which can only be done in and through us, does not get done. God is alive in this world, God’s work is done in this world, only in and through us, or it is not done.

In many ways you and I are the temple of the Lord. When we are in church, the building, we sense the presence of God there simply because it is the place where we gather as a community to worship God or where we, as individuals, come to pray on our own. Yes, we can pray anywhere at any time and we do. But the church as a gathering space is special place where we come into the presence of our God.

But the truth is that we, as God’s children, are to be a temple of the Lord in that when others come into our presence, they are to find the godly, find God living in us. We are to be a living temple of God’s presence to others. That thought is what gave me pause when I was worshipping in one of God’s temples those weeks ago. It still gives me pause, and a great deal of it.

It also frightens me in a very real way. That is a tremendous responsibility you and I have because of our baptism: to be the temple of the Lord, the place, the person, in whom others can find God’s love and care and concern, who can learn what it means to be a Christian, who can discover in themselves that they, too, are the temple of the Lord, the living temple. Does that give you pause as it does me?