IN COMPARISON TO WHAT?

My wife tells me I am wonderful. Those are wonderful words to hear. The other night as we were falling off to sleep, she told me again that I was wonderful. My first thought, at least at that moment, was to say, “In comparison to what?” But being the wise man I sometimes am, I shut my mouth and cuddled up to her even closer. That was not the right time for any philosophical discussion about what she meant. I knew what she meant.

But the truth is the question can still be asked, perhaps should be asked. We all make value judgments about people and places and things. We make value judgments about how people think and act and respond, about what they said or did not say, or what they did or should have done. We make them instinctively and automatically. That is natural and expected given who we are as rational beings.

But what do we use as a guide when making such value statements such as, “You are wonderful” or “That was foolish” or “This feels great” or “That was a mistake”? Wonderful compared to what? Foolish compared to what? Great compared to what? Mistake compared to what? Who sets the parameters for judging? Who sets the tone? Is what is wonderful for one person merely mundane for another? Is what is wise for one, foolishness for another? Is what is great for one, merely so-so for another? Is what is right for one person, wrong for another?

Is there a moral arbiter, a consensus determiner, out there who can help us measure our emotions and keep us on the right track when it comes to knowing good from bad, right from wrong, foolish from wise? Even more importantly, do we wish there were? Do we want someone else to determine for us how we should feel or think or react?

Life certainly would be simpler if there were such a guide or guidelines or both. Then when my wife tells me how wonderful I am, both of us would know exactly what she means. Then when I make a fool of myself – as I would do were I to ask her what she means – I would then know just how foolish I was, or would become dare I ask such a foolish question in the first place. Guides and guidelines would prevent much of the messiness of daily life.

But life is lived in messiness. Life is lived not knowing what everything and everyone means. Life is lived in the discovery of what “wonderful” and “foolish” and “great” and “mistake” all mean. Were it otherwise, we would not call it “life” but rather something less than being fully alive and fully human. The temptation is always to dissect, define and delineate; and we often succumb to those temptations, often to our later regret.

That is not to say there are no guidelines or guides. Jesus’ words and actions certainly hang over everything we say or do. Yet we are not Jesus. We are who we are: wonderful, foolish, doers of great deeds and mistake prone as well. Come judgement day we will not be judged as to how well we compared to Jesus, but how well we lived our life as a disciple of Jesus. It’s messier that way, but it also happens to be God’s way, which is certainly some consolation when we get into trouble because we asked a foolish question.

THE HORIZONTAL AND THE VERTICLE

The cross, in more ways than one, represents who we are as Christians and what it means to be a Christian. On one level it reminds us that the cross and all that it symbolizes is part and parcel of the living out of our faith. It is a reminder that no one is immune to carrying a cross and no one escapes from his or her fair share. As for Jesus, so with us as his followers: we, too, have to take up our crosses daily and follow our Lord.

On another level the cross is a reminder of the horizontal and vertical relationships that are also part and parcel of our lives as Christians. The horizontal beam signifies our relationship one to another in this world of ours. It is a time-centered relationship. We meet and encounter one another at various points of time, interacting as we do.

These encounters are all too often regulated by the clock. We are engaged in a lively conversation, take a glance at our watch and say, “Oops. Gotta go. Have another appointment in ten minutes.” And off we go to another meeting or another something else and on the way check the calendar on our cell phone to see how much time we can give to this meeting or this item on our agenda.

Thus, it is not without a sense of truth that Gary Eberle observes in Sacred Time and the Search for Meaning: “People treat their daily planners [cell phones] the way monks and nuns used to treat their prayer books. They keep them close at all times. They clasp them with missionary zeal as they head from meeting to meeting…yet none of this points beyond our horizontal realm to the vertical realm in which we also live.”

For as Christians the vertical beam of the cross reminds us why we are doing what we are doing and gives meaning and life to the horizontal realm. Without the vertical realm the horizontal realm becomes simply a chasing after something, whatever that something is, that in the end will have no meaning and bring no lasting pleasure or satisfaction. With the vertical in place, everything we do has meaning even if it is sometimes too regulated by the clock, and will be pleasing and satisfying even if it does not turn out the way we had hoped or planned.

Jesus never intended to die on the cross and his followers never intended to be put to death because they believed in him and followed his commands. Yet even in suffering and dying they knew what they were doing and why and they were not doing so in vain even if it seemed to everyone else they were fools. They understood the vertical and horizontal relationship of being a Christian, a both-and and not an either-or.

The calendar on my cell phone may be my guide through my daily rounds, be a record of whatever I do and am supposed to do in the present moment and in the days and weeks to come. And if you are like me, sad to say for all of us, I feel naked without my phone. But if that is all it is, if it is only a way of keeping me focused on the here-and-now but not a reminder that what I am doing is goodly and Godly, and that that is truly what is presently and ultimately important, then I had better toss it and refocus my attention on what is truly important.

IT'S NOT DISSONANCE BUT SWEET MUSIC TO THE EARS

Opera? I can take it or leave it, mostly leave it, my totally Italian genes notwithstanding. Rap? I don’t even consider that music, much to the disagreement of some of my daughters (who shall remain nameless) who used to drive me almost insane by blaring that noise from their rooms. Hip Hop? Please. Country, R&B and Jazz I can take on occasion. I love the music of the Forties, probably because I was truly weaned on it in my mother’s lap. I cut my eyeteeth on Rock and Roll and received the bulk of my education with Folk Music and its messages playing in the background. Classical music is great on a regular basis; Disco once a week and Heavy Metal never.

Imagine being in an auditorium with one huge orchestra playing all these types of music and playing all of them all at one time. It would be dissonance to the nth degree. Even if we could tune in to that part of the orchestra playing our kind of music, that which we did not like, or even consider music, would drown out what we did appreciate. No one would ever consider the music being played sweet music, if it were considered music at all. It would simply be noise, horrible noise!

Take that imagery in another direction and apply it to the church and we might come to the same conclusion. There would be those who would staunchly maintain that the music being played in the church today contains so much dissonance that all they want to do is simply distance themselves from it. If not that, they want to find a room where only their music of choice is being played. And, of course, there are those who don’t want any music at all.

The church, if it is anything, at least in the Anglican Tradition (and, I would maintain, in the very tradition of Jesus) is not a symphony orchestra playing one kind of music with reeds and horns and percussion instruments all on the same page. Rather the church has been and always was and will be more like a bunch of bands together on the same stage, each playing/doing its own thing and yet making not dissonance but truly very sweet music together.

That’s the Anglican Way, the Episcopal Way, Jesus’ Way. It’s not an easy way or the only way, but it is the best way – I believe. It is not a way that says anything goes. Rather it is a way that says that I may not like your music and you may detest mine, but we are all in the same band. What we each have to do is at least be willing to listen to the other’s music even if we will never, ever come to like it or maybe even understand how anyone could even dare call it music.

Of course this means we have to be willing to play in the same band or sit in the same auditorium/church pew with those whose taste in music is so contrary at times to ours. It means we have to take their music seriously just as we ask them to take ours. It is much more comfortable and much more tempting for me to simply play my Oldies station than to punch the roaming switch to see what comes up next. But that’s our church: playing dissonance to some but really making sweet music – if we are willing to let our ears hear it and our minds welcome it.

 

BOB AND BERTHA

We have added two new members to our family thanks to our middle daughter. Their names are Bob and Bertha. Actually Bob’s full name, given to him by grandson Carter, who also typed his name in on our computer, is Bob the Vacume 4 (phonetic spelling). They came as Christmas and House-Warming presents and they are, as one might assume by Bob’s full name, a robotic sweeper (Bob) and a robotic mop (Bertha).

As I write this, Bertha is back in her resting place in my office recharging after having mopped all the floors, or at least the floors she can get to which, unfortunately, because we will still have to do those, is not all of them. She won’t go over carpets to get to the floors. Bob, on the other hand, knows no bounds. To be honest, both do very good jobs for which we are thankful.

To be even more honest, I truly feel guilty when we tell them to get to work. I mean, it’s no great of a deal to vacuum or mop the floors. Well, to be truly honest, I vacuum and Arlena mops, but neither of us works up a sweat when vacuuming or mopping. And I certainly don’t want our daughter to feel guilty because she gifted us with something she knew we really would appreciate. And we do, of course.

Bob and Bertha are simply another example of AI taking overt our lives. Our washer and dryer, stove and refrigerator and dishwasher and probably even the microwave are all capable of being connected to our phone or tablet or this computer I am now using. None of them are because I know, I know, I know I will somehow do something to lock one or all of them and not be able to use because I will not know how to unlock them. Better safe than sorry or, given my age, even foolish.

Yes, I truly appreciate everything that AI is capable of doing and has already been doing in my life, like my phone and computer. The phone gives a sense of security and the computer as well as the phone allows for easy access to other people and needed – and unneeded – information. My car basically runs on a computer which, of course, costs a fortune to repair when a chip goes haywire. But that’s another story.

The doomsday sayers are warning us that AI will take over our lives and perhaps it will take over much of it. But no one of us wants to go back to typewriters or surgery suites without the latest in AI. We love what AI can do and does for us for which we should be thankful. So thank you Bob and Bertha.

However, there is one thing Bob and Bertha nor any AI device cannot do and that is love us. Only we, with real intelligence, not artificial, can do that. And while we may wonder or even fear where AI will lead us, we know that love, in all its imperfections, is a wonder to behold and casts out any fear that we may have. I like what AI does but that’s as far as it goes. We love and need to be loved by one another. That’s the bottom line!

GUESS WHO'S THE BAIT?

We are all called to be carpenters in the sense that we are to be bridge builders between one another. That is especially true these days when it seems that the divide is so great that building a bride is well nigh impossible. And if it seems impossible, we usually do not make any effort to even try to start building that bridge. Yet, whether we like it or not, and, of course, we really do not, as Christians that is our responsibility.

But how do we do this? How do we even start when the task seems to be so great, so difficult, when it seems that it will be a waste of time because we will be rejected? It seems to me that in this task we must, along with our carpenter’s hat, put on another hat, if you will. That is the hat of a fisherman.

During the last few weeks I have been thinking about this notion that each of us is called in and through our baptism to be carpenters to build bridges but also to be fishermen, to fish for others and bring them to the faith. I have been reflecting on the fact that most of us, perhaps all of us, are, in fact, if the truth were told, reluctant fisherman. It occurs to me that there is one hard and constant fact why this is true. I will get to that in a moment.

I'm not a fisherman, but I do know that the fishermen I know go to great lengths to use the right bait to catch whatever fish it is they happen to be pursuing at the moment. I have seen tackle boxes that are awash with some of the most magnificent colors under the rainbow and stuffed with the most wondrous lures one can imagine -- all in pursuit of an elusive fish. True fishermen, it seems, will expend no amount of time or money to land that big one.

Should not that same philosophy be ours as Christian fishermen? Of course! But why the reluctance? It seems to be that there is one over-riding and all-abiding reason why we are reluctant fisherman. We have discovered what the bait is or, perhaps better, who is the bait. We are! Each of us is the bait. Each of us is that lure that entices others to come and see what we have found. Or we are not.

Fish, I understand, usually do not chase after false bait. There has to be some allure to the lure or else they will swim away no matter how hungry they are. The same analogy holds, I believe, when it comes to our faith. If we are the bait that attracts others to the faith, our way of life must be so enticing that someone will grab the hook. For that person to grab hook, line and sinker, the bait has to be overwhelming. We will have to overwhelm the other by the way we live out our faith in Jesus.

Somewhere deep down inside we know that. That frightens us because we do not think it is possible. But it is. Unlike those tackle boxes filled with exotic and expensive lures, our box seems to be filled only with common worms. But worms catch fish and that’s all that matters. Catching others by the way we live out our life of faith is the way bridges are built and probably the only way bridges are built.

We are the bait. Others come to Jesus only through us. Think what it would/could be like if we were more -- and constantly -- aware of this truth! Have a Blessed and Bait-full New Year.