THREADS OF GRACE

Our lives are made up of stories, countless stories, hundreds of thousands of them. The older we get, the more stories we have to tell. Most of them are truly mundane and quite uninteresting even to the main actor in that story: our self. Even the minutest detail in our life is a story. I always kid our youngest daughter, Tracy, because when Tracy tells a story, she tells a story. When she lived at home, it would take her five minutes to tell us that someone was at the front door.

Yes, that is a slight exaggeration, but not by much. The point is that there is a story behind every decision we make, every move we take. We do not make that decision out of the clear blue sky. We do not make that move, take that step, however short or long it is, without something preceding it; and, whether we realize it or not, whether we are cognizant of it or not, that something entails a story.

We are a people of the story. Whenever we gather, however small or large that gathering, whether at a family dinner, a Sunday worship, a class in school, at work, at play or at the local coffee shop for a chat with a friend, we each bring our personal stories with us and make that gathering into a larger story. The truth is that were we more aware of that truth, perhaps there would be less conflict and more cooperation in this world. For the further truth is that in one way or another we all have similar stories to tell. Only the names and places and circumstances are changed, but not the basic story.

That basic story is about a life lived with ups and downs, joys and sorrows, wins and losses. No one is exempt and no one is immune. It does us no good to complain that others have it better than we do because we have it better than others. And, yes, some people seem to suffer more than others and others seem to be more blessed than others. But we never know.

The only life we truly know about is our own, and often we do not truly know much about that life. Why? A simple answer is to say that we tend to go from one story to the next without much reflection on that last story. Yet it is only when we take the time to think about our life and the stories we have to tell that we can come to grips with what our life is all about and where we should be going next.

What we will discover in the process is that what has held us together when we thought our world was falling apart, what has kept us moving when we wanted to shrivel up and hide, have been those threads of grace that has kept us together, God’s grace and the grace that comes from those who are walking this journey of life with us. That said, it is also true that the many blessings of life that have come our way are more because God’s grace has been present and not because we have been someone special. Often we are unaware of those threads; but when we take the time to reflect on our life’s story, they become quite evident.

The tapestry of life – our personal life, the lives of those around us, the life of the world –is, if you will, woven together by those threads of God’s grace.

IT IS ABOUT ME

Each one of us has an ego whether we are willing to admit it or not. We are all selfish. That’s the way we were created. We came out of the womb thinking we were Number One, that the self always comes first. That belief was reinforced during our infancy when our every whim and need was attended to and as quickly as possible but certainly not as quickly as we felt we deserved.

All that notwithstanding, the truth is that when are we involved in something, whatever that something is, it is about us. It is about us, about me, and there is nothing wrong with that. In fact, it is essential that we realize that what is happening is about us and we must somehow in some way respond.

What we also have to realize is that it is also more than just about us. It is about everyone else as well. And sometimes, perhaps more often that we realize and certainly more often than we are willing to admit, it is more about others than it is about us. It is really and truly about them. Their problem, their issue, becomes our issue because we are now aware of it.

That is especially true when it comes to the living out of our faith, which, of course is to be done 24/7, every minute of every hour of every day. Every second of our life we are called through our baptism – and the promises made for us when we were baptized and which we renew each year – to seek and see and serve Jesus Christ in all persons, loving our neighbor as we love ourselves. In other words, it is as much about our neighbor, whoever that neighbor is and wherever that neighbor lives, as it is about me, whatever that “it” is at the moment.

As baptized Christians we promise to strive for justice and peace among all people and to respect the dignity of every human being. Not some. Not just those we love, but each and every one of them. Again, it is all about them as much as it is all about us. But in order for it to be all about them/him/her, it also has to be all about us/me first. Each one of us is vitally important in doing God’s work in resisting evil and in proclaiming the Good News. We cannot do any or all of that if we do not realize just how important we are, each one of us, in God’s grand scheme.

It is all about me because if I fail, others are hurt. If we fail, many are hurt. Yes, too many people – and sometimes we are one of them – lose sight of this truth and think that they are more important than others, that the world or at least their corner of the world, no matter how small that corner is, revolves about them and is only about them. It does not, never did and never will.

When we finally allow our ego to take back seat, or at least step aside for a moment, it is humbling to realize just how important we are in God’s ordering of creation. It is even more humbling to admit that we are not as important as we sometimes think we are. It is about us; but in being about us, it is also about how we full the responsibilities God has entrusted to us.

FALLING SHORT

As Christians, as followers of Jesus, as people who promise and regularly renew that promise to live out our baptismal vows, if you are like me and I suspect you are, we sometimes feel we simply cannot live up to that task. It just seems too, too difficult. And so we fall short all too often. This failure becomes even more onerous when we begin to compare our lives to Jesus’ life or at least the picture we have of Jesus’ life when we read the Gospels.

Perhaps it is not so with you, but when I read the Gospels and when I know I am to follow Jesus the way Jesus lived and loved, it just seems to me that Jesus has set the bar too high, far too high. Nowhere in the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ ministry do the writers report a scene where Jesus, having spent the day healing and teaching, finally throws up his arms and says, “Enough is enough! I’m out of here. No more healing for today. Let’s go, guys,” and off he and the apostles head to some place somewhere where there are no people pleading for his attention.

Yes, the Gospels do recount those seemingly rare times when Jesus goes off alone or when he and his disciples do so. But there surely had to be those moments in Jesus’ life when he vocally, and in no uncertain terms, had had enough and just said “No! No more!” and walked away with needy people standing there, mouths agape and minds wondering what they had said or done to foster such a reaction from this obviously kind and caring man. What brought this on?

The only glimpse we get of Jesus’ humanity is at the end of his life when he in the Garden of Gethsemane practically begs off doing what he knows he has to do and when, on the cross, he wonders if God has abandoned him after all the good he had done in this life. I can relate to that Jesus. However, the always-kind and always-caring and always-ready-to-respond-to-the-needs-of-others-and-never-not-doing-so Jesus, that Jesus can be quite intimidating.

The only consolation is that I am not Jesus and God does not expect me to be Jesus. God expects me to be me. That is what I should expect of myself. None of us is Jesus nor can we be. We can be only who we are and that is gifted but limited human beings who on occasion do have to say “No” to the needs and demands of others in order to take care of ourselves so that we can say “Yes” the next time our time and talent are needed.

Issues arise we must deal with. We fall short for many reasons. Sometimes we do so deliberately, and sometimes not. However, it is when we fall short because we have not taken care of our own needs, taken care of ourselves that is when we have a real problem and one that we must not ignore.

Self-care is just as important, perhaps more important than taking care of others. Even if the Gospels fall short in recounting Jesus’ taking care of himself, we can be sure he did. We must not fall short in taking care of ourselves either.

 

WELL-BEING/BEING WELL

There is a part of us that focuses on our well-being, that desire that we be healthy, content, satisfied with our life and everything about it. Many ingredients go into our well-being, and many of them are out of our control. One of those ingredients is being well. Much of that is indeed in our control but some of it is not. Sickness and disease, accidents and tragedies know no bounds. We all fall victim in one way or another throughout our lives. And when we are not well, so, too, is our well-being not well.

There are two ingredients that are vital to our well-being and our being well. The first is a sense of purposefulness and the other is a sense of belonging. Both are necessary and both need each other. If they are not present, both of them, then our well-being will be less than it could or should be and we will not be well spiritually, physically and emotionally – all three.

We all know people who seem to be in perfect health but act as if there is something missing in their lives. This is especially true as we grow older, certainly after we retire. We used to be this, whatever that vocation is. We had a position, a job, a responsibility. When someone asked what we did, we could tell them and even tell them proudly. But now we are retired, our job has ended and we seem to have no purpose in life. I’ve known parishioners who died shortly after they retired because they felt and believed that their purpose in life was over.

They were wrong, of course. They did not realize that they now had a new vocation, a new job. They simply had to discover it. They had gifts and talents to share even if they had always taken them for granted. Now they had to take them as a gift to be given to those who needed them. No matter how old or how young we are, we all have a purpose in life. We simply need to discover it and we will be well and we will be content with our well-being.

Not only do we need to find a sense of purposefulness in our lives but we also need to have a sense of belonging. We all know people, and we may one of them, whose family is all gone – all have died or all have moved away or all no longer are a part of our lives. Yet we never have to be alone. We can choose to be but we do not have to be. When we belong to a faith community, to a church, we are never alone. We belong.

Both of these ingredients to a sense of well-being and being well are intertwined. We can find a purpose in life when we belong to a community and that community to which we belong helps us to find purpose in life. The community helps us discover the gifts and talents we have long forgotten or taken for granted and pushes us to put them into use in other ways than perhaps we did before.

A satisfied well-being does not come naturally. We have to work at just as we have to work at keeping ourselves well. And yet, even though none of us is ever in perfect health and all of us fall short of a perfect well-being, knowing our purpose in life and belonging to a community that supports us helps to make our life as well as it can be.

SOMETIMES SILENCE IS BEST

The trouble with us preachers, or at least one of them, is that when we are asked a theological or religious question or placed in a situation that all but calls out for us to respond with a definitive answer, we invariably open our mouths. Even worse, all too often we end up putting our foot firmly inside. It is an occupational hazard that is dangerous to all those involved. The same may be true in other vocations. I only speak of the one with which I am most familiar.

Remember the story of Job in the Bible? Job lost everything: his children, his possessions, and almost lost his wife who became impatient with his seemingly endless patience over all that had happened to him. On top of all that, he found himself covered from head to toe with boils that made his life even more wretched and miserable. Even though his wife remained faithful, she blamed Job for what had happened to him – and to her. He must have done something wrong, something so sinful, that God punished him in this way. He had to have. And she said so.

In the midst of Job’s agony along came three of his closest friends. They sat in silence with Job for seven days. That seemed to be a comfort for him. After all, what could they say anyway? They could do nothing to alleviate his pain and agony. They could not bring back or restore all that had been taken from him. There really was nothing for them to say or do. And that is what they did: nothing, just sat in silence.

But there must have been some kind of preacher in each of them. They ended their silence and began to lecture Job about his condition. Each in his own way told Job in no uncertain terms that he must have done something so terrible and sinful that God had no recourse but to punish Job in the way God did. Very simply it was all Job’s fault and that of no one else, period. It would now be best for Job, each said, for Job to confess to his sinfulness, ask God for forgiveness, and then just maybe, maybe God would heal his boils and restore him to physical health. Maybe.

They should have just shut up, just kept their mouths closed and sat there in silence with Job. Once they tried to play God, it all went south on them. They no more knew why Job did nothing to deserve what happened. It was not that he was sinless. It was simply that he had not been so sinful that such a tragedy was the deserved punishment. Thus, all these friends did was make matters worse and cause Job’s pain and suffering to increase. Their silence would have been golden.

Sometimes saying nothing says it all. There are times when all words fail and any words we do utter only make the situation much more difficult for the person who is suffering. That is true not only when we find ourselves being with such a person but also, on the other extreme, when we find ourselves experiencing deep love and awe or being overwhelmed with the wonder of creation. Words fail, then, too, and we shouldn’t muck it up with words that come up short. Silence, sometimes, is not only the correct response. It is the only response.

 

I AM BECAUSE YOU ARE

In this life in this world we are all in it together. As the poet said, no one of us is an island alone unto oneself. We need one another. That is why we were born. That is why each of us was and is blessed by God with gifts that no one else has in the same way that we do.

We are called to use those gifts to the betterment and blessing of others and discover a better and blessed life for ourselves when we do.

Sometimes I think we forget that truth. Sometimes we do not recognize just how blessed we are, what gifts with which God has blessed us. Sometimes, even when we realize what these gifts and talents are, we make light of them, downplay them, and even denigrate them because we believe our gifts pale in comparison to the gifts and talents with which others are blessed.

And they do. Every gift I have, every talent that God has given me, can be and is topped by someone else. There are better preachers better pastors, better priests; better writers, better husbands, better parents -- the list is endless – than I am. I know that. The people I have served over the years know that. My wife and children know that. The saving grace is that I am not alone.

The truth is is that it does not matter. We are all gifted by our gifts, but no matter how superior they may be, they are limited. There is always someone who is better than we are and we are better than others. It is a waste of time and quite useless to compare gifts. What we are called to do and what God expects us to do and what we should demand of ourselves is to recognize the gifts with which we have been blessed and then use those gifts to the best of our ability even as that ability and those gifts are limited because of human nature – because we are not God!

Whenever we do that, what we do is make others better people. Whenever others use their gifts to the best of their ability, they make me a better person. That is why it is so true to say that I am because you are. I am who I am because you are who you are. We are who we are, we become who we are becoming because others are who they are in our lives. You make me me. I make you you. We help make each other. That is the way and that is why God both created us and blessed us as God did.

God did not create us islands unto ourselves nor intend for us to become as such. God created us to need one another in this world. What we are, rather, and what God intends for us to be, is a community: one community, one family, one world. We are a people created by God to love and care for one another, each of us using our gifts to help make one another grow into the person God wants and we ourselves want to be and can be. That is our task.

Thus, the truth is that without you I am less. With you I am more. Again, I am who I am because you are who you are, and vice versa. If we only realized just how important we are to one another, if we all understood this truth, we would make this world the community that God created it to become. We still can.

LETTING GO OF THE EGOS

We men, or perhaps I should speak only for myself but I sincerely doubt that I do, have this seemingly innate need to want to fix everything that goes wrong or at least believe we can do so with just a little help from our friends. We think that there is simply no problem that is beyond our ability to resolve or solve. And even if we cannot resolve the issue at hand because it is beyond our own or combined capabilities, we will give it our very best shot.

If we take the time to look at some of the messes we have gotten ourselves into, we will discover that what we did sometimes was head down the road where no sane person would venture, where even angels themselves would not dare to tread. We knew this beforehand, of course, yet we foolishly placed ourselves in positions we should have avoided with the proverbial ten-foot pole. But we did not.

Perhaps this daring-do attitude stems from a macho gene that we men seem to be born with or at least somehow think we should possess even if we know deep within our head and heart that a wide yellow streak runs up and down our spines – speaking only for myself here, of course. Sometimes that yellow streak does save me from myself, but not always and not often enough.

This foolishness to act all on our own may be understandable and even forgivable, men being men, humanity itself being what it is. And what it is, and we men have no claim to it simply because we are men, women are just as guilty – what it is is our inability, certainly our unwillingness as human beings to trust in God rather than in ourselves alone.

The truth is that we will never fully place our trust in God until and unless we let go of our egos. Yes, we trust, even believe that God walks with us in our journey through this life, that the Holy Spirit guides us and that Jesus gives us the strength for the journey; but there is something in us that wants to believe that we can solve and resolve everything that comes our way. When we cannot, and it seems only when we cannot, do we hand the situation over to God.

None of this means that we do not do our very best to solve the problems that come our way, that come to every human being, problems like sickness, disease, loss of any kind: physical, mental, material. We do try to do our very best. What it does mean is that we often take too long to trust that God will help us, wait too long to put the situation in God’s hands, to acknowledge that we are not God. Doing so, we somehow believe, would be a blow to our ego.

Yet the fact is that we have to let go of our egos if we want God to do what only God can do. That does not mean that we do not do our part. God will not do for us what we can do for ourselves. It simply means that we sometimes have to realize that we cannot resolve the problem at hand without God being part of the solution from the get go. And for that to happen, we have let go of our ego from the get go.                                             

CAN’T BUY ME LOVE

In 1964 The Beatles recorded Can’t Buy Me love. It was a mega seller. When pressed by American journalists in 1966 to reveal the song's "true" meaning, Paul McCartney said, "The idea behind it was that all these material possessions are all very well, but they won't buy me what I really want." There are lots of things money can buy, and that is well and good. But there is much more that money cannot buy, as McCartney said.

We all know what money can buy. All we have to do is look around at all our possessions. We worked long and hard to pay for them; and if some of them have been given to us as gifts, those who gave them worked long and hard to earn the money to purchase them so that they could give those gifts to us. Material possessions all come at a financial cost and we know it.

So it is good that, at least every once in a while, we do take pause to admire what our hard work and dedication has enabled us to purchase. We can be justly proud of our possessions while at the same time giving thanks to God for whatever gifts and talents with which we have been blessed that enabled us to achieve what we have. Even more, we need to remember while we are rejoicing in all that we have that we will take none of it with us when we die. All possessions are temporary and temporal.

On the other hand, as McCartney’s song reminds, there are some things money cannot buy, love being first and foremost. Sometimes we have been seduced into believing that we can buy another’s love and affection if we simply bestow on the other gift after gift, the more expensive the better. What we have painfully learned in the process is that that love was not only fleeting but was not real.

The danger in our pursuit of more and more is that we can lose that which money cannot buy. Marriages have been broken apart because one or both have spent so much time climbing the corporate ladder that they have grown apart. The bigger house and better cars and all the possessions their increased income enabled them to buy did not bring them closer together. The time apart only drove them apart.

Money can’t buy love. Money can’t buy happiness. Money can’t buy peace of mind. A member of our family was so obsessed with accumulating money that he truly never found happiness and drove away all those who could bring joy and certainly could bring some love into his life. I don’t think he ever knew until the very end of his life what he was missing, if he even did then, and then it was too late.

His was and is a very sad story and it is one that, in this material world of ours, is easy to repeat. We can all fall victim, as he did, to the belief that material wealth can purchase what we truly want and need the most: the love of others. It can’t. It never could and it never will. His story and McCartney’s song are reminders to me, and I hope to you, that while it is good and important to recognize how materially blessed we are, we must, at the same time, take time to make sure we have not lost, in our pursuit and accumulation of the material, the things that are most important and that money can’t buy.

PROOF POSITIVE

Juries want proof, usually beyond a reasonable shadow of a doubt, that a person is guilty before they will come to such a verdict. Yet we do not have to serve on a jury to demand proof that something is true. When there is doubt on our mind, we want that doubt erased before we will believe that what we are asked to so believe is, in fact, true. Otherwise we will hold onto our doubts.

Sometimes, of course, we will never know for certain whether what is said is actually the truth or only partially true or simple a lie. We give the person asking us to believe in him or believe her a little and sometimes a lot of slack. Life would be too complicated and we would be stuck in a rut if we had to know for certain that everything and everyone we are asked to believe is true and truthful.

Who we believe and what we believe are always open to challenge until proof is proffered. That is a fact of life. We can give deep and profound explanations and reasons why something is so and that is often enough. Not always, however. T. S. Eliot, in commenting on how we prove our faith not only to others but, more importantly, to ourselves said this: “The greatest proof of Christianity for others is not how far a man can logically analyze his reasons for believing but how far in practice he will stake his life on his belief.”

We can all talk a good fight and we sometimes do and we sometimes even win. There are others times when our words fool no one. There are times when they do not even fool ourselves. We know we are bluffing even if our bluff sounds so logical, so believable, so true. There are other times, however, when we have so convinced ourselves that what we claim to be true is true that we deny the truth when confronted with the facts.

As Eliot noted, simply asserting that “I am a Christian” does not make one a Christian. Simply being convinced that following Jesus is the absolute right way to live does not mean that we will in fact actually follow Jesus in the way Jesus would want us to follow. We are known and convicted not by the words that come from our mouths but the deeds that come from our lives – when confronted with the fact that we are unable or unwilling to put into practice what we profess.

That is often a hard and very harsh lesson to learn especially when it comes to our faith. Again, sometimes it is only when what we profess to believe, even knowing deep in our hearts and heads that it is true, is challenged in a real-life situation that we learn whether or not we are indeed true believers or have simply deceived ourselves because we are good at professing such a belief.

Faith is an intellectual assent to be sure. What we profess to believe has to make sense, a whole lot of sense, even if some of what we believe cannot be proved, like the existence of God, for instance. But what we believe is put to the test, is proved, by the way we do or do not live out that profession. What is important here is not so much that we prove our faith to others as we prove it to ourselves. That is accomplished by the way we live.

BELIEVING WHEN IT’S ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE

Sometimes things happen to us that make us, force us, to step back and examine our beliefs. Those events can be both good and bad. For the unbeliever, the agnostic, the atheist, the unexpected observance of the magnificence of creation can force one to stop and think: is this all by chance? Is there not, might there not be a creative intelligence behind what I am observing?

One would think one would think such thoughts. Maybe not. Perhaps the unbeliever is so secure in his ways that nothing and no one will ever convince him that there is a God, a personal God, a loving God. Perhaps the evils of this world, man’s inhumanity to man, the unjust sufferings that innocent people undergo when an all-powerful God could put a stop to it – perhaps that is what inures some to any thought of God, any temptation to actually believe in God.

While the wonders and goodness of creation may not convince a person to think thoughts of a personal God, certainly the opposite is true. When one is suffering unjustly, when nature wreaks havoc on the innocent, when it seems that the world is going to hell in a handcart, one’s belief in God can be sorely tried and tested. In fact, if it is not tested, one has to wonder how strongly one’s faith really is.

When World War II ended in Europe and the Allies were combing through the rubble of what was left in the war zones, they came across an inscription on the wall of a cellar in Cologne where Jews hid from the Nazis. It read: “I believe in the sun even when it is not shining. I believe in love even when not feeling it. I believe in God even when he is silent.” If anyone’s, any people’s faith was tested, it was that of the Jewish people during that war.

Perhaps there were some, but I have never read or heard an interview where the Jewish people gave up their deep faith in God because of what happened to them during that War. Of course, that is also the story of the Old Testament. The faith of the people was tried and tested over and over again, And while they moaned and groaned to God when things were not going well – as we all do, they never lost their faith, never believed that God had abandoned them much less that God never existed in the first place, such was their faith.

The reality is that it is easy to point out examples of people who remained steadfast in their belief and trust in God while, at the same time, also had serious doubts as to why they should keep believing. The truth is that everyone’s faith is tested, sometimes very seriously tested. Only those who have immunized themselves to the horrors of life in this world ask no questions.

We are not of that sort. Thus, there are times in our lives when the suffering of others and especially when our own suffering forces us to ask the God question. Sometimes we wonder why we still believe when what is happening screams at us that there is no God. But we hold on, thanks be to…well, thanks be to God!

JUST BECAUSE

My father-in-law was a quiet, unassuming man. Now my mother-in-law, well, let’s not go there. As I said, my father-in-law never spoke much; but when he did, he spoke quietly, quickly and to the point. He once told my wonderful wife when she was a little girl and making a nuisance of herself and everyone else in the car that if she did not clam down, he would stop the car and throw her off the bridge. She got the message.

A few years later when the siblings were teenagers and the electric bill came in, he lined them up, held the bill up and said, “We will never have a bill like this again. Turn out the lights when you leave the room!” They got the message.

My favorite was the time when My Beloved, teen-age driver at the time, came home, red hair on fire (Been there. Experienced that!) and told her Dad, “Some man wouldn’t turn off his high beams when I signaled him, so I turned on mine!” Wise Dad replied, “Arlena, just because someone else acts like a dummy doesn’t mean you have to.” A message we all need to remember.

Well, I don’t know about you, but there have been times in my life, not many but enough, when I have done something in reaction, actually in retaliation, to what someone had done to me. I did so knowingly and willingly and it made me feel good. It did not accomplish anything, of course. And in the end, it only made me look like what Arlena’s Dad said I would look like: a dummy.

Sometimes just the threat of punishment works to get the message across and the lesson learned and sometimes it does not and then we have to find ways to earn the money to pay the electric bill. Sometimes life’s lessons are indeed learned the hard way. But most assuredly and most embarrassingly they are learned the way of the foolish. In truth that is also the most painful way to learn a lesson.

Payback, as we have learned, does not work because it cannot undo what has already been done. My retaliating does not undo the pain I felt when that for which I am paying back was inflicted. I was hurt and then I hurt the one who hurt me. But that did not and does not take away my pain. It can even make it worse. He blinds me with his headlights. I blind him to get even and we both go blind. The foolishness of it all!

The temptation to hurt another just because the other has hurt us will always be there. Perhaps it is because of the “survival of the fittest” syndrome that is part of the human condition. Perhaps it is because we sometimes need to learn life’s lessons the hard way or else we will not learn them at all. And even if we really knew why we sometimes do unto others just because they have done unto us, that, in and of itself, would neither justify our retaliation nor make us look less foolish.

Hopefully we grow less foolish as we grow older. Our parents’ words of wisdom do sink in, after we have learned the hard way, and we then share our hard-earned and hard-learned wisdom with our own children. We hope they listen and learn.

FACING CHALLENGES

There are many problems in our world today. That is not to say that there ever was a time when the world was free from problems or had less of them than we have today. After all, give the instantaneous ability we have to communicate any problem, any issue, any triumph – anything! – to the rest of the world, the problems of this world almost seem both overwhelming and insurmountable.

Part of our problem today is that we can communicate so quickly. The headlines are rife with stories about politicians, pundits and ordinary people who have sent off thoughts, criticisms and even pictures without having taken the time to reflect upon what they were doing and now are paying the price for their indiscretions, their foolishness and even their criminal activity.

Concomitant with our ability today to communicate something instantly and worldwide is that a quick response is demanded. The one who sends the message wants a response right now simply because an instant response is available. Not too long ago one would send a letter by mail that took several days to reach its addressee. Then the one who received the letter had the opportunity to reflect on its contents and then write a reply. By the time the reply was received, several weeks could pass and no one was upset that it took so long to receive a response. Not so any longer.

None of this is to assert that we should do away with computers and email and cell phones. It is simply to say that sometimes the problems we face today are of our own making because we do not take time to reflect on the issue at hand that so often needs a reflective response which is impossible when an instant response is expected.

The point is not that we have so many problems both as a person and as a world, nor is it to bemoan the fact that we seem to be overwhelmed by them so many are they and so few resources there are at our disposal to deal with them. We know that we cannot solve all the problems in the world no matter how much money or how many resources we have. That is a given.

What we need to remind ourselves in the face of such that not everything that is faced can be changed; however, nothing can be changed until it is faced. In the face of any problem, especially a difficult one, often our first response is to turn and run, hoping either it will go away if we can get away or that someone else will deal with it while we are away.

The other response when made aware of a problem is to assert that “it’s not my problem.” But of course it is. Once we are made aware of a problem, once faced with it, it now becomes our problem as well. In this world we are all in it together whether we like it or not. It goes with the territory, as they say. Thus, each of us individually and all of us collectively are challenged to do whatever we can to resolve it. Often what we can do is very little, but at least we can do something. The problem may not be resolved no matter what we do. But doing nothing only makes the problem worse.

TRIAL BY JURY

We’ve all been told that someday, that being upon our death, we will have to stand before the judgment seat of God and face our Maker. We have been told that all the sins we committed in this life will be laid out before us and we will have to make some kind of defense for them. None will be forthcoming, of course, as sin has no defense. It is always a deliberate act that we know at the time of its commission is wrong but we still go ahead and do it anyway knowing all the while we have no excuse.

At the same time we will want to lay out before God all the good we have done hoping that those good works will somehow make up for all our bad deeds. They won’t. They never do. But that, too, is no excuse for not doing the very best we can whenever we can, which is all the time.

Whether or not this scene really plays out upon our death only time and death will tell. It does not matter anyway because eternity is out of our hands. What God has in store for us when that time comes is left to our imaginations. If we want to believe it will be a time for judgment or a time for forgiveness or whatever crosses our mind, it will be, as Paul says in one of his letters, beyond our wildest imaginations. This does bode well.

What is important and what I think really concerns God and what should be our own main concern is not what will happen in the hereafter but we are doing and what is happening in the here-and-now. We know that to be true and, for the most part, we are quite aware of such and act on such awareness, but not always and perhaps not often enough, or not often enough to make a difference in the way we live.

George Bernard Shaw, who enjoyed the fruits of a successful life and who understood that to whom much is given, much is demanded in return and who did not observe this to be happening opined: “Every person who owes his life to civilized society, and who has since childhood enjoyed its very costly protections and advantages, should appear at reasonable intervals before a properly constituted jury to justify his existence.”

It might be less intimidating to appear before a jury of our peers than before our God, but not by much, if at all. Public confessions, which such would be, are humbling and frightening. They are humbling because we have to stand naked, as it were, before our peers and admit that we have failed to live up to our responsibilities as citizens and, even more importantly, as Christians, and deliberately so in the process.

On the other hand, such confessions are frightening not because we are afraid of the punishment that would be meted out because there would be none. Rather, what frightens us is that in facing our deliberate failures we would have to change the way we act so that we do not repeat them between now and the time we appear before that jury again.

The truth is that we are both the judge and the jury of our own actions. We know what is expected of us. We know that we have failed. We know what has to be done. All we have to do now is do it.

THE POT CALLING THE KETTLE “BLACK”

We’ve all made that remark. We’ve listened to someone criticize the actions of another and thought to ourselves that the criticizer was just as guilty of the same fault as s/he found in someone else. It is quite easy for any one of us to be blind to our own faults, failings and shortcomings while being very aware of those of others, and sometimes being very verbal about it in the process.

That is not to say that just because each and every one of us comes up short when it comes to being the perfect person, one found without fault, just because there is no such person, none of that means that it is all right to ignore another’s faults and failures just as it is not all right for others to note ours. The fact that we are all imperfect does not give us license to be such.

If, as children, our parents did not point out our bad actions and simply let us be, we would assume that what we were doing was just fine and dandy. On the other hand, if they did point them out and we ignored them and then were punished for our continued bad behavior, then we were taught a lesson. We could have listened and learned or we could have not listened and learned the hard way. The choice was ours.

The saving grace in all this, if it indeed can be called grace, is that we are all in the same boat. We learn some lessons because we are willing to believe our teachers know what they are talking about and want to save us from certain pain and sufferings. We also, at times, need to suffer that pain in order to really learn the lesson our teachers were trying to get across but which we were too stubborn to believe and learn.

One of the great spiritual classics that I used to read in seminary was Thomas a Kempis’ The Imitation of Christ. It was/is (you can still buy it on Amazon) filled with pithy and pointed sayings and observations about how to live a Christ-like life. As a young seminarian that is certainly something I wanted to do, that being the reason why I read it almost on a daily basis.

Whether my devotional reading made a difference in my life only others can tell because, again, each one of us is a rather poor judge of our own character. We often downplay both our good qualities and our bad. What I do know is that it was always a struggle to be the person I thought I wanted to be even as it was rather easy for me to judge that another was not acting as I thought he should.

When I made those judgments, I should have remembered what Thomas had written: “Be not angry that you cannot make others as you wish them to be since you cannot make yourself as you wish to be.” I could not back then and I still cannot today. It is no consolation that, again, there are many in the same boat as I. Thomas would probably say that we’re all in that same boat.

If there is any consolation, it is that we are still in the boat rowing, trying to become what we wish to be and that our boat mates are doing the same.

DOING GOOD

John Wesley, good Anglican that he was till his death, who, along with his brother Charles were the founders of Methodism, was at his heart and in his ministry an itinerant evangelistic preacher at a time in England – and in the world – when that was just what was needed. The Wesleys preached and taught a way of life that was based on a regular practice of prayer and good works. There was a method to this way of life, a regularity and orderliness about it, from which came its name.

Their preaching did not fall on deaf ears because that was the message that needed to be preached, taught, learned and put into practice. They were highly successful. Their message is no less needed today than it was over two centuries ago, perhaps even more so. The people of the Wesley’s time led very simple lives, hard lives but very simple lives. Our lives today are much easier, given all the gadgets we have available to us to make life such. But our lives are also much more complicated also because of all these gadgets, many of which are simply toys.

Because we have so much to distract us, so many more options about what to do, how to use our time, what next, our lives have become somewhat, if not entirely, disordered. Sometimes it seems as if we do not know if we are coming or going. In those times we long for a simpler life even if we have no idea what that would mean or even knowing that it would mean giving up and even giving away some of these gadgets that consume so much of our lives.

For John Wesley the simple life boiled down to simply doing good. He said that we should do all the good we can, in all the ways we can, in all the places we can, at all the times we can, to all the people we can, as long as we can. Tall order? Yes. Exhausting? No doubt. Fulfilling? Absolutely. And it is all very simple, really, even if it sounds or seems all-consuming.

Opportunities for doing good are everywhere, especially right where we are. Be a good parent, a good child, a good spouse, a good worker, a good boss, a good whatever we are wherever we are. Do the best we can do at whatever we are doing. It is when we do less  than the best or, worse, when we deliberately do that which is not good, that we make problems for ourselves, for those around us, for the world.

While the opportunities are there, we often do not see them because, again, we have allowed ourselves to be consumed by consumerism. We fill our lives with so many distractions that we can’t see what needs to be seen, can’t hear what needs to be heard and then can’t do the good that needs to be done. It’s not that we do all this deliberately so much as it has come upon us gradually, one distraction at a time, one after another.

That’s where Wesley’s way comes in. We need to step back every once in a while – he would say every day – and take a good look at our lives, to slow down, sort out priorities, shed unwanted and unneeded distractions and allow ourselves time to look for the good in each moment. That would make life simpler, more orderly and more enjoyable.

FOUR NOT-S0-EASY PIECES

My wife and I like to work jigsaw puzzles. The bigger, the better. The more pieces, the more challenging. The problem, of course, is that whenever we set out a puzzle, it will consume us until we complete it, often putting aside chores that really demand our attention. In that, I don’t think we are different than anyone else who likes to work puzzles of any kind, jigsaw, crossword, Sudoku, and so forth.

Life itself is often a puzzle. It is made up of many bits and pieces that we want to fit together to make a whole, certainly hoping that all the pieces will do so. Loose ends are not of our liking, at least not of my liking, speaking only for myself. If I – if we? – can find a simple plan to make life, especially our life as a Christian, fall easily into place, I/we would like to know that plan.

I found one in four steps, four pieces, if you will, but not so easy ones. The Collect for Proper 17 prays thusly: Lord of all power and might, the author and giver of all good things: Graft in our hearts the love of your Name; increase in us true religion; nourish us with all goodness; and bring forth in us the fruit of good works; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God for ever and ever.

The first piece of the puzzle in trying to figure out how to follow Jesus, the first step on the road to such following, is this: the grafting in our hearts the love of God’s Name. Grafting, not thinking about it or wishing that it were so but actually making the love of God part and parcel of who we are, of our every thought and word and action. If we could not take the second step, add the second piece without having the first piece firmly in place, we would and could go no further. Making the love of God part of our being is a life-long process, but a necessary one.

The second step in the journey, the next piece in the puzzle, is to grow in true religion: true religion. There is a lot of false religion out there selling us a path to God that is easy and rewarding and exempt of pain and suffering on the one hand or one that instills fear and the threat of hell, reminding us that the path to God is very straight and very, very narrow on the other. The difficulty in walking the path is sorting out what is true and what is false, and that, too, is a life-long process.

As we grow in the love of God and walk the path of true religion, we need to be nourished by all that is good and refrain from dining on what is not, namely what feeds the soul with selfishness and hardness of heart. Separating the good from what often tastes so good but which, in the end, only leaves a sour taste in our mouths, is, again, a life-long process.

The final step in living as a follower of Jesus is to do good deeds. Doing so is the result of loving God, living out our faith as Jesus taught us to and by being fed with whatever is good and holy and just. That, too, is a life-long process. The good thing in all this is that even though all the pieces of the puzzle don’t fit perfectly, they fit enough so that we can keep on working at it the rest of our lives.

POOR PAUL, POOR ME

St. Paul was never one of my heroes, a saint that I admired and wanted to be like. It’s not that I doubted his sanctity or his devotion or anything like that. He was a great man who was indispensable to the growth of the church. He was our first real theologian even though he got some things wrong and was sometimes too hard headed for his own good and the good of the church.

Rather, I think Paul spent too much time patting himself on the back, even though he deserved all that adulation and more; and he whined too much even though he was treated horribly by foe and friend alike. Given all that, it would seem that Paul was a person one should admire and want to emulate. It would seem, even though for some reason I cannot find myself in that position.

However, I do find myself moaning and groaning for the same reason Paul did. He wanted to be a perfect example to the people he was proselytizing of someone who followed Jesus almost to the letter. But the more he tried, the more he was tempted to be and do otherwise. As he wrote in his letter to the Romans, he was constantly tempted to do that which he knew he should do and not do that which he knew he should. What is worse, all too often he gave in to those temptations. Poor Paul.

Now there is someone to whom I can and do relate! While I may not be tempted in the same way Paul was (what temptations he received he did not detail), nevertheless I often find myself in the same position of wanting to do that which I should not and not doing that which I should. Poor me. Poor all of us, because none of is exempt from being tempted to be selfish, which is what all temptations are about.

Actually, temptations in and of themselves are morally neutral They are just temptations: temptations to utter an unkind word, temptations to refuse to help when one is perfectly able, temptations to eat or drink too much, temptations of every kind and degree. They are morally neutral until we respond to them either by giving in to them or by rejecting them and moving on.

The rejecting and moving on is what is difficult. We all know that, as did Paul, from personal, firsthand experience. We’ve all been there and we’ve all done what Paul did and what Paul did not do. And like Paul, there have been times when we cried out to God to rid us of these temptations because, at least at that moment in our lives, they seemed to be so overwhelming that we were ready to give up and give in.

Yet, as Paul knew and we know, there is no escape. As long as we are alive we have free will. Because of our free will there will always be temptations to go either way: to do or not to do. But temptations are really choices. When we give in to a temptation, we are making a choice, a free will choice. We do not have to be unkind or selfish but we freely choose to do so. Like Paul we can whine because we are tempted and we can try to blame someone or something when we give in. But the truth is, like Paul, in the end, we have no one else to blame but ourselves.

WE HAVE EVERYTHING WE NEED

When we listen to the news, read the newspapers, even look around our neighborhoods, it is sometimes easy to believe that the world is going to hell in a handcart. Wars and uprisings, poverty and natural disasters, sickness and disease, conflict and controversy are everywhere. A peaceable world, a world where people live in harmony with one another seems so far off if not totally unrealistic and unobtainable.

When the world is perceived as such, most of us look for someone, some hero, some Lone Ranger as it were, to come riding in on a white horse to rectify it all. We know, or believe, that we cannot do it, that we are not that savior, that messiah; but surely someone has to be. The Jewish people in the Old Testament were always looking for that savior, whether in a king, a judge or even the real Messiah, to save them for the messes they were in, messes created mostly by their own sinfulness and selfishness. We are no different today.

What they forgot, what we forget, or perhaps what we all would rather discount and even deny is that we have everything we need to make this world a better world, a peaceable world. The list of what is needed is short: two hands, two feet, two eyes (Helen Keller did it with none!), two ears, a brain, a mouth and a heart full of love for God and one another. That’s all!

That’s easy to say, you say. And, of course, it is. But it is also the truth. It takes a special person, you say. And, of course, it does. It takes a real saint, you say. And, of course, it does. But why were the saints saints? As someone once observed: they were saints because they were cheerful when it was difficult to be cheerful, patient when it was difficult to be patient, and because they pushed when they wanted to stand still, and kept silent when they wanted to talk, and were agreeable when they wanted to be disagreeable, That was all. It was quite simple and always will be.

We are those people, those saints, even if we would never, ever consider ourselves as such, whether in pride or humility. But saints were and are ordinary people: people with two hands and feet and ears and eyes, people who were willing to get involved in the world in which they lived – who get involved in this world. They do not stand idly by and wait for some savoir to do the work needed to be done.

So how do we get involved, we saints of God? Thomas Merton put it rather succinctly: “Before you do a darned thing just BE what you are, a Christian; then no one will have to tell you what to do. You’ll know.” We know Merton was correct. We know in our hearts what to do and what not to do. It is written there by the God who created us and who lives in us and who acts through us. We know.

We have everything we need, individually and collectively, to make this world of ours a better world, a peaceable world, where there is liberty and justice for all, ALL. Not some, not the privileged few, not the powerful: ALL. What we seemingly do not have is the will to do what needs to be done because that will involve personal sacrifice. That is sad.

GENERALIZATIONS ARE JUST THAT

"Our youths love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority – they show disrespect for their elders, and love to chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when their elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up food, and tyrannize teachers.” That was Socrates’ opinion over 2500 years ago. As the wise Ecclesiastes opined even before Socrates’ observation, there is nothing new under the sun.

Ecclesiastes’ opinion was correct and valid. There is nothing new under the sun. Generation after generation not only learns from the previous generation but they also make the same mistakes as their ancestors. We learn from history, but not always and never enough. The world would be better and life would probably be so much easier if we learned from the past not to repeat the mistakes of the past. We do but not always.

Socrates, on the other hand, was generalizing and was thus generally correct in his observation of not only the youth of his time but also of all youth. While many young people love luxury and have bad manners, not all of them do. While some talk too much, don’t listen when they should, and make life miserable for their parents and teachers, not all do, not even the majority do; but enough do to make adults generalize when they should specify.

It is easy to generalize, of course. When we do, it is usually about those who disagree with us or who are simply disagreeable. Then we can write them off as being in the wrong or simply wrong because they are different. The problem, of course, is those whom we categorize also categorize us. Whenever we judge others with our sense of our own superiority, we can be reasonably certain that they are returning the favor. Just ask young people what they think about their elders if you don’t believe me!

It is not only easy but it is also safe to generalize. That way we do not have to get to know the other on a person-to-person basis. Yet that is also the only way to not only learn about the other; it is also a great way to learn about ourselves. Once we get to know someone whom we have categorized, however we have categorized that person, we will, more often than not learn that we were wrong. He didn’t fit our generalization. In the process we will have to come to grips with why we were so ready to stuff him into a box in which he obviously did not fit.

I once spent almost ten days with four teenage boys, like 24/7 with them: slept in the same room, rode in the same van, walked the same trails, ate at the same table. None of them fit Socrates’ description of his or our youth. I knew that before we went on our Journey to Adulthood Pilgrimage to the Upper Northwest with our theme of “Finding God in Nature.” We found God there and I found God living in them even if they sometimes talked too much or ate as if this were their last meal. Boys will be boys, we say, whatever that means. However, when we spend enough time with them, whether as adults with youth or youth with adults, what we will all learn is that our generalizations are just that and no more and probably just plain wrong.

FORGIVENESS….AGAIN

It may be an exaggeration, but I think only a slight one, to assert that forgiveness is the most difficult concept to accept or understand. Yet it is the basis for living in this world and a basic of our faith. We cannot live in this world unless we forgive and accept forgiveness and we cannot be fully Christian unless both are part of our daily lives. Forgiveness is simply that basic to life as we know and live it.

Forgiveness comes after the pain, often in the midst of the suffering. Someone has done something, said something, to hurt us and to hurt us deeply. The pain is real, is ongoing, begs for redress. The hurt was deliberate which makes the pain even more difficult to bear and the thought of forgiveness almost impossible to conceive. Yet, unless we can forgive, we cannot move on in life.

In fact, not only are we not moving on in life, we are not even living in the present. The hurt that was inflicted in the past is keeping us living in the past. It is there and it is preventing us from moving on, so consuming is our pain, our hurt and our anger. This did not have to happen. The hurt may have been fully deliberate or have been caused because the other lost control which may lessen that person’s guilt but does nothing to alleviate our pain.

Is it any wonder, then, that being asked to forgive the one who hurt us is not only so difficult, it almost seems foolish. Why should we have to forgive someone who has hurt us? Won’t that make him even more likely to hurt us again and again? How will she learn from what she did if we so readily forgive? Will she learn? After all, are we not supposed to learn from our mistakes, especially deliberate ones? What kind of learning is that, being forgiven with no punishment or redress involved?

The wound inflicted is not something that will heal all on its own. It is not a surface cut but a wound so deep that it demands surgery or else it will eventually kill us, literally and figuratively, if it is not treated. And the only one who can treat our wound is we ourselves. We have to be our own surgeon. God will give us the grace and strength to begin the process and see us through as will those who love us.

The late Lewis Smedes has written much on forgiveness. He said this: “The only way to heal the pain that will not heal itself is to forgive the person who hurt you. Forgiving stops the reruns of pain. Forgiving heals your memory as you change your memory’s vision. When you release the wrongdoer from the wrong, you cut a malignant tumor out of your inner life. You set a prisoner free, but you discover that the real prisoner was your­self. Forgiveness is God’s invention for coming to terms with a world in which, despite their best intentions, people are unfair to each other and hurt each other deeply. He began by forgiving us. And he invites us to forgive each other.”

Forgiveness is never demanded nor deserved. It is simply granted and must just as simply be accepted when we are the one who is to be forgiven. Neither is ever, ever easy. But to live either unforgiving or unforgiven is to die while still breathing and that is not living.

OUR LIFE IS A MYSTERY STORY

The great (only a personal opinion, or course) mystery story writer Mickey Spillaine, in talking about how he read mystery stories, admitted that he read the end of the story first to see who did it and then went back to the beginning. He said that he read mysteries in this way so that he could better follow the plot. That would be a great way to follow the plot but it would also take all of the fun out of reading mystery stories.

Life, our life, is truly a mystery story that is still being written. It is a mystery not in the sense that we have to figure out who is going to do what to us or who truly was to blame for something that happened to us. Rather life is a mystery because we have no idea what the rest of our life will bring. We do not know how that story will end. That’s the real mystery, isn’t it?

Yes, we have plans for the future, near and very distant. We plan the day. We plan for our vacation. We plan for retirement. We all have plans, some more definite than others, to be sure, but we have them. However, we have no idea of knowing whether any of these plans will materialize. We may die before any one of them takes place. We may live to see most of them fulfilled. But we simply do not know.

Our life is not predetermined. No one, including God, knows how our life we till turn out, even how tomorrow will turn out. Our free will and God’s giving us that free will to do as we please help determine how our life will proceed and even end. What is more, the free will of every other human being also helps determine what happens next in our life. How often have we had to change our plans because someone or something else – a boss, a sick child, an accident – forced us to do so?

That may be unsettling when we think about it, but it is also a fact. In fact, instead of the mysteriousness of life being at times so much a cause of worry and concern, it can be a cause for some peace of mind. Much of our life is truly out of our hands and is in the hands of others, even at the whim of their free will. We cannot control what others do. We only have control over our own lives and even that control is limited by our own human limitations.

If Mickey Spillaine were alive today, and if he took a look at our life as it is right now, he would have no idea how it might evolve let alone end. Neither do we. Would we want to know? Do we have any desire to be like Mickey Spillaine and know how the end of our life will take place – all the details – and then watch as our present life unfolds that will eventually lead to that pre-determined end even if that were possible? I doubt it.

Just as the joy of reading a good mystery story is in paying attention to all the details, so the joy of life is living in the moment. It’s not that we are not concerned how our life will turn out; we are, we most certainly are and we moist certainly well should be. Rather it is the fact that the rest of our life has not been written. It is written moment to moment, day to day. We are called to live each moment as faithfully and as fully as we can and watch as the mystery of our life unfolds.

SIN AS DEBT

When you and I say The Lord’s Prayer, we ask the Father to “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us”, or in the newer form: “forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.” My Presbyterians friends, however, are accustomed to say “forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” In fact, one of the more famous musical versions of The Lord’s Prayer uses the Presbyterian form.

Not to argue what is correct or, perhaps, what is more correct – trespasses, sins, debts – but a good case could be made that debt is the better term, or at least gets to an issue about trespasses and sins that we hardly ever think about. Both trespass and sin are words that indicate that something wrong has been done. The trespasser, the sinner, has hurt another and asks for forgiveness just as s/he asks for the same when s/he is the one who has been done wrong.

We all know that we are sinners, that we have hurt others, and deliberately so, with our words and actions. We make no bones about it and are never hesitant to say The Lord’s Prayer. We’ll even make a public confession of that fact during the Eucharist. We do not shy away from such admissions because we know we cannot and because we also know that everyone around us, everyone period, is in the same boat as we are. We are all sinners, no questions asked.

That is all well and good as far as it goes. But does it go far enough? Does simply admitting our sinfulness suffice? The Presbyterians, at least as far as their version of the prayer goes, do not seem to think so. We should not think so either. Think about it: whenever we hurt another, we owe them something. We are in debt to them. What we certainly owe is an apology. We might be in even more debt as well. We may have to make amends, repay, somehow in some way, what we have damaged. There may be occasions when we are in debt big time.

Too often, I think, we do not think about the consequences of our sinfulness, do not even consider that we are indebted to the one we have hurt just as the other is indebted to us whom he or she has hurt. We owe and are owed as a result of our sins and trespasses but we often think little or nothing about this truth – or, even worse, how we are going to pay off the debt that we owe.

Years ago a prominent psychologist asked the question, “Whatever happened to sin?” because he believed we human beings were simply taking our sinfulness for granted and were satisfied that that was sufficient. “We’re all sinners, so what’s the big deal?” we said and asked and went on with our lives. In doing so all the debts we built up because of our sinfulness and selfishness only got higher and higher and we became more and more alienated one from another.

The only way to remedy such alienation is to take responsibility for our sins and somehow begin to repay the debts we owe. Perhaps if we were more cognizant of the fact that our sins require debt payment, we would sin less and love more. Perhaps.

THAT EXPLAINS IT ALL

Ever wonder why we human beings can sometimes be so smart, do so much, be so intelligent that it often staggers the imagination? Every time I look around, it almost seems that there is another newer and better and faster technological gadget on the market. My first cell phone years ago had more computer stuff than the Apollo astronauts had. My new phone is a less than a year old and it is behind the times.

That is only for starters. One only wonders what will be next so smart are we. And then, at the same time, we have to wonder why we same human beings can do some of the dumbest and most foolish things. We make serious decisions often on the spur of the moment and live to regret what we’ve done, regret it for a long, long time. We all have skeletons in our closets we had to hide there out of sight and out of mind because we did not want to be continually faced with our foolish past actions.

So why do we very smart human beings often do what is quite foolish, what we would not do had we given some thought ahead of time? Mark Twain had the answer. “Man was made at then end of the week, when God was tired,” he opined. Sounds like a plausible explanation to me given that I know I make foolish and rash decisions when I am tired, when I should have waited, that I do not do my best when I am exhausted.

Tongue in cheek or not, Twain was on to something there. Of course, no matter when we were created, we would still do what is unwise and foolish, free will being what it is. That being a given, something else Twain observed goes hand-in-hand with our ability and proclivity to do the foolish after which we often grieve over our mistakes. We grieve alone because we are not going to find a sympathetic ear. We made our bed freely even if foolishly. No one is going to join us in it just to ease our guilt. That is how we learn.

Grief can take care of itself, says Twain. And it should. But, he says, “to get the full value of joy you must have somebody to divide it with.” We can and do – must – grieve over our foolishness alone. We do not rush out and tell everyone, tell anyone, about the fool we have been. But we do not rejoice over our good deeds all alone. We need someone else, many others, to share our joy. When something good has happened to us, we can’t wait to share our good news.

God may have created us on the last day when God was worn out, exhausted, and did not give us his best shot. I can live with that. We all can because we must. What God also did, as the creation parable makes very, very clear is that God created us for one another. It is not good for us to be alone, especially in our joy and even in our grief and sorrow.

Yes, we need to grieve alone in order to personally deal with whatever it is we are grieving about – a foolish action, the loss of a loved one, the loss of a job, a failure of some kind. We need that time alone, but we need others to be close at hand.

We are who we are: each of is wise and foolish, weak and strong, sad and joyful all rolled into one human being. We are God’s creation. That explains everything even if we can’t understand the half of it.

ELIMINATE THESE WORDS

The late Senator Barry Goldwater, no friend of mine because of his politics, but a kindred spirit when it comes to what is really important, namely our relations with one another and with this world of ours, made a couple of astute observations. First: “Scratch the word hate from your vocabulary. If you’re going to talk about a man you don’t like, just say you don’t like him. Don’t say you hate him. ‘Hate’ is the dirtiest, ugliest word in the language – any language.”

To truly hate someone means that we wish that person were dead and not only dead but consigned to everlasting hell as well. What is worse is that when we hate another person, we are, in the process, hating God because that person is a child of God no less a way than we are and is loved by God to no less a degree than God loves us and has God living in him in no less a way that God lives in us.

We can and must always hate the sin, just as God does. But we must extrapolate the sin from the sinner if only because we desire the same from God and especially from the one we have sinned against. We all do sinful and selfish and stupid actions because we are limited human beings. We are not perfect and will never be perfect but can only strive to be better today than we were yesterday. And if we fail, as we often do, then we need to pick ourselves up, brush ourselves off and start all over again.

That is all God expects of us, all we can expect of ourselves, and all we can expect – and demand – of the other. There is no room for hate in God’s world, only confession, repentance, and forgiveness. As Goldwater said, we need to scratch the word hate from our vocabulary, admit we don’t like what the other did or perhaps even like him or her as a person. Remember, as difficult as it may be to believe, there are many people who don’t like us.

One more Goldwater observation that goes hand-in-hand with his thoughts on hate: “I’ve never been in a place on earth that I would call ugly, because when you talk to the people there it begins to be a little beautiful. I have a strong feeling that when this world eliminates the social, language, and religious barriers there will be peace. I think that’s the way the Lord wants it.”

As the song says, “everything is beautiful in its own way.” Why? For the same reason why we must not hate: everything, like every person, is a creation of God. It is good and it is beautiful, not only in its own way, but in the eyes of others. They see beauty it what is plain and bland to us just as God see good in someone who acts so badly.

We put up barriers, even walls, sometimes impenetrable walls, between ourselves and others because of cultural issues, religious beliefs, socio-economic differences (and that is only for starters). WE erect those walls, those divisions, those barriers. God does not. As the Senator opined, God’s choice would be that we not only knock them down, but keep them down and eliminate them entirely. That is not and never will be easy; but if we want peace on earth and peace of mind and heart and soul as well, that is the only way.

MISREADING THE CROSS

Sometimes whenever we look at the cross with Jesus on it, hanging in pain and suffering and death, we can easily get the wrong idea about what it means to be a Christian, to follow Jesus. Yes, there are times, probably very, very few and very far between, when we get nailed for being a Christians. But those times are the exception, thank God, and not the rule.

Being a Christian demands sacrifice, to be sure. It means putting the other person first, walking the extra mile, even turning the other cheek if necessary. All these actions can be and usually are painful. But they come up short when we compare that kind of pain to the pain Jesus endured. And, yes, we have been told that no greater love can we have than to lay down our life for another, lay it down and give it up as in actually dying. So, when was the last time anyone ever asked you to do that?

Novelist and poet Chris Abani, a Nigerian by birth, thinking about not only life in war-torn Nigeria but life in this world, said this: “What I’ve come to learn is that the world is never saved in grand messianic gestures, but in the simple accumulation of gentle, soft, almost invisible acts of compassion, everyday acts of compassion. In South Africa they have a phrase called ubuntu. Ubuntu comes out of a philosophy that says, the only way for me to be human is for you to reflect my humanity back to me.”

He is not denigrating what Jesus did on the cross; rather he is observing that such messianic gestures really don’t change the world. Jesus’ death on the cross did not. What changed the world were “the simple accumulation of gentle, soft, almost invisible acts of compassion, everyday acts of compassion” that the followers of Jesus did day in and day out. That is what converted others, changed them, changed their lives.

Yes, we are all thankful for what Jesus did, but that is not what he has called us to do nor is that we have promised to do in and through our baptism. We are called to live each day as caring and compassionate people, no more and no less. That is not always easy and it is often a pain in the neck if not everywhere else on our body. Kindness and compassion are not always rewarded in kind but just the opposite.

Nevertheless, if we truly want to change the world from what it is to what God created it to be and what Jesus came to remind us that we could make it over as, then the only way is the ubuntu way. That means that we are fully alive, fully human, when the kindness and love we share with another is shared back. Sometimes that happens immediately. Sometimes it takes a long time, even a very long and painful time. And sometimes the other simply does not share back. It happens.

Yet, no matter how long it takes, how painful it is at times, the only way we can change another and in the process change a very, very, very small part of this world, is to hang in there even when our acts of kindness and compassion are rejected. Jesus never gave up even to the end when he kindly, lovingly and compassionately forgave those who rejected his love and nailed him to that cross. Neither can or must we.

THE DEVIL

One of the great comedic lines of all times was that from Flip Wilson who used to explain his failings and shortcomings by asserting “The devil made me do it.” It always, always got a laugh no matter how often we, the audience, had heard that line. Why? As with all humor, there is always a sense of truth. It is said that when we find something in another that makes us laugh, we are really laughing at ourselves.

Like Flip, there is not a one of us who has not done something for which we were later or even immediately chagrined. We wondered how we could have been so foolish, so stupid, so selfish. How could we have done such a thing, said such words? The pain for our foolishness could have been eliminated or at least alleviated if we could have blamed it all on the devil.

Like Flip, sometimes we did. In our imagination we pictured this evil-looking creature, fork in hand, fire blazing from his mouth, who forced us to do that which we now rue. Of course we knew better. Nevertheless, there was and is and always will be that need to try to pass the buck, or at least some part of the buck of blame onto someone else. The devil is always and easily that scapegoat.

Yet, no one and nothing, the devil included, can make us do that which we know we should not. The devil is not the cause of or reason for our sins and offenses. We are. However, the truth is that we need the devil. We need that figure in our imagination who prods and pushes us to say and do that which we know we should not. We need that reminder that sin, evil, selfishness is simply the absence of good.

And is not that what the devil is for us: a creature, however we imagine him to be, that personifies all that is bad, all that is wrong, evil incarnate? No good can possibly come from the devil and thus, we reason, all bad somehow must originate with the devil. Thus, whenever we take stock of our sins, we go back to whence they obviously began: the devil. Laying the blame for our sinfulness at the feet of the devil quickly follows.

It makes for a good laugh when we try, a good laugh all around. If we tried Flip’s line on another, they laughed. They didn’t even have to say, “Get serious!” If we tried that line on ourselves, we laughed even harder even as we truly wished we could blame someone, anyone, even the devil.

And yet we need the devil even if we don’t believe in the actual existence of a devil, of Satan. We need the reminder of how powerful the absence of good really is. Nazi Germany, Muslim fanatics, a crazy man with a Glock are examples of the devil at work, examples of what power the absence of good has and the evil that it can do.

There is evil in this world, lots of it. We are reminded of it every day, sadly. But the doer-of-evil, the devil, is not figment of our imagination or some outside force trying to control us. The devil is in each one of us yearning to get out and have his way with us. We are the devil whenever we do evil and we have no one else to blame but ourselves.

IN A PICKLE

Over the millennia there have been numerous arguments and discussions between scientists and theologians. For the most part they have gone nowhere. The scientist wants proof: proof of God’s existence, proof that a certain miracle has taken place, proof that a law of nature has been suspended in this instance – proof. The theologian, on the other hand, does not demand such. The theologian only demands that what he believes is, well, believable, given his first belief, namely, that of his belief in God.

Novelist Robertson Davies, discussing his joining of the Anglican Church: “Yes, indeed, I consider myself a believer. But if I were asked to nail down and defend what it was I believed and why, I would be in a pickle like a lot of people. I think this is the kind of thing that is not perhaps very widely or sympa­thetically understood. Religious belief is not susceptible to the kind of discussion and proof that appeals to skeptical minds that generally want to work on scientific principles. They’re so imbued with the scientific method that intuition and a sort of native awareness don’t count for anything.”

We believers are always in a pickle, often with ourselves let alone with those who demand scientific proof. We, too, wonder why we sometimes believe what we believe. We, too, have our doubts about God’s love for us, even about God’s very existence or certainly that God cares about us either individually or as a whole. Given the mess that the world is in and has been in almost since creation, we have to wonder about this God of our faith.

Thus, when we try to defend our faith or our God or both, we wind up in a pickle. We have no adequate answers, answers that will satisfy the questioner even when that questioner is ourself. Yet, while the scientist will walk away shaking his head at our foolishness for believing what is impossible to prove and what, in many instances, makes no sense at all, we hang on. We don’t give in or give up.

That’s not to say that it wouldn’t be easier to live with ourselves if we did. There are times when we would just like to shuck it all and give up on this God of ours who seems so often to be so distant and so uncaring about the pain and suffering that we are enduring, unjustly and undeservedly enduring. Just mark it up to fate and get on with life without God. Wouldn’t that be so much easier and certainly make so much more sense?

Perhaps. But we do not. Why we do not, why we hang on and hang in when everything in us says to give up and walk away, we cannot explain. As Davies asserts, if and when we try, we end up in a pickle of our own making. There is no scientific explanation for this instance of ours to hold on to a God who sometimes does not seem to care to hold on to us. Sometimes.

But it is in those times when God holds on to us, won’t let us go, who even forcibly grabs us, that we know why we still believe even when it might make complete sense not to. We wish we could explain this faith of ours, but we cannot. That may put us in a pickle but it is a very sweet one, is it not?

PRAYER

When I was in college, my English professor used to regale the class with definitions from Ambrose Bierce’s The Devil’s Dictionary. For example: Conservative (noun) A statesman who is enamoured of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal, who wishes to replace them with others. Lawyer (noun) One skilled in circumvention of the law. My prof’s favorite was that of prayer: to ask that the laws of the universe be annulled on behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy.

As with all of Bierce’s definitions there is a very real ring of truth about them. Most conservatives I know, religious and political, get all bent out of shape around existing evils: taxes and sexual issues being two. And most liberals I know, myself included, invariably arrive at solutions to these problems by creating other problems rather than real answers. A good defense lawyer’s job is to find a way around a law or a reason why his client is exempt from the law.

So, too, whenever we pray to God, we most assuredly confess our unworthiness to approach God in prayer because we are sinful human beings. And that we are. We dare not do otherwise. And there are times in prayer when we most assuredly ask God to either annul or at least bend the laws of the universe on our behalf. That’s what a miracle is, is it not: asking God to go against nature?

Are we fools? Are we wasting our time? Are we wrong? Is that what prayer is all about? Well, yes and no. It’s not what prayer is all about but prayer is about some of that. We do pray that God work miracles on our behalf, or at least on behalf of someone we love at our request. And sometimes our prayer takes the form of yelling at God in anger or begging with tears streaming down our cheeks or, in some instances, both.

We’re not fools or wasting our time or are wrong when we pray for miracles, pray that the laws of nature be annulled on our behalf because we believe, no, because we know God can and sometimes does do exactly that. Not always, but at least often enough for us to pray in the hope that God will make another exception to the laws of nature just this once more and for us or for someone we love.

Lewis B. Smedes said it best: “I think we should see miraculous healings not as a way of solving human suffering, but as whimsical signals – to be taken sometimes with a bit of humor, not made too much of, but still signals – that God is alive, that Christ is Lord, and that suffering is not the last word about human existence.” Whimsical signals: playful, fanciful, impulsive acts on God’s part on our behalf.

It is God who is in control and not us, and we know it. That is why we ask God to give some of that control into our hands by giving in to our prayers, our wishes and wants. Yet, like Bierce’s definition of a conservative and a liberal, sometimes our solution to the problem may be worse than the problem itself or we are creating more problems in having our prayers answered. Bierce reminds us that we need to be aware of what we are asking and Smedes reminds us that God really does know best.

FAME

Andy Warhol once opined that every one of us gets his or her fifteen minutes of fame. Whether this is good or bad is often determined by the way this fame is achieved. The reality shows on television allow many people to make fools of themselves in front of a vast audience that is foolish enough to waste its time on such foolishness. There are those, obviously, who care not how they earn their fifteen minutes.

Fame comes at a price. The more fifteen-minute segments someone is allowed to have, the less of a private life that person has. The larger the audience that produces the fame, the more will be the demands placed on that person afterwards, either trying to down play or trying to live up to whatever it is that produced the fame initially. Those who have sought out fame or those who have it thrust upon them can all vouch for the price they have had to pay for their time in the limelight. More than less will tell us that the fame is not worth the price one has to pay.

Yet we all want to be looked upon, at least by some, as someone of some importance. We do have our pride and we want and even need that pride to be stroked at times, not necessarily and even not certainly on television or YouTube or Facebook. As long as there are others who look up to and respect us, that is enough. Of course, maybe a little bit of publicity wouldn’t hurt now, would it? Would it?

The question remains, and it is a very personal one and one whose answer we dare not reveal to anyone but ourselves, if we even dare to do that, is this: do I worry too much about what others think of me? Do I? Really? If I do, if any of us does, then perhaps we need to heed the admonition of Eleanor Roosevelt. She said this: “You wouldn’t worry so much about what others think of you if you realized how seldom they do.” Ouch!

She is right, most certainly. Even the most famous people in the world are ignored and never thought about on a daily basis by most of the people. They just are not. And since we are nowhere near to being deemed famous, it should give us pause to realize that if we really are worrying about what others think about us, our worries are for naught and we are truly wasting our time.

None of this is to say that who we are is unimportant and what we do makes little difference. We are important because each one of us is a child of God and because God has given each of us a mission and a ministry that only we can fulfill. When we discover that mission and ministry and fulfill it, the world is a better place and we are a better person, whether we receive any fame in the process. On the other hand, whenever we fail to fulfill the mission and ministry God has entrusted to us, both we and the world are less for it.

Our goal and responsibility in this life is not to seek out our fifteen minutes of fame. It is simply to learn what God has in mind for us, to fulfill it as best we can, be thankful that we can, and be satisfied. If any fame comes in the process, so be it. If none does, at least in the world’s terms, so be it as well.

MEMORIES OF LIFE-CHANGING MOMENTS

Ah, memories! Memory Number One: I remember very well, or at least as well as one can remember an event that took place 65 years ago, the moment. I was a senior in seminary high school. It was the seventh game of the World Series with my beloved Bucs playing the hated Yankees. We were allowed to watch the game during free time after lunch, but at 2:00 we had to go to our scheduled study hall. Fortunately one of my classmates, also an ardent Bucco fan, had a contraband transistor radio and was able to pick up the game in the recesses of the typewriter room. At 3:36 pm on October 13, 1950, that dramatic moment when Bill Mazeroski hit the home run that beat the Yankees to win the 1960 World Series will live on in my memory forever.

Memory Number Two: It was Friday afternoon and I was on my way back from lunch heading to my room to change clothes to do something outside. What it was I no longer remember. What I do remember is walking up the steps and running into two guys on their way down. We stopped. I looked at them and said, “You two look like you just lost your best friend.” They looked at me and asked, “Didn’t you hear? The President has just been shot.” It was November 22, 1963, a day that changed the world – no hyperbole here – forever, and my life as well.

Memory Number Three: It was October 17, 1971, the day of another World Series Game Seven. The Pirates were playing the Baltimore Orioles. I was alone in the Rectory as my boss, the Pastor, was visiting some friends and the house keeper was out playing bingo. Prior to this moment, every time the Bucs lost a game, I would get ticked off, even want to throw something, so wrapped up was I in their every game. It was the bottom of the ninth, the Pirates were leading 2-1, Steve Blass was on the mound and an epiphany moment happened. I said to myself, or something or someone inside of me said this: “Bill, the Pirates are either going to win or their going to lose; but you still have to get up tomorrow morning at 6:00 to say the 7:00 Mass.” Life, real life, came into perspective for me at that moment.

Memory Number Four: The day before I was visiting with my family and complaining to my brother Fran that I was tired being alone. I had been a single parent for six years and so much wanted to find someone to love and be loved by. He said very matter-of-factly, “Don’t worry. She’ll fall out of a tree.” I could only hope he was right.

The next day, August 24, 1986, I was celebrating the 10:30 Eucharist at Trinity Church in Parkersburg, West Virginia. I stepped into the pulpit and looked across the congregation. My eyes spotted a beautiful young woman sitting by herself six pews from the back of the church. Somehow I got through the sermon and through the Eucharist. When she came to Communion and held out her hands to receive the host, I quickly noted that she was not wearing a wedding ring. After church I introduced myself. That was the beginning of a wonderful romance that continues to this day and forever.

Memories of life-changing moments: I have others; we all have them. They stay with us forever. What are yours?